
Why I don't use my real photo when messaging with customers on my website - bemmu
https://www.kapwing.com/blog/why-i-dont-use-my-real-photo/
======
kragen
A woman here is explaining that she prefers to interact anonymously or
pseudonymously on the internet in order to avoid vicious abuse, amply
demonstrated in screenshots. I find it very alarming that a significant part
of the response here is to suggest that we should therefore eliminate
anonymity and pseudonymity on the internet in order to force people to behave
better.

This suggested measure would force this woman, and others, to face this
vicious abuse all the time, with no escape except not to use the internet.

This seems like a bad idea. Problems like this are precisely why we must
protect the rights to anonymity and pseudonymity, and indeed work to make them
normative. (And that's without even getting into the fact that real-names
policies have been conclusively shown not to make people behave better.)

------
cyberferret
I found this post deeply upsetting and alarming. I guess I am lucky that my
co-founder and I run a B2B SaaS, and not a B2C company - in over two years of
running a chat agent on our website and within our app, we have never had
anything even close to this. Frankly, seeing the interactions on that blog
post was like opening a door into some sort of hell hole.

Maybe I lead some sort of cloistered life online, but I don't think I have
ever seen anything like it. And yes, I am male and my co-founder is female,
and all of our team use our own profile pics within our chat widget. I will
never tolerate even a paying customer treating any of my team with anything
but courtesy and respect.

~~~
ericabiz
I am female, and have run my own B2B SaaS as well as currently managing chat
(as part of marketing) for another B2B SaaS.

I have seen all sorts of comments like the ones mentioned in the article, and
I hate to say it, but many of them came after we got profiled in places like
Hacker News (and other tech websites, too, to be fair.)

One that had a referrer as a thread on Hacker News kept insisting I couldn't
be a real person, and wanting me to do basic math like 2+3 "before he would
talk to me." It was gross.

I put my own face as an avatar on my current client's chat without thinking
twice. Less than 24 hours later, my first interaction on the chat was
harassment. Their product is an enterprise B2B SaaS.

~~~
tree_of_item
> One that had a referrer as a thread on Hacker News kept insisting I couldn't
> be a real person, and wanting me to do basic math like 2+3 "before he would
> talk to me." It was gross.

I'm a bit confused, is this an example of harassment? I'd be pretty sure I was
talking to a bot in one of those chat popups as well.

~~~
ericabiz
Maybe some context would help. Since I knew many of the folks visiting our
website would assume our live chat was a chatbot, the initial message in our
chat said "Hi, I'm Erica! I'm a real person, and one of the founders of [name
of my company.] What questions can I answer for you today?"

I put that in there specifically to circumvent people asking if this was a
bot.

The person who kept asking me to answer simple math questions had the context
of this being the initial interaction. Furthermore, he didn't stop at asking
once. He continued to repeatedly ask me to answer math questions, and when I
asked him to please ask a question about our product or service, he would
refuse and smirk about how I was obviously a bot because I refused to play his
game.

It was this repeated questioning that turned it into harassment, from my
perspective. And this single interaction was part of a pattern of harassment,
both sexual and otherwise, that I've seen manning B2B SaaS chats.

I can also attest that men who've run the _same_ live chats, at the same
companies, with their avatars and real names do not get this sort of
harassment at all. In fact, they have been shocked at the level of harassment
received by simply having a female face and/or name.

~~~
smsm42
> I put that in there specifically to circumvent people asking if this was a
> bot.

Nice idea, but nothing prevents one from writing a bot that starts
conversation with "I'm a real person" so that people would type their
questions to a cheap bot instead of demanding to speak to an expensive human.
Thus not all people trust this. Plus of course not all people read anything
that is written as a chat header, because the assume it is a boilerplate
filler like "we value your feedback and eager to help you" blah blah, no
relation to my actual question so I won't read it.

That of course presents a problem - how do you prove you're human if a bot
could always be doing the same thing? I don't really know :)

And yes, chatbot designers frequently use pictures of attractively looking
women to make the customer more likely to engage with a bot. Which trains the
users in a predictable way, unfortunately.

------
jakobegger
Amazing. The author spends a lot of time to tell us a very convincing story
how sexism affects people in our industry, and the Hacker News thread is full
of people rationalizing it.

\- it's only because people think you're a bot

\- it's because of your target audience

\- it's because chat widgets are annoying

\- you don't really have enough data to make any conclusions

How much will it take to convince the average HN reader that sexism actually
is everywhere?

~~~
verroq
"Rude people are sexist" or "Sexist people are rude" is about the only
conclusion you can draw here (maybe not even that, correlation != causation
etc etc)

It doesn't even come close to showing how "sexism is everywhere". For all we
know the sample could be entirely edgy 12 year olds.

Tell me again how this self-admittedly "non-rigorous scientific study" proves
"sexism is everywhere"?

It could easily be that more attractive profiles result in more interactions
and receive the same proportion of sexist responses. Their data measures
sexist messages not the proportion of sexist messages over all of their
interactions.

~~~
jakobegger
You're probably new to HN, so you might not have seen all the other stories
about sexism posted in the last year or so.

A single story like this doesn't prove anything, but the flood of stories just
like that paint a pretty clear picture.

At some point you can no longer say: "This is an isolated incident".

~~~
hueving
The plural of anecdote is not data. We need real stats about this because
individuals complaining vastly outweighs the silent remaining ones.

There are enough murders every day to cover the front page of hacker news with
a story about each one. It doesn't mean murder is a rampant problem in our
society.

~~~
UncleMeat
We have real stats. Hundreds, if not thousands of studies. But those get this
identical reaction.

~~~
Chris2048
> Hundreds, if not thousands of studies

That you personally know of, despite citing even one?

------
moonka
I always assumed these messages were automated helper bots, I didn't realize
they are people on the other end. Now I feel a little bad about being so curt
when I use them like I'm searching an FAQ.

~~~
jenthoven
Yes, I noticed that people hated when they thought they were talking to a bot.
[This is Julia, the OC.] Sometimes I would respond to a sequence of four or
five messages from a user, and they would immediately stop messaging, as if
they didn’t realize a human was there. I tried that tactic for a while - a
user would message me or Rachel some inappropriate demand and I would respond
with “Absolutley not.” Many users would stop messaging, but some would get
even more fired up and become really aggresssive or threatening.

