Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life • Hacker News Board

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#331

Post by gosukiwi » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

Dewie wrote: post #140

> “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” Men are afraid that a woman will change/ruin their whole lives with just their words. Well, at least that is how "Hank" feels now.

That phrase made me realize she's really traumatized. When I read about her childhoold I confirmed it. Pretty sad for her I guess, but still she should grow up and see a doctor or something if she wants to work again... I'm surprised she got there in the first place.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#332

Post by mreiland » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

Jem wrote: post #219

byuu wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that I can never directly relate to being a female. All I can do is think about things logically. If she truly had this kind of response to an innocuous joke, I think that says more about her own insecurities than about the behavior of Hank. Feeling danger in response to a bad joke in a crowded room is not a reasonable response to have. It's grossly over-proportionate. How far should we go to cater towar…

This reminds me of when I go out running at night. I avoid running near men (particularly groups of men) because of a fear that I'll come to harm: specifically rape. It's irrational, and unreasonable, but it's the reaction I have nonetheless. (This is common, FYI, many women feel like this.) I don't expect other people to cater towards my fear, but acknowledging that it's real and that it happens is important. Ridicu…

But do you have that fear running around in a public area with 800+ random people?

The fear itself is reasonable, perhaps not fair, but reasonable. But if the fear is so strong for you that you can't even feel safe in the above description it's an issue with you and not them.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#333

Post by placeybordeaux » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

It seems like the take-away is that mob justice is increasingly worrying in the Internet age.

The two people that were affected barely knew each other and seemingly had no way of absolving themelves.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#334

Post by pcthrowaway » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #320

pcthrowaway wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adria's immediate comment on the situation [1], conveniently not mentioned in the article being currently discussed, expressed anything but hatred for Hank. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047

Yeah, it's odd her opinion in the interview didn't seem to match that public HN comment, which I remembered too (thanks for finding it). I'd guess the article author didn't notice/find the HN comment, or he would have asked her about it, I'm curious what she would say (she never meant it, she was just trying to save her own job? She changed her mind? She has complicated feelings?)

To be honest, I'm a little bit skeptical of the honesty of the interviewer. Even if she said the things in this article, it's possible many of those statements were taken out of context. Someone here linked to this blog post [1] from someone apparently close to Richards, where the writer is classified as being manipulative and duplicitous in order to obtain 'the first interview' with Adria Richards.

[1] http://www.shakesville.com/2015/02/the-falsest-of-false-equi...

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#335

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

byuu wrote: post #311

interpol_p wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't see how hearing two guys in a crowd of 800+ people talk about big dongles would make one feel threatened enough for a comment like To her it's not 800+ people, it's 800+ men where you are one of the few women. That's not something I can say I've ever experienced. Personally I can't see how the joke is threatening, but I can't dismiss her feelings over this just because I find it tough — or even impos…

I just want to say that, although I don't fully agree with you, I really appreciate you chiming in with your thoughts on this. It's given me plenty to think about. In the event that you are right, and she's really being sincere, then I hope she gets help to work through her issues. Especially over the parts about her childhood at the end. > I think it's because she is viewing Hank as an oblivious part of a system whi…

Thank you, I appreciate this discussion with you too.

I often wonder what my reaction to these sorts of articles would be if the genders were reversed. And I find that I more quickly and easily empathise with males, which makes me wary that perhaps my feelings when reading these articles are not completely rational.

I believe both parties did something thoughtless, Adria more so than Hank, but the anger here and how we vilify Adria is so different to how we talk about Hank. It's almost like she's not even human, just some delusional sociopath filled with hatred. I imagine if I were a woman reading this thread I would feel very excluded.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#336

Post by joshstrange » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

mreiland wrote: post #277

joshstrange wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why you should never use your real name with your online identity in any wa While I agree with most of your post I don't agree with this statement. In my opinion hiding behind a username not tied to your real identity is nothing more than a stopgap, eventually someone will link "byuu" with who you really are or more likely you will make a slip up and expose yourself. DPR did everything he could to conceal his ident…

For those of us who are older, the internet was a way to express ourselves without having to deal with the backlash of having views that weren't popular in your local community. being liberal in a conservative community, for example.

