Donglegate

blatantrereg

Playhaven fired a developer after he allegedly made sexual jokes in the audience during a keynote session at PyCon, a conference for Python developers. Now Adria Richards, a developer evangelist for SendGrid, is getting rape and death threats via Twitter.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/20/playhaven-developer-fired-for-making-sexual-jokes-after-sendgrids-developer-evangelist-outs-him-on-twitter/

Making jokes about big dongles when you're in an audience really isn't a big deal.

Taking a photo of the people doing it and criticising them on twitter is silly and annoying, especially if you have lots of followers. But should be dismissed as someone being silly and annoying.

Firing someone for talking about big dongles while in an audience and having their pic taken - that's stupid and really not nice at all.

Sending death threats and hate-mail over a Twitter post is a bit mind boggling. "How dare you be mean to people on the internet! I will kill you, you *!@*!?!!" There's a contradiction there surely.

What have gates to do with it

Chop Chop

Did anyone else read "donedealgate" first time?

Jimoslimos

bluewolf wrote: »

What have gates to do with it

I think it might be a suffix for scandal

like Watergategate.....er

Ted_YNWA

blatantrereg wrote: »

Making jokes about big dongles when you're in an audience really isn't a big deal.

Taking a photo of the people doing it and criticising them on twitter is silly and annoying, especially if you have lots of followers. But should be dismissed as someone being silly and annoying.

Firing someone for talking about big dongles while in an audience and having their pic taken - that's stupid and really not nice at all.

Sending death threats and hate-mail over a Twitter post is a bit mind boggling. "How dare you be mean to people on the internet! I will kill you, you *!@*!?!!" There's a contradiction there surely.

Warning mentioning big dongles in AH is going to unleash the immature

Clandestine

I've read up on this, and she got what she deserved.

Her job was "developer evangelist", which is basically to create a good relationship between developers and her company. She did the complete opposite.

You should check out her twitter, amazed she wasn't dropped earlier.

Johro

bluewolf wrote: »

What have gates to do with it

My favourite is still 'Cowengate'.
It simply has no equal.

Pilotdude5

"Made in China" is written on my Dongle.

Dancor

Chop Chop wrote: »

Did anyone else read "donedealgate" first time?

I read donegalgate.

blatantrereg

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

Warning mentioning big dongles in AH is going to unleash the immature

That's all they were making jokes about. Sorry I noticed I left the link out.

Donglegate is how the whole thing is being referred to in the media. I reckon it is a Watergate reference alright! Not my own invention anyway.

lkionm

So we have your thread on willys and mine on boobs.

It's gonna be a good night.

efb

Johro wrote: »

My favourite is still 'Cowengate'.
It simply has no equal.

its good but its not the breast

blatantrereg

Mayoman911 wrote: »

I've read up on this, and she got what she deserved.

Her job was "developer evangelist", which is basically to create a good relationship between developers and her company. She did the complete opposite.

You should check out her twitter, amazed she wasn't dropped earlier.

Do you mean she deserved to be fired? I'm not aware that she was. One of the subjects of her photo was fired - that's what I was referring to. If that's her role, then yes she does deserve to lose her job.

If you mean she deserved death and rape threats - well no she doesn't deserve that.

Clandestine

blatantrereg wrote: »

Do you mean she deserved to be fired? I'm not aware that she was. One of the subjects of her photo was fired - that's what I was referring to. If that's her role, then yes she does deserve to lose her job.

If you mean she deserved death and rape threats - well no she doesn't deserve that.

She did lose her job, her company announced it on Facebook and their site.

I don't think she deserved death and rape threats, they're a step way too far.

Ted_YNWA

Why does every scandal have to be Summat-gate ?

Be more original FFS !

Augmerson

I wonder if a man went about taking pictures of women like that, posting them to Twitter and writing about their conversation, would it be considered ok.

Micky Dolenz

Am I the only one with a small dongle?

blatantrereg

Augmerson wrote: »

I wonder if a man went about taking pictures of women like that, posting them to Twitter and writing about their conversation, would it be considered ok.

Then you would be sexist.
When she did it to guys, that was them being sexist.


[This post is not sexist, before someone says it is.]

Amalgam

She has been the target of the day on various chans..

What she did was totally out of order and disproportionate. Odd person.

Ted_YNWA

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

Am I the only one with a small dongle?

Have you been involved in the Christmas mods pics ??

Easy to prove

Augmerson

blatantrereg wrote: »

Then you would be sexist.
When she did it to guys, that was them being sexist.


[This post is not sexist, before someone says it is.]

I think if a man did the same to a woman, he would be utterly condemned as some kind of pervert. These guys didn't make comments aimed towards her. They were speaking among themselves. Sure, it's pretty childish what they were talking about, but sexist?

