6 ms·

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

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.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    While we're at it, there were two unpopular firings last month at reddit. The Reddit Gifts guy, who was let go without much fanfare, and chooter (Victoria), who got the entire website to support her, go dark in protest, and fast-forwarded Pao's resignation. But we don't mention those, no no. It's only "sexism" and "mysoginy" because we don't like what happened to a woman. When it's good for a woman, that's just sheer luck. Or white-knightism, whatever floats your boat. Please.
    - geofft 11y ago
      I agree that, from the public information, it sounds like both of those terminations were potentially ill-advised. (There's also rumors that both of them were loosely tied to Yishan's everyone-in-SF policy, as it happens, but only rumors.) Obviously there's more going on than the public will ever know, unless Reddit corporate email ends up on Wikileaks, so I don't actually have an opinion on them because I don't have anywhere near enough information to make having an opinion worthwhile. However, unless I misread this thread, the conversation wasn't about whether employee terminations were well-advised. I was talking about which Reddit employees received interminable ugliness from Redditors, and whether it was correlated with what the public knew about their performance in their jobs. To my knowledge, there was no public discussion, vitriolic or otherwise, of either /u/kickme444 or /u/chooter's performance before their terminations, so I'm not sure what point you are making. (There were some comments that received flak for supporting /u/ekjp's "Removing Harassing Subreddits" post.) edit: I should also note that I'm not taking any position on the merit of /u/ekjp's departure, as mediated by the Board. Probably it was the right thing to do for the site, and quite likely it was the right thing to do for her, as well, but again, I'm not privy to anything that would let me have a well-informed opinion. I am only taking a position on the vitriol leading up to it. I think we'd both agree that it would be a bad thing if the vitriol was causative -- either if the Board relented to the worst parts of the mob (instead of, say, to respectful argument about why she's the wrong CEO), or if she stepped down because she couldn't take it any more -- and I'm hoping and assuming that it's not the case.
- genericuser 11y ago
  >So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What? No one in this chain of comments said that; besides maybe the GP you are defending. I referred to her as a woman and said the type of hate was horrible. There was no causation there. >You know the .... No shit, whats your point how does that justify ANYONE getting death and rape threats for doing their job in a manner others consider badly? So what if some of the people threatening her were probably also female? Or was there a different equally horrible point? >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. I am sorry I didn't mean to implicate that. I meant to flat out say that is what the the GP was effectively doing. That person decided to reply to a post of which the only content was saying that the internet acted poorly.(basically a truism), and they made a post that disagrees as a response, the only way that post furthers the conversation as a reply is with them supporting the very hate the original poster was talking about. Look if a person does not want come across as supporting rape and death threats it is best not to disagree with posts which are only pointing out how horrible those type of threats are. It's a pretty basic idea. And if a person does want to support rape and death threats, they should just flat out say so, that way they can be removed as a user on whatever sites want to have actual conversations.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    > Look if a person does not want come across as supporting rape and death threats it is best not to disagree with posts which are only pointing out how horrible those type of threats are. It's a pretty basic idea. And if a person does want to support rape and death threats, they should just flat out say so, that way they can be removed as a user on whatever sites want to have actual conversations. This is the same discourse BS that we get from politicians, name-dropping "terrorism" and "paedophilia" to pass random bills, laws or make people swallow unpopular opinions. It's frankly repulsive seeing it happen here too. "Oh you disagree with me? YOU SUPPORT RAPE."
    - genericuser 11y ago
      I have a riddle for you. If literally the only content of what someone says is "Rape is Bad" and a person disagrees.... Does the disagreeing person support rape?
- nebulus 11y ago
  Anonymity doesn't make any "normal person" start spewing death threats and rape threats. The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is just an excuse bad people tell themselves to justify their antisocial behavior.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
genericuser 11y ago
When I made this post (and for a good time afterward), and I clicked 'parent' of your post it took me to the post with the person talking about the vitriol being appalling. My response above was written assuming that the intended 'parent' post was the one being linked as the 'parent' at the time. That post is no longer the parent of your comment, instead the parent is a post which your post actually works as a relatively legitimate reply to. I am saying this as a way of acknowledging, all my further replies (some of which may have been made after the parent changed, without me noticing) are clearly deserving of down votes in the current context.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

