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PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted. We cannot trust Altman is being honest that he appreciated her efforts. We can't trust that her and her hus

PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted. We cannot trust Altman is being honest that he appreciated her efforts. We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. All of this that comes out of spokesmen is carefully crafted as a result of a numbers game. When do we hear "so and so CEO did a horrible job and was forced out by the board."? Never. So are we to believe there is no such thing as a terrible CEO? Will we hear Sam saying "We made a terrible decision putting her in charge."? Never. Even if it was the actual truth. Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman.

justizin 11y ago
> Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman. It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman, since a lot of the vitriol predates the past few days.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  As someone who has only watched this popcorn feast, I have the sense that she was the subject of vitriol primarily for taking actions that people didn't like. Many of the insults may well have targeted her gender, but that is not the same thing at all. I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.
  - moskie 11y ago
    > I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman. Well, the litmus test can't be simply whether the harassment solely targeted her gender and nothing else. Sexism (and other forms of bigotry) have a more insidious nature to them.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      I didn't say there wasn't sexism. I do indeed believe that gendered insults are the result of sexism. I am, however, stating that the genesis of the entire Ellen Pao affair seemed to be about her actions, not her womanhood.
      - moskie 11y ago
        I just think it's important that we don't gloss over the possibility that the level of criticism and outrage could very well have been exaggerated as a result of latent/subconscious sexism.
        fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
        Sure that's possible and it's likely that there are a lot of misogynists that have participated; but that doesn't make everyone who was critical a misogynist.
        zxcvcxz 11y ago
        Isn't it strange that you have to say this? These people are literally insane.
        moskie 11y ago
        There was no reason that it needed to be said, as no one claimed the thing he is refuting.
        cheald 11y ago
        I think it's much more likely that the amplification of criticism and outrage was catalyzed by her high-visibility public image stemming from the KP trial. She came out looking (IMO) like a vindictive, petty, and greedy person. Whether that's true or not, I suspect that image was then projected onto her role as Reddit's CEO. The kind of insults she got were absolutely driven by some of the most vile and reprehensible expressions of sexism, but I think it was more that Pao was an unsympathetic person who made an easy target for sexists, than that some latent sexism caused otherwise-normal reddit users to turn against her. I don't think she was responsible for nearly so much of the stuff Reddit reacted negatively to over the course of her tenure as some would think, but I think the primary blame for that perception lies with Reddit's leadership as a whole and their astounding lack of communication to their audience. They knew that Pao had been the subject of a high-visibility lawsuit heavily steeped in social justice implications, which she rather badly lost - it doesn't take a PR genius to think that if you start introducing sweeping social justice-driven changes to your site while she's in office as CEO, people are going to presume that she's the one driving them. That could have been trivially defused by saying "This was a decision made by our board" or "This initiative is something we've been working on for the past 3 years", rather than just sitting by and letting the bogeyman grow and grow. As another example, as best I can tell, Ohanin let Pao take all the heat for Victoria Taylor's firing, and then clarified that he was the one who made the decision to terminate her only after Pao had resigned. A huge amount of unrest could have been deflected off of Pao if Ohanin had said "Hey, I'm the one that made this decision", but that wasn't said (if I'm wrong, please let me know; the first reference I saw to this admission was timestamped around ~1h ago). In fact, reddit's leadership as a whole was extremely wishy-washy and vague about the whole thing, despite the fact that it upset the volunteer base that makes reddit usable enough to incite mini-revolt. Leaping to claims of sexism seems lazy and just a little-too-convenient for me. I think that if her husband had been in the CEO role and the same things had happened, given his PR image problems, you'd have seen the same magnitude of criticism and outrage (but then, of course, people would level claims of racism as the cause, which I think would have been equally as wrong).
  - Joeboy 11y ago
    It seems like the major source of antipathy towards her was the firing of Victoria Taylor, which happened on her watch, but was actually done by a man who is still at the company, and nobody seems to want him fired. It's entirely possible I have some or all of my facts wrong, but this is what I understand to be the case.