Why didn't she just turn around and tell them to stop? That seems like a direct course of action. Instead of putting them, without their knowledge or consent, onto Twitter for all her followers to bash.

blatantrereg

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/

Blog post with her talking about her actions (apparently before the backlash).

I know I don’t have to be a hero in every situation.
...

I saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop.

I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.
...
There is something about crushing a little kid’s dream that gets me really angry.
...
Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard.

Micky Dolenz

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

Have you been involved in the Christmas mods pics ??

Easy to prove

I was, but it was cold, damn cold.

<_<
>_>

On the plus side the boys will make a killing when they bring their ex employers to court for unfair dismissal.

blatantrereg

Augmerson wrote: »

I think if a man did the same to a woman, he would be utterly condemned as some kind of pervert. These guys didn't make comments aimed towards her. They were speaking among themselves. Sure, it's pretty childish what they were talking about, but sexist?

Why didn't she just turn around and tell them to stop? That seems like a direct course of action. Instead of putting them, without their knowledge or consent, onto Twitter for all her followers to bash.

Yes I think that was malicious. Her own account of it encourages me to think that it was malicious tbh:

Three things came to me: act, speak and confront in the moment.

I decided to do things differently this time and didn’t say anything to them directly. I was a guest in the Python community and as such, I wanted to give PyCon the opportunity to address this.

A few minutes later, one of the PyCon staff member approached to the left. I stood up, went outside to talk with him and explain the situation with a few of the other PyCon staff. They had seen my tweet. After explaining, they wanted to pull the people in question from the main ballroom. I walked back in with the PyCon staff and point them out one by one and they were escorted to the hallway.

As I walked back to my seat, I cannot tell you how proud I was of the PyCon and Python community at the very moment for keeping their word to make the conference a safe place to be. A bit shaken, I took my seat to continue watching the lightning talks. I sent an updated tweet that the situation was being dealt with and later on, PyCon tweeted they had addressed the issue.

Dyr

So her defence is that she was thinking of the children?

token101

blatantrereg wrote: »

Yes I think that was malicious. Her own account of it encourages me to think that it was malicious tbh:

Her account of the situation is disgusting to be honest. She sounds vile, a real extremist looking to be the victim in a victimless scenario. I wouldn't want to work with her or be anywhere around her and I'd be glad she was fired.

But this death threat and rape stuff is absolutely ridiculous. What the **** is wrong with these people?

Scruffles

token101 wrote: »

Her account of the situation is disgusting to be honest. She sounds vile, a real extremist looking to be the victim in a victimless scenario. I wouldn't want to work with her or be anywhere around her and I'd be glad she was fired.

But this death threat and rape stuff is absolutely ridiculous. What the **** is wrong with these people?

she doesnt sound like that at all in own opinion,read the deleted blog post of hers a user posted here to get a bit of an idea on her thinking
- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/

she is a female techie who has spent her entire life in an industry that still suffers from discrimination and sexism to a degree,towards females.
some aspects of the industry still has a long way to go when so many computer geek/techie forums denie the existance of a female computer geek if they do not look/dress girly and act so stereotypicaly girly; ie needing a male to help them with their computer stuff because their girl genes program them to not have a clue,its funny watching attention starved male users sockpuppeting as females though as they use that exact stereotype to manipulate their way up through ranks and cliques.

its easy to understand why she feels sensitive to the humour exactly because of the history of sexism in her profesion,people who grow up facing discrimination and an *ism of some kind tend to be hyper vigilant to what goes on around them,look at users here who whine about the so called 'race card' for example ranting about people who percieve racist abuse without understanding how life affects the way a person percepts the world, people who have faced racism all their lives are hyper vigilant to it and may see racism where it isnt-through no fault of their own,its how any form of long term abuse and discrimination reprograms the brain.

am a female and a life long computer and gaming geek,but see things differently to this other female,in own view techie humour is funny,what they said did not sound nasty towards females-theres obviously going to be male perspective isnt there considering the majority of techies are male!

its wrong that she grassed the blokes up rather than having an adult discusion with them about why she feels offended-maybe they coud have both learned something, its also wrong she grassed them up on twitter; putting their photos on a public site,the guys coud say it was breach of privacy and defamation of character if they wanted to get back at her.
she coud have moved seats and put a quiet complaint in to whoevers running the shindig, but what she did seems more like the equivilent of a toddler throwing themselves on the floor and kicking and screaming.

Duggy747

As someone who works in tech and the media, she should have been more than well aware of what sort of public lynching was going to happen as a result of this.

This is what I hate about social media, it cause adults not to act like adults in situations and instead let them stew up a story any which way they want on the internet resulting in a guy (and possibly the other) losing his job and her receiving death / rape threats.