So I stopped responding to any message that was inappropriate, mean, or
nonsense. It’s a waste of time and energy when you’re trying to grow the
company.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX
thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was
looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to
your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a
status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part
of the underlying page design.

Also, IRL anecdote. My ex-wife used to get heckled and cat-called all the time
when walking alone (even pushing baby pram). Number of times it happened when
she was walking with me? 0. I'm amused and saddened by all the incredulity on
display here. I could have said "well I've never seen it, so it's not
happening..."

EDIT> You have to be a special kind of ignorant or inexperienced to not have
noticed that this is how people talk to women when there are no consequences.

~~~
efreak
> Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX
> thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was
> looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to
> your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have
> a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any
> part of the underlying page design.

I almost entirely agree with this. Chat pop-ups are _incredibly_ annoying.
Many websites have a livechat tab at the bottom, or at the side of the screen
that you can click to initiate a chat, and that's fine, but the chat should
_never_ be initiated automatically (or appear to be). Once the page loads, any
change in the main area of a website should _only_ be initiated by user
interaction, such as clicking the 'chat' tab at the bottom. Otherwise, for the
interruption it generates in my thought process, you might as well just load
another page entirely.

------
jenthoven
A few thoughts from Julia (the OC) 24 hours after this post caught on: 1\.
Thank you all for the kind words and thoughts - The Kapwing chat box has been
full of supportive and kind messages this morning. 2\. I didn’t intend to
solicit pity; annoying users are just one small challenge on the way to
growing an Internet company and are easy to avoid, thanks to the Drift
messaging platform and pseudonyms. But it is one example of a small thing that
steepens the path to success for women founders. 3\. The discussions in these
comments are, for the most part, insightful and interesting. Even though my
users and my experience are not representative of everyone’s, I appreciate the
conversations this post has started around user behavior on the internet.

------
lancebeet
It may also be that people are more likely to assume it's a bot if it's a
female, given that almost all chat bots claim to be female.

~~~
Chriky
Showering abuse on a female bot still demonstrates deep misogyny imo, even if
there is no victim in that case.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
If its a bot, is it really "male" or "female"? The larger point that many
people are trying to make is that if websites and corporations didn't always
try to disguise their bots behind the face of a pretty girl then perhaps
people would consider that their messages were being sent to actual human
beings.

------
waytogo
I can't relate to her post. We use on purpose attractive female profiles for
our support chat avatars (our product is a SaaS) and the cases where a user
behaves like this are 0.5% and for us not a problem at all, we just ignore
them.

FYI, we tested a while different pics, female, male, average looking, good
looking and we just got the best conversion rates with the above mentioned.

~~~
yAnonymous
Just wondering, how do the support people feel about being represented by
better looking avatars?

"Your real face is too ugly, sorry."

~~~
fastball
Same way I felt when I was younger and would serve drinks at events, but then
was moved to just pouring the drinks because "we now hire actual models for
serving".

I'm a guy, by the way.

------
throwaway613834
Honest question: What's the logic behind being so utterly rude from the first
moment to someone you find attractive? Is it supposed to attract them back
somehow?

~~~
guy98238710
Actually, people are colder and more abusive towards those less good-looking.
The case described in the article is not due to beauty. It's because people
think it's a bot or at least a fake photo. That's what irritates them.

~~~
AnsisMalins
But then why would you harass a bot?

~~~
Slansitartop
Because it's an emotionless inanimate thing, so it's a safe place to play
around with saying things you otherwise never could?

------
ponderatul
It's funny how Silicon Valley is like a fish in the water. They don't see the
water, because they are in it. Technology is like putting a V8 engine on the
skateboard of evolution. It accelerates the shit out of everything.

These people that are commenting and being sexist, trolls etc. are hurting.
Most of them don't have the awareness to realize it. Their attention has been
hijacked by the superstimulus of the 21st century. The 24/7 media,
sensationalist headlines, addictive apps ( facebook, twitter, instagram,
snapchat ). Everything there comes to them in a blink of an eye. But life is
not like that. Real life doesn't move at that blistering speed. And it creates
dissonance, that hurts.

Everything is amplified with technology. I've been there. I've been an addict,
but I got my head out of the water as well. Once you see it, you can't go
back.

------
tziki
Since the post is framed as a gender issue, let me offer another view that I
think is evidently good to remember in the conversation: according to studies,
men are more likely to experience online harrasment [1].

[1] [http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/07/11/online-
harassment-2017...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/07/11/online-
harassment-2017/)

~~~
gouggoug
There was a great blog post[0] recently regarding the recent Aziz Ansari story
about sexual harassement. (If you haven't heard of this case, I encourage you
to Google it.)

It made a really great point that I believe -whichever side (if any) you take
in the Ansari story- is very enlightening (at least it was for me), and that
potentially applies to your study.

I can't possibly explain it as well as the author, so please go read the
article, but, in essence, the author explains that women have been conditioned
from the beginning of time to endure pain and as such _don 't report_ it as
much.

The study you linked to, is based on reports of men and women, and indeed,
according to this study, men are more likely to experience online harassement.

But now, is it because men _report_ it more because they are more _sensitive_
than women to online harassement, or are they really more likely to be
harassed online?

When I ask myself, "have I ever been harassed online?", I can definitely say
"absolutely never".

This is of course only my personal experience, but I'm eager to believe the
exact opposite the study you linked to concludes: women are definitely more
likely to experience online harassement, and OP's article is one demonstration
of it.

[0] [http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-
pleasur...](http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure)

~~~
baud147258
The Aziz Ansari story is more a bad date than actual harassement.

~~~
baud147258
But I think this story show the power imbalance between men and women that
enable the real cases of harassement.

------
alex_duf
As a guy, both reading this article and the horrendous comments in this thread
I kind of want to put a female avatar picture on my social media accounts.

Just to see what it's like to be in someone else's shoes...

~~~
kpao
I'm wearing someone else's shoes every day so I can give you a quick feedback
of my experience. I'm trans, blonde, pass relatively well and on the feminine
side. I have seen a drastic shift in messages I get from people online. I
regularly get mansplained obvious things about aviation, tech, coding on
social media. People don't assume I'm the CEO of my company or that I have
anything to do with engineering anymore. Glad we hired someone else to do
support for us...

------
contravariant
It would be nice to have some labels on the bar graph.

I assume that orange represents the rude messages and blue the heckling, but
for all I know it's the other way around. It's even possible that one column
is for normal messages and one for rude/heckling messages, especially since
I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between between rude/trolling and
sexual-harassment/heckling (I'd understand if it were rude/sexual-harassment
vs. trolling/heckling).

I would also be interested in whether there was any effect on the number of
'normal' messages.

