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I love that marketing works, and that people want to believe in values, and will band together over those values. However lately, I've felt that especially in

I love that marketing works, and that people want to believe in values, and will band together over those values. However lately, I've felt that especially in the US, values -- or more accurately -- symbols of values have become more important than actual tangible outcomes or functional real achievements. For people as individuals and as groups. I guess of course that I'm especially thinking about our politics and social emphases these days. And maybe it's just gotten slightly worse that you notice it, fueled by Instagram and sound bite technology. Maybe even the way we market products and companies (come for the values!) contributes to our political discourse. Think about any movement out there at present -- MeToo, conservative agenda, liberal agenda, organic produce, gentrification, almost any major movement. If you really get into the issue, you find that the symbol of the thing is actually a very, very small almost non-representative case of the situation as a whole. Immigrants are not invading in hordes. Men at work are not harassing every female employee. People are not trying to kick out elderly widows to turn the block into a shopping mall. They're all symbols of the most extreme cases, and we latch on to them because they're recognizable, inflammatory, and get us riled up to want to do something. As always the rare, incredible threat dominates our minds so much more than the mundane everyday threat. But sometimes I think, a society needs to think about the whole and not the extreme cases. And give up being obsessed with achieving symbolic victory, and instead actual (minor, boring, incremental) achievements for the whole. That's much harder to get people inflamed to vote for. The current climate is why we got tax breaks for a couple of billionaires at the expense of millions of people with mortgages. It's a symbol of someday when I'll be a millionaire! (Never going to happen, on average) . When did you last thank the policymaker who came up with the mortgage deduction, something that you take advantage of every day? Your shoe is not going to make you a star athlete. An immigrant is not knocking on the door to take your job -- that was decided decades ago. For every policy you put in place to protect the imaginary elderly widow, you make it harder for 10 young people to have an affordable place to live. Stop believing so much in symbols.

