Donglegate

[TaraJo]

Has anyone been following this story?

Adria Richards was at a tech convention for her job. It was dull and monotonous and everything, but, hey, it's your job so you just do it, right? Well, while she was there, she was evesdropping on a couple of guys making comments about big dongles and forking repos and other, general sexual junk. Most people would just ignore it or shrug it off and go on with their lives. This would be especially easy since she's been making dick jokes herself, on twitter. Or, if they can't do that, they can turn and confront those guys and ask them not to make rude comments like that. But not Adria Richards! Oh, no, she takes their picture, goes on twitter and publically attacks them for their comments.

https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status...5879102464

Where did it go from there? Adria claimed she was doing it to help future generations of women trying to get into the tech field, but being held back by sophmoric humor like this. So far, there hasn't been much change. However, one of the guys she called out was fired from his job. The rest of the internet picked up the story, too, and it kinda exploded from there. Feminist groups jumped in support of Richards, but most the rest of he internet was less understanding of her. Several sites initiated a ddos attack against her employer who was forced to not only fire her, but to do so publicly in an attempt to stop the ddos. Meanwhile, she still seems to be claiming victory and comparing herself to Joan of Ark.

So, who's heard of it? What do you think of it? What should happen to who?

[Joel]

Yeah, I saw it.




I was annoyed, deeply, by it.

[Something completely different]

I once met a Russian who told me a Russian joke common in the Stalinist 1950s Soviet Union.

A guy walks up to another guy in a tram and wisperes something into his ear:

Person A: Psssst! Can I tell you a joke?

Person B: Yeah sure!

Person A: What do the newspapers and our goverment have in common?

Person B: I dont know?

Person A: You can shove them both up your ass!

Person B: Ha! Can I tell you another one?

Person A: Sure!

Person B: What is the difference between this tram and you?

Person A: I dont know?

Person B: The tram keeps driving on and you are coming with me! Because I am from the secret police.

The situation kind of reminded me of that joke.

[TaraJo]

I once met a Russian who told me a Russian joke common in the Stalinist 1950s Soviet Union.

A guy walks up to another guy in a tram and wisperes something into his ear:

Person A: Psssst! Can I tell you a joke?

Person B: Yeah sure!

Person A: What do the newspapers and our goverment have in common?

Person B: I dont know?

Person A: You can shove them both up your ass!

Person B: Ha! Can I tell you another one?

Person A: Sure!

Person B: What is the difference between this tram and you?

Person A: I dont know?

Person B: The tram keeps driving on and you are coming with me! Because I am from the secret police.

The situation kind of reminded me of that joke.

Except the big difference is, they didn't even seem to be talking to her; they were talking to each other and she was just evesdropping! So, for the joke to be more accurate, the two guys talking were both pretty innocent but guy c, who was sitting away from them, was with the KGB and had them arrested or something.

And, yeah, I'm pissed. On many levels. I'm a little nervous to really look at what freethoughtblogs has to say about this, or Atheism+, but I have to guess they think the guys deserved it and Richards was some perfect little saint who only got canned because..... y'know..... uh... patriarchy. Or something like that.

[Autumnlicious]

I've been follow this from the beginning.

Seems to be like the following:

Prelude:
Adria is a well known "Social Justice" warrior. In short, she is a hypocrite who makes sexist jokes about men, believes that racism cannot be done towards whites and escalates preemptively.

Proof for those three points:

REF (sexism that she so abhors but feels fine to use) : https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status...1791847425
REF (about her tendency to sic her twitter mob on people) : http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

Let's let Dr. Reddit summarize:

This actually goes beyond the scope of simple subreddit drama and involves twitter, blogs, facebook etc, but I will be focusing on the drama it caused in several subreddits.

---
Short summery of who Adria Richards is and what happened:

At a tech convention she overhears two guys making jokes about "dongles" and "forking" and because she was offended by the "lewd nature" of it, she took a picture of them and publicly outed them on her twitter account and later makes a blog post about it. This caused one of the guys to be fired from his job, which in turn made Adria Richards feel like Jeanne d'arc.

Obviously her actions caused some anger and the company she worked for got under heavy attack from anonymous. Today SendGrid, her company, publicly announced her termination on twitter and facebook.

Oh, and maybe I should mention that her job was "developer evangelist"; basically maintain a good public relation with developers.

REF: http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/c...tice_goes/
REF: http://np.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1...next_year/

In short, we have a trollish awful woman who thinks nothing of posting photos (unblurred) of people to cry are sexist who is getting viciously mobbed by the worst racism and sexism.

Part of me knows what she is getting is unjust.

The other part of me thinks she brought this on herself.

The reality is in the middle.

She posted a picture to bully.

She also got PyCon to intervene and they did. The two men apologized. We thought it had ended.

One of the people was fired by their risk-averse company, creating the image that she caused the firing (responsibility lies on PlayHaven, not Andrea).

She got called out for 'Why post a photo to allow for people to identify private citizens'?

She posted a blog entry and compared herself to "Joan of Arc" and that the "Future of Programming was on the line".

She made a sexist joke (TSA and balled up socks representing penises).

Many people became massively angry.

The fired man was determined to have three kids.

This gave cassus belli to the mob.

The Internet Hate Machine decided to bully her.

She claimed her employer was behind her.

The Internet Hate Machine (anonymous if you're a little slow) decided to bully her employer.

Her employer fired her, kowtowing to the Internet Hate Machines blackmail.

Conclusion:
She, SendGrid, the fired employee, and PlayHaven all lost out.

Lessons learned?

DON'T post identifiable pictures of people you're going to criticize.

DO contact the event staff, either through twitter (like she did do (right)) or in person.

DON'T rant against sexism and then make a sexist joke.

DO be responsible for what your actions can do.

[Tiberius]

The guy who was fired has clarified that the comment about "forking his repo" was meant literally and not in a sexual way. So the only joke made was about big dongles.

That said, it doesn't even matter to me whether a joke about forking was made. It's a joke, between friends. People who happen to overhear it do not have the right not to be offended. Besides, joking about big dongles and forking are either male-based on gender-neutral jokes. The argument made by Adria is that she was protecting future female python developers, as if these men were being sexist and rude towards women.

On top of that, as Syn pointed out, she's a massive hypocrite and also apparently an idiot (concerning the racism thing).

The tech industry is better off without her. There are far better women in tech who can evangelize without causing unneccessary controversy.

[thesummerqueen]

I sometimes think these women get offended by things not even directed at them because it makes them feel better to assume that all men want them all the time.

[Faith No More]

I'm sure there are, summer, but this seems to be more of a case of an opportunist using a situation in order to portray herself as a moral crusader. Some people believe that looking down their noses at someone else automatically elevates them to a greater status.