~~~
jenthoven
Hey this is Julia, the post’s author. Sorry there’s no legend; I kind of
included it in the title of the graph but orange was “Rude or trolling
messages” and blue was “Sexual harassment or heckling”

~~~
jaaames
Did you consider that this maybe not be representative of a systemic bias
against women across all demographics, rather, the demographic that searches
for video meme makers on the internet is skewed towards horny rude teenage
boys that bask in anonymity?

~~~
te_chris
It's funny, I searched her article for 'systemic bias against women' and
couldn't find the phrase...

------
cimmanom
It's disappointing that so many comments in this discussion are trying to
explain away the problem rather than to come up with a solution for it.

~~~
slantyyz
While there might be some valid solutions that can be conceived for the
problem, I highly doubt the problem will ever go away.

People on the Internet use the veneer of anonymity afforded to them by the
Internet to behave in a manner very different from a face-to-face interaction.

The chat box in the post isn't very different from being approached in a
retail store by a salesperson. And while I'm sure retail salespeople receive
their share of abuse/rude comments from customers for asking "Can I help you",
I think it's a safe bet that abuse/rudeness is still way lower than the same
interaction online.

When I read that article, I just felt sad. I'm probably a little older than
the average HN'er -- the Internet didn't become "a big thing" until my 20s,
and in my lifetime, I've seen how technology has undeniably advanced and
changed the world for the better. But I often wonder whether that same
technology has made _people_ better or worse.

~~~
zimpenfish
> I often wonder whether that same technology has made people better or worse.

I don't think it's either - it's just exposed what people always were but now
there's zero friction to telling hundreds (thousands, etc.) of people your
beliefs whereas before you'd, what, write to a paper and maybe it got
published and 600 people would see it.

------
logicallee
This was extremely interesting.

1.

It would be interesting to know to what extent she would have received the
same messages if she had had the message (this matches the style of the
message they used):

>Hey! Thanks for visiting Kapwing. I'm Julia [or Rachel], founder of Kapwing.
If you run into any issues making your video, feel free to let me know, and
I'll do my best to help!

By identifying herself as a founder this would separate the message from the
chatbots who use female avatars, as mentioned in our comments here in this
thread.

2.

I'd also be interested in an even less breezy version (to make it even less
like a chatbot), such as:

>Hello and thank you for visiting Kapwing. I'm Julia [or Rachel], founder of
Kapwing. If you run into any issues making your video, please do let me know
and I'll investigate the issue.

I don't have a guess as to what the results would be: perhaps exactly the same
regardless of style and introduction. But it would be interesting to know.

3.

For comparison it would also have also been interesting to use a male model
who matches the same description ("I found a stock photo of a blonde woman who
was attractive in an obvious way", so a stock photo of a male model who was
attractive in an obvious way.)

For this one I _do_ have a guess:

\- I expect that in the article/study, 100% of the rude messages came from
heterosexual males.

\- But there are homosexual males so my guess is that an equally "obviously
attractive" man would get 10% as many lewd messages, i.e. from homosexual
males. (if use the old figure of "1 in 10" being gay.)

But as far as it goes the study was extremely interesting and worth reporting.

EDIT: I updated men to males above, actually especially since it's a meme site
I bet most of the puerile messages were from teenagers - they show striking
levels of immaturity.

------
hutzlibu
I don't think you can generalize the results at all, when the product was a
"meme generator" for which the target group is reddit, 4chan, etc.

Because inside those groups are some really depressed, miserable and angry
lonley single male (teens) who are horny, but got mostly rejection (or beeing
ignored) from women in real life ... where they would not even dare to talk to
them. But so they built up great anger because of their frustration. So quite
some of them go for fantasys of the old ways, where women had no rights, could
be used and they would therefore finally get real sex. (rape videos are really
liked in some forums)

So actually it surprised me, that there was only so little hateful trolling.
But I would have suspected more racism, though.

~~~
Slansitartop
> I don't think you can generalize the results at all, when the product was a
> "meme generator" for which the target group is reddit, 4chan, etc.

So we're selecting a socially maladjusted population here, then trying to
generalize to society as a whole?

~~~
ignoramceisblis
That is exactly what many of the commentors in this discussion are attempting
to do, taking cues from the article.

------
JepZ
As disturbing as the story is, I find it quite intriguing. Obviously meme
makers often have some crude humor, but somehow I assume that most of the
visitors who wrote inappropriate comments were male. So I wonder if you could
tell a similar story from some other website with a primary female user base.
I supposed it would be very different.

The other thing is, it seems that the 'sexier' (from a hetero male
perspective) the contact picture was, the more rude comments arrived. An
interesting hypothesis is, if the picture activated some sort of 'sexual brain
area' which lead to the creation of the rude comments. Does anybody know of
any scientific research related to that topic (sexual activation leading to
rude behavior)?

~~~
staticelf
> So I wonder if you could tell a similar story from some other website with a
> primary female user base. I supposed it would be very different.

It is not, I have worked on an app with many female users and they are just as
mean and snarky as anyone.

"Fire the developers", "piece of shit xxx" etc was common.

------
z3t4
I think those chat boxes are rude. Here I'm am browsing the web in my
underpants and some dude sneaks up on me like "hey, I see you are visiting our
site! Wanna chat ?". Instead make it so that the user needs to make active
action, eg clicking on a link to start the chat.

~~~
orthecreedence
Strongly agree. Whenever something annoys me, I find the first person I can
who is remotely associated with that thing and hold nothing back as I verbally
abuse them and sexually harass them.

~~~
prepend
Comically, that’s sort of what I do. They annoy me, so I take out my
frustrations on them. I don’t say the stuff in the article, but my typical
response is to close, or if it seems like an actual human type a quick “fuck
yourself.” Every once in a while, I engage them to explain how their intrusion
is annoying.

------
AnsisMalins
I don't understand. Why would you ask a random website chat on a date? The
chances that you're anywhere near her are nil. Do you intend to fly out to
meet her? What is happening in your head, random visitor?

