The power of the Web to inflame and spread naked idiocy and cowardice was demonstrated over the weekend after an incident at something called a PyCon Conference last week. A female attendee, Adria Richards,became annoyed when two men sitting behind her began making what she thought were inappropriate jokes behind her back. The jokes involved the terms "forking" and "big dongles."
Never mind that this was already baby talk for the act and the organ involved. She took a picture of the two men, Tweeted it and her opinion of them, to the world. I will summarize the cascade of rampant stupidity and shameless bleating that followed:
The men were kicked out of the conference. For this, they must have been at least briefly grateful, until one of them was fired on account of it from his job at PlayHaven, a company which designs games for mobile devices. This means they make the games that enable you, like all Americans if they so desire, to spend the rest of your days poking at the screen on your cell phone.
To that guy I would say "Now you are free to do something useful with your life, like tending bar or shampooing dogs," but I don't know if that would console him for the loss of income and the opportunity to come up with some game even more annoying and omnipresent than Angry Birds. PlayHaven announced his departure via the following exercise in spinelessness:
"PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation," Andy Yang, the CEO of PlayHaven, wrote on the company's website. "The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go."
Then Adria herself was handed her pink slip. In the words of her boss at SendGrid, which company sent her to PyCon:
"A SendGrid developer evangelist's responsibility is to build and strengthen our developer community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48-plus hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid," he wrote.
What can we learn from these two statements of termination, besides the fact that they are both chock full of gutless euphemisms? First, PyCon, PlayHaven and SendGrid were all named by people unable to find the spacer bar on their keyboards. Second, people who design mobile device games, which often feature rape and murder in an attempt to keep the player poking at his cell phone instead of having a life, are dedicated to gender equality and honorable behavior. (Here I pause to note that these gaming guys, who spend all day sinking electronic war-axes into imaginary maidens, must indeed have a tough time adjusting to an outside world where they are forbidden to tell dongle jokes) Finally, when you are a salesperson nowadays, you are allowed to call yourself an "evangelist."
Fine. I've been an evangelist for longer than Bill Graham, Jr., by that standard.
The story does not end there. Apparently Adria has been subject to threats of murder and rape from across the Internet for getting Team Dongle in trouble. It is true that Adria comes across as extraordinarily prissy and anhedonic in this account. You can have more fun watching the flies trapped inside of your storm windows decay than you can with Adria, but if you think she deserves to be threatened with rape and death just for being a tad oversensitive, you ought to know that people like you often eventually find out what it's like to be on the receiving end of restraining orders. Then you'll get a chance to tell the judge that you were just kidding and that you really don't have the nerve to rape or murder anybody.
And that's likely the truth.
Another revolting facet of the story is that SendGrid was moved to fire Adria because they were threatened by Anonymous, the hacker group that destroys the computer networks of people and companies they don't like. Possibly they've attacked companies I don't like, but I don't like hackers anyway. Electronic vandals are what they are, putting cyberpoop in bags, lighting them on fire, ringing doorbells and running away. That's not brave, either.
But the whole cycle of trembling and ass-covering was begun by Adria herself, who shouldn't have taken a sneaky little pic and Tweeted it. She should have just turned to the Dongle-eers and said "Would you clowns shut up? I'm trying to play Angry Birds."
But she didn't have that kind of fortitude. As didn't anyone else in the bunch. And when you don't have any cajones, you know what you are.
Just a dongle.
Never mind that this was already baby talk for the act and the organ involved. She took a picture of the two men, Tweeted it and her opinion of them, to the world. I will summarize the cascade of rampant stupidity and shameless bleating that followed:
The men were kicked out of the conference. For this, they must have been at least briefly grateful, until one of them was fired on account of it from his job at PlayHaven, a company which designs games for mobile devices. This means they make the games that enable you, like all Americans if they so desire, to spend the rest of your days poking at the screen on your cell phone.
To that guy I would say "Now you are free to do something useful with your life, like tending bar or shampooing dogs," but I don't know if that would console him for the loss of income and the opportunity to come up with some game even more annoying and omnipresent than Angry Birds. PlayHaven announced his departure via the following exercise in spinelessness:
"PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation," Andy Yang, the CEO of PlayHaven, wrote on the company's website. "The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go."
Then Adria herself was handed her pink slip. In the words of her boss at SendGrid, which company sent her to PyCon:
"A SendGrid developer evangelist's responsibility is to build and strengthen our developer community across the globe. In light of the events over the last 48-plus hours, it has become obvious that her actions have strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite. As a result, she can no longer be effective in her role at SendGrid," he wrote.
What can we learn from these two statements of termination, besides the fact that they are both chock full of gutless euphemisms? First, PyCon, PlayHaven and SendGrid were all named by people unable to find the spacer bar on their keyboards. Second, people who design mobile device games, which often feature rape and murder in an attempt to keep the player poking at his cell phone instead of having a life, are dedicated to gender equality and honorable behavior. (Here I pause to note that these gaming guys, who spend all day sinking electronic war-axes into imaginary maidens, must indeed have a tough time adjusting to an outside world where they are forbidden to tell dongle jokes) Finally, when you are a salesperson nowadays, you are allowed to call yourself an "evangelist."
Fine. I've been an evangelist for longer than Bill Graham, Jr., by that standard.
The story does not end there. Apparently Adria has been subject to threats of murder and rape from across the Internet for getting Team Dongle in trouble. It is true that Adria comes across as extraordinarily prissy and anhedonic in this account. You can have more fun watching the flies trapped inside of your storm windows decay than you can with Adria, but if you think she deserves to be threatened with rape and death just for being a tad oversensitive, you ought to know that people like you often eventually find out what it's like to be on the receiving end of restraining orders. Then you'll get a chance to tell the judge that you were just kidding and that you really don't have the nerve to rape or murder anybody.
And that's likely the truth.
Another revolting facet of the story is that SendGrid was moved to fire Adria because they were threatened by Anonymous, the hacker group that destroys the computer networks of people and companies they don't like. Possibly they've attacked companies I don't like, but I don't like hackers anyway. Electronic vandals are what they are, putting cyberpoop in bags, lighting them on fire, ringing doorbells and running away. That's not brave, either.
But the whole cycle of trembling and ass-covering was begun by Adria herself, who shouldn't have taken a sneaky little pic and Tweeted it. She should have just turned to the Dongle-eers and said "Would you clowns shut up? I'm trying to play Angry Birds."
But she didn't have that kind of fortitude. As didn't anyone else in the bunch. And when you don't have any cajones, you know what you are.
Just a dongle.
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