Speaker 1: This is Bridget Todd, and you're listening to Internet Hate Machines,
Speaker 1: and I am here with my lovely producer, Sophie. Sophie,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm doing well, Bridget, How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing good? And I am so excited for the
Speaker 1: first official episode of Internet Hate Machine because we're talking
Speaker 1: about a topic that I've kind of think about a lot,
Speaker 1: and that is the saga of Adria Richards. And I
Speaker 1: know that you know a little bit about this story
Speaker 1: one of my favorite named topics on the internet, dongle gate,
Speaker 1: but you know, I only really know the surface level.
Speaker 1: So I'm really looking forward to hearing more about this
Speaker 1: from you and more about Adria as a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be using the word dongle a lot in
Speaker 1: this episode. Just two level set love that. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I wanted to start with Adria Richards is
Speaker 1: because I think that she really represents an early situation
Speaker 1: where bad actors were able to completely hijack a sensitive,
Speaker 1: complicated situation in ways that they're still doing to this
Speaker 1: very day. And I think it's a really great early
Speaker 1: example of how when a black woman is being harassed
Speaker 1: and attacked online, people watching will essentially fit back and
Speaker 1: say she probably deserved it. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1: That started the beginning. Who is Adrian Richards Well, Adrian
Speaker 1: Richards is a black woman who has been working as
Speaker 1: an engineer since about She first got her start in
Speaker 1: technology as a network administrator and started volunteering teaching tech
Speaker 1: skills in her spare time. And while she started working
Speaker 1: her way up in these like successful tech startups, she
Speaker 1: also kind of became this visible black woman in tech.
Speaker 1: You know, she was doing a lot of media. She
Speaker 1: had a pretty big YouTube channel with a healthy number
Speaker 1: of subscribers. She celebrated ten thousand subscribers where she does
Speaker 1: these accessible tech tutorials mixed with kind of every day
Speaker 1: I guess lifestyle content like dating advice, And she does
Speaker 1: a lot of content where she is calling out examples
Speaker 1: of sexism in tech. Um, that's kind of I guess
Speaker 1: her brand or her thing is these explorations of gender
Speaker 1: and technology and the way that they intersect. Like her
Speaker 1: personal website where she has her blog is called but
Speaker 1: You're a Girl dot com, so you can sort of
Speaker 1: get a sense of she's someone who is really interested
Speaker 1: in shaking up the status quo in technology. She travels
Speaker 1: to speak at these pretty big deal tech conferences where
Speaker 1: she often is talking about things like diversity in tech
Speaker 1: and inclusion in tech. Here's a little clip of her
Speaker 1: speaking at one of those conferences. Any startup you're gonna
Speaker 1: work at, it's not going to be all one gender.
Speaker 1: If you're a woman, it's very unlikely. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: need to work with guys. So you should be going
Speaker 1: to events that have guys. And it's not that guys
Speaker 1: don't want to help, but we have to give them
Speaker 1: opportunities for them to be allies. So that was it,
Speaker 1: Just a quick little clip that I think speaks to
Speaker 1: um a little bit about what happened with her side.
Speaker 1: Now somebody we would totally be friends with. Oh, absolutely, absolutely,
Speaker 1: no question. So what I was doing research for this episode,
Speaker 1: I really kind of enjoyed going back in time and
Speaker 1: looking at Adria's digital life before what went down went down,
Speaker 1: because honestly, she kind of just gives off vibes of
Speaker 1: a black woman who is killing it, like she's really
Speaker 1: hit her stride. Watching her talk about technology, she comes
Speaker 1: off as really confident and happy and like she's in
Speaker 1: like really walking in her power and It was exciting
Speaker 1: to watch, but it kind of made me sad. Knowing
Speaker 1: a little bit about what happens next, you might be
Speaker 1: asking what happened to Adrea Richards. Adrea starts working as
Speaker 1: a developer evangelist, which is basically, if you don't know
Speaker 1: what that is, it's someone whose role is to work
Speaker 1: with developers, help them solve problems, help them level up
Speaker 1: in their career. She gets the job as a developer
Speaker 1: evangelists for the email vendor sind Grid, and then she
Speaker 1: goes to Peicon, a conference for Python users, and while
Speaker 1: she's there, she is sitting in the main conference room
Speaker 1: during a keynote talk, and she turns around to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with some attendees behind her, having a normal
Speaker 1: talk about some of the presentations they've seen, when she
Speaker 1: overhears a pair of male attendees who are also developers,
Speaker 1: making a crass joke while seated behind her. Now, the
Speaker 1: actual nature of the joke is somewhat in dispute. A
Speaker 1: little bit more on that later, but essentially, the crux
Speaker 1: of the joke is that they're talking about dongles because
Speaker 1: they work in tech, and the crux of the joke
Speaker 1: is that dongle is a funny sounding word that kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like dog, wow, brave such as just transferred
Speaker 1: me back to you know, the seventh grade cool cool, cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's crass and it's immature, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's like, like I said, it's like very middle school.
Speaker 1: It is very middle school. It takes me back to
Speaker 1: a lot of text bases I've been in where that
Speaker 1: is the love that it just it is the level
Speaker 1: of humor that you kind of are asked to smile
Speaker 1: through and be like ha ha, this is one percent bridging.
Speaker 1: I actually don't know if you know that, like one
Speaker 1: of my first jobs out of college, I worked in
Speaker 1: tech for several years, and I don't think on microoff
Speaker 1: Mike we've talked about this at all. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: definitely know exactly what you're talking about. In those In
Speaker 1: those scenes, especially when there's very few women around the
Speaker 1: the nature of the jokes can sometimes be a little
Speaker 1: bit off putting to say the least. Yes, exactly, and
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly where Adrian was at as well.