~~~
draugadrotten
I am male and used to work in a call centre. I apparently have a good voice,
and I was repeatedly asked out by random women calling the service desk. I
even got a virtual stalker who kept inventing issues and calling daily just to
speak with me. Since I am male, I was not threatened but amused, but I can see
how a woman would feel vulnerable in the same situation.

~~~
hycaria
>Since I am male, I was not threatened but amused, but I can see how a woman
would feel vulnerable in the same situation.

Why ?

~~~
totalZero
In the US, the average guy is five inches taller and about 30 pounds heavier
than the average lady. Also, given a particular body weight, men tend to be
stronger than women. Furthermore, 80% of people arrested for violent crime are
men.

Seems pretty clear to me.

~~~
hycaria
This is happening by phone.

~~~
totalZero
You don't think it's possible to scare or intimidate someone over the phone?

~~~
hycaria
I do but I don't think this has anything to do with gender.

------
acemv
I find the sexual harrassment to be appalling and it upsets me that she had to
face those types of challenges when her only goal was to increase engagement
with the user base.

Though I have to wonder how many of the total user base were responsible for
the harrassment. They should be able to track this through logs etc to better
understand the scale of the harrassers.

One must equally be prepared to ask if this is an expected outcome from
selection bias? Her user base appears to be onlya sub section of a subsection
of a slice which is only a slither of the meme following community. I a going
to generalize here but when you cater to a community which runs off dark
humor, sarscasm, and the occasional debauchery - I wouldn't be surprised of
the possibility and abundance of users that are non-pc and disregard most of
the norms established in society.

To be very honest, I feel like her post is the equivalent of a female prison
guard complaining of the lack of empathy and manners in the male prisoner
population... One could also make the comparison of female guards in a female
prison.

Females are not as physically strong as males on average and due to this and
other societial factors, they are exposed to an over adbundance of
harrassment.

It's a problem yes, but it is an obvious expectation of unfettered anonymous
communication on this the internet. Just as the potential for violence, injury
and bodily harm is there for many professions that engaged with large the
populations - cops, guards, public relations, celebrities, journalist, etc.

Unless the internet is regulated, I believe all users should be very aware of
it's faults, and perpensity for unusual and harrassing behavior. To control
that aspect of the internet would be to implement censorship which would cause
way more harm.

[Edited based on feedback.]

~~~
madez
> To be very honest, I feel like her post is the equivalent of an prison guard
> complaining of the lack of empathy and manners in prisoner population...

This is not a valid comparison because when posing as a male she did bit
receive the abuse. That's like a female prison guard being harrased while the
male one isn't.

------
JustSomeNobody
I don't know what's worse[0], the fact that Ms. Enthoven has to go through all
this simply because she's a woman, or the fact that half the comments on this
story are people trying to make excuses[1] for this type of behavior.

Wow!

[0] I do. Obviously what Ms. Enthoven has to go through is worse.

[1] People think it's a bot. People hate chat popups. The photo is fake. Your
math is wrong! Etc...

SMH...

~~~
cyberferret
I concur. I am finding the level of conformance rationalisation in here almost
as shocking as the original blog post. My previous comment on this thread
merely expressing my shock at the article and stating that we would not
condone anything even mildly approaching it on our site got downvoted!

And here I was thinking that HN was one of the last bastions of internet
civility and manners... SMH indeed...

------
weeksie
I have a friend that had a _very_ similar experience when changing her
LinkedIn profile photo. She's an expert in her industry and the vast
difference in the lack of patronizing comments and unsolicited weird messages
was pretty striking.

------
DrScump
Is a grand total of 6 trolling messages in a _week_ statistically significant
in the first place?

The number I'm missing is how many _legitimate prospect interactions_ resulted
from each avatar. It wouldn't surprise me if the rude/harassing messages came
from utter trolls who were not useful user prospects in the first place. If
so, it could be worth keeping Rachel around just as a high-level troll trap to
weed out the time wasters.

------
laci27
Wow.. Never done it myself, nor any of my friends, I never realized that this
was such a huge problem. I read articles in the past but I always though they
were exaggerating. Like I can't believe boys can be so rude online.

Thanks for making time and writing the article and including the comments.

~~~
T2_t2
Don't over extrapolate this one instance to a rule. I think what was
interesting was the testing. An audience that is mostly, say, pensioners, will
likely have a very different result than a site that has as its first claim:

"Meme Maker The most popular video meme maker on the Internet. Also works for
images!"

I really found the testing and the changes enlightening, and that is what
strikes me as really interesting here.

~~~
laci27
I agree that pensioners don't do this:), I meant people 15-40. I did run a
chat on our site, and as one commenter noted, I also took a stock girl photo
as profile pic. The thing that socked me in this article is actually my own
ignorance. I got ,probably, just as many nasty comments, but I blanked them
out completely. When someone was being a jerk, i would just close the chat,
ban the user, and that's it. It didn't even register as a particular problem,
or sexism, for that matter...

------
jopsen
I wouldn't be surprised if choice of avaatar also affects the likelihood that
people will contact you..

This would be an interesting thing for someone to study. Did anyone look for
published studies?

Regardless, I'm sure simple things like wording of the text and picture
affects how people precieve the product, and behave when replying. Obviously,
such effects can also be exploited for the better - one should hope :)

------
vortico
It's without a doubt that there is extreme misogyny on the internet and in the
real world, but I would be interested in the demographics of the bad responses
you got: country, age, gender, etc. This is the natural next step to
understand how to solve this problem.

~~~
guy98238710
It's not without a doubt. See other comments. It might be that people think
the pretty woman photo is fake or that it's all a scripted bot. The sexism
might actually go the other way round - some people assuming these web devs
are ugly antisocial men hiding behind fake photo of a pretty woman.

------
nathan_f77
I like the "Team Kapwing" mascot, I think that's a good approach. I also have
a chat widget on FormAPI [1], and I don't like pretending to be someone else.
I looked through some stock photos [2], but it just feels wrong to me. I also
don't like the "automatic popup" setting, so I turned that off. Those really
annoy me, so I struggle to see how it could lead to more customers. But maybe
I'm wrong about that.

[1] [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

[2]
[https://www.pexels.com/search/person/](https://www.pexels.com/search/person/)

------
jaclaz
I would tentatively shift the focus on age groups.

I believe (maybe wrongly, raise your hand if you never did this) that _any_
(male) kid in - say the 10-14 age range has made some "harassment", possibly
of sexual nature, toward females (not necessarily of the same age group).