    - sjtgraham 11y ago
      The buck stops with the CEO.
    - zo1 11y ago
      The point of leadership is to deal with these sorts of issues, and take those hits when they don't pan out. It's like having your cake and eating it. On the one hand, we use the excuse: "just doing his/her job" or "just following orders", and then on the other hand: "Happened on his/her watch, by a subordinate", as if it makes it okay. The blame needs to be shared (if appropriate), and not shoved around depending on which side we are currently arguing for/against.
    - MBCook 11y ago
      That's when most people started hearing about it outside of Reddit, but I guarantee there is been strong hate before any of that happened. And it really does seem gender-based, or at least those are all the primary attacks.
  - erikpukinskis 11y ago
    Really? What are the decisions she has made that seem so substantially larger than past Reddit CEO mistakes? Worse than selling to Conde Nast? Worse than closing subreddits for content? To me the uptick in personal insults seems obvious, and uncorrelated to a long history of questionable decisions by Reddit admins. Although I think her being labelled as a feminist false accuser is as much the reason as her being a woman.
    - coolnow 11y ago
      Probably the fact that she's relatively new and seen as an outside by most in the community who wants to "ban behaviour" yet goes after ideas (see: /r/fatpeoplehate drama, while subreddits like /r/coontown and other racist shitholes were allowed to stay). Their stance on brigading that seems to not apply to /r/shitredditsays. People seemingly shadowbanned for speaking their minds. Her lawsuit (that she rightly lost) against her former employer where she claimed her gender was the reason she wasn't promoted? Pao was the face of reddit as CEO and had to rightly "face the music", not because she's a woman. I find it incredible to see things boiled down to "they hate her cuz she's a gurl".
    - gjulianm 11y ago
      Not to defend the harassers and neither to say that there wasn't sexism, but I think that the uptick is mostly related to what she did banning FPH. Previous controversies [1] were either non-issues for the majority of reddit (selling to Conde Nast triggers some "Reddit is going down" but not uproar, is just a business decision that didn't affect content in that precise moment) or easy for the admins (distributing private intimate photos, subs regarding beating women or, what's worst in the Reddit set of rules, vote manipulation and brigading). However, FPH wasn't as bad in the eyes of many users and the community was really big (150.000) users. You don't ban it without a major backslash. I think that's when all the insults got really heated up, I didn't see such a big anti-Pao circlejerk before the FPH issue. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
- sjtgraham 11y ago
  > It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman More like passing off a lack a simple lack of ability at KPCB as gender discrimination, having the temerity to file a meritless suit on that basis, losing it so conclusively, and then further demonstrating her lack of ability at Reddit thereby harming something a lot of people love a lot. I find that easy to see how that is vitriol-inducing.
  - vonklaus 11y ago
    You forgot the bit where she tried to blackmail KPCB or she would appeal. She also owed them nearly 1m in legal fees which they waived.
- shock-value 11y ago
  That's nonsense. While the expression of disdain for her probably did come forth at times through misogynistic language from some misguided users, it was pretty clear that it was her actions and vision (or lack of a coherent one) that was driving the backlash. Further evidence against the idea that there's a latent misogyny among Reddit's userbase: the firing of a popular female employee is what set all this off (this time at least).
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  No, most people didn't like her because she was generally a terrible person.
- Natsu 11y ago
  That's hardly the only thing that predates the last few days: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletcher-ellen-pao http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletch...
- coolnow 11y ago
  Uhm, how? Although there were lots of trolls just looking to rile people up, a lot of the criticisms about her allegedly snubbing other females for promotions and baseless lawsuits that amounted to the same exact figure her fraud of a husband was being hounded for were perfectly valid. Or are all those forgiven because she has a vagina?
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  The problem with insults in America is that people confuse sexism for insults that are gender-specific. Unlike anal sex, many insults do not work on any gender. Many of the insults we men use on each other just don't work on a woman. For example, what would calling a woman a "dickless wonder" even mean? Similarly, let's say I wanted to insult a guy raised by a gay male couple. It would make no sense telling him "Your mother is a whore".
iaw 11y ago
I think the last line may resonate a bit negative (and possibly sexist) with people but I do agree with your larger point of: when do corporations actually tell us the truth about these ousters?
