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This Industry is Fucked

blog.jessfraz.com

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Re: This Industry is Fucked

#121

Post by alaroldai » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:24 AM UTC

cjbprime wrote: post #109

bsder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." I'm tired of people whining in a blog post instead of calling the police. Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile case…

> Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop. What evidence do you have that the police will do something? We could look at people like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, who I feel confident we'll agree have experienced massive and credible death threats. They report the threats they get to the po…

Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. I haven't seen or heard of many court cases dealing with this, and when I have it's been via a blog post. Calling the police might be helpful in the specific case, but unless it really is high profile, it's not going to help change the culture.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#122

Post by astrocyte » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:25 AM UTC

slater wrote: post #97

astrocyte wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol @ all the downvotes I'm getting for this and the swift retracing of upvotes of my initial thread due this extended commentary. I would delete this but i'm going to let it stay... Just goes to show you the depth of people's view on such issues. You want to go on and on about surface issues and foolishness that has nothing to do w/ the root. Yet, the minute someone brings up something real.. Oh no !! That's too muc…

Hahaha yeah, couldn't be that people are downvoting you for legitimate reasons, no sirree! Can only be white-knighting!

Engage in commentary then instead of anonymously pulling out your whiteknight sword because I'm not towing the comfort line you're accustomed to. You feel something was wrong in my commentary, hash it out with me. I'll respond and hopefully a higher truth is arrived at. My main thread went from 11 upvotes to -3 in a matter of seconds because I 'kept it real'. Only with one person having the decency to engage me. That's not white knighting? Back up the votes go

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#123

Post by plorg » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:26 AM UTC

Given the responses I see here, it seems pretty obvious that this is a 'problem with the industry' regardless of whether it's a problem with or that sprouts from the internet.

It seems evident that Jess has experienced terrible things in the process of performing her job. That she would post so adamantly to her blog suggests that the problem is not going away, and she is probably not receiving much of a helpful response from the people around her, presumably including her colleagues. The obvious implication is that as male-dominated industry, most of her (male) colleagues are not familiar with the type of abuse she is receiving and, when they hear of it, are dismissive, taking an attitude of 'not my problem/job description' rather than offering support or assistance.

If that doesn't make it an industry problem, I don't know what would.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#124

Post by ctide » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:28 AM UTC

shoeluckpotland wrote: post #104

I have a small theory about harassment in tech. Posting from a throwaway, as I have been threatened myself. I know many women in technology. Some have experienced some truly vile online harassment. Almost all of which is conducted online, anonymously. Not in-person. Instead, it is rape threats via email. Tweets from pseudo-anonymous accounts. Almost never something that can be attached to a real person. I do not doub…

You forgot the '#gamergate' at the end of your post.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#125

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:29 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #98

alaroldai wrote: post #80

Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." And that makes me so angry. Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgust…

> Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." I'm tired of people whining in a blog post instead of calling the police. Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile case…

Since when do the police care about online harassment?

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#126

Post by vezzy-fnord » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:30 AM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #48

thirdtruck wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably haven't heard it from them because complaining about such is so often labeled as "whining" and met with replies of "get a thicker skin." Even if you, specifically, are a genuinely sympathetic ear, they've likely been burned too often to open up yet again.

This, this, a thousand times this. I have a few female programmer friends, and they only ever spoke about "well, you know, not too many women in the field" in careful, guarded tones. Until the Adria Richards thing happened, and I said something like "I don't really think either of them should have been fired, but I also think it's shitty how common those stupid sexual jokes are. I wish we could get past that stuff."…

being talked over or ignored constantly (which never happens to me, a tall white dude)

I love how you extrapolate this as a general maxim.

But ultimately, I find the parallels to junior high school to be thoroughly unconvincing. Yes, schools can be hellholes, but for completely different reasons than the one you imply, as has been written in detail by the likes of Ivan Illich, John Holt and John Taylor Gatto.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#127

Post by knowtheory » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:31 AM UTC

shoeluckpotland wrote: post #104

I have a small theory about harassment in tech. Posting from a throwaway, as I have been threatened myself. I know many women in technology. Some have experienced some truly vile online harassment. Almost all of which is conducted online, anonymously. Not in-person. Instead, it is rape threats via email. Tweets from pseudo-anonymous accounts. Almost never something that can be attached to a real person. I do not doub…

That's some fucked up gas-lighting dude.

Kathy Sierra explicitly called out one of her harassers weev and his posse (def not what you'd call a "Social Justice Warrior", and weev initially copped to harassing her and has been trying to deny it subsequently).

Places like 4Chan and KotakuInAction are not some fucked up false flag operation simply by virtue of the vast number of man hours involved.

And even ignoring all of the evidence that contradicts your theory, i'd like to point out how incredibly unsympathetic and unhelpful your theory is.

Even if there were some psychotic cadre of rabble rousers out there harassing others, IT WOULD STILL NOT BE OKAY IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. And there would still be the very practical problem that people were being harassed.

There are people out there who are trying to address harassment on the internet with technological and social means, and despite the size of the challenge, this is something that needs to be addressed.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#128

Post by aklemm » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:31 AM UTC

MollyR wrote: post #28

I'm sorry to hear this. But I want to add a counter statistic. I've only had pleasant experiences from people trying to help me. The only shit I got in the industry was from a business manager trying to push our team into a death march. There are many factors out in there in the world. We need to put things back into context, rather than just saying things like "Our Industry is fucked". It feels like lately its too e…

Focusing on the minority is important, and kind of the point of article. The vocal minority in the tech world seem to be more unreasonably misbehaved than other industries. Imagine a woman in the medical industry or energy sector who gives conference talks and blogs...no way she's going to get this level of harassment.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#129

Post by yoshuaw » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:34 AM UTC

astrocyte wrote: post #95

yoshuaw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it bluntly Astrocyte is telling Jessie to shut up. They aren't saying harassment is OK, it just shouldn't be talked about.

Agreed mholt. I never said this harassment was ok. It is not ok and threats can be followed up by police if she really wanted to get even... I am saying that it looks like modern day internet trolling to me. Sign on Xbox live or a modern gaming network .. People are threatening and calling each other vile names all day long. No one cares if you're a female/male or what your ethnicity is. However, if you provide that…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YesAllWomen

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#130

Post by beloch » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

alaroldai wrote: post #80

Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." And that makes me so angry. Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgust…

The problem is, just one person like this is "enough" to really mess people up. You can have hundreds of normal, positive interactions in a week and it just takes one a$$hat to make you forget all that. Thanks to the internet, one guy can ruin hundreds of other people's days. He (or she) can do it anonymously and safely from a great distance. For the overwhelming majority of us, there simply are no barriers to prevent this. We routinely filter out nuisance emails from Nigerian princes but very few people try to filter out the crazies.

Most of us, if given the chance to have our messages filtered, would choose not to do so. Most people are eager to please and want to know when somebody is unhappy so they can fix it. Only people in the most visible positions are faced with such a deluge of crap that they're forced to do something about it. For the average person, the aberrant attention that comes from a small amount of exposure, such as a conference talk, is just big enough to throw us for a loop but not so big that we'd think about taking steps to never see that stuff. This isn't only a problem for women. Men face it too.

Perhaps the time has come to approach harassment the way we approach spam. Namely, make it easy to report personal attacks so that we can start using the same techniques that block spam to block harassment.

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