Once they were "jokes" or "pranks" on the phone (of very dubious humour but
that amused the kids a lot).

I am not particularly surprised that on the internet, a new media where the
kids have the same basic "protections" (anonimity and no need to show their
appearances) the "tradition" continues.

------
JabavuAdams
This matches what I've heard from a female friend who was doing support in a
mobile game forum. Pretty stark and hard to explain away.

I did LOL at "lick my balls nigga". It's so dumb it's kind of cute.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Reminded me of Tokyo Breakfast. :D

------
bhouston
Just today our chat agent was told "Annoying popup, annoying face, annoying
smile, annoying papillon... Please shut up!" And it was a white guy.

A lot of people are rude to the chat people unfortunately.

~~~
sleepychu
OC measured the responses to different chat personas though and it seems
pretty clear that gender plays a role in the volume of vitirol received,
what's your point here?

------
knorker
I read just the headline and just thought "because you're a woman?".

Clicked through. Yes, this was a woman.

Sad, but predictable.

------
alkonaut
Kids who grew up in an environment where anonymous interaction is the norm
(such as kids who have anonymous social chats at school, or do in-game chats
etc) have grown so accustomed to it that I don't think they even see it as
sexist, racist, bullying etc. Most would probably never say any of this to
someones' face, not out of fear of consequences but simply because they know
better. Yet in anonymous contact they don't think twice about it. It also
doesn't help that these interactions are ephemeral. Tomorrow you play against
someone else, or chat with a different person. What you said yesterday doesn't
matter, you may not even be the same persona. So as far as human relatoins go,
they know that the chat interaction isn't a human relation, it's a short
anonymous interaction.

So I think the important thing for us parents to convey is that being an
asshat isn't ok just because you are anonymous. It might help to explain that
everthing typed _anywhere_ online is usually recorded _forever_ , and that
true anonymity doesn't exist either. That, and of course that real people
deserved being treated like real people, even when anonymous.

~~~
staticelf
When I play online games, in this example PUBG, I think a part of the fun is
to be rude and aggressive before the match starts. You're about to virtually
shoot them in the head so saying something rude to random online gamers
doesn't feel at all bad. Other people often respond back, just as rudely and I
think it's hilarious.

It can't be just me who thinks and acts like this? Context matters a lot in my
opinion.

Although, I am never rude to someone IRL or even on a more serious note
outside of online gaming. It's nice to vent and I don't think other players in
PUBG care at all.

~~~
adbachman
If part of the fun for you is acting like a jerk to other people online, then
it means you enjoy acting like a jerk to other people.

Context is interesting, but it just means that overall, you’re only sometimes
acting like a jerk.

You might just be a jerk.

~~~
bittercynic
In some contexts competitive back-and-forth insulting is a baked in part of
the culture, and is mutually enjoyable. You're only a jerk if you can see that
the other person is no longer enjoying it and you continue anyway.

~~~
dpark
You cannot see the person you’re insulting in an online context so you cannot
see if they are “no longer enjoying it”. Engaging in such behavior means
you’re a jerk.

Trash talk is also not the same as engaging in trolling. Telling someone
you’re going to kick their ass is perhaps reasonable trash talk in some cases.
Calling someone racist or sexist epithets is not.

~~~
bittercynic
Even in text, it can be pretty clear when you've crossed the line and it's
time to stop.

Please don't take my comments to mean that insulting/mean behavior is OK,
though. IME many commenters across the web are far to quick to hurl insults in
situations where they have no idea how they'll be received.

------
javadocmd
I think anyone remotely familiar with the internet won't be surprised by these
outcomes. Of course the occasional reality check is always good.

I wonder to what extent plucky startups expect abuse when they put pop-up chat
dialogs in their products. I imagine it's inescapable that some percentage of
your user base is going to see it as an invitation to respond poorly.
Something door-to-door salespeople and telemarketers learned long ago. I
suppose abuse filtering is still an unsolved problem waiting to make someone
rich.

~~~
laci27
I'm using the net (As a guy) for 20 years now, and I was surprised. This is
taking place at an alarming scale. Some parents really missed the mark in
teaching their kids basic human manners, and I'm not even talking about the
golden rule...

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
I am really curious. You say you have used the net for 20 years now, so how
can you be surprised about this? Have you not exposed yourself to other
anonymous forums? They're all filled with vitriol and disrespect.

~~~
tim333
As another surprised guy I'm aware people post bad things on the internet but
I wasn't aware of the degree of difference between having a male and female
picture as I haven't tried that.

~~~
Jaruzel
Surprised here also (I'm a guy in my 40s; 25 years online) - I know there are
people online with no manners, and I go out of my way not to interact with
them, but the sheer level of abuse shown here (and sadly elsewhere too)
constantly amazes and upsets me.

The obvious thing to do is to remove anonymity from the Internet. However then
what do we do about peoples rights[1] to free speech?

\---

[1] Not every country gives this right to it's populous.

~~~
gambiting
Facebook is a fantastic example that lack of anonymity does not solve
anything. It takes 5 seconds to find groups where people openly say that all
women are bad, immigrants should be shot, black people are responsible for all
the crime etc etc......even though all of their friends and family can see
those posts. It solves nothing.

~~~
laci27
China is solving this problem. Every citizen will have it's own score (by 2019
or something) and you get points taken away if any of your online friends or
family say bad things about the communist party. It's a solution... but i'm
not sure if it's the right one:)

here's the article: [http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-
cre...](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-
privacy-invasion)

~~~
Slansitartop
> China is solving this problem

China is run by a _authoritarian oligarchy_ that wants to suppress any
challenge to it's power. The planned "social credit" system is part of that
suppression.

FYI, this oligarchy has a list of "perils" that include:

> “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal
> values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and
> civic participation [1]

It's _not_ trying to solve your problem with people's online lack of manners,
and any imputation to the contrary is part of a smokescreen.