grecy 8y ago
> They're all symbols of the most extreme cases, and we latch on to them because they're recognizable, inflammatory, and get us riled up to want to do something Having moved from Australia to the US then Canada and having spent over and month in more than 50 countries around the world, I can tell you the US does this more (better?) than other countries. The entire US system and political discourse is setup as right/wrong, black/white, right/left, and leaves no room for discussion. In America you're either pro-life or pro-choice, pro-guns or anti-guns, etc. etc. There is no middle ground, no room for a discussion and certainly you can bet your bottom dollar nobody would ever listen to someone from the other side and perhaps learn something. Happily, in my experience other countries are not nearly as bad as this, and I hope like hell we don't follow suit like we have with too many other bad habits of the US.
- jackpirate 8y ago
  you can bet your bottom dollar nobody would ever listen to someone from the other side and perhaps learn something. One problem with listening to the other side is that most people are so ridiculously misinformed about issues (on all sides), that listening to the average person of the other side is unlikely to make you learn something. You have to actively seek out the smartest people from the other side and listen to them, and that's a lot of work.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    > You have to actively seek out the smartest people from the other side and listen to them, and that's a lot of work. Partly because the smartest people on the other side aren't the ones that the average person on the other side is listening to. They're lost in the noise, even for people on their own side.
    - harimau777 8y ago
      I think there's truth to that; however, I wonder if there can also sometimes be a sort of "immune system" that protects people in a sub-culture from the bad parts of the group. For example, when I move, I ask people at my old church if they recommend any churches in the new city. So I naturally end up insulated from any crazy churches that are there. On the other hand, someone who isn't already plugged into the "Christian network" is much more likely to be exposed to the crazy parts of the community.
  - dfgert 8y ago
    That's because most people religiously put faith in dumb news outlets of USA and keeps repeating the same arguments without trying to fully understand them. They have gotten accustomed to outsourcing critical thinking process to news orgs.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >One problem with listening to the other side is that most people are so ridiculously misinformed about issues (on all sides), that listening to the average person of the other side is unlikely to make you learn something. That's the very mindset that prevents people from listening to other sides. Instead of focusing on the "misinformation" of those on the other side on a matter (which could even be misinformation on one's own side attributed to the "enemy"), it's best to try to understand their point of view. Especially on issues where there's no hard and fast right and wrong (as is the case in hard sciences), but are more a matter of moral values, culture, personal experiences, etc.
momentmaker 8y ago
That's how you sell (influence/persuade) others to do something is by engaging their emotions - the stronger the better. Words are a tool like another other, can be used to empower others or create hatred...
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Words are a tool like another other, can be used to empower others or create hatred... In 2019, outrage has become the easiest emotion to exploit to achieve virality. One should always be asking: Does this media prioritize accuracy over virality, or is it the other way around?
stcredzero 8y ago
Think about any movement out there at present -- MeToo, conservative agenda, liberal agenda, organic produce, gentrification, almost any major movement. If you really get into the issue, you find that the symbol of the thing is actually a very, very small almost non-representative case of the situation as a whole. Also, sometimes the symbol becomes the focus, instead of the actual underlying value. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ As always the rare, incredible threat dominates our minds so much more than the mundane everyday threat. It can also more easily go viral. Here's how ordinary, regular people can help. When people start being extreme and a bit divorced from reality and engaging in violence, unsavory almost-violence, and untruthful agenda pushing, people need to call it out, and also call it out from their own sides. It's a failure of calling out one's own side which reads as tacit approval and most strongly gives the false impression to others that the extreme represents the median. Understanding this is one key to understanding why the views of reality diverge so strongly between groups in society in 2019. The tricky part of this, is that to be able to do this, you have to poke your head out of your "side's" information bubble. (If you think your side is 100% in the right, you're not poking hard enough!) There are forces in society who claim to be championing human rights, but then throw out fundamentals like due process, paint entire groups with a broad brush based on surface characteristics, and engage in the same sort of tactics that the Westboro Baptist Church and the people in the past who tried to exclude Jewish people, blacks, and homosexuals from the mainstream and most valuable parts of society. It's just harder to see, if it's being done on behalf of your own "side." The real conflict in 2019 is the mainstream vs. the extremes. The extremes actually don't have the same values as the mainstream. The extremes have the advantage of stealth, by re-framing everything in terms of "us vs. them." What they really want is to create more outrage to roll the dice and increase their own power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc Stop believing so much in symbols. Start "following the money." Start examining what's happening in terms of how media uses a basic emotion like outrage to go viral. Who benefits?
- stephenbez 8y ago
  > Here's how ordinary, regular people can help. When people start being extreme and a bit divorced from reality and engaging in violence, unsavory almost-violence, and untruthful agenda pushing, people need to call it out, and also call it out from their own sides. I've done this before on Hacker News (on a different account). I've pointed out that an asserted fact was untrue and linked to a PDF compiled by a government agency and pointed out which data table to look at. I agreed with the conclusion the original poster had, but not the facts he used to support the case, and I didn't mention what my political views were. All I ended up with was a lot of downvotes and lots of comments accusing me of supporting evil policies and that I should read certain books and I'd get my eyes opened. No one even discussed what I said. The funny thing is that I had read the book that was recommended and had it with me in my bookshelf. I was thinking of taking a picture of me holding the book and posting it with the comment saying: "Hey HNer, I'm on your side! But when people use incorrect facts to try to push an agenda, it causes the whole side to lose credibility. There are enough reasons to support policy X that we don't need to make stuff up". It opened my eyes that people don't engage with the actual content. They just make assumptions of a posters point of view, and then argue against stereotypes.
ouid 8y ago
The mortgage deduction is actually terrible...
- supernova87a 8y ago
  Well, we can definitely debate over whether it produces the right incentives or is equitable. But it is certainly more equitable and useful relative to tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
  - zeroname 8y ago