This is a very good point, as a 24 year old I will be the first to admit that my ideas may be wrong or misguided (It is what I believe at this point in time but beliefs need to be flexible to adjust to change and I believe mine are). I do see the internet as a way to talk as humans where we are judged by/on our thoughts/ideas and not things like race, political views, religious views, sexual orientation, etc which I understand conflicts with my previous statements. I'll never forgot some of the forums I was on as a kid where I was able to be myself and not be brushed off for being so young, I loved that feeling. Sadly I worry that I won't be able to find that again.

There is a great deal of self-censorship that I do because I expect every comment I make to come back later be it positive or negative. It's less of "Oh I won't post that comment" and more of "I won't go near that forum/board/community in case I were to get doxxed". It's just that trying to be anonymous is so hard and even people that think they are doing a good job slip up all the time and get doxxed. If people trying their best fail what hope do I have?

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#337

Post by seabee » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:25 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #313

TeMPOraL wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his inability to realise how vulnerable she felt simply attending a conference because she was in the minority Aren't we granting too much power to minorities? Let me tell you a story that happened to me. I once went to a Java developers meetup. I'm a Lisper, probably the only one that was attending, so I was a clear minority (that was 3 years ago, back before everyone jumped onto functional programming bandwagon a…

Aren't we granting too much power to minorities? Why should we be the ones who have the ability to grant power?

Parent is wrong though. Nobody is granting anybody power.

Hank's employer had the power to shrug off the episode and keep employing him. Instead, they ceded their power to a minority/controversial view.

Adria's employer, on the other hand, was actually being attacked over the situation. Maybe they could have withstood it, maybe they bucked early. Still, it's not like anyone granted 4chan users power - they already had it and decided to use it against SendGrid.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#338

Post by mistermann » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:27 PM UTC

Personally, I condemn anyone who is a vocal activist in the "gender debate" in tech who does not speak up on topics such as this. If you are female and want to genuinely be treated as an equal in tech, you don't freak out over minor jokes, and when "one of your own" does, I believe you are obligated to voice your disagreement with the behavior, assuming you even think it is wrong, which might be an incorrect assumption. If you don't think it's wrong, I never want to work with someone like you. And if this mentality is at all common (I have no idea), purely from a risk management perspective, I would only hire females when they are massively more qualified than any male counterparts.

I don't like feeling like this, but with what little I know of the public female sentiment on these types of issues, fear and avoidance is the wisest stance.

Hopefully situations like this are vast statistical anomalies.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#339

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:27 PM UTC

Dewie wrote: post #171

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is, such delusional behaviour does nothing but foster more doubt and double standards. If I were Hank, I would react exactly as he wrote: > I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life? > “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I…

Then enough people get cautious like that, and eventually we have people complaining about discrimination because groups of guys will suddenly get quiet when a woman enters earshot, and they act somewhat uncomfortable. "Why can't they just treat us like equals?" I'm starting to believe that you can't really please everybody's sense of what is fair and equality in cases like this.

Such abuses do not foster equality, they validate discrimination. When you make a lot of people afraid of your group, they won't suddenly start being nice to you. They will start to hate you.

It was visible in case of the wave of antisemitism in Europe. People weren't hating Jews because the Jews went around demanding equality and talking about "misoabrachamism". They were hating Jews because overarching narrative was that they're the cause of evil, they're out there to get you economically, to take over the world, etc. etd. Being afrad breeds hate.

Re: Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

#340

Post by mercurial » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 3:29 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #301

mercurial wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would consider shaming them to be "fight," in this instance. More like shooting someone in the back. > I also feel really bad that Adria felt so uncomfortable that she did something so rash. That is where we differ. I do not believe her explanations. Not when she tweets the same kind of joke herself. > The upsetting thing is that our lack of diversity makes these situations so unavoidable. This particular situati…

> Everybody makes bad call. The difference is in how you handle your bad decisions, and what lessons you draw. Adria does not even begin to recognize that she acted wrongly towards these two guys, and generally gave a bad name to feminists. Has she ever claimed to be a feminist?

She claimed at the time that she tweeted to defend women in tech (which is a perfectly fine cause to defend).