> It's a solution... but i'm not sure if it's the right one

It's the wrong solution, full stop.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-
lead...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-leadership-
takes-hard-line-in-secret-memo.html)

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The fact that China as a whole is an authoritarian oligarchy does not mean
that they can't do things better than the US.

~~~
Slansitartop
> The fact that China as a whole is an authoritarian oligarchy does not mean
> that they can't do things better than the US.

You're missing the point. The US should _not_ emulate China's authoritarian
systems of control, regardless of how well China can do them or how they might
seem applicable to some aspect of American life. They are the tools of
authoritarianism, and to bring them here is to allow authoritarianism to creep
in.

------
prepend
This has got to be exhausting for someone going through this and appreciate
the ideas for others who can reduce trolling and harassment.

I sometimes wonder about ways to measure something subjective like
attractiveness is an objective enough way that it could be used on dating
sites (eg, only dating 6+).

In the olden days you could put a photo up on hotornot and get a rating after
a few days. But it’s down because of abuse and general jerkiness.

If you try to have a nice version, people will bias and signal higher scores.

But maybe you could measure troll behavior on bots like this to determine some
level of physical, superficial attractiveness. Then you could use those scores
for a variety of purposes.

------
codedokode
I wonder what is the percent of users who really need help and use the popup
for it? If it is a minority than maybe it is better to make the popup closed
by default so the majority of the users doesn't get distracted?

------
jacquesm
I really don't blame her. Years of interaction with end-users on
ww.com/camarades.com has taught me that if you do use your real ID and
photograph you will most likely end up regretting it. Threats of rape and
other niceties will be your lot if you use your real data. Also when you use
fake data but at least you will have reduced the possibility for real harm
considerably.

The same goes for your users, not just for the operators, especially in any
context where the site operator allows or encourages end-user interaction.

------
rdl
This was an excellent use of data to convince people of something they
probably didn't believe before. (I knew harassment was a thing, but not how
cleanly it would be split along gender; I'm used to everyone being a target
all the time.)

Although I think "Apparently, people don’t hit on cats, so I was mostly free
from harassment for a while" is not actually true on large enough sample
sizes, terrifyingly. I follow cat feeds on instagram and see some terrifying
comments.

------
logfromblammo
I don't even reveal my real _species_ on the Internet.

Apparently, the anecdata from the article backs this decision up, with
compound interest.

If you can't be the perfect parody toy (for a girl or a boy), like me, be a
moderately attractive white dude. And actually, we should probably all be
pretending to be the same clip-art business guy that is pointing at the
computer screen in all the stock photos. We're all him now.

------
adventured
After reading through the entire post, what I found lacking is a break down of
what percentage of actual visitors & unique message senders were abusive.

It appears to be extraorinarily low. One in a thousand visitors or so. There's
no question she was being abused because she was a woman. From what I can tell
by their stats, that abuse appears to be coming from literally a handful of
bad actors over a month's time, with many of the messages deriving from single
persons.

So the question is: how do you deal with one bad person out of a thousand? I
can't imagine there's any scenario, any technical implementation, that can
eliminate abuse down much further than that no matter what you do. If you
assume that even 1 in 100 men are going to be assholes, abusive, whatever,
it's nearly impossible to stop them from behaving badly. You can take action
after the fact, including in both anonymous and registered account situations.
I also see no cultural scenario where you can pre-emptively stop that guy from
being an asshole until he identifies himself through behavior.

One consideration would be pre-screening the chat for abusive language,
abusive actors. That might catch a couple of the particularly bad examples.
When a post is sent, you have to check it before it reaches the support agent.
That's not difficult to do, except in the most heavily dodged scenarios of
character replacement (s3x etc., some of which can still be pretty easily
caught). Monsters will be monsters, there are at least a few options for
dealing with them.

~~~
valar_m
I suspect that you're deliberately missing the point, but I'll tell it to you
anyway.

It's not about the percentage of visitors that were abusive. It's the number
of people who were abusive when they thought they were talking to a female vs.
a male.

~~~
bloak
We don't know what they thought, obviously. We can only hypothesise about
that.

Psychology would be so much easier if we could directly observe other people's
thoughts...

------
JungleGymSam
This is ridiculous (not the article; the treatment she received)!

I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned here the thought of passing every
message through a sentiment analysis system. This seems like a perfect
application for that.

    
    
        Site Visitor
        * Message blocked [inappropriate language] *

------
chappi42
TBH if such an annoying chat robot pops up, my answer could also be a very
unfriendly 'go away'.

Regarding photo difference this has likely to do with part of the audience
which use such a mem maker kapwing site: idiots. An ip lookup who they are
and/or coming from would have been interesting.

~~~
jenthoven
We didn't include "Go away" or "get out of my way" or even "shut up" in the
count of rude messages. I only counted messages where a user swore, called me
a name, or said something clearly aggressive or mean.

~~~
guy98238710
When I used Windows 10 for the first time and Microsoft's chatbot popped up,
the first thing I asked it to do is "f*ck off". This might be the gender bias
you are seeing. People assume it's a safe-to-swear chatbot when the photo is a
pretty woman.

------
Eufjriendj
I used to chat on IRC with a very feminine nick (I'm a man), the difference is
_night and day_. People would PM me out of nowhere, pay me _all kinds_ of
undue attention. If you don't believe the author, try it yourself, it's easy
to reproduce their results.

------
n0tme
I think that removing this chat box from the website completely will greatly
improve it and solve this problem. Just have a page with a feedback form
somewhere, so people who realy want to leave a feedback or a question could
contact you. Stop annoying your users and random visitors!

------
laci27
I wonder if this is a mainly US problem or an international one? While I could
imagine some of the people I know would do this 'for harmless fun', it's only
1-2 idiots (out of all the people I talked to in my life), but those are jerks
in real life too...

~~~
laumars
The article did state comments came from all parts of the globe (presumably
they're doing some kind of GeoIP look up)?

I'd love to say it's just 1 or 2 idiots but stories like these are so common
that Ive come to the conclusion that there is a very real gender bias at play.
Which makes me both sad from the perspective of equality and disappointed as a
representative of the male species. :(

~~~
laci27
All parts of the globe, but I can't imagine comments like this coming from The
Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland... you know 'from
countries such as Norway' (presidential quote here)

~~~
raquo
One of my more depressing findings in life is that no matter how you slice and
dice the population, you'll find an abundance of assholes in every slice.

------
RikNieu
This is ridiculous behaviour.

And I'm curious as to who these visitors are broken down into sub-groups.

It would have been interesting to see if the harassment could be correlated to
certain countries and regions, age groups, and whether the time of day would
make a difference.

------
intrasight
Why wouldn't you leave it as Rachel Grey, and then fire those abusive
customers?