Speaker 1: So she didn't say anything in the moment, She didn't
Speaker 1: say that this bothered her, and she explains that choice
Speaker 1: in her blog. She writes, I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: heckled or have my experience denied, which I also really,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do. Having worked in tech, I know
Speaker 1: what she's talking about. I did it. She probably didn't
Speaker 1: want to have that vibe of, oh, she's crazy, she's
Speaker 1: over sensitive. You know you, you know you can you
Speaker 1: kind of have a sense of maybe it's not going
Speaker 1: to go that well if you take the route of saying, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: knock it off. Oh my god, she's so emotional, she's
Speaker 1: in her feelings. Why can't we just can't we just
Speaker 1: be our souls? It's like, all right, exactly. So, rather
Speaker 1: than saying something to them in the moment, she takes
Speaker 1: out her phone, takes their picture, and tweets it, tweeting
Speaker 1: quote not cool jokes about forking repose in a sexual
Speaker 1: way and big dongles right behind me hashtag picon. She
Speaker 1: goes on to tweet, can someone talk to these guys
Speaker 1: about their conduct? I'm in lightning talks top right near stage,
Speaker 1: Tin roseback hashtag picon, and then she tweets the code
Speaker 1: of conduct for the conference, which in part says, quote
Speaker 1: offensive jokes are not appropriate for Peicon. So initially, Adrian
Speaker 1: said that she was wanted to ignore this, but in
Speaker 1: her blog but I'm a Girl, Adria explained what triggered
Speaker 1: her to send that tweet. She writes, I was gonna
Speaker 1: let it go. It has been a long week, a
Speaker 1: long month. I've been on the road since mid February
Speaker 1: attending and speaking at conferences. Icon was my fifth and
Speaker 1: final conference before heading home. I know it's important to
Speaker 1: pick my battles and I don't have to be a
Speaker 1: hero and in every situation, but sometimes I want to
Speaker 1: go to a conference and be a geek. But like Popeye,
Speaker 1: I couldn't stands it no more because of what happened.
Speaker 1: She talks about how her company was a sponsor for
Speaker 1: this event and when she heard them talking about dongles,
Speaker 1: she felt blustered. Then, she writes, then it happened the trigger.
Speaker 1: She's watching somebody on the main stage and he's talking
Speaker 1: about this young Hooder's workshop that Adrian volunteered at. He
Speaker 1: was mentioning that the Pie Ladies auction had raised ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in a single night for funds that we're
Speaker 1: going to be used to support this young Coder's Workshop initiative.
Speaker 1: I saw a photo on the main stage of a
Speaker 1: little girl who had been in the Young Coder's Workshop.
Speaker 1: I realized I had to do something because she would
Speaker 1: never have the chance to learn and love programming because
Speaker 1: the ask clowns behind me would make it impossible for
Speaker 1: her to do so. So I I remember reading this
Speaker 1: when the whole situation was going down, and I was
Speaker 1: very moved by what she had written. Um, I think
Speaker 1: it's if you're if you're listening to this and thinking
Speaker 1: that seems a little overdone. Fine, sure, but I guess
Speaker 1: I'm saying that I understand what where she sort of
Speaker 1: coming from when she wrote that. Yeah, I mean like,
Speaker 1: I definitely have empathy for for the way that she's
Speaker 1: feeling here. I feel like that happens to a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the business world, and specifically within the
Speaker 1: tech space, where you're in a situation where you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I could say nothing, but you know that would be
Speaker 1: very disappointing to child me, or to my niece, to
Speaker 1: my nephew, to my daughter, to my son, the inner
Speaker 1: child in me where where I'm like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. While this might seem small to some who's
Speaker 1: to say that many small things. If you let it
Speaker 1: go this time, you might let it go the next
Speaker 1: ten times, and then it's just a habit, and then
Speaker 1: it's a pattern, and then you're enabling. So that's exactly
Speaker 1: what she says. In her blog, she writes about how
Speaker 1: this incident was actually not the first time that she
Speaker 1: had heard a sexualizing joke at that particular conference. She
Speaker 1: describes how earlier during that event, in a hallway, a
Speaker 1: guy had made a crass joke about looking under the
Speaker 1: skirt of the table and you know, make he made
Speaker 1: some crass long and about it, not like so it
Speaker 1: doesn't have pubic hair, just like I like it. But
Speaker 1: because this happened in a way, I know, really not great.
Speaker 1: She says that because this happened in a hallway and
Speaker 1: not like at a seated, you know, main stage event
Speaker 1: while somebody's on stage talking, she actually did feel comfortable
Speaker 1: speaking up to whoever made that joke. And I think
Speaker 1: it's exactly what you were saying, Sophie. It sounds like
Speaker 1: this was death by a thousand cuts for her, where
Speaker 1: it was laugh it off, laugh it off, say something,
Speaker 1: say something, and eventually she just couldn't anymore. Like I've
Speaker 1: been there where you just hit your limit of ship
Speaker 1: that you are willing to smile through or giggle through
Speaker 1: or brush off to the point where you just can't anymore.
Speaker 1: The conference staff talk to the guys who end up
Speaker 1: being developers who made the joke. For their part, it
Speaker 1: sounds like these guys handled it very well. Ticon put
Speaker 1: out a state meant saying quote. An incident occurred involving
Speaker 1: some inappropriate comments made during a crowded plenary session her
Speaker 1: the state of guidelines for the attendees and staff. The
Speaker 1: issue was reported to PIKE staff and resolved privately. Both
Speaker 1: parties were met with in private. The comments that were
Speaker 1: made were in poor taste, and the individuals involved agreed, apologized,
Speaker 1: and no further action were taken by the staff of Pike.
Speaker 1: No individuals were removed from a conference, no sanctions were levied,
Speaker 1: and so honestly, it sounds like it truly could have
Speaker 1: ended there. You know, these developers who were making this
Speaker 1: crass joke, they they seem like they legitimately felt bad.
Speaker 1: They apologized. Picon staff it sounds like they acted quickly
Speaker 1: and it was resolved. It truly could have been there,
Speaker 1: and honestly, throughout the entire situation, Adrian is clear both
Speaker 1: in her writing and in her actions that she does
Speaker 1: not want these men fired. You know, she is not
Speaker 1: calling for any consequences were them beyond just being talked
Speaker 1: to about appropriate conduct by the Picon staff, which they were,
Speaker 1: So this truly could have just been the end of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like all she really wanted to do was
Speaker 1: come on, guys, not a time or place, do better?
Speaker 1: Does it? It's easy for me to have a lot
Speaker 1: of empathy for all of the individuals involved in the situation,
Speaker 1: Like those guys shouldn't have been making that joke. It
Speaker 1: does sound like it was crass and stupid. It does
Speaker 1: sound like it was against the rules of what happened.
Speaker 1: It's easy for me to just because I'm someone who
Speaker 1: says things without thinking a lot, it's easy for me
Speaker 1: to put myself in their shoes of like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: certainly I've said things where it comes out of my
Speaker 1: mouth and boy I wish it hadn't. You know? For
Speaker 1: sure somebody who's on a lot of podcasts can relate,
Speaker 1: can relate. Yeah, I'm not saying that these guys are
Speaker 1: like the worst guys ever, and they handled it very well.
Speaker 1: Both men worked for a company called play Haven, which
Speaker 1: was a sponsor for picon the event, and this incident
Speaker 1: led to one, but not both of the men being fired.