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  Only when the truth can't be hidden (eg, when the ousted is going to jail)
magicalist 11y ago
> PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted What does this have to do with the parent's post?
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Parents post was the highest place to hang a reply.
  - mynameisvlad 11y ago
    The parent comment is a reply, so that's not really true.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jonathankoren 11y ago
> We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. What the fuck is this? And how is this relevant? And when was the last time you heard a similar comment about a man?
- knodi123 11y ago
  This is part of the scandal around her. It's not out of left field.
  - geofft 11y ago
    Sure, but is it part of the scandal around the KPCB partner who had the affair with her? It takes two to tango.
    - knodi123 11y ago
      I'm sure that if he were in any way relevant to the conversation, then his affair would come up in conversation. But he's not, so let's not wander down that rabbit hole.
- michaelmrose 11y ago
  She had a affair with a married senior partner who was also a lecherous jerk at her prior job, betraying both her spouse and her fellow cheaters spouse. Then when he, the lecher, was under fire for his treatment of another female subordinate she defended him.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonathankoren 11y ago
    I know the story. What I want to know is how this is relevant to her tenure as CEO. Which you've failed to specify.
    - 11y ago
Alupis 11y ago
> Will we hear Sam saying "We made a terrible decision putting her in charge."? Never. Even if it was the actual truth. She was previously fired from Kleiner Perkins for unsatisfactory performance. Perhaps the Reddit board has come to the conclusion she might not be ready for a CEx position.
genericuser 11y ago
No one said give her a pass, it was simply said the 'vitriol was appalling.' That simply means that the denizens of the internet when taken as a collective are horrible people who can not voice criticism in a civil manner. Assuming she was completely horrible and a terrible CEO... Assuming that! How could someone's lack of ability to do their job (or anything else for that matter) make the type of death and rape threats that this 'vitriol' was seen being expressed with less appalling? You are falling into a common pit where you may think it was good she has been replaced, and you may be right, and gosh darn it you are certainly entitled to that opinion. But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible, you become part of the problem by basically saying she deserved to receive those threats.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What? You know the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[1] right? It applies to male and females alike. And it's pretty scummy how your comment implicates GP said she "deserved to receive those threats", when all he/she did was to point out Pao did an atrocious job and was an awful choice for CEO, and you'll never hear the board admit that. [1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19 http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19
  - geofft 11y ago
    Yishan was actually an incapable CEO and a bad choice. And all the complaints about Ellen apply to him too: he censored subreddits with no clear policy, he was at odds with his own staff and his own board, and he presided over lots of unhappy departures of valuable employees for stupid reasons. A lot of the problems we see now are his doing. Did he get the same sort of personal, visceral threats?
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      Yishan was a massively unpopular CEO and both him and his decisions were strongly disliked. I'm sure he received his fair share of death threats, because internet, but there were also two points to keep in mind for his time as CEO: - He wasn't in the middle of a bunch of massively controversial fraud/discrimination lawsuits and other issues - Reddit's administration wasn't a damn soap opera at the time, so people didn't care as much. PS: You don't need to be a woman to receive death threats. It's not an exclusivity. People are assholes, like I said. I've worked long enough in the video game industry to know this as a fact. Unfortunately, America has this very weird narrative about women which only serves to reinforce the stereotypes they claim to fight. And since it's past 1AM in Europe, we're seeing this narrative dominate the comments... it's pretty sad.
mwfunk 11y ago
Skepticism in all things is great, but if it doesn't go both ways (like you're presenting here), then it's not skepticism at all but rather a bunch of preconceived notions about what's going on behind the scenes upon which you are projecting all of this bizarre vitriol. It's great that you are so skeptical of what Reddit management is saying, but you should be equally skeptical about all of this stuff that you're imagining is really going on.
rtpg 11y ago
>We can't trust that her and her husband were in love I'm sorry but this is total BS. The onus is on you to prove the "Pao's marriage is political to help with lawsuits" conspiracy-circlejerk, not on Pao to prove that her marriage isn't just a "normal" marriage.
dang 11y ago
> We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. We detached this subthread and marked it off topic.

