Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole • Hacker News Board

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#21

Post by fzeroracer » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #11

Can this not be viewed as a call for the media to more accurately report stories? I think people are just tired of massive media outlets manufacturing the news instead of reporting it. This was obviously a team effort but a single individual got put on a pedestal because it fit with a larger narrative. People are mad and tired of it. Why don't we step back and look at the bigger picture and listen to what people are…

So you're saying the reason why people are making fake profiles, spreading fake rumors etc is because of the media narrative?

Why don't you say what you really mean by 'calling for the media to more accurately report stories'?

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#22

Post by tom_ » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #4

iamdave wrote: post #2

I wonder sometimes if writing articles “Trolls did thing trolls are known for doing” is incidentally giving the trolls exactly what they want.

No, it’s letting them know they stand outside what’s considered polite company. Rereading the discussion about her, this community is among those standing to learn something by considering how she is being treated differently than any man ever featured in such stories.

I find it useful to have a handle on which subjects are currently triggering outbursts. Makes it easier to spot when some other discussion might be heading (or, sometimes, being steered...) in the direction of derailment, I think, if I feel like I have an idea of the current themes.

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#23

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #12

kzcqt wrote: post #7

Media invents a fact, that she is responsible for everything, and make her the face of the discovery, when it was a team effort. They get tons of clicks for saying something that is clearly preposterous. Some people get upset, some even start trolling about it, and badmouth the poor woman, who's not responsible for what the media said in their quest for clicks. A loss of time for everybody involved. Media reports the…

Care to find any example among the myriad of „meet the man behind...“ stories where the same thing happened?

[deleted]

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#24

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #21

malvosenior wrote: post #11

Can this not be viewed as a call for the media to more accurately report stories? I think people are just tired of massive media outlets manufacturing the news instead of reporting it. This was obviously a team effort but a single individual got put on a pedestal because it fit with a larger narrative. People are mad and tired of it. Why don't we step back and look at the bigger picture and listen to what people are…

So you're saying the reason why people are making fake profiles, spreading fake rumors etc is because of the media narrative? Why don't you say what you really mean by 'calling for the media to more accurately report stories'?

I'm saying that the media caused all of that through yellow journalism and the pushing of political agendas:

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

Over the past decade they've been in a race to the bottom of what historically would have been thought of as journalistic ethics. People aren't stupid and can see this. Some people are reasonable and have well thought out rebuttals, some are unreasonable and troll to vent their frustration.

Either way, it was the media that created the entire situation we find ourselves in.

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#25

Post by fzeroracer » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

kzcqt wrote: post #18

fzeroracer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet these discussions, as Matt brings up, generally only occur when there are women involved. No one's been giving her sole credit for this project, they've been highlighting her as part of the team. She admits that it was a team effort, her team admits it was a team effort and wants people to stop downplaying her accomplishments. Yet the discussion on sites like HN keeps veering into a narrative in which she is…

She and the team she belongs to have been reasonable. I'm talking about what the media is reporting, since they are exploiting this story just for clicks. These discussions are the result of the media trying to push a feminist narrative. They chose a female member of the team, and they knew where they were going with it. People can see through it, and are rightly upset. Harassing her personally is, obviously, not the…

You haven't addressed the fact that when someone chooses a male member of the team and gives them undue credit, people don't get upset. Do you really think Jeffrey Snovey was the sole person behind Powershell? That there was no one else on his team that contributed to his project and helped make it a reality? Where was the outrage in that HN thread?

Yet now we have 'the media' pushing a 'feminist narrative' because they're highlighting a woman on the team. Now why would pushing a 'feminist narrative' using your logic cause people to get angry?

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#26

Post by kzcqt » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #25

kzcqt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She and the team she belongs to have been reasonable. I'm talking about what the media is reporting, since they are exploiting this story just for clicks. These discussions are the result of the media trying to push a feminist narrative. They chose a female member of the team, and they knew where they were going with it. People can see through it, and are rightly upset. Harassing her personally is, obviously, not the…

You haven't addressed the fact that when someone chooses a male member of the team and gives them undue credit, people don't get upset. Do you really think Jeffrey Snovey was the sole person behind Powershell? That there was no one else on his team that contributed to his project and helped make it a reality? Where was the outrage in that HN thread? Yet now we have 'the media' pushing a 'feminist narrative' because t…

Nobody gets upset when a male gets undue credit because that's not seen as following a politised agenda. Whether that's right or wrong, or how we could fix that, that's an entirely different matter.

