Apology from Geeklist • Hacker News Board

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#41

Post by electrichead » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

psykotic wrote: post #33

tptacek wrote: post #5

I could care less about Geeklist but from a purely analytical perspective: this is so "how not to write an apology" that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. It literally starts out in its first sentence by undermining itself. Incidentally, publicly threatening the job of someone who criticizes you (as a tit-for-tat for them "threatening your brand") is one of…

> that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. I'm sure this isn't what you had in mind, but I couldn't help myself. I'm not claiming this is what they were actually thinking, but it's how an upset, uncharitable reader might take it, which is who you'd want to address in an apology. >Hi everyone. We never meant to offend any person and are very sorry as we clearl…

Actually it seems that the article was changed before you read it. One line in particular was "We never meant to offend any woman and are very sorry as we clearly have" instead of "person." Someone went through and corrected most of the language to be gender-neutral but the original was actually an interesting read in itself.

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#42

Post by tptacek » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

psykotic wrote: post #33

tptacek wrote: post #5

I could care less about Geeklist but from a purely analytical perspective: this is so "how not to write an apology" that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. It literally starts out in its first sentence by undermining itself. Incidentally, publicly threatening the job of someone who criticizes you (as a tit-for-tat for them "threatening your brand") is one of…

> that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. I'm sure this isn't what you had in mind, but I couldn't help myself. I'm not claiming this is what they were actually thinking, but it's how an upset, uncharitable reader might take it, which is who you'd want to address in an apology. >Hi everyone. We never meant to offend any person and are very sorry as we clearl…

For comparison's sake, look how Coda Hale handles this problem:

https://twitter.com/#!/coda/status/182858775382851585

140 characters. Note the advanced trick he employs of explaining himself while simultaneously owning the problem. The fundamental technique there: demonstrate (somehow) that you understand the concern and that the concern is valid.

(Your annotation is more cynical than mine would be; the interesting discussion though as far as I'm concerned is "the mechanics of how to apologize effectively in an open letter").

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#43

Post by psykotic » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:12 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #42

psykotic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. I'm sure this isn't what you had in mind, but I couldn't help myself. I'm not claiming this is what they were actually thinking, but it's how an upset, uncharitable reader might take it, which is who you'd want to address in an apology. >Hi everyone. We never meant to offend any person and are very sorry as we clearl…

For comparison's sake, look how Coda Hale handles this problem: https://twitter.com/#!/coda/status/182858775382851585 140 characters. Note the advanced trick he employs of explaining himself while simultaneously owning the problem . The fundamental technique there: demonstrate (somehow) that you understand the concern and that the concern is valid . (Your annotation is more cynical than mine would be; the interesting…

Exactly. We fucked up. We are sorry. We have taken down the video. It won't happen again. Done. That's all you need to say. Anything more and you're just making it worse.

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#44

Post by semanticist » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:13 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

I could care less about Geeklist but from a purely analytical perspective: this is so "how not to write an apology" that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. It literally starts out in its first sentence by undermining itself. Incidentally, publicly threatening the job of someone who criticizes you (as a tit-for-tat for them "threatening your brand") is one of…

It's the threatening of her job that made this unforgivable for me - I can understand someone, at night, reacting overly defensively about their startup. It's something hugely important to them and they identify with it strongly, so they react without thinking too much instead of walking away from the keyboard like they should've.

But their reaction-without-thinking is so telling here that I'm kinda glad they did it. Their first reaction when threatened is to look for the strongest way to lash out and hurt the other person - in this case by threatening their job, by repeatedly trying to drag their employer into the fight (even after Basho did the decent thing and said 'not our concern').

How could you trust a company founded by someone who has an instinctive reaction like that?

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#45

Post by tptacek » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:15 PM UTC

jerrya wrote: post #40

tptacek wrote: post #5

I could care less about Geeklist but from a purely analytical perspective: this is so "how not to write an apology" that someone ought to take it apart and do an annotated version of it as a lesson to the community. It literally starts out in its first sentence by undermining itself. Incidentally, publicly threatening the job of someone who criticizes you (as a tit-for-tat for them "threatening your brand") is one of…

It literally starts out in its first sentence by undermining itself. It's first sentence is "Hi everyone." Is that the sentence you feel undermines itself? It's second sentence is "We never meant to offend any person and are very sorry as we clearly have." In that sentence they acknowledge that they have offended people and take responsibility for that, and unequivocally apologize for that. The usual undermining apol…

They are editing this in place. We may be discussing two different apologies. (It's fine if they're tuning the apology up, a good thing even, so I'm not interested in tracking down the earlier one).

That said: "We never meant to... and we are sorry" is an apology antipattern.

Your instinct is that there's social value in signaling that you aren't (sexist/a plagiarizer/a serial laundry-on-floor dumper††/what-have-you). Your instinct is often right. However: apologize first. Your #1 priority in an apology is not to explain yourself and it's not (as many people on HN seem to think) to wear a hair shirt. Your priority is to communicate that you understand the concern and that you believe it's valid.

A quick list of issues I have with this apology (as an example of the form, not as a moral issue):

* It doesn't know what it's trying to do, and so comes across as evasive.

* It fails to establish that the author understands the validity of the concern.