Speaker 1: Play Haven CEO Andy Yang acknowledge the firing, writing quote,
Speaker 1: play Haven had an employee who was identified as making
Speaker 1: inappropriate comments at picon, and as a company that is
Speaker 1: dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted
Speaker 1: a throw investigation. The results of this investigation led to
Speaker 1: the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go.
Speaker 1: We believe in the importance of discussing sensitive topics such
Speaker 1: as gender and conduct, and we hope to move forward
Speaker 1: with a civil dialogue based on the facts, which unfortunately
Speaker 1: does not happen. But you know, and you might be
Speaker 1: asking yourself, Well, HbF photographed and pointed out two men
Speaker 1: who worked at play Haven who were having this inappropriate conversation,
Speaker 1: So you might be asking why was only one man
Speaker 1: fired and not the other. Play Haven went on to
Speaker 1: say in their statement that they would not comment on
Speaker 1: all the factors that contributed to our parting ways with
Speaker 1: the one developer, So it's totally clear, you know what
Speaker 1: is actually happening if the decision was entirely about what
Speaker 1: happened at picon, or if something else contributed to it, Right,
Speaker 1: this could have been a a noted behavior from this
Speaker 1: person or some other reason. Yeah, that's interesting and and
Speaker 1: kind of um, I would say, CEO and Yang actually
Speaker 1: taking action is kind of rare, I would say, especially
Speaker 1: at that time. So that's that's interesting to know here
Speaker 1: as well. But yeah, I totally see what you're saying,
Speaker 1: Like there could have been other things there that we
Speaker 1: just don't know and we'll never know. But yeah, what happened, Oh,
Speaker 1: I know what I good to what happened. I'm bombed.
Speaker 1: It's not great. And honestly, like I I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't have any kind of special insight,
Speaker 1: but I would be willing to bet just from what
Speaker 1: I know about how tech companies work that play Haven
Speaker 1: that there was some sort of information that maybe we're
Speaker 1: not privy to that play Haven like maybe this was
Speaker 1: a pattern, maybe there were other factors at play, and
Speaker 1: play Haven was like, well, you know, let's just part
Speaker 1: ways with this person and this is just another just
Speaker 1: just one more reason why we should take that action.
Speaker 1: So after Adria's tweet, everyone kind of starts responding to
Speaker 1: what happened. Now. I absolutely do not think that Adria
Speaker 1: thought that this was going to blow up the way
Speaker 1: that it did, with so many people beyond the tech
Speaker 1: conference weighing in. You know, some people are supportive of Adria,
Speaker 1: others are supportive of the developers. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: this is to be really clear, not all the people
Speaker 1: who were not on adria side are men. There were.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of women weighing in and saying
Speaker 1: that they felt like Adria was making it harder for
Speaker 1: them as women in tech by being so are sensitive
Speaker 1: or not just talking directly to the men, right, So
Speaker 1: it's not it's certainly not a clear cut men on
Speaker 1: one side, women on the other side issue. When people
Speaker 1: were just sort of talking about it, expressing their their
Speaker 1: take on it. The fire developer posted on Hacker News,
Speaker 1: and I have to say his post, which is still up,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty civil. Uh. In my opinion, I do
Speaker 1: not think that the fired developer was interested or intended
Speaker 1: to whip up a hate mob around Adrian. I think
Speaker 1: that that was not a consequence that he was expecting
Speaker 1: or was welcoming in any way. He apologized, saying, quote, first,
Speaker 1: I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not
Speaker 1: mean to offend anyone, and I really do regret the
Speaker 1: comment and how it made Adria feel she had every
Speaker 1: right to report me to staff, and I defend her position,
Speaker 1: which I think is like pretty recent. Yeah. He also
Speaker 1: clarified her characterization of part of his comments. He says,
Speaker 1: while I did make big dongle joke about a fictional
Speaker 1: piece of hardware that identified as a male, no sexual
Speaker 1: jokes were made about working. My friends and I had
Speaker 1: decided that forking someone's repo is a new form of flattery,
Speaker 1: and we were excited about one of the presenter's projects.
Speaker 1: A friend said I would fork that guy's repo. The
Speaker 1: sexual context was applied by Adria, not us, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't there, so I can't speak to
Speaker 1: whether or not the forking part of that joke was
Speaker 1: sextual or not. I will say that with jokes, oftentimes,
Speaker 1: you know there's nuance and context between friends that maybe
Speaker 1: can be easily missed when you're overhearing it. I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I don't know. I whether I don't know
Speaker 1: what he says. I can't read into what he's saying. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think I'm like forking dongle if the
Speaker 1: shoe fits um? But but sure, sir. Yeah, It's like
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's hard. And what's what's funny is that
Speaker 1: after what I'm sure it was like a well intentioned clarification.
Speaker 1: Of course, people on the internet ran with that and
Speaker 1: they were like, totally Andrea lied about what he said.
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, I could even if even if
Speaker 1: he is correct and she misrepresented or like misunderstood it,
Speaker 1: it's not really a lie like that nuance is completely
Speaker 1: stripped from the conversation when bad actors on the internet
Speaker 1: get involved. Absolutely, I mean, we're out here analyzing somebody's
Speaker 1: really bad middle school joke about gongles. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: like I know what happens next, and it's like, don't
Speaker 1: just like, don't defend your bad joke. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like if you meant it that way or not putting
Speaker 1: the blame on Adria. Just I don't think that was cool.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not thrilled with that.
Speaker 1: So this is something that I do have to take
Speaker 1: issue with. In his post on Hacker News, he kind
Speaker 1: of implies that Adria personally taking his photo and tweeting
Speaker 1: it is the reason why he got fired. He it's
Speaker 1: Adria has an audience and is a successful person of
Speaker 1: the media. Just check out her web page linked in
Speaker 1: her Twitter account or hard work and social activism speaks
Speaker 1: for itself. With that great power and reach comes responsibility.
Speaker 1: As a result of the picture she took, I was
Speaker 1: let go from my job today, which sucks because I
Speaker 1: have three kids and I really liked that job. She
Speaker 1: gave me no warning. She smiled while she snapped my
Speaker 1: picture and sealed my fate. Let this serve as a
Speaker 1: message to everyone. Our actions and words, big or small,
Speaker 1: can have serious impact. I have a question. Sure, I
Speaker 1: looked up Adria again on Twitter before we started doing
Speaker 1: this episode, and I'm sure it's changed since then. But
Speaker 1: you know, at the time, do we know what her
Speaker 1: bio was, Do we know how many followers she had?