Something that could've been avoided had she just turned the fùck around and told them to be quiet / ignored them / made a complaint.

Wrapping it all up in a "doing it for the wimmen in technology" packaging doesn't make it good, it makes things worse.

token101

Scruffles wrote: »

she doesnt sound like that at all in own opinion,read the deleted blog post of hers a user posted here to get a bit of an idea on her thinking
- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/

she is a female techie who has spent her entire life in an industry that still suffers from discrimination and sexism to a degree,towards females.
some aspects of the industry still has a long way to go when so many computer geek/techie forums denie the existance of a female computer geek if they do not look/dress girly and act so stereotypicaly girly; ie needing a male to help them with their computer stuff because their girl genes program them to not have a clue,its funny watching attention starved male users sockpuppeting as females though as they use that exact stereotype to manipulate their way up through ranks and cliques.

its easy to understand why she feels sensitive to the humour exactly because of the history of sexism in her profesion,people who grow up facing discrimination and an *ism of some kind tend to be hyper vigilant to what goes on around them,look at users here who whine about the so called 'race card' for example ranting about people who percieve racist abuse without understanding how life affects the way a person percepts the world, people who have faced racism all their lives are hyper vigilant to it and may see racism where it isnt-through no fault of their own,its how any form of long term abuse and discrimination reprograms the brain.

am a female and a life long computer and gaming geek,but see things differently to this other female,in own view techie humour is funny,what they said did not sound nasty towards females-theres obviously going to be male perspective isnt there considering the majority of techies are male!

its wrong that she grassed the blokes up rather than having an adult discusion with them about why she feels offended-maybe they coud have both learned something, its also wrong she grassed them up on twitter; putting their photos on a public site,the guys coud say it was breach of privacy and defamation of character if they wanted to get back at her.
she coud have moved seats and put a quiet complaint in to whoevers running the shindig, but what she did seems more like the equivilent of a toddler throwing themselves on the floor and kicking and screaming.

I read it before it was taken down; it was vile and ego driven nonsense. She didn't think about the consequences of two guys getting fired, she just wanted to live out her little Emmeline Pankhurst fantasy. I don't care if she's sensitive or not; it's no-one's concern but her own. She has no right not to be offended. If other people talking about dongles and forking 'offends' her so much, move or complain privately. What she did was despicable; she tried to incite a mob and it swung right back and deservedly smacked her in the face. Her getting fired and receiving all the vitriol (aside from the obvious OTT stuff) she tried to inflict is poetic justice and hopefully an example to all the other 'victims' who try that sort of feminazi, ego driven ****.

She's also a really, really **** social marketing guru if she didn't see that sort of thing coming back to haunt her. So there goes her career.

Wompa1

She got fired....

http://blog.sendgrid.com/a-difficult-situation/

Wow. This week has been extremely challenging for all. We want to give you our perspective on this complicated situation, so here goes…

On Sunday at PyCon, Adria Richards felt comments made behind her during a conference session were inappropriate and of an offensive, sexual nature. We understand that Adria believed the conduct to be inappropriate and support her right to report the incident to PyCon personnel. To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs.

What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation. Even PyCon has since updated their Code of Conduct due to this situation. Needless to say, a heated public debate ensued. The discourse, productive at times, quickly spiraled into extreme vitriol.

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+ 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.

In the end, the consequences that resulted from how she reported the conduct put our business in danger. Our commitment to our 130 employees, their families, our community members and our more than 130,000 valued customers is our primary concern.

She probably deserved to get fired by making the situation public, given what her job title and function was!

Augmerson

token101 wrote: »

She's also a really, really **** social marketing guru if she didn't see that sort of thing coming back to haunt her. So there goes her career.

I guess she doesn't see it as a career, more a fight for freedom and justice. And children. Somebody please think of the children.

emo72

My god, that poor girl had delusions of grandeur! I read the whole thread, she really put a lot of effort into justifying her actions. Off her trolley.

token101

emo72 wrote: »

My god, that poor girl had delusions of grandeur! I read the whole thread, she really put a lot of effort into justifying her actions. Off her trolley.

Yep she seems like a real piece of work

gobnaitolunacy

Oh yes, appending '-gate' to something scandalous is so inventive.

danniemcq

And to think if you look through her twitter she was making joke about putting socks down a mates pants to give the TSA agents a shock during patdown checks bacj in March

blatantrereg

token101 wrote: »

Yep she seems like a real piece of work

Two points of interest from that link:

• She took a similar approach to sabotage a conference where a female speaker used a lighthearted analogy of porn direction to talk about webcasts. She then used her own slot to lecture the audience about how porn isn't acceptable in IT.
  
