6 ms·
What list? What’s the back story!
by honksillet 5y ago
What list? What’s the back story!
- gregsadetsky 5y agoA list of customers with "funny" names. See https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec... and https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-political-speech-policy-controversy https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-politic...
- enriquto 5y agoBut where is the actual list? The only bit of information marginally interesting in this stupid drama is the list itself, yet it is nowhere to be found! Moreover, how can a "list of best names ever" be so troubling, let alone racist? I don't understand.
- pantulis 5y agoI dont think the relation "best names ever" -> "no politics at work" is that straightforward. There had to be a lot of escalation in the discussion internally, and then political issues were raised.
- jjeaff 5y agoYa, it almost seems like once the criticism of the list took on a somewhat political component (people saying it was racist), that the critics were silenced with the no politics rule.
- garmaine 5y agoAccording to the summary articles posted upthread, that seems to be what happened. The list was reinterpreted in the context of Stop Asian Hate to be racist. Which is not exactly fair given that the list is 10 years old. One should judge by the standards of the time, not the changing standards of today. And reading between the lines, that's essentially what the Basecamp founders said too: (paraphrasing) "this was a joke in bad taste made by people who aren't even at the company anymore. we're sorry that it happened, but it's water under the bridge." Then someone filed a racism complaint with HR against the founders and it escalated from there.
- themacguffinman 5y agoThis is basically what happened according to available info [1]. DHH, one of the co-founders, admitted the list was a mistake but aggressively pushed back on the political assertion by some employees that the list and the people involved were contributing to genocidal attitudes. As DHH pushed back, he went so far as to dig up old employee messages and repost them publicly to argue that the employees making accusations about genocidal attitudes were themselves hypocrites. Less than two weeks later, Jason Fried announced the new company policies. [1] https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basecamp https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
- frereubu 5y agoI imagine people are wary of circulating the list because it's private data - people's names - from the Basecamp client list. It also sounds like those names might well be easy to Google, so they wouldn't even be anonymous. They shouldn't even have been shared internally, let alone externally. The idea that it's racist is that the names were only funny to English speakers, because they sounded like English words they consider funny, from the reporting I'd guess things like butt, dick or fart. That feels really condescending and exclusionary if you're on the receiving end of it.
- enriquto 5y ago> The idea that it's racist is that the names were only funny to English speakers, because they sounded like English words they consider funny This makes no sense to me: aren't native English-speakers of many races? Aren't there non-English speakers of many races also? Moreover, this happens with any pair of languages. I'm not a native English speaker and there are some English names that sound extremely hilarious in my language. I see myself compiling such a list just for fun. I wouldn't expect English people to be offended by this silly thing, which is inevitable: when there are different languages, there are word collisions and some of them are funny. > people's names - from the Basecamp client list. Ouch, this is different, then! I did not pay attention to this detail. Now I understand why the list of names does not circulate (but still, I don't get what could be so bad about it).
- jolux 5y ago>but still, I don't get what could be so bad about it Making fun of people in a way that isn’t offensive is a tight line to walk interpersonally and best avoided altogether in professional circumstances. This is particularly true if you’re making fun of people for fundamental aspects of their identity, like names. How would you feel if your name was on a list somewhere and people were laughing at it and cracking jokes about it regularly? Some people might be okay with this, but I think others might be rather offended by it.
- frereubu 5y ago> I wouldn't expect English people to be offended by this silly thing... I imagine it depends to a large extent on whether you've heard the same shitty joke about your name - hur dur your name sounds like butt! - from far too many people in your professional life. Remember, this is a list of client names that was created solely for the purposes of ridicule while being passed around internal Basecamp networks. In terms of racism, I'm white and British, and it definitely has a flavour of the cultural racism that was prevalent during the British Empire which, for all its differences, America inherited.
- simonh 5y agoThese are personal details of actual people. I sincerely hope it stays as confidential as possible. The fact is we don’t know what actual behaviour this is about. I can imagine circumstances where circulating such a list was questionable but harmless fun. I can imagine circumstances in which it involved egregious and tasteless taunting and offensively derogatory behaviour. I just don’t know.
- hellomyguys 5y ago>Moreover, how can a "list of best names ever" be so troubling, let alone racist? Well I imagine the list had a lot of people from certain ethnicities...
- nailer 5y agoIt didn’t. See DHHs blog post for numbers. > Out of the 78 names listed on the last version we were able to recover, just 6 names appear to be Asian.