Speaker 1: Anything like that? Just as like a side note, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. It's not super clear. I think that when
Speaker 1: he said media, I don't think that he was saying
Speaker 1: and it does actually relate. I was gonna put this in,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know how to say it. I think
Speaker 1: that he was saying not that she is a member
Speaker 1: of the media, which god, we know members of the
Speaker 1: media are always attacked in the line. I think that
Speaker 1: he was saying that she is a successful person of
Speaker 1: the media, like she gets glowing media attention, because at
Speaker 1: the time that was kind of her thing. I think
Speaker 1: that basically, I guess, if I'm gonna keep it real,
Speaker 1: this is just my opinion. I think he was trying
Speaker 1: to sort of imply that she is someone who is
Speaker 1: good at using the media and good at getting her
Speaker 1: perspective and her name in the media for her causes.
Speaker 1: And I think that he was kind of trying to
Speaker 1: imply that in tweeting about his joke at this conference,
Speaker 1: that she was perhaps intending to get media on her
Speaker 1: side because she has a uh skilled that using media.
Speaker 1: She's you know, she's a YouTuber. She's someone who like
Speaker 1: has a name for herself and it's very visible. So
Speaker 1: I think that he's making a nod toward her visibility,
Speaker 1: which is sort of incumbent on media and her ability
Speaker 1: to to be a person in media. That's what I think.
Speaker 1: This is my opinion. Yeah, it just comes off as
Speaker 1: like weird, weird, jealous vibes. It's just the phrasing and
Speaker 1: what he said, it just comes off very well, she's
Speaker 1: fake news, and um, why would you believe her when
Speaker 1: she knows, like clearly she knows what she's doing here.
Speaker 1: It just reads very Oh god, it just reads witch hunt.
Speaker 1: I hate it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I really
Speaker 1: struggled with how to deal with this nuance in the
Speaker 1: episode because I do genuinely think the Spire developer is
Speaker 1: trying to his best to be civil through a tough situation.
Speaker 1: But I also think that he is using a couple
Speaker 1: of key phrases that the audience definitely picked up on
Speaker 1: as Oh, she was trying to like use him and
Speaker 1: what he said to bolster her own career and to
Speaker 1: boost her own profile. And the conversation around how Adrian
Speaker 1: Richards handled this was very much steeped in. She was
Speaker 1: really calculated, and she was doing this because she thought
Speaker 1: it was going to, you know, empower her and boost
Speaker 1: her own profile, and it was very like self motivated.
Speaker 1: I honestly think she just tweeted it and didn't think
Speaker 1: much of it and it blew up on her face.
Speaker 1: If I'm being honest, just my perspective. But the way
Speaker 1: that he writes his statement, people, what you're calling out
Speaker 1: people definitely picked up on and ran with it. That
Speaker 1: she is untrustworthy, that she is calculating and conniving, and
Speaker 1: that she did this in a calculated, intentional move to
Speaker 1: to cloud Chase and they're going to punish her for it.
Speaker 1: How did she respond to his post? So that is
Speaker 1: a great question. So she writes to his post on Hackernew,
Speaker 1: she replies, I'm sorry to hear your employer decided not
Speaker 1: to work with you on this, and I hope they
Speaker 1: reconsider bring you back and deal with it constructively. So again,
Speaker 1: she wasn't calling for him to be fired. If she was,
Speaker 1: she could have easily, you know, said like this was
Speaker 1: on you. You did this, you agree that you did it,
Speaker 1: you should be fired. She didn't say any of that.
Speaker 1: She was like, oh, sorry to hear, not what I
Speaker 1: had in mind. I hope they reconsider. That's not that.
Speaker 1: In my book, those are not the words of somebody
Speaker 1: who is gleefully watching the takedown of somebody they're hoping
Speaker 1: to clout build by tearing down, not at all. And
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those as part of
Speaker 1: the nuance of the conversation, because I think you could
Speaker 1: argue that the men should not have been making these
Speaker 1: kinds of jokes at the conference. And I also think
Speaker 1: that it's within the realm of possibility that you could
Speaker 1: take issue with the fact that Adria took a picture
Speaker 1: of these guys and tweeted it. I'm I am a
Speaker 1: big I think that taking pictures of people unless they're
Speaker 1: committing an act of violence against you. I think taking
Speaker 1: and tweeting pictures of people without their consent is like
Speaker 1: a no no in my book. Just personally, I think
Speaker 1: you could argue that she shouldn't have done that. Side note.
Speaker 1: After the incident, ICON updated its attendee procedure for handling
Speaker 1: harassment to encourage conference attendees to report behavior privately and
Speaker 1: not to tweet about them publicly like Adria did, and
Speaker 1: so their new procedures say public shaming can be counterproductive
Speaker 1: to building a strong community. ICON does not condone nor
Speaker 1: participate in such actions out of respect. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the word public shaming is such a loaded term,
Speaker 1: and it is interesting to me that that is the
Speaker 1: language that they chose to update their procedures. They said,
Speaker 1: we don't want bad pr so let's keep these things quiet.
Speaker 1: They didn't say they didn't. What they didn't say is
Speaker 1: I mean, like I guess they said it prior where
Speaker 1: they're like, we don't condone this type of thing. But
Speaker 1: they made a public policy change that points the finger
Speaker 1: again at Adria. She's consistently getting the finger pointed at her. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Public And dare I say public shaming by POCON Maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit, I mean I want to get into that,
Speaker 1: but absolutely. And it's it's so funny that you bring
Speaker 1: up this idea of how people attending a conference should
Speaker 1: handle conflict. I am a longtime political organizer. I go
Speaker 1: to a lot of like lefty progressive political conferences. At
Speaker 1: the conferences that I go to, they will call your
Speaker 1: ass out. Almost every single time I go to a conference,
Speaker 1: like a net Roots or something, there is some elected
Speaker 1: official who's being booed or bird dogged or tweeted at.
Speaker 1: You know, I think Biden spoke there a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, and everybody was tweeting at the conference and
Speaker 1: using the conference hashtag like oh why don't you go?