• Then she launched a similar campaign about a modified xkcd cartoon that was used on T-shirts for a Wordpress conference. The cartoon was modified by a woman, and featured two women. She declared that one of the characters was male and that the female was being portrayed as ignorant. This one was probably the most bizarre, since it was promoting women in IT if anything.

A real piece of work is right. She does seem to like sabotaging people an awful lot.

Dyr

The really sh**y thing about this is american employers being so willing to fire their staff just as a PR response to bad publicity

pickarooney

This **** is ****ing hilarious!

Amalgam

'Adult actress' material surfacing..

bleg

PCs gone mad!!

Wibbs

Scruffles wrote: »

its wrong that she grassed the blokes up rather than having an adult discusion with them about why she feels offended-maybe they coud have both learned something, its also wrong she grassed them up on twitter; putting their photos on a public site,the guys coud say it was breach of privacy and defamation of character if they wanted to get back at her.
she coud have moved seats and put a quiet complaint in to whoevers running the shindig, but what she did seems more like the equivilent of a toddler throwing themselves on the floor and kicking and screaming.

This in a big way and it seems her ego has previous as far as kicking up a fuss over eff all.

The problem with her and her ilk is while they have a point they make it so clumsily and egotistically and massively over the top that any point they make is rendered moot. Passersby just look at the daftness and miss the underlying point(where it actually exists).

I'll lay bets we can all sit back and watch her soapbox over this, again out of ego to further her "status" among other handwringers of her ilk.

Of course the rapid downright disgusting threats towards her are incredibly out of order. That should go without saying. However twats like those who make such threats shouldn't be used as a "proof" she was right, which no doubt they will be.

She is a nasty, egotistical bully who manufactures controversy and manipulates events for her own gain. This entire debacle is one that she created simply to stroke her own ego and get a few likes from similar small minded individuals such as herself. That two men made childish jokes is not something that should create this level of publicity. Had the jokes been directed at or made at the expense of someone in attendance then perhaps there's a case to be offended but they were not. She took personnel offence at something that was absolutely none of her concern and used it to further enhances her own online standing. Thankfully it blew up in her face and she's feeling the repercussions of it. I hope that others who share her misguided, ego driven need to "defend the rights of all women" will think twice in future.

J_E

I'm glad she got fired to be honest. Someone had to take her down. What she did was completely unprofessional and she obviously had an agenda by taking their pic rather than asking them to stop. Now two people are fired because of her actions and a company has been damaged.

amacca

judging by her actions she seems to be a bully, a coward and a bit of a twit and much much more of an asshat than the poor unsuspecting guys behind her,whom she never even gave any warning to or opportunity to respond......I personally would be out for blood if someone with that kind of following decided to publish my image without permission with accusations that were not completely true and probably taken out of context

I'm glad it seems to have backfired on her....I despise what I see as mostly unjustified self righteous bullying and self promotion on her part

I also hope there is no silver lining for her in terms of chatshow appearances etc or a new better role with another company because of her new found notoriety ......It was a horrible sh1tty thing to do on her part imo...mostly because the guys are clearly identifiable........if she was genuinely offended, tweet about it on twitter without identifying the guys.....go through the proper channels with the conference organisers

Dyr

Amalgam wrote: »

'Adult actress' material surfacing..

Say what now?

Augmerson

She's a meme now. Also Forbes is talking about this. Career over tbh.

token101

Augmerson wrote: »

She's a meme now. Also Forbes is talking about this. Career over tbh.

Jesus that's funny, but it could start getting out of hand pretty fast. Keep down that road and she could end up tipping over the edge like that nurse.

token101

token101 wrote: »

Jesus that's funny, but it could start getting out of hand pretty fast. Keep down that road and she could end up tipping over the edge like that nurse.

Was discussing this today with a friend and they commented that the media should not cover this story as the negative backlash could lead her to taking her own life. To be honest, as horrible as it may sound I really couldn't care less if she did. I know it properly makes me sound like a despicable human being but she brought this on herself. She created something out of nothing and tried to paint herself as some crusading knight in shining armour who single handedly has taken a stand for women everywhere. What she has in fact done is repeatedly found offence where no other has and taken every opportunity to sit on her high horse and lecture others. She appointed herself as some moral guardian abd everything that comes her way on relation to this incident she brought upon herself.

Augmerson

token101 wrote: »

Jesus that's funny, but it could start getting out of hand pretty fast. Keep down that road and she could end up tipping over the edge like that nurse.

I remember that, Jesus....I really hope that doesn't happen. I have to admit, ashamedly, that I was kind of happy all of this backfired on her and she lost her job. I know that's a terrible thing to admit, in this age, and she probably didn't intend for that guy to lose his job, but she had this very self-righteous air about her and it just really annoyed me. I think now would be a good time for her to come out and apologise for her part, I think it would ease off the madness somewhat.

emo72

shes an asshole.