------
b0rsuk
For telephone calls you could use a voice distorter application. The trick
would be finding one that sounds quite natural but makes gender hard to
identify. Or maybe it's just enough to sound like an _old_ lady?

------
madez
Given how even small differences in social treatment can make one feel, this
must have a dramatic effect. And looking at this evidence suggests it's very
systematic, not random and isolated. This is outrageous!

------
newman8r
I wonder if this article will cause additional heckling in the future - can
the OP comment as to whether there's been an increase in trolling today from
this?

~~~
romanovcode
100% it will.

------
2474
Ironically enough, as I type this comment on the internet, it's my general
feeling that the internet has made the world a far worse place.

------
pm24601
She is trying to get a service going and doesn't need to deal with shit.

However, later on maybe use "Rachel" as a way to start banning "customers".

How about selected comments are attached to their videos as metatext :-) ?

There needs to be less internet witch hunts and more corrective action.

On the internet, response goes from 0 to 100 with no steps in between.

Its either ignored in the hope anti-social behavior gets corrected or it turns
into a full on witch hunt of internet shaming.

I really wish Google would age out search results on people.

------
stesch
If it looks like an ad people will treat it like an ad. In this case annoying
ads with chat bots.

------
taurath
What an interesting experiment! I wonder how users would react if she did an
uber attractive guy

------
tomcam
Quite depressing. I wonder what would happen if they eliminated all pictures.

------
dazc
These chat messenger pop-ups can be quite annoying, the example on the site
mentioned is typically 'in your face'.

What's particularly frustrating with this one is that there is already a
prominent speech bubble icon in the corner of the screen that suggests they
have a chat feature - if I want it. It doesn't need to crack open after a
second and slap me.

I am not defending the obvious misogyny here but I think an experiment that
starts out by peeing off its subjects can not be fully objective?

~~~
jenthoven
Hey - I totally agree it can be annoying, especially since Drift asks users to
enter their email address and people are worried about spam. So it’s a
tradeoff between annoyance at the pop up and the support users get when they
have problems. Our website is a video editing tool, so we decided that it’s
more important to have someone to answer questions than to avoid “peeing off”
users.

And, regardless of how annoying a chat box is, the findings of this article
still stand...[This is Julia btw, the author of this post]

~~~
vgf
> especially since Drift asks users to enter their email address and people
> are worried about spam.

Huh, okay. (Why bring up some other site?)

> Our website is a video editing tool, so we decided ..

I don't quite follow - how does that fact justify using this particular dark
UI pattern?

~~~
w0de0
> A dark UI pattern.

I disagree. Dark UI is manipulation of the user. For example, hiding 'X'
buttons on pop-ups asking for a subscription. (Is refusing to pay for value
provided a dark 'pattern' on the part of users?)

This pop-up does not manipulate the user. It is an honest value proposition.
So is "Fifty Shades of Grey." I didn't buy it.

~~~
vgf
The manipulation in this case is that a naive user assumes there's a real
person on the other end who has noticed them browsing the site and decided to
take some time out of their day to initiate a conversation with them.

It's a classical sales tactics that builds on social pressure, here taken to a
more dishonest level - the chat box was initiated by some code, in spite of
what the text message implies.

------
sergiotapia
I don’t think it’s sexism. It’s just meme spewing permavirgins doing what they
do online all the time. Think of your target audience. “How to make a video
meme?” - of course they’re one of those show u de wae types.

~~~
notriddle
How does that not count as sexism? They're literally treating the support tech
differently based on which photo is shown!

------
newscracker
Since she seems surprised about this, I wonder if the author has had any
social media profiles at all, because these kind of responses come through
every channel — be it website customer support chat or Facebook messenger or
chat sites or matchmaking/dating sites or even plain old IRC. All that you
need are to have a female sounding name and (if the platform supports it,) a
picture that looks like a girl or woman. It used to be that such names would
get private "asl?" (standing for "age, sex, location?") messages before social
media came into existence. Any mention of "f" and a somewhat younger age would
get lots of messages of different kinds — enough to prevent real girls/women
from using female sounding names or nicknames online.

As for anonymous nicknames or handles, I'm all for it. While people who want
to say nasty stuff will do it even with their real names attached to it (there
are many examples from Facebook), the negative effect that real names (or
forcing them) has is two fold — it increases harassment for girls/women (and
some others who are normally discriminated against), and it makes people
censor themselves more than they need to (more so in environments like
Facebook where most people have one identity to interact with different
circles and relationships in their lives). The Internet was always a place to
use self-chosen nicknames and handles, and the kind of community shapes the
interactions more than the mere ability to use a nickname/handle.

As someone who values privacy and is strongly opposed to profiling, censorship
and surveillance, I wouldn't want a world where anonymous/pseudo-anonymous
communication doesn't exist

------
tomlock
How many more instances of this happening do we need before people believe
there's actually a problem in society surrounding sexism? Honestly I expect to
see equivocation more than indictment in the comments section here.

~~~
mirimir
Its more than sexism. It's misogyny. Or sarcastic emulation of misogyny, for
trolling. Which has the same impact on targets.

However, it's hard to know how prevalent these attitudes and behavior are.
Because observations aren't independent. One asshole posts on some chan about
a fun target, and then his friends compete with each other. And it could even
be scripted.

~~~
b6
> misogyny

I keep seeing this word being used, and I don't think it's apt. I don't think
we're seeing "dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women",
much less "hatred of women".

I think it's much closer to the truth to say that people everywhere are
extremely interested in and enamored of women, but that women provide some
kind of easy target for expression of bad feelings or trolling.

As a former troll, I can say nobody really wants to mess with Eric Lu because
there's just no troll juice there. A guy would just laugh at those "mean"
comments. I certainly have laughed at comments like that. Nobody wants to
troll me because the comments just can't get any purchase.

So, please, let's stop with the myth that people hate women. People love
women, guys have been dying for women since forever, and it's certainly not
because they have contempt for them or hate them. There's clearly a
discriminatory thing going on here, but its root is not hatred of women.

~~~
tomlock
>A guy would just laugh at those "mean" comments.

>People love women

What are these statements based on?

Meanwhile, the vast majority of domestic violence victims, and the victims of
murders where the assailant was in a relationship with the murderer, are
women. This idea that "people love women" is not reality based.

Plenty of men have spoken out about how toxic and awful online culture can be.
It's not too hard to find examples.

~~~
b6
> What are these statements based on?