    Tax breaks for corporations are actually really important, those high rates make real businesses in the U.S. unattractive. By "real businesses" I don't mean the likes of Amazon who rarely if ever make a profit. They're not really paying taxes anyway. Neither am I talking about big international corporations, they know how to offshore and not pay taxes as well. The same goes for billionaires. You can't tax them and expect to get more money. They can allocate their wealth to pay the minimum in taxes.
zeroname 8y ago
> Immigrants are not invading in hordes. Subjectively, they are. > Men at work are not harassing every female employee. Subjectively, sexual harassment is extremely widespread. > People are not trying to kick out elderly widows to turn the block into a shopping mall. When I complain about my rent going up, it is of course much easier to make the case for the poor widow than myself. > Your shoe is not going to make you a star athlete. Of course. It's still going to make me feel like one, just a little bit. > An immigrant is not knocking on the door to take your job -- that was decided decades ago. Subjectively, he is. Even factually, as a laborer, immigration drives down my wages. That's basic economics. Of course there's nary a citizen left willing to work for as little as an illegal immigrant - but that's because those wages have been driven down already. > For every policy you put in place to protect the imaginary elderly widow, you make it harder for 10 young people to have an affordable place to live. Maybe, but doesn't everyone like elderly widows? Doesn't everyone hate those hipster millennials? > Stop believing so much in symbols. Never. Not in a million years.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Basic economics: you're mostly competing with other people who apply for the same jobs as you. There is not one labor market, there are many, and they are often pretty specialized. You can't substitute a plumber for a lawyer or vice-versa. This is why different jobs pay different wages. This means it's never going to be all that useful to approach controversial issues like immigration at a high level of abstraction. It affects people differently. The details matter, and yet, here we are, talking in abstractions instead of from experience. There are few facts here, lost in a sea of stylized summaries and witty exaggeration. Maybe we shouldn't take it too seriously?
  - zeroname 8y ago
    > The details matter, and yet, here we are, talking in abstractions instead of from experience. I ain't got time nor interest for the details. If you can't speak in terms that I can understand within a short timeframe, in a way that appeals to my preconceived notions, then I'm voting for the guy that promises me the wall. Even as an untrained laborer, I used to be able to earn a decent living. Now I can't because wages have been driven down. I'm blaming immigrants. You're not convincing me otherwise, nerd. > There are few facts here, lost in a sea of stylized summaries and witty exaggeration. I'm obviously playing a couple of characters here, but the truth is embedded within. The facts don't matter when the emotions get in the way. It will be like this with humans, always. Ain't no use in lamenting it, better learn to deal with it. > Maybe we shouldn't take it too seriously? You absolutely should take it seriously.
pesmhey 8y ago
You would love to read Baudrillard. He would agree with you that symbols have overtaken the real as the domain of reality.
jpfed 8y ago
MeToo is an interesting example. I suspect that Facebook and Twitter have their own linear algebra models of who is interested in what, and that factors into their choices of what content from your friends makes it into your stream. After the wave of MeToo posts on Facebook and Twitter had died down, I asked my friends on Facebook to characterize how many MeToo posts they'd seen. Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. Something I didn't ask about, but have seen after the fact, is that conservatives and liberals seem to have a totally different idea of what MeToo is about. Algorithmic balkanization may have contributed to these differing ideas, and cordoned most of the MeToo-related activity in a liberal cluster of the social graph. I saw a lot of personal stories of harassment and abuse from my friends. The sheer volume of them was undeniable. I could never say, given the experiences my friends reported, that it was mostly symbolic. Those experiences were very much concrete. It is possible that my particular subset of the social graph is disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and assault, which would affect the validity of any conclusions about the broader society I might draw from what I saw. But, for the subset of the social graph I observed, there is simply no way to call it symbolic.
- oarabbus_ 8y ago
  >Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. This could be "confirmation bias" or perhaps more accurately the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon... liberals tend to be more in-tune with the MeToo movement and therefore would be more likely to recall having seen it.
  - jpfed 8y ago
    Yes, that is possible. Part of MeToo, as interpreted by liberals, was establishing a sort of quorum of those who had been victimized. The fact that other survivors were coming out with their experiences made it seem safer for each person to feel like they could reveal their own experiences. If liberals were disproportionately likely to notice the quorum, then they would be disproportionately likely to contribute their own stories, resulting in a positive feedback loop. That may be an even better explanation for the discrepancies than algorithmic balkanization. In either case, for the people that I observed posting about it, MeToo was not symbolic; it was explicitly grounded in personal experience. But it's possible that the messages propagated differently in different areas of the social network, such that some others viewed it as symbolic.
blotter_paper 8y ago
>Men at work are not harassing every female employee. Ever work a shitty job in the food industry? Not all men are harassers, but anecdotally it seems like maybe 10-25% of men at these jobs will systematically harass every female employee below the age of 30. Unsolicited back-rubs, ass-grabs, the whole shebang. It's, like, really bad, and when the owner/manager is involved there's not much you can do. I do feel like the "always believe the accuser" narrative goes too far, but I don't think this behavior is really an edge case. It seems like a significant minority of males in unprofessional work environments.
- morgancmartin 8y ago
  To play devil's advocate, I have worked shitty jobs in the fast food industry. Two and a half years at McDonald's and then another two and a half at Longhorn Steakhouse. I never witnessed a single incident of physical harassment against any of the girls I worked with, not even once. There was one guy that pushed the line a little too far sometimes but the girls weren't afraid of or offended by him so much as they took pity on him. He was a very depressed individual. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, only that anecdotal evidence is fundamentally incomplete. It is entirely too small of a sample to be statistically significant.
  - geodel 8y ago
    Of course chain restaurants will have strict anti-harassment policies else they would on hook for multi-million dollar lawsuits. The kind of abuse that above comment mentioned is most common at standalone places.
    - blotter_paper 8y ago
      Yeah, I agree with this and also believe the parent is responding in good faith. I've never worked at an established franchise, and I'm sure there are ma-and-pa shops that actually care, but what I've seen has been abysmal.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Ever work a shitty job in the food industry? Not all men are harassers, but anecdotally it seems like maybe 10-25% of men at these jobs will systematically harass every female employee below the age of 30. 10-25%? So, in all probability less than 1 in 4, and even close to just 1 in 10? If only in all areas of life people (men and women) were jerks with merely those odds...