justizin 11y ago

> Pao does not get a pass on this dynamic for being a woman. It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman, since a lot of the vitriol predates the past few days.

oldmanjay 11y ago
As someone who has only watched this popcorn feast, I have the sense that she was the subject of vitriol primarily for taking actions that people didn't like. Many of the insults may well have targeted her gender, but that is not the same thing at all. I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman.
- moskie 11y ago
  > I have seen literally no evidence that she was harassed simply for being a woman. Well, the litmus test can't be simply whether the harassment solely targeted her gender and nothing else. Sexism (and other forms of bigotry) have a more insidious nature to them.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    I didn't say there wasn't sexism. I do indeed believe that gendered insults are the result of sexism. I am, however, stating that the genesis of the entire Ellen Pao affair seemed to be about her actions, not her womanhood.
    - moskie 11y ago
      I just think it's important that we don't gloss over the possibility that the level of criticism and outrage could very well have been exaggerated as a result of latent/subconscious sexism.
      - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
        Sure that's possible and it's likely that there are a lot of misogynists that have participated; but that doesn't make everyone who was critical a misogynist.
        zxcvcxz 11y ago
        Isn't it strange that you have to say this? These people are literally insane.
        moskie 11y ago
        There was no reason that it needed to be said, as no one claimed the thing he is refuting.
      - cheald 11y ago
        I think it's much more likely that the amplification of criticism and outrage was catalyzed by her high-visibility public image stemming from the KP trial. She came out looking (IMO) like a vindictive, petty, and greedy person. Whether that's true or not, I suspect that image was then projected onto her role as Reddit's CEO. The kind of insults she got were absolutely driven by some of the most vile and reprehensible expressions of sexism, but I think it was more that Pao was an unsympathetic person who made an easy target for sexists, than that some latent sexism caused otherwise-normal reddit users to turn against her. I don't think she was responsible for nearly so much of the stuff Reddit reacted negatively to over the course of her tenure as some would think, but I think the primary blame for that perception lies with Reddit's leadership as a whole and their astounding lack of communication to their audience. They knew that Pao had been the subject of a high-visibility lawsuit heavily steeped in social justice implications, which she rather badly lost - it doesn't take a PR genius to think that if you start introducing sweeping social justice-driven changes to your site while she's in office as CEO, people are going to presume that she's the one driving them. That could have been trivially defused by saying "This was a decision made by our board" or "This initiative is something we've been working on for the past 3 years", rather than just sitting by and letting the bogeyman grow and grow. As another example, as best I can tell, Ohanin let Pao take all the heat for Victoria Taylor's firing, and then clarified that he was the one who made the decision to terminate her only after Pao had resigned. A huge amount of unrest could have been deflected off of Pao if Ohanin had said "Hey, I'm the one that made this decision", but that wasn't said (if I'm wrong, please let me know; the first reference I saw to this admission was timestamped around ~1h ago). In fact, reddit's leadership as a whole was extremely wishy-washy and vague about the whole thing, despite the fact that it upset the volunteer base that makes reddit usable enough to incite mini-revolt. Leaping to claims of sexism seems lazy and just a little-too-convenient for me. I think that if her husband had been in the CEO role and the same things had happened, given his PR image problems, you'd have seen the same magnitude of criticism and outrage (but then, of course, people would level claims of racism as the cause, which I think would have been equally as wrong).
- Joeboy 11y ago
  It seems like the major source of antipathy towards her was the firing of Victoria Taylor, which happened on her watch, but was actually done by a man who is still at the company, and nobody seems to want him fired. It's entirely possible I have some or all of my facts wrong, but this is what I understand to be the case.
  - sjtgraham 11y ago
    The buck stops with the CEO.
  - zo1 11y ago