Speaker 1: The ports of people are like like, like I came
Speaker 1: up in a conference scene where it was expect I
Speaker 1: totally expected that you were going to handle whatever conflicts
Speaker 1: you had entirely publicly. So it is a little telling
Speaker 1: to me that they're like, oh, no, part of our
Speaker 1: quote of conduct is if you have a problem with somebody,
Speaker 1: keep it on the hush hush, because it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess I feel like it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be up to the conference to decide how I feel
Speaker 1: it's best to handle my conflict. Like, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's almost like a personal choice. That's it's a weird
Speaker 1: micromanagement by the conference. I don't know. Yeah, you've definitely
Speaker 1: are are somebody who spends more time at conferences than
Speaker 1: I do. But unfortunately I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: I follow you on social media, um, and if you
Speaker 1: don't follow Bridge of Fall Bridger, But yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 1: It's anytime somebody's like, let's do this behind closed doors,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, red flag. Yeah. I just feel like
Speaker 1: having that as a rule that you have to agree
Speaker 1: to in the code of conduct. Just in general, I
Speaker 1: am not a big fan of a power structure telling
Speaker 1: me that I can't be public about something that i've experienced.
Speaker 1: I guess, let's put it that way totally. And so
Speaker 1: even if you think that Adria should not have taken
Speaker 1: the picture of these guys and tweeted it, Adria Richards
Speaker 1: does not handle hr decisions at play Haven, right, and
Speaker 1: they are the ones who decided to part ways with
Speaker 1: this developer. Again, I have no evidence for this, but
Speaker 1: I suspect that there might have been other reasons why
Speaker 1: this developer was let go, particularly because that they only
Speaker 1: fired the one developer and not the other, even when
Speaker 1: two men were photographed. And it is really interesting to
Speaker 1: meet how play Haven just allowed Adria to become this
Speaker 1: very public scapegoat or their hiring and firing decisions. They
Speaker 1: didn't speak up and say, hey, Adria doesn't work at
Speaker 1: play Haven and had no you know, did not force
Speaker 1: our hand. We made this decision. It is interesting to
Speaker 1: me how they didn't take the flak publicly. This visible
Speaker 1: black woman in technology was the one who got all
Speaker 1: of the negative attention for their decision. And I guess
Speaker 1: I think you know, companies just back then certainly did
Speaker 1: not and I would argue still do not know how
Speaker 1: to handle it when there is a big public outcry
Speaker 1: happening around one of their employees. Had play Haven said
Speaker 1: we're aware of the issue and we're taking the appropriate action.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. You know, release some statement that's just like,
Speaker 1: we know what's going on and we're gonna handle it.
Speaker 1: None of this would have happened. You know, if people
Speaker 1: are mad that this developer was fired, they should be
Speaker 1: mad at play Haven, not Adria. But Adria as a
Speaker 1: black woman, she's very visible and she represents all of
Speaker 1: the different trigger points that make people mad. She's black,
Speaker 1: she's outspoken, she's a woman, and she's very actively trying
Speaker 1: to shake up the status quo in technology as being
Speaker 1: this white male bros. Club, all of which makes her
Speaker 1: an easy target when the actual decision makers are play Haven.
Speaker 1: And it seems like people were not just angry about
Speaker 1: the firing of this one developer, but they were angry
Speaker 1: about is Age R. Richards and what she represents in technology.
Speaker 1: She represents technology and technology spaces becoming more accommodating to
Speaker 1: women and marginalized people. She represents women and marginalized people
Speaker 1: having meaningful power in those spaces and feeling like they
Speaker 1: can actually take up space in those spaces and with
Speaker 1: that comes all the people who currently had power in
Speaker 1: those spaces feeling threatened, feeling like the order that they
Speaker 1: are used to where there on the top and have
Speaker 1: the power, might actually be upset, and that they might
Speaker 1: actually have to make room for people who traditionally have
Speaker 1: not had a lot of institutional power in technology spaces.
Speaker 1: That's what she represents. A good example of what I
Speaker 1: mean is the fact that when this all was going down,
Speaker 1: three redditors launched what they called the Feminist Defense Fund,
Speaker 1: where they took donations in bitcoin for the fire developer,
Speaker 1: and in their plea for donations, they write, feminism has
Speaker 1: call us some serious changes to our culture, to our society,
Speaker 1: into our lives. We focus on some that are effected
Speaker 1: more than others, and we give back. Our goal is
Speaker 1: to encourage men to speak out, to be men, to
Speaker 1: not fear oppression, and enjoy their freedom of speech. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in today's climate, being a man has become a financial liability.
Speaker 1: Say the wrong thing in the wrong place, and you
Speaker 1: can find your entire life ruined, destroyed. Feminists fought for equality,
Speaker 1: but now they're out for our rights. They're destroying us financially.
Speaker 1: They're trying to tear apart our families. We're saying that
Speaker 1: enough is enough. No longer should men fear masculinity, No
Speaker 1: longer should speaking up risk that man a job, a career,
Speaker 1: or a family. It is time to rise up against
Speaker 1: the tyranny. It is time to tell men it is
Speaker 1: okay to speak up. We're here for you. This is
Speaker 1: the Feminist Victims Fund. So it's so obvious, like what
Speaker 1: they're pissed about. Oh god, crime, crime, crime, Oh god,
Speaker 1: that was great. Man, read the room, my guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is like, it's so clear that they are using
Speaker 1: this as a proxy to fight these larger kind of
Speaker 1: culture wars issue. They don't care about this developer. They
Speaker 1: don't care that even he agrees that joke that he
Speaker 1: made was stupid and inappropriate for the setting. That's not
Speaker 1: what they care about. They care about women, and in
Speaker 1: this case, specifically a black woman shaking up the status
Speaker 1: quo and technology and threatening what they see as the
Speaker 1: way that the world in society should work. Let's get
Speaker 1: into the fallout of what happened with all of this. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of companies being really cowardly and caving to a mob,
Speaker 1: that is pretty much what happened to Adria Richards. So
Speaker 1: after the developer gets fired, the internet, or more specifically, fortune,
Speaker 1: really turned on Adria and her employer sent Grid. Adria,
Speaker 1: I have to say, is horribly, horribly harassed her website.
Speaker 1: It gets a d O s attacked, which is, if
Speaker 1: you don't know what that is, it's a denial of
Speaker 1: service attack where essentially attackers blood a website with more
Speaker 1: traffic than it can handle to shut it down. What
Speaker 1: happened to Adria wasn't just people tweeting that they disagreed
Speaker 1: with her, Nor was it just a few mean tweets
Speaker 1: or mean comments online, which side note, Funnily enough, a
Speaker 1: lot of the garden variety mean tweets directed at Adria
Speaker 1: are still up as we speak. You know, tweets like quote,
Speaker 1: horror cost two men their jobs in this economy, you
Speaker 1: just made two families poor. I hope you feel good,
Speaker 1: hypocritical bitch, or little did they know they were sitting
Speaker 1: behind some count, or good job at being a picture
Speaker 1: book feminist bitch? Or why are you such a count?
