
16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy? - Dawny33
https://namc.in/2018-02-05-plagiarist
======
throwaway2016a
I have a related question. Since when is a 16 year old who makes an app a
prodigy? Even if she did write it all by herself?

I was getting paid to make back office software for local businesses at 13 in
1998 with absolutely no help from anyone and no one called me a prodigy. I'm
sure tons of NH people have similar stories.

I seem to remember a survey at one point that the average person on HN who
actually codes started coding at around 12.

Perhaps we should be teaching young people that coding is an obtainable goal
that if you put your mind to it and work hard you can do? Not something you
need to be a "prodigy" to do.

~~~
EnderMB
It's easy enough to write code when you're young, but to write something that
is being actively used is impressive.

With that being said, I do find the worship of young people in tech a bit
worrying. Over the years I've worked with a handful of talented developers
that have started from a very young age, and over the years they become very
good at a relatively young age. By the time they reach 20, they're senior-
level developers.

That's all well and good, but these youngsters have been praised for years.
Once they reach their twenties, they go from being young to being an adult,
like everyone else. All of a sudden, the slack they were given to build their
career up is gone, and many of them struggle from here onwards. It can be a
mixture of being treated differently, or from essentially being jaded about
dedicating that many years of their youth to a skill to be building the same
old CRUD shit year after year.

~~~
cableshaft
My brother was a security consultant for a few major websites that you've most
likely used yourself at the age of 16, many years ago. He knew more about
security at 16 than most developers I work with today. Don't discount
someone's knowledge or abilities because of an arbitrary age.

He's still successfully protecting servers from getting hacked today, when
pretty much every other server is getting hacked nowadays.

~~~
simplify
Did you reply to the wrong comment? They didn't say anything dismissive, and
even expressed the impressiveness of someone writing a usable app at 16.

------
jjevanoorschot
"Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because
sweetie, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent
dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this
male-dominant coveted industry."

It's quite ironic that in a sentence about sexism and a male-dominated
industry, the author addresses the developer by 'sweetie'.

~~~
Waterluvian
In my experience, "sweetie" is a word older women use condescendingly towards
younger men or women.

~~~
watwut
Sexism is not limited to men on the side of who does it (nor on women on the
side that is the target).

~~~
cosmiccartel
The point is that, in the South, sweetie isn't a gendered term. I'm a man and
get called sweetie every day in a non-demeaning sense. When used pejoratively,
it's essentially "bless your heart" condensed into a noun.

Interestingly, at least in my area, it's generally only used by women and
effeminate gay men. As a result, actually using the term does imply
effeminacy, so a straight man using it to insult a woman may be unknowingly
implying something about himself which he'd find embarrassing.

------
aje403
I'm getting the vibe this person is a complete fraud. It seems likely that
somebody is steering her on what to say, how to manage the project, and market
herself as the visionary behind it.

Reading through the comments "However her aptitude was pretty poor... I've
mentored many kids in my life.

At some point she was unable to even reason out how to convert a string to
upper case.

She said... What does this have to do with programming.... I want to build
apps.

After that she didn't talk to me much and I didn't bother either."

These aren't really the people we should be lauding or giving a free ticket to
MIT. From what I'm reading, she's probably a future successful corporate
bullshit artist, but this is not a role model for anyone or a future
visionary.

I think it is good things like this get attention - young people should know
they're not going to get ahead by stealing credit from others or falsifying
their talents.

------
j-pb
This is advertisement. They use her story to promote the app. Of course she
didn't write the thing, no "child prodigy" that "released an app that will
change the world" in the last 10 years of apps, did. It's either a political
diversity narrative or emotional advertisement for a product.

But yeah, let's all waste our time holding 16 old kids "accountable" for their
"unethical" behaviour, like big boy adults do, that'll teach them how to grow
up!

~~~
FRex
Yes. "If you manage to get social media on your side by endearing them then
you can lie and steal" is the better lesson to teach a 16 year old.

A 16 year old can waste his or her life by this age if he or she does really
badly in school or smokes weed and gets caught. I can forgive teens for a lot
of silly things like lying, cheating, petty crime, etc. but not doubling down
when caught and creating a social media hatemob for someone questioning her.

Also - she is not a kid. There are at least few countries in which a 16 year
old can have sex, drive, drink alcohol, join military academy, etc. and at 17
or 18 the list of countries grows to hundreds of entries.

And she is a "prodigy", not any ordinary kid and she defended herself very
well (and evidently successfully considering the thread calling her out on
reddit got outright removed, not just downvoted) on social media and even
called the person claiming she is lying a "jobless disturbed harasser and
bully".

She has attended MIT Launch, was intern at Sales force. Along with writing
that app she also localized this app to 10 languages (I'm not sure if she did
it herself via Google Translate, the way she writes about it is not clear),
optimized it for iPhone X, prepared a full release, all within these 2 months
while coming across new techniques and concepts and learning them on the fly.

This is all in her medium.com post and if she can do all of that she can get
held to the same standard as an adult. And if it's someone just using her
persona and doing all this then there is even a bigger problem, bordering on
personality theft and fraud.

~~~
Faaak
Being a kid is not a boolean value. You don't go from "being a kid" to "not
being a kid". It's gradual. Some people are still kids at 19, others are quite
mature at 17.

Who knows, maybe her parents are pushing her a lot and she doesn't know how to
react.

We should give people the benefit of the doubt when we don't know the full
story. She'll be forgiven in 2 months anyways..

~~~
FRex
> Being a kid is not a boolean value. You don't go from "being a kid" to "not
> being a kid". It's gradual. Some people are still kids at 19, others are
> quite mature at 17.

It actually is boolean for many laws but that's beside the point. Whatever a
threshold is a person who makes apps so quickly, calls herself an entrepreneur
and a programmer, all while highlighting her young age (ostensibly to show
that she is more mature or skilled than others that age) has crossed it.

> Who knows, maybe her parents are pushing her a lot and she doesn't know how
> to react.

Then just like with "a team" it's a big issue if her parents pushed her to do
it all or did it for her and should not be swept under the rug because it's a
woman in tech or a teen.

> We should give people the benefit of the doubt when we don't know the full
> story.

Too bad the author of this post doesn't get that. Instead they got called
names, accused of bullying and harassment of a teen, accused of driving women
out of tech, flagged (here too for a while apparently), and pretty much told
to fuck off and die. It's only more ironic that the author is a woman too
(which in an ideal world should not matter in the dispute but in USA/tech
industry it seems to, although I've seen plenty of woman vs. woman disputes
online where one woman will claim the other who criticizes her has
"internalized sexism").

> She'll be forgiven in 2 months anyways..

Well yes. No one is going to crucify her for this but plagiarism and being put
on a pedestal for things you didn't do are (in theory, apparently it is if you
are a woman judging by some of the comments here[0]) not acceptable and can't
be revealed and then just defended (not even disputed) by tons of people
because the perpetrator is a woman or teen and thus beyond criticism or fair
attribution of work.

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307994)

------
tomaskafka
> But after reading her blogpost, her stackoverflow/