    The point of leadership is to deal with these sorts of issues, and take those hits when they don't pan out. It's like having your cake and eating it. On the one hand, we use the excuse: "just doing his/her job" or "just following orders", and then on the other hand: "Happened on his/her watch, by a subordinate", as if it makes it okay. The blame needs to be shared (if appropriate), and not shoved around depending on which side we are currently arguing for/against.
  - MBCook 11y ago
    That's when most people started hearing about it outside of Reddit, but I guarantee there is been strong hate before any of that happened. And it really does seem gender-based, or at least those are all the primary attacks.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  Really? What are the decisions she has made that seem so substantially larger than past Reddit CEO mistakes? Worse than selling to Conde Nast? Worse than closing subreddits for content? To me the uptick in personal insults seems obvious, and uncorrelated to a long history of questionable decisions by Reddit admins. Although I think her being labelled as a feminist false accuser is as much the reason as her being a woman.
  - coolnow 11y ago
    Probably the fact that she's relatively new and seen as an outside by most in the community who wants to "ban behaviour" yet goes after ideas (see: /r/fatpeoplehate drama, while subreddits like /r/coontown and other racist shitholes were allowed to stay). Their stance on brigading that seems to not apply to /r/shitredditsays. People seemingly shadowbanned for speaking their minds. Her lawsuit (that she rightly lost) against her former employer where she claimed her gender was the reason she wasn't promoted? Pao was the face of reddit as CEO and had to rightly "face the music", not because she's a woman. I find it incredible to see things boiled down to "they hate her cuz she's a gurl".
  - gjulianm 11y ago
    Not to defend the harassers and neither to say that there wasn't sexism, but I think that the uptick is mostly related to what she did banning FPH. Previous controversies [1] were either non-issues for the majority of reddit (selling to Conde Nast triggers some "Reddit is going down" but not uproar, is just a business decision that didn't affect content in that precise moment) or easy for the admins (distributing private intimate photos, subs regarding beating women or, what's worst in the Reddit set of rules, vote manipulation and brigading). However, FPH wasn't as bad in the eyes of many users and the community was really big (150.000) users. You don't ban it without a major backslash. I think that's when all the insults got really heated up, I didn't see such a big anti-Pao circlejerk before the FPH issue. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
sjtgraham 11y ago
> It seems like she's been the subject of vitriol primarily for being a woman More like passing off a lack a simple lack of ability at KPCB as gender discrimination, having the temerity to file a meritless suit on that basis, losing it so conclusively, and then further demonstrating her lack of ability at Reddit thereby harming something a lot of people love a lot. I find that easy to see how that is vitriol-inducing.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  You forgot the bit where she tried to blackmail KPCB or she would appeal. She also owed them nearly 1m in legal fees which they waived.
shock-value 11y ago
That's nonsense. While the expression of disdain for her probably did come forth at times through misogynistic language from some misguided users, it was pretty clear that it was her actions and vision (or lack of a coherent one) that was driving the backlash. Further evidence against the idea that there's a latent misogyny among Reddit's userbase: the firing of a popular female employee is what set all this off (this time at least).
sergiotapia 11y ago
No, most people didn't like her because she was generally a terrible person.
Natsu 11y ago
That's hardly the only thing that predates the last few days: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletcher-ellen-pao http://www.vanityfair.com/style/scandal/2013/03/buddy-fletch...
coolnow 11y ago
Uhm, how? Although there were lots of trolls just looking to rile people up, a lot of the criticisms about her allegedly snubbing other females for promotions and baseless lawsuits that amounted to the same exact figure her fraud of a husband was being hounded for were perfectly valid. Or are all those forgiven because she has a vagina?
meatysnapper 11y ago
The problem with insults in America is that people confuse sexism for insults that are gender-specific. Unlike anal sex, many insults do not work on any gender. Many of the insults we men use on each other just don't work on a woman. For example, what would calling a woman a "dickless wonder" even mean? Similarly, let's say I wanted to insult a guy raised by a gay male couple. It would make no sense telling him "Your mother is a whore".