* It spends its crucial first several sentences talking about the concerns of the apologizer (WE never meant to, WE are about the inclusion of every geek)

* It introduces the totally irrelevant point of the gender of the producer of the video (repeatedly) in a manner that makes it easy to read an objection out of the apology ("a woman made this, so why are you complaining?")†

* In startlingly bad form, it introduces the totally irrelevant point that the complainer applied for a job but did not end up working (subtextually, for at least a large number of readers: the complainer was turned down for a job)

* It tries to mitigate the concern by saying other women will speak on their behalf, which is also simply not relevant.

* It at one point blames the complainer ("we were taken off guard by her continued comments after we...")

* It actually brags about the apologizer ("I’ve built my career over 15 years working to make this world a better place for women, mothers, and children") --- in other words, this is an apology that both wants to serve as a +10 amulet of apologies against Twitter concerns and a marketing document.

These aren't moral issues. They're strategic and tactical failures.

The marketing goal of an apology is #1 to communicate your understanding of the validity of the concern and (very optionally) #2 to communicate as a feature/benefit message the steps you're taking to make it never happen again.

The business goals of an apology are #1 to put the issue to rest, #2 to put the issue to rest, #3 to put the issue to rest... #1984983 to put the issue to rest, and #1984984 (very optionally) to learn and grow from the experience.

It is, for whatever it's worth, a little annoying to feel obligated to write this much about this issue on an HN thread nobody is really reading (this is I think buried on the second page already). I'd appreciate it if you didn't assume I was required to respond at essay-length to every concern you might have with a comment. These are message board comments; unless you think I was directly wrong, maybe let some lack of depth go, every once in awhile?

† Way to handle this issue, if it's really important that the issue be handled in your apology: apologize to the video designer and say you hope no part of this reflects badly on her, &c.

†† Wanna get good at apologizing? Be married for 13 years.

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#46

Post by tptacek » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

phwd wrote: post #34

tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think there was no reason for her to publicly complain about that video, or that calling it "fucking disgusting" was so out-of-bounds that her behavior was comparable to threatening her job, then there's really nothing about this situation for you or I to discuss productively. Either way, my point wasn't so much the specifics of this situation as how jaw-droppingly ineffective that particular apology was. You…

Well if you believe, it is not possible to resolve something(not specifically this issue)/anything/at all without calling it "fucking disgusting" such that each/and every situation with getting customer support from a company (must) turn into a PR shit show for public study and discussion about how bad the company handled it, further giving bad examples to others that it is okay to throw tantrums/offensive statements…

I have never asked anyone to apologize to me for using the word "fuck" and I am not interested in a debate about how serious a concern the words "fucking disgusting" are.

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#47

Post by badclient » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 6:45 PM UTC

ForrestN wrote: post #39

badclient wrote: post #11

Wow, this scream-sexism-at-everything police is becoming very annoying. I do not believe that the video is offensive at all. I do think the Geeklist founders came across as petty in their constant back and forth with the lady. But to be clear, that has nothing to do with the video being offensive. It isn't.

I have to say, your annoyance likely (assuming you're a man) from a fairly privileged place. You can afford to be "annoyed" by other people voicing concerns, because this issue doesn't affect your professional life everyday. If you want to learn more about why the video itself offends some people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification

Sorry, your link did not help me learn more about why there is such a huge uproar in this specific case beyond "meh, someone's always offended by everything."

Also, I'd say the said video is a very weak example of sexual objectification and in the grand scheme of things, it actually hurts the cause.

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#48

Post by rhizome » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #15

The lesson here is that defending a brand does not always mean getting defensive. Brand owners have to look at what is being attacked and decide how close it is to the core of the business. A t-shirt fashion shoot video is not the core of the Geeklist business model, so once it became a brand liability it needed to be cast off. An example of a brand attack that DID call for a head-on approach was the iPhone 4 antenna…

"Cast off what is useless" --Bruce Lee

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#49

Post by freshhawk » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 9:41 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #19

Hm, I wonder if this will be deleted as well? The two submissions of the Storify article were: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3740378 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3739913 I'm a little concerned/confused as to why. If the apology is HN-appropriate content then I'm a little surprised that the reason for the apology isn't.

I was a bit on the fence until the submission to a post (http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/19740556298/why-are-posts-...) asking about the deletions was also deleted.

Clearly there is no conversation allowed on HN about this bullshit controversy or about HN's removal of these submissions.

The second one bothers me a whole lot more, although both of them are not what I want happening on HN.

Re: Apology from Geeklist

#50

Post by ForrestN » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 10:01 PM UTC

badclient wrote: post #47

ForrestN wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say, your annoyance likely (assuming you're a man) from a fairly privileged place. You can afford to be "annoyed" by other people voicing concerns, because this issue doesn't affect your professional life everyday. If you want to learn more about why the video itself offends some people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification

Sorry, your link did not help me learn more about why there is such a huge uproar in this specific case beyond "meh, someone's always offended by everything." Also, I'd say the said video is a very weak example of sexual objectification and in the grand scheme of things, it actually hurts the cause.

I think you might be overreacting. There isn't a "huge uproar." I think I and most of the other commenters I've seen are pretty calm. You can be offended and say so without being out of control or irrationally angry. I don't think that the two men in this case are evil or something. But they are emblematic of a culture that many here have a problem with.

You seemed incredulous that people are offended by the video. I pointed you to the link not because it would make mention of this specific case, but because it explicated the concept of sexual objectification and its place in feminist thinking. It's a fine example, if not an extreme one. She's being flirty in a sexy outfit because she expects that will sell shirts and bring attention to the Geeklist brand. She is trying to relate to viewers as an object of sexual desire, and to transfer that desire onto the brand. It happens all the time because, at least in our culture, it works.