I have personally laughed at comments much worse than those in the post,
directed at me, and so have my friends. All my male friends and my dad and my
friends' dads and so forth love women -- they would die for women.

What I'm trying to say is, people bring out this word "misogyny" to make a
claim about the origin of a problem, when the origin is unclear, or at least
much more complicated than "hatred of women". Let's just agree about the clear
evidence that there is discriminatory behavior and not insist on absolute
certainty as to why it is happening.

~~~
MarinReiter
Wew lad, I can't believe I'm saying this, but you either don't understand
women or don't understand love.

Women dont want you to die for them. That's your own need for chivalrious
purpose, you selfishly romanticizing your own (or your male friends')
sacrifice. I dont know if you've ever had someone sacrificing themselves for
you, but lemme tell you first hand, it's not nice, and it makes you feel like
shit. Women, and everyone for that matter, are adults, so they don't need
someone sacrificing themselves for them. Why would you die for someone, when
that person is capable of complete independance? The "love you to death" love
isn't really love, it's obsession, and it's unhealthy. And it's either "women
are an easy target for trolling" or "people love women". I dont know what kind
of twisted love makes you harass your object of desire online.

I can think of a million different ways to harass Eric. Everyday men are also
harassed online, usually for not being "masculine" enough. So why are people
more likely to harass Julia or Rachel and not Eric?

~~~
b6
I'm not talking about what women want, I'm saying that I know firsthand that
many men I know love the women in their lives very much, much more than life
itself. That's all.

There certainly are men out there who hate women, but it doesn't seem to me to
be very many. Try it, enumerate the men you know and ask yourself, or even ask
them directly, if they love the women in their lives. What fraction of women
haters do you find? I think you'll find it's very low. And that's my point,
that we are not actually facing an epidemic of misogyny ("hatred of women"),
that it is actually something else, or at least much more complicated.

Personally I don't find it hard to come up with another explanation: miserable
people want other people to be miserable too. And to make people miserable,
you do whatever will be effective. Over the internet, mean words work a lot
better against women than against men.

~~~
bloak
Your last paragraph is totally correct, in my opinion.

(It is probably also true that many people who use "racist" insults are not
really being "racist"; they are just insulting in an effective, target-
specific way. If they couldn't come up with a racist insult, but the target
has glasses, they'd probably resort to "four-eyes". I'm talking about the UK
here, by the way.)

~~~
mirimir
If someone is being "just insulting in an effective, target-specific way" that
comes across as racist, then they're being racist, no matter what they may
really feel, or what they may think that they really feel. And it's the same
for sexism or any other *ism.

~~~
bloak
You may choose to use words in a way that deliberately obscures an important
distinction in the real world but please accept that other people may choose
not to.

------
grasshopperpurp
And, no one should have any issue reporting those people to their employers.
If you act like scum, particularly with your employer in your profile, society
should punish you.

~~~
Nadya
People are always so quick to jump to this line of reasoning when popular
opinion agrees with them.

Would you be fine with losing your job for wrongthink if - or rather, when -
social opinion swings the other way? It doesn't matter if you're right or
wrong - you should be punished for disagreeing with society!

Societal retribution for "wrongthink" is not the right answer. It's how you
end up with LGBT losing their jobs where it's "wrong" to be LGBT - because the
actual wrongness/rightness doesn't matter, just that _society doesn 't agree
with them_ and that it's okay for society to punish them for being "wrong".

~~~
enlightenedfool
Excellent point. The idea that someone should lose the job and livelihood
because of a wrong doing is madness. The punishment should cause a behavior
correction and not end of life. Such vengeful society we live in today!

~~~
tammer
Western society's concept of justice is largely focused on punitive
retribution. A transformation to restorative action is needed here.

------
walrus01
even without the "audience" part, still valid: [https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

~~~
tomlock
But Eric and Kapwing Team got significantly less of the anonymous hate than
the two women.

------
jtbayly
Unpopular opinion ahead:

For all we know, the majority of the rude comments are coming from women.

And if you are assuming, without evidence, that these comments all come from
males, then you are either sexist or there really are differences between men
and women that ought to inform things like what jobs we put people in as a
society, for the sake of everybody involved.

~~~
orthecreedence
Donny, please.

------
bpanon
Shocking.

------
hycaria
Why would you want to be someone for customer support anyways

------
oh_sigh
Wow, that sucks.

Side note: What is the harassment of asking 'Do YoU lIkE tO eAt BaNaNaS'? I
know the banana<->penis euphemism, but it doesn't seem like that is the case
here.

------
mozumder
A lot of this has to do with the target audience you're drawing: meme makers.

Meme makers are all pretty much going to be unsocialized and autistic douche
boys & gamers and who seek to make memes for 4chan or Reddit. They're
trolling, so obviously you're going to draw terrible people.

If your site was selling expensive fashion items, you're going to see a
completely different reaction.

Know your audience.

------
tomxor
The author characterises these messages as either aggressive and threatening,
sexist _or_ trolls. Yet all of the comments are anonymous, generic, obscene or
extreme, there is no subtlety or personality to the insults, they are
completely generic and transferable as far as the individual is concerned.
It's hard to see them as anything _other_ than trolls.

If they are all trolls, isn't this analysis really just about which profile
pictures trolls find the easiest to find politically incorrect, offensive or
sexist thing to say about? and isn't that just a reflection of what society
finds the most offensive rather than what a bunch of trolls sincerely think?

[edit]

I'm downvoted because I think they are trolls, really? how lame... Try to come
up with an argument group thinkers, or must we all cry in defence of anything
even vaguely resembling sexism without thinking.

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vitro
Sometimes I think how difficult it must be to be a women, being bombarded by
the looks all the time, feeling like a pray... Partly it is in our nature,
partly in the culture and education. We as men have still a long way to go to
fully respect women.

If you haven't seen, I recommend the movie Whores' Glory
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327628/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1327628/)
to have a peek into the women's life as a sexual worker. If only we could
offer them a better life.. Imagine being a woman trapped there for your
lifetime. Unimaginable..

~~~
andrewmcwatters
> We as men have still a long way to go to fully respect women.

These types of generalizations are akin to saying, "We as Americans have a
long way to go to make better student loan investment decisions." The effects
are so personal that it's worthless to make blanket statements like this; that
is to say–speak for yourself.

~~~
vitro
You're right. Thanks.