People get upset when the media pushes a feminist narrative because feminism is a very divisive issue. Talking about a divisive issue drives clicks, interactions, retweets, etc. Especially when you get dismissive with one half of the pie. The only purpose of the media is to piss people off so they can get eyeballs on ads.

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#27

Post by wesammikhail » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

I know I am gonna get down-voted to hell for this but here goes nothing:

Am I the only one who was born and used the internet early enough to understand how it actually works? It´s like suddenly everyone is talking about trolls as if it´s some massive internet problem when in actuality trolling is as old if not older than the internet itself. The mere fact that people are complaining about trolls is in itself mind-boggling to me.

People are assholes. You give them the ability to be anonymous and they will take advantage of it. In fact, most of you have probably at one point done something that would be considered trolling. So why the heck is everyone so outraged at the existence of trolls? like really?! How thin skinned do you have to be that some mean comments on the internet aimed to piss you off actually do work? Man I miss the old days when people didn´t associate their online @mynameisabcdef with their actual offline worth and self-esteem.

The less you separate your online life from your offline one, the more you´ll get hurt. Get off the internet, take a walk and if you want to have a proper discussion, seek a forum where people talk seriously. There web is a much bigger space than the cesspool that is Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It´s as if some people live and die by what is said on Twitter these days. In my book that´s nothing short of insanity.

I get that people want the problem fixed. I really do. But you are up against human nature. If you think you´re going to beat that by pointing fingers and getting angry, then you don´t really understand the problem.

She did something amazing and no matter what, no amount of trolls can take that away from her. Simple as that. And if trolls can actually take that away from her then what she did was probably not so great after all. Let the work speak for itself rather than worrying about what some schmuck on twitter said

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#28

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #12

kzcqt wrote: post #7

Media invents a fact, that she is responsible for everything, and make her the face of the discovery, when it was a team effort. They get tons of clicks for saying something that is clearly preposterous. Some people get upset, some even start trolling about it, and badmouth the poor woman, who's not responsible for what the media said in their quest for clicks. A loss of time for everybody involved. Media reports the…

Care to find any example among the myriad of „meet the man behind...“ stories where the same thing happened?

[deleted]

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#29

Post by 0815test » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #12

kzcqt wrote: post #7

Media invents a fact, that she is responsible for everything, and make her the face of the discovery, when it was a team effort. They get tons of clicks for saying something that is clearly preposterous. Some people get upset, some even start trolling about it, and badmouth the poor woman, who's not responsible for what the media said in their quest for clicks. A loss of time for everybody involved. Media reports the…

Care to find any example among the myriad of „meet the man behind...“ stories where the same thing happened?

What stories - the one about PowerShell? Do you think it makes sense to compare the EHT (a literally worldwide effort) to PowerShell?

Re: Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take pictures of a black hole

#30

Post by yodon » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

kzcqt wrote: post #7

Media invents a fact, that she is responsible for everything, and make her the face of the discovery, when it was a team effort. They get tons of clicks for saying something that is clearly preposterous. Some people get upset, some even start trolling about it, and badmouth the poor woman, who's not responsible for what the media said in their quest for clicks. A loss of time for everybody involved. Media reports the…

The first part of the scenario, where one scientist is held up as responsible for a large team's discovery, has played out in every Nobel Prize for experimental work in the past fifty years. That's how science works and everyone who does science professionally knows this. The second part of the scenario, where the internet goes wild and declares this a horrendous miscarriage of credit, happens only when the leader of the team is female. It is not a miscarriage of credit. It is how scientific teams are credited and how they have always been credited, by personifying the collective work through the persona of the leader of the team. There is nothing new here except the application of misogyny.