iaw 11y ago

I think the last line may resonate a bit negative (and possibly sexist) with people but I do agree with your larger point of: when do corporations actually tell us the truth about these ousters?

Domenic_S 11y ago
Only when the truth can't be hidden (eg, when the ousted is going to jail)

magicalist 11y ago

> PR that comes out of corporations cannot be trusted What does this have to do with the parent's post?

tedunangst 11y ago
Parents post was the highest place to hang a reply.
- mynameisvlad 11y ago
  The parent comment is a reply, so that's not really true.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jonathankoren 11y ago

> We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. What the fuck is this? And how is this relevant? And when was the last time you heard a similar comment about a man?

knodi123 11y ago
This is part of the scandal around her. It's not out of left field.
- geofft 11y ago
  Sure, but is it part of the scandal around the KPCB partner who had the affair with her? It takes two to tango.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    I'm sure that if he were in any way relevant to the conversation, then his affair would come up in conversation. But he's not, so let's not wander down that rabbit hole.
michaelmrose 11y ago
She had a affair with a married senior partner who was also a lecherous jerk at her prior job, betraying both her spouse and her fellow cheaters spouse. Then when he, the lecher, was under fire for his treatment of another female subordinate she defended him.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  I know the story. What I want to know is how this is relevant to her tenure as CEO. Which you've failed to specify.
  - 11y ago

Alupis 11y ago

> Will we hear Sam saying "We made a terrible decision putting her in charge."? Never. Even if it was the actual truth. She was previously fired from Kleiner Perkins for unsatisfactory performance. Perhaps the Reddit board has come to the conclusion she might not be ready for a CEx position.

genericuser 11y ago

No one said give her a pass, it was simply said the 'vitriol was appalling.' That simply means that the denizens of the internet when taken as a collective are horrible people who can not voice criticism in a civil manner. Assuming she was completely horrible and a terrible CEO... Assuming that! How could someone's lack of ability to do their job (or anything else for that matter) make the type of death and rape threats that this 'vitriol' was seen being expressed with less appalling? You are falling into a common pit where you may think it was good she has been replaced, and you may be right, and gosh darn it you are certainly entitled to that opinion. But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible, you become part of the problem by basically saying she deserved to receive those threats.

scrollaway 11y ago
> But when you reply objecting to a comment that is basically just saying the type of hate a woman got on the internet was horrible So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What? You know the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[1] right? It applies to male and females alike. And it's pretty scummy how your comment implicates GP said she "deserved to receive those threats", when all he/she did was to point out Pao did an atrocious job and was an awful choice for CEO, and you'll never hear the board admit that. [1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19 http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19
- geofft 11y ago
  Yishan was actually an incapable CEO and a bad choice. And all the complaints about Ellen apply to him too: he censored subreddits with no clear policy, he was at odds with his own staff and his own board, and he presided over lots of unhappy departures of valuable employees for stupid reasons. A lot of the problems we see now are his doing. Did he get the same sort of personal, visceral threats?
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    Yishan was a massively unpopular CEO and both him and his decisions were strongly disliked. I'm sure he received his fair share of death threats, because internet, but there were also two points to keep in mind for his time as CEO: - He wasn't in the middle of a bunch of massively controversial fraud/discrimination lawsuits and other issues - Reddit's administration wasn't a damn soap opera at the time, so people didn't care as much. PS: You don't need to be a woman to receive death threats. It's not an exclusivity. People are assholes, like I said. I've worked long enough in the video game industry to know this as a fact. Unfortunately, America has this very weird narrative about women which only serves to reinforce the stereotypes they claim to fight. And since it's past 1AM in Europe, we're seeing this narrative dominate the comments... it's pretty sad.

mwfunk 11y ago

Skepticism in all things is great, but if it doesn't go both ways (like you're presenting here), then it's not skepticism at all but rather a bunch of preconceived notions about what's going on behind the scenes upon which you are projecting all of this bizarre vitriol. It's great that you are so skeptical of what Reddit management is saying, but you should be equally skeptical about all of this stuff that you're imagining is really going on.

rtpg 11y ago

>We can't trust that her and her husband were in love I'm sorry but this is total BS. The onus is on you to prove the "Pao's marriage is political to help with lawsuits" conspiracy-circlejerk, not on Pao to prove that her marriage isn't just a "normal" marriage.

dang 11y ago

> We can't trust that her and her husband were in love. We detached this subthread and marked it off topic.