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

#31

Post by adventured » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:09 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?

Sure, there are several famous examples that everyone is aware of.

Steve Jobs with the iPhone or iPod. Elon Musk with both SpaceX and Tesla. Jeff Bezos with AWS and Amazon's success generally.

In every thread (or media article) in which those people are given opulent credit for the thing in question, it's persistently pointed out that in fact the teams, designers, employees, engineers, leadership, etc. behind those things deserve enormous credit, while the famous person at the front is getting the credit as a visionary genius. Why? Because it sells better to put Bezos on the cover (with his head in a box).

State in an HN thread that Elon Musk founded Tesla sometime, see what response you get 100% of the time. I've been watching that specific response play out over and over for the better part of a decade here as one example. Musk persistently gets given overwhelming credit by the media, and he persistently gets torn down for it.

You also constantly see it when it comes to team efforts generally to take this further. For example when NASA and ESA work on something together and then NASA gets blanket credit. The more famous team will get the overwhelming credit, because it sells. That last part is what it's all about.

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

#32

Post by plemer » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

yodon wrote: post #9

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.

Trolling is a thing. So is misogyny. They are not the same thing.

Popular usage seems to have shifted from "someone who posts solely to get a rise out of people" to "a jerk online." It's too bad because there are plenty of terms for the latter already.

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

#33

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

kzcqt wrote: post #26

fzeroracer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then people are a bunch of bigotted asses. Just because it is their twisted norm in no way makes it acceptable. Less so in fact as it isn't just some rando who thinks it but a social bloc promoting it.

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

#34

Post by berrynice » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

I'm so sick of this MSM/social media fueled gender shit flinging. She herself never claimed she did all the work, the MSM did.

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

#35

Post by faissaloo » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:17 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?

Literally any time someone brings up Steve Jobs

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

#36

Post by yodon » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

plemer wrote: post #32

yodon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolling is a thing. So is misogyny. They are not the same thing.

Popular usage seems to have shifted from "someone who posts solely to get a rise out of people" to "a jerk online." It's too bad because there are plenty of terms for the latter already.

See also the corruption of the word terrorist. Not all bad people are terrorists, some are simply criminals. Similarly not all bad people are trolls, some are simply misogynists. The linguistic difference in each pairing is not measure of badness but motive.

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

#37

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:19 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…

No because their concerns are transparent misogyny - if they wanted actual coverage they would shame them with a complete list of contributors and snark that "an additional kilobyte or printed page isn't that expensive!". Sadly so many choose to be outraged over irrelevant bullshit instead of something which remotely matters.

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

#38

Post by daenz » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #6

Reposting my comment from another story that didn’t get traction (edit: thar was quickly flagged off the front page, as this one is now as well): It should be noted that this community here was among the worst in this regard. This isn’t about measuring the exact contribution she may or may not have made to the project. It’s that there are limitless stories of „meet the man behind “ where that question just never cros…

>See "The Man Behind Windows PowerShell"

Everything I'm finding about Jeffrey Snover indicates that he did, in fact, by himself, invent PowerShell. The idea and original implementation was developed by him, and then he picked a small team (Bruce Payette and James Truher) to bring it to maturity. So I don't see how that's a fair comparison.

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

#39

Post by brlewis » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:22 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…

> These discussions are the result of the media trying to push a feminist narrative

Because whenever they don't have an agenda to push, they apportion credit for accomplishments with perfect accuracy from the beginning?

It's common for recognition to come from some combination of hard work, intelligence, and luck. When you see people getting all bent out of shape over the luck involved in this case and not in others, you have to wonder why.

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

#40

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #37

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…

No because their concerns are transparent misogyny - if they wanted actual coverage they would shame them with a complete list of contributors and snark that "an additional kilobyte or printed page isn't that expensive!". Sadly so many choose to be outraged over irrelevant bullshit instead of something which remotely matters.

Why are the concerns transparent misogyny? Are people not allowed to voice concern as soon as the subject matter involves a woman? You can't just label all of the objections as misogyny and sweep them under the rug. I guess you can, but that's very much the mentality that's causing the toxic environment we find ourselves in.