Speaker 1: You know? So definitely not nice stuff. But those are
Speaker 1: not even the tweets and messages and comments that I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the harassment that Adria Richard Scott was heinous
Speaker 1: and worse, it was coordinated. I personally witnessed many, many,
Speaker 1: many death and rape threats that she got some of
Speaker 1: the worst people on the internet. We're telling her in
Speaker 1: mass that she deserved to die by suicide. They docked
Speaker 1: and publicized her home address and phone number to the
Speaker 1: point where she had to flee from her own home
Speaker 1: for her own safety. Oh cool, they're dosing her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really scary. Fortune circulates a change dot org petition
Speaker 1: calling for Adrian to be fired from sin grid. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a pastebind document claims that anonymous has sin Grid's client
Speaker 1: list and that they're harassing their customers and will continue
Speaker 1: to do so if they don't fire her. Um here's
Speaker 1: a bit from that post. They say ad R Richards
Speaker 1: engaged in malicious conduct to destroy another individual's professional career
Speaker 1: due to what she perceived as an affront to her
Speaker 1: own extremist views from a comment that was not directed
Speaker 1: at her, not meant for her to hear, and certainly
Speaker 1: not for her to provide unwarranted input on. As such,
Speaker 1: she should have her professional career destroyed just like her victim,
Speaker 1: and ordered for justice to be rendered and for balance
Speaker 1: to be restored in the universe. The Hive Minds judgment
Speaker 1: is final. There is no appeal, no forgiveness, no forgetting. Remember,
Speaker 1: real life harassment is an escalation that comes into play
Speaker 1: based on how long the situation is allowed to play out.
Speaker 1: It is not affected by the effectiveness of previous forms
Speaker 1: of harassment. Even if your customers and financial backers are
Speaker 1: dropping like flies, this will still happen if Anonymous maintains
Speaker 1: an interest in the situation. Boxing is a term used
Speaker 1: to define the discovery and dissemination of all personal information, included,
Speaker 1: but not limited to, home address, phone numbers, credit card numbers,
Speaker 1: your medical records, what brand of toothpaste you buy, etcetera.
Speaker 1: If some of the more talented members of Anonymous take
Speaker 1: interest into this, every employee of sent grid becomes a target,
Speaker 1: starting at the top. For your reference. This is already
Speaker 1: happening to miss Richards as per standard protocol. So basically
Speaker 1: that's like a clear threat, like this is you know
Speaker 1: whether this is legit or not. This is someone basically
Speaker 1: trying to scare this this major tech company. So the
Speaker 1: attacks on send grid worsen um sin Grid acknowledge that
Speaker 1: they had suffered a denial of service attack, and so
Speaker 1: you know, this is a major company and their website
Speaker 1: traffic is essentially shut down. They're not able to have
Speaker 1: have people go to their website, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal. And so I guess I feel like if
Speaker 1: I was running a big company, I would not cave
Speaker 1: to a mob that is outright threatening me. But that's
Speaker 1: exactly what sin Grid did. Sin Grid eventually cave to
Speaker 1: this mob and fired Adria, and they fired her publicly.
Speaker 1: Cowards fucking coward ship. It's so cowardly, and so they
Speaker 1: write on Facebook. Effective immediately, sin Grid has terminated the
Speaker 1: employment of Adria Richards. While we are generally sensitive and
Speaker 1: confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken
Speaker 1: on a public nature, and we have taken action that
Speaker 1: we believe is in the overall best interests of sin Grid,
Speaker 1: its employees, and our customers. A few hours later, sent
Speaker 1: Grid CEO Jim Franklin expanded on the company's reasons for
Speaker 1: firing Adria, writing, sin Grid supports the right to report
Speaker 1: and appropriate behavior whenever and wherever it occurs. What we
Speaker 1: do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her
Speaker 1: decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people
Speaker 1: who made the comments cross the line. Publicly shaming the
Speaker 1: offenders and bystanders was not the appropriate way to handle
Speaker 1: the situation. And the aftermath of all of this was
Speaker 1: that Adria had to literally go into hiding. And she
Speaker 1: was someone who had this big voice online and this
Speaker 1: big online footprint, and she essentially stopped tweeting and stopped
Speaker 1: making videos and stopped putting our perspective out into the
Speaker 1: world after this happened. And so, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like so many people, for example, the men's rights activists
Speaker 1: who were raising money for the fired engineer, we'll talk
Speaker 1: so much about things like free speech, free speech, but
Speaker 1: they almost never talked about the fact that somebody like Adria,
Speaker 1: who was someone who really did a lot of putting
Speaker 1: her voice out into the world, was effectively silenced when
Speaker 1: this harassment campaign against her began. So she she wasn't
Speaker 1: continuing to, you know, speak up. And so when we
Speaker 1: talk about whose free speech is being threatened, it's almost
Speaker 1: never the marginalized people who have to stop speaking and
Speaker 1: our silence when they become the targets of harassment campaigns
Speaker 1: like Adria was. So that's basically what happened with Advia Richards.
Speaker 1: And so there are so many takeaways here and so
Speaker 1: many things I think that we can learn from this situation.
Speaker 1: One is that I believe that Adrivia Richards situation really
Speaker 1: ushered in this new understanding of situations that are complicated
Speaker 1: and involve being real people being treated like tit for tat,
Speaker 1: you know, these culture wars and identity wars, point scoring
Speaker 1: where our guy got fired, so their guy has to
Speaker 1: get fired, or this happened, so that happened. You know,
Speaker 1: they made a black aerial in The Little Mermaid, so
Speaker 1: now they need to make a Malcolm X movie where
Speaker 1: Malcolm X is white. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, bro,
Speaker 1: try that one. Go ahead. Yeah. It's a completely reductive
Speaker 1: and unhelpful thing that I think that dongle Gate really
Speaker 1: ushered in. You know, the big rallying cry in dongle
Speaker 1: Gate was that because the play Haven developer was fired,
Speaker 1: that Adrian needed to be fired just like he was.
Speaker 1: You know, as that poster put it, she should have
Speaker 1: to have her professional career destroyed just like her victim
Speaker 1: in order for justice to be rendered and for balance
Speaker 1: to be restored to the universe. But in the real
Speaker 1: world of complexity and nuance and adults. It's really just
Speaker 1: not help to have these situations be viewed through this
Speaker 1: incredibly simple, black and white binary lens. And when you do,
Speaker 1: you are creating the conditions that are prime for bad
Speaker 1: actors to exploit. And that brings me to my next takeaway,
Speaker 1: which is bad actors. Those fuckers ruin everything. And I
Speaker 1: feel like the situation is a great example because even
Speaker 1: though dongle gate was obviously very gendered, I don't want
Speaker 1: to give the impression that it was that all of
Speaker 1: the men who did not agree with Adria taking a
Speaker 1: picture of these guys. It's not like all of them
Speaker 1: had joined in on this harassment campaign against Adria. And
Speaker 1: there were certainly women in tech who did not agree
Speaker 1: with Adria's actions. One of them Amanda Blum, who was
Speaker 1: a developer who worked with Adria I r L when
Speaker 1: she invited Adria to speak at a conference that she organized.