grecy 8y ago

> They're all symbols of the most extreme cases, and we latch on to them because they're recognizable, inflammatory, and get us riled up to want to do something Having moved from Australia to the US then Canada and having spent over and month in more than 50 countries around the world, I can tell you the US does this more (better?) than other countries. The entire US system and political discourse is setup as right/wrong, black/white, right/left, and leaves no room for discussion. In America you're either pro-life or pro-choice, pro-guns or anti-guns, etc. etc. There is no middle ground, no room for a discussion and certainly you can bet your bottom dollar nobody would ever listen to someone from the other side and perhaps learn something. Happily, in my experience other countries are not nearly as bad as this, and I hope like hell we don't follow suit like we have with too many other bad habits of the US.

jackpirate 8y ago
you can bet your bottom dollar nobody would ever listen to someone from the other side and perhaps learn something. One problem with listening to the other side is that most people are so ridiculously misinformed about issues (on all sides), that listening to the average person of the other side is unlikely to make you learn something. You have to actively seek out the smartest people from the other side and listen to them, and that's a lot of work.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  > You have to actively seek out the smartest people from the other side and listen to them, and that's a lot of work. Partly because the smartest people on the other side aren't the ones that the average person on the other side is listening to. They're lost in the noise, even for people on their own side.
  - harimau777 8y ago
    I think there's truth to that; however, I wonder if there can also sometimes be a sort of "immune system" that protects people in a sub-culture from the bad parts of the group. For example, when I move, I ask people at my old church if they recommend any churches in the new city. So I naturally end up insulated from any crazy churches that are there. On the other hand, someone who isn't already plugged into the "Christian network" is much more likely to be exposed to the crazy parts of the community.
- dfgert 8y ago
  That's because most people religiously put faith in dumb news outlets of USA and keeps repeating the same arguments without trying to fully understand them. They have gotten accustomed to outsourcing critical thinking process to news orgs.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >One problem with listening to the other side is that most people are so ridiculously misinformed about issues (on all sides), that listening to the average person of the other side is unlikely to make you learn something. That's the very mindset that prevents people from listening to other sides. Instead of focusing on the "misinformation" of those on the other side on a matter (which could even be misinformation on one's own side attributed to the "enemy"), it's best to try to understand their point of view. Especially on issues where there's no hard and fast right and wrong (as is the case in hard sciences), but are more a matter of moral values, culture, personal experiences, etc.

momentmaker 8y ago

That's how you sell (influence/persuade) others to do something is by engaging their emotions - the stronger the better. Words are a tool like another other, can be used to empower others or create hatred...

stcredzero 8y ago
Words are a tool like another other, can be used to empower others or create hatred... In 2019, outrage has become the easiest emotion to exploit to achieve virality. One should always be asking: Does this media prioritize accuracy over virality, or is it the other way around?