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.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  While we're at it, there were two unpopular firings last month at reddit. The Reddit Gifts guy, who was let go without much fanfare, and chooter (Victoria), who got the entire website to support her, go dark in protest, and fast-forwarded Pao's resignation. But we don't mention those, no no. It's only "sexism" and "mysoginy" because we don't like what happened to a woman. When it's good for a woman, that's just sheer luck. Or white-knightism, whatever floats your boat. Please.
  - geofft 11y ago
    I agree that, from the public information, it sounds like both of those terminations were potentially ill-advised. (There's also rumors that both of them were loosely tied to Yishan's everyone-in-SF policy, as it happens, but only rumors.) Obviously there's more going on than the public will ever know, unless Reddit corporate email ends up on Wikileaks, so I don't actually have an opinion on them because I don't have anywhere near enough information to make having an opinion worthwhile. However, unless I misread this thread, the conversation wasn't about whether employee terminations were well-advised. I was talking about which Reddit employees received interminable ugliness from Redditors, and whether it was correlated with what the public knew about their performance in their jobs. To my knowledge, there was no public discussion, vitriolic or otherwise, of either /u/kickme444 or /u/chooter's performance before their terminations, so I'm not sure what point you are making. (There were some comments that received flak for supporting /u/ekjp's "Removing Harassing Subreddits" post.) edit: I should also note that I'm not taking any position on the merit of /u/ekjp's departure, as mediated by the Board. Probably it was the right thing to do for the site, and quite likely it was the right thing to do for her, as well, but again, I'm not privy to anything that would let me have a well-informed opinion. I am only taking a position on the vitriol leading up to it. I think we'd both agree that it would be a bad thing if the vitriol was causative -- either if the Board relented to the worst parts of the mob (instead of, say, to respectful argument about why she's the wrong CEO), or if she stepped down because she couldn't take it any more -- and I'm hoping and assuming that it's not the case.
genericuser 11y ago
>So now she got all those threats because she's a woman? What? No one in this chain of comments said that; besides maybe the GP you are defending. I referred to her as a woman and said the type of hate was horrible. There was no causation there. >You know the .... No shit, whats your point how does that justify ANYONE getting death and rape threats for doing their job in a manner others consider badly? So what if some of the people threatening her were probably also female? Or was there a different equally horrible point? >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. I am sorry I didn't mean to implicate that. I meant to flat out say that is what the the GP was effectively doing. That person decided to reply to a post of which the only content was saying that the internet acted poorly.(basically a truism), and they made a post that disagrees as a response, the only way that post furthers the conversation as a reply is with them supporting the very hate the original poster was talking about. Look if a person does not want come across as supporting rape and death threats it is best not to disagree with posts which are only pointing out how horrible those type of threats are. It's a pretty basic idea. And if a person does want to support rape and death threats, they should just flat out say so, that way they can be removed as a user on whatever sites want to have actual conversations.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > Look if a person does not want come across as supporting rape and death threats it is best not to disagree with posts which are only pointing out how horrible those type of threats are. It's a pretty basic idea. And if a person does want to support rape and death threats, they should just flat out say so, that way they can be removed as a user on whatever sites want to have actual conversations. This is the same discourse BS that we get from politicians, name-dropping "terrorism" and "paedophilia" to pass random bills, laws or make people swallow unpopular opinions. It's frankly repulsive seeing it happen here too. "Oh you disagree with me? YOU SUPPORT RAPE."
  - genericuser 11y ago
    I have a riddle for you. If literally the only content of what someone says is "Rape is Bad" and a person disagrees.... Does the disagreeing person support rape?
nebulus 11y ago
Anonymity doesn't make any "normal person" start spewing death threats and rape threats. The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is just an excuse bad people tell themselves to justify their antisocial behavior.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

genericuser 11y ago

When I made this post (and for a good time afterward), and I clicked 'parent' of your post it took me to the post with the person talking about the vitriol being appalling. My response above was written assuming that the intended 'parent' post was the one being linked as the 'parent' at the time. That post is no longer the parent of your comment, instead the parent is a post which your post actually works as a relatively legitimate reply to. I am saying this as a way of acknowledging, all my further replies (some of which may have been made after the parent changed, without me noticing) are clearly deserving of down votes in the current context.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]