Speaker 1: Um she writes in her blog post about how she
Speaker 1: did not have a great interaction with Adria. She was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't really like her, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: this kind of harassment campaign against her is good. You know,
Speaker 1: her her piece, which will link to in the show notes,
Speaker 1: is this very measured piece about what went down, and
Speaker 1: basically pointed out that she felt like everyone lost here.
Speaker 1: It was just a loss for everyone, And so I
Speaker 1: think that reasonable people could agree or disagree with what
Speaker 1: Adria did, and they did agree or disagree. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of substantive conversation online about what it means
Speaker 1: to be a woman in tech, how men can be
Speaker 1: allies to women in tech? Are men going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, afraid of making whatever joke or speaking up
Speaker 1: that they're working with women? How can women and men
Speaker 1: and everybody all work together in these spaces. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of really meaty, meaningful conversation that I think
Speaker 1: was sparked from dongle Gate. But what people remember was
Speaker 1: not the meaningful conversation or people like Amanda writing measured
Speaker 1: takes about the situation. They remember the hateful mob, right,
Speaker 1: They don't remember any of that meaningful conversation. So I
Speaker 1: believe that the kind of behavior like these coordinated attacks
Speaker 1: that we saw from Fortune actually drown out debate and discourse.
Speaker 1: They don't make us more thoughtful, They don't push us
Speaker 1: forward on all of the issues that we need to
Speaker 1: make progress on They keep us all polarized and enraged
Speaker 1: and frankly stuck having these silly circular debates about well
Speaker 1: he got fired, so she should get fired. That don't
Speaker 1: help our serve anybody. You know, an online mob like
Speaker 1: Fortune getting involved in this situation didn't make it more clear.
Speaker 1: It just inflamed it and polarized it. And these situations
Speaker 1: already exist at tension points between things like race and
Speaker 1: gender and conversations around inclusion in tech that we know
Speaker 1: are kind of heated. You know, it's predated that Google
Speaker 1: employee who kind of became an right murder after he
Speaker 1: wrote that memo blasting diversity in tech. You know, so like,
Speaker 1: these are conversations that are hot, that are that are
Speaker 1: hense and you know, as someone who works in combating
Speaker 1: miss and disinformation, this is a textbook tactic of bad
Speaker 1: actors to purposely inflame conversations that are rooted in these
Speaker 1: things that are legitimate tension and pressure points, and to
Speaker 1: hijack those conversations and to weaponize them so that pretty
Speaker 1: much it ensures we can never get anywhere on them.
Speaker 1: And I think the sad part about all of this
Speaker 1: is that it sounds like from all public accounts that
Speaker 1: Adrian and the Fire Developer seems like people who were
Speaker 1: being used as proxies in a larger kind of identity
Speaker 1: culture war fight. In that hacker news back and forth
Speaker 1: that they had, they seemed like two people who were
Speaker 1: genuinely interested in coming to some kind of a conclusion
Speaker 1: with one another. But that is simply not possible when
Speaker 1: bad actors with an ax to grind hijack conversations and
Speaker 1: are really invested in making those conversations as polarized as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say the comments section definitely wasn't looking
Speaker 1: to find a solution here. They were just looking to
Speaker 1: cause more chaos and uh, make things worse for everybody.
Speaker 1: In the Fire Developers post, there are people who are like,
Speaker 1: when he apologizes for his comments, don't apologize? How is
Speaker 1: that helpful if somebody has taken a look inward at
Speaker 1: their own behavior and feels the need to apologize. And
Speaker 1: this goes for pretty much all conversations. If a celebrity
Speaker 1: is saying something on the Internet, there's always and they
Speaker 1: apologize for something, It's always going to be that one
Speaker 1: stand in the comments who's like Queen don't apologize like
Speaker 1: we love you, you you know what I mean, I certainly do.
Speaker 1: Another takeaway from this is that companies and institutions just
Speaker 1: didn't know how to deal with mobs back then, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't think they've gotten much better today. You know,
Speaker 1: as fucked up as four Chune ship heads were here,
Speaker 1: my real beef is actually with play Haven and sent Grid.
Speaker 1: This was happening back in teen and maybe none of us,
Speaker 1: and by extension, the people who run companies didn't know
Speaker 1: how to handle it when a mob swarmed around one
Speaker 1: of their employees. You know, play Haven was ultimately the
Speaker 1: decider when deciding to fire that developer that Adria photographed.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to do that, and they certainly did
Speaker 1: not have to let Adria take the fall for what
Speaker 1: was entirely their decision and no one else's. And to
Speaker 1: that point, they didn't even if this was somebody that
Speaker 1: that deserved to be fired for reasons we don't know about,
Speaker 1: they didn't need to make it public and therefore point
Speaker 1: that mob towards Adria and then just sit back and
Speaker 1: say nothing as this mob pour her apart and she
Speaker 1: had to flee her home and locked down her entire
Speaker 1: online presence that she had been building forever, you know,
Speaker 1: totally completely Yeah, and looking at sin Grid, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that sin Grid, as a big tech company, loved having
Speaker 1: a visible black woman in tech when Adrian was making
Speaker 1: their company look very inclusive and forward looking. But when
Speaker 1: that same employee was facing racialized harassment, they did not
Speaker 1: support her. And this is sort of a side note,
Speaker 1: pet peeve of mine. People are so fond of saying
Speaker 1: things like, oh, support black women, champion black women, you know,
Speaker 1: support their leadership, without acknowledging that part of supporting the
Speaker 1: leadership of black women is also being honest about the
Speaker 1: climate that a lot of black women will be coming into.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're a visible black woman coming into
Speaker 1: a pretty white, pretty male field, you might have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a tougher time. And ignoring it and
Speaker 1: pretending that is not the case is not actually supporting
Speaker 1: black women. And so I always say, don't just support
Speaker 1: black women, also work to create the conditions where black
Speaker 1: women can actually have an equal playing field and and
Speaker 1: thrive in the work that you want to support them in.