stcredzero 8y ago

Think about any movement out there at present -- MeToo, conservative agenda, liberal agenda, organic produce, gentrification, almost any major movement. If you really get into the issue, you find that the symbol of the thing is actually a very, very small almost non-representative case of the situation as a whole. Also, sometimes the symbol becomes the focus, instead of the actual underlying value. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ As always the rare, incredible threat dominates our minds so much more than the mundane everyday threat. It can also more easily go viral. Here's how ordinary, regular people can help. When people start being extreme and a bit divorced from reality and engaging in violence, unsavory almost-violence, and untruthful agenda pushing, people need to call it out, and also call it out from their own sides. It's a failure of calling out one's own side which reads as tacit approval and most strongly gives the false impression to others that the extreme represents the median. Understanding this is one key to understanding why the views of reality diverge so strongly between groups in society in 2019. The tricky part of this, is that to be able to do this, you have to poke your head out of your "side's" information bubble. (If you think your side is 100% in the right, you're not poking hard enough!) There are forces in society who claim to be championing human rights, but then throw out fundamentals like due process, paint entire groups with a broad brush based on surface characteristics, and engage in the same sort of tactics that the Westboro Baptist Church and the people in the past who tried to exclude Jewish people, blacks, and homosexuals from the mainstream and most valuable parts of society. It's just harder to see, if it's being done on behalf of your own "side." The real conflict in 2019 is the mainstream vs. the extremes. The extremes actually don't have the same values as the mainstream. The extremes have the advantage of stealth, by re-framing everything in terms of "us vs. them." What they really want is to create more outrage to roll the dice and increase their own power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc Stop believing so much in symbols. Start "following the money." Start examining what's happening in terms of how media uses a basic emotion like outrage to go viral. Who benefits?

stephenbez 8y ago
> Here's how ordinary, regular people can help. When people start being extreme and a bit divorced from reality and engaging in violence, unsavory almost-violence, and untruthful agenda pushing, people need to call it out, and also call it out from their own sides. I've done this before on Hacker News (on a different account). I've pointed out that an asserted fact was untrue and linked to a PDF compiled by a government agency and pointed out which data table to look at. I agreed with the conclusion the original poster had, but not the facts he used to support the case, and I didn't mention what my political views were. All I ended up with was a lot of downvotes and lots of comments accusing me of supporting evil policies and that I should read certain books and I'd get my eyes opened. No one even discussed what I said. The funny thing is that I had read the book that was recommended and had it with me in my bookshelf. I was thinking of taking a picture of me holding the book and posting it with the comment saying: "Hey HNer, I'm on your side! But when people use incorrect facts to try to push an agenda, it causes the whole side to lose credibility. There are enough reasons to support policy X that we don't need to make stuff up". It opened my eyes that people don't engage with the actual content. They just make assumptions of a posters point of view, and then argue against stereotypes.

ouid 8y ago

The mortgage deduction is actually terrible...

supernova87a 8y ago
Well, we can definitely debate over whether it produces the right incentives or is equitable. But it is certainly more equitable and useful relative to tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Tax breaks for corporations are actually really important, those high rates make real businesses in the U.S. unattractive. By "real businesses" I don't mean the likes of Amazon who rarely if ever make a profit. They're not really paying taxes anyway. Neither am I talking about big international corporations, they know how to offshore and not pay taxes as well. The same goes for billionaires. You can't tax them and expect to get more money. They can allocate their wealth to pay the minimum in taxes.

zeroname 8y ago

> Immigrants are not invading in hordes. Subjectively, they are. > Men at work are not harassing every female employee. Subjectively, sexual harassment is extremely widespread. > People are not trying to kick out elderly widows to turn the block into a shopping mall. When I complain about my rent going up, it is of course much easier to make the case for the poor widow than myself. > Your shoe is not going to make you a star athlete. Of course. It's still going to make me feel like one, just a little bit. > An immigrant is not knocking on the door to take your job -- that was decided decades ago. Subjectively, he is. Even factually, as a laborer, immigration drives down my wages. That's basic economics. Of course there's nary a citizen left willing to work for as little as an illegal immigrant - but that's because those wages have been driven down already. > For every policy you put in place to protect the imaginary elderly widow, you make it harder for 10 young people to have an affordable place to live. Maybe, but doesn't everyone like elderly widows? Doesn't everyone hate those hipster millennials? > Stop believing so much in symbols. Never. Not in a million years.

skybrian 8y ago
Basic economics: you're mostly competing with other people who apply for the same jobs as you. There is not one labor market, there are many, and they are often pretty specialized. You can't substitute a plumber for a lawyer or vice-versa. This is why different jobs pay different wages. This means it's never going to be all that useful to approach controversial issues like immigration at a high level of abstraction. It affects people differently. The details matter, and yet, here we are, talking in abstractions instead of from experience. There are few facts here, lost in a sea of stylized summaries and witty exaggeration. Maybe we shouldn't take it too seriously?
- zeroname 8y ago
  > The details matter, and yet, here we are, talking in abstractions instead of from experience. I ain't got time nor interest for the details. If you can't speak in terms that I can understand within a short timeframe, in a way that appeals to my preconceived notions, then I'm voting for the guy that promises me the wall. Even as an untrained laborer, I used to be able to earn a decent living. Now I can't because wages have been driven down. I'm blaming immigrants. You're not convincing me otherwise, nerd. > There are few facts here, lost in a sea of stylized summaries and witty exaggeration. I'm obviously playing a couple of characters here, but the truth is embedded within. The facts don't matter when the emotions get in the way. It will be like this with humans, always. Ain't no use in lamenting it, better learn to deal with it. > Maybe we shouldn't take it too seriously? You absolutely should take it seriously.

pesmhey 8y ago

You would love to read Baudrillard. He would agree with you that symbols have overtaken the real as the domain of reality.

jpfed 8y ago

MeToo is an interesting example. I suspect that Facebook and Twitter have their own linear algebra models of who is interested in what, and that factors into their choices of what content from your friends makes it into your stream. After the wave of MeToo posts on Facebook and Twitter had died down, I asked my friends on Facebook to characterize how many MeToo posts they'd seen. Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. Something I didn't ask about, but have seen after the fact, is that conservatives and liberals seem to have a totally different idea of what MeToo is about. Algorithmic balkanization may have contributed to these differing ideas, and cordoned most of the MeToo-related activity in a liberal cluster of the social graph. I saw a lot of personal stories of harassment and abuse from my friends. The sheer volume of them was undeniable. I could never say, given the experiences my friends reported, that it was mostly symbolic. Those experiences were very much concrete. It is possible that my particular subset of the social graph is disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and assault, which would affect the validity of any conclusions about the broader society I might draw from what I saw. But, for the subset of the social graph I observed, there is simply no way to call it symbolic.

oarabbus_ 8y ago
>Liberals reported seeing far more MeToo posts than conservatives did. This could be "confirmation bias" or perhaps more accurately the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon... liberals tend to be more in-tune with the MeToo movement and therefore would be more likely to recall having seen it.
- jpfed 8y ago
  Yes, that is possible. Part of MeToo, as interpreted by liberals, was establishing a sort of quorum of those who had been victimized. The fact that other survivors were coming out with their experiences made it seem safer for each person to feel like they could reveal their own experiences. If liberals were disproportionately likely to notice the quorum, then they would be disproportionately likely to contribute their own stories, resulting in a positive feedback loop. That may be an even better explanation for the discrepancies than algorithmic balkanization. In either case, for the people that I observed posting about it, MeToo was not symbolic; it was explicitly grounded in personal experience. But it's possible that the messages propagated differently in different areas of the social network, such that some others viewed it as symbolic.

blotter_paper 8y ago

>Men at work are not harassing every female employee. Ever work a shitty job in the food industry? Not all men are harassers, but anecdotally it seems like maybe 10-25% of men at these jobs will systematically harass every female employee below the age of 30. Unsolicited back-rubs, ass-grabs, the whole shebang. It's, like, really bad, and when the owner/manager is involved there's not much you can do. I do feel like the "always believe the accuser" narrative goes too far, but I don't think this behavior is really an edge case. It seems like a significant minority of males in unprofessional work environments.

morgancmartin 8y ago
To play devil's advocate, I have worked shitty jobs in the fast food industry. Two and a half years at McDonald's and then another two and a half at Longhorn Steakhouse. I never witnessed a single incident of physical harassment against any of the girls I worked with, not even once. There was one guy that pushed the line a little too far sometimes but the girls weren't afraid of or offended by him so much as they took pity on him. He was a very depressed individual. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, only that anecdotal evidence is fundamentally incomplete. It is entirely too small of a sample to be statistically significant.
- geodel 8y ago
  Of course chain restaurants will have strict anti-harassment policies else they would on hook for multi-million dollar lawsuits. The kind of abuse that above comment mentioned is most common at standalone places.
  - blotter_paper 8y ago
    Yeah, I agree with this and also believe the parent is responding in good faith. I've never worked at an established franchise, and I'm sure there are ma-and-pa shops that actually care, but what I've seen has been abysmal.
coldtea 8y ago
>Ever work a shitty job in the food industry? Not all men are harassers, but anecdotally it seems like maybe 10-25% of men at these jobs will systematically harass every female employee below the age of 30. 10-25%? So, in all probability less than 1 in 4, and even close to just 1 in 10? If only in all areas of life people (men and women) were jerks with merely those odds...