Speaker 1: Um sen Grid also did not have to cave to
Speaker 1: these coordinated four chan mob attacks that were threatening their
Speaker 1: business via harassment and denial of service attacks, you know,
Speaker 1: fin Grid. If I had been running sin Grid, I
Speaker 1: would have said, you know, hey, people who are angry,
Speaker 1: we hear you, but our personnel decisions are our private
Speaker 1: business and we will handle this privately, even if they
Speaker 1: felt like Adria deserved to be reprimanded. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty rich that in their statement public statement on Facebook
Speaker 1: about her firing, that they say that, oh, we're against
Speaker 1: public shaming, and Adria publicly shamed these men and then
Speaker 1: said nothing as Adria was harassed publicly with rape and
Speaker 1: death threats and racial slurs, and then fire her in public,
Speaker 1: completely inflaming the very public shaming that she was going through.
Speaker 1: It's just cowardly. And these are the exact same kind
Speaker 1: of tactics that would go on to fuel gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: you know, coordinating on message boards like Fortune to avenge
Speaker 1: some perceived grievance around women and feminists and marginalized people
Speaker 1: claiming power in a tech space. You know, in the
Speaker 1: case of gamer Gate video games, I would argue that
Speaker 1: if we had done some real collective analysis after dongle Gate,
Speaker 1: we might not then have allowed bad actors have basically
Speaker 1: do the exact same thing a year later with gaybor Gate.
Speaker 1: I think things would have gone very differently had we
Speaker 1: had some kind of public accounting for what actually happened,
Speaker 1: who were the major players, and what decisions allowed those
Speaker 1: tactics to be weaponized in that way. And I feel
Speaker 1: like today, you know, the targets may have changed, but
Speaker 1: the tactics are pretty much the same. You know, we
Speaker 1: still see the same kind of thing play out. A
Speaker 1: small handful of bad actors have pretty much used this
Speaker 1: playbook to get their way, and I think they're going
Speaker 1: to continue doing it until we do something. For example,
Speaker 1: by now, I think that most folks listening know that
Speaker 1: just this last week, there was a violent attack on
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, who was attacked with a
Speaker 1: hammer to the head while he was sleeping by an
Speaker 1: assailant who claimed that he wanted to break Nancy Pelosi's
Speaker 1: knees to send a message of fear to other Democrats,
Speaker 1: and per of the writings of the accused attacker online,
Speaker 1: it was gamer Gate that, you know, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, radicalized him, and that he described gamer
Speaker 1: Gate as the turning point in his own trajectory politically. Now.
Speaker 1: I have a ton to say about this. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a whole other episode later this week all about this,
Speaker 1: but I'll just say right now that gamer Gate provided
Speaker 1: this connection between the cultural and the political. You know,
Speaker 1: you're angry about women taking up space and technology and gaming,
Speaker 1: so you use these tactics to harass and attack them
Speaker 1: and take away their power. And it really created a
Speaker 1: blueprint for how those same tactics could be weaponized politically
Speaker 1: as well, which I think is exactly what we're seeing
Speaker 1: right now. And maybe if when all of this was
Speaker 1: happening with Adria Richards, if the takeaway hadn't been to
Speaker 1: just blame her for her own harassment and to think
Speaker 1: a little bit more clearly about how these same tactics
Speaker 1: might be perfected and abused and weaponized on larger and
Speaker 1: larger scales, targeting more and more people, maybe these gamer
Speaker 1: Gate tact would not be happening as part and parcel
Speaker 1: of our current political and social landscape now. You know,
Speaker 1: things like people coordinating on Facebook pages to flood schools
Speaker 1: with calls about teachers who they suspect of being lgbt Q,
Speaker 1: or you know, they suspect of teaching something that they
Speaker 1: don't like in schools, which happened to a Georgia school teacher,
Speaker 1: Cecilia Lewis, who will talk about in a later episode
Speaker 1: of this podcast. You know, that's definitely a tactic that
Speaker 1: I see that was really refined in dongle Gate and
Speaker 1: gamer Gate, and rather than taking some kind of action
Speaker 1: to have that not be a tactic that is so
Speaker 1: easily weaponized against people who are marginalized, now it's just
Speaker 1: a tactic that we all have to live with, whether
Speaker 1: you're marginalized or not. Now it's a Now, it's just
Speaker 1: part of our political and social landscape that unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: worry is not going to go away. In fact, is
Speaker 1: going to become worse. It also happened recently to a
Speaker 1: woman named Nina janko Witz, who was the former head
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration's Disinformation When It's board, who eventually
Speaker 1: had to resign and go into hiding after a right
Speaker 1: wing smear campaign against her. You know, I think it
Speaker 1: doesn't take that many people to really disrupt and shut
Speaker 1: down institutions if those institutions do not know how to
Speaker 1: handle it when one of their employees is being attacked
Speaker 1: in this coordinated way like these women have been. And
Speaker 1: it also is one of the reasons why, and I
Speaker 1: know this is perhaps a bit of an unpopular opinion
Speaker 1: why I think that it's not great when the internet
Speaker 1: rallies together to like call someone's boss to get them fired,
Speaker 1: even if I ostensibly agree with like, that person needs
Speaker 1: to be fired, right, I definitely have seen situations on
Speaker 1: the Internet where I'm like, oh, well, that person should
Speaker 1: not hold the office that they hold. But I just
Speaker 1: don't think that the tactic of coordinating people to call
Speaker 1: someone's an employer or to disrupt their work for their
Speaker 1: life is a good one because companies are cowardly and
Speaker 1: we know that they will cave to mobs, and I
Speaker 1: just think it turns into an easily gamified numbers game
Speaker 1: that I know, the worst people on the Internet can
Speaker 1: definitely coordinate to get a blood of angry emails or
Speaker 1: tweets to give the impression that there is a broad
Speaker 1: consensus where really there is none, you know, And I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not going to act like I don't find it
Speaker 1: cathartic when I'm being a video of a racist in
Speaker 1: public lose their jobs. I fucking love that ship. Who doesn't. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say that, I I it's a good time.
Speaker 1: It's a good time. I'm not going to say that
Speaker 1: I'm like above that. But I just know that that
Speaker 1: tactic is so easily weaponized by bad actors coordinating for
Speaker 1: bad and so I just think it's something that as
Speaker 1: good stewards of the Internet, we have to really be
Speaker 1: careful when we traffic and tactics like that, because it
Speaker 1: is a tactic that is well worn by bad actors,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's getting us to a place
Speaker 1: that is better on the Internet. Internet Hate Machine is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, check out our website cool zone media
Speaker 1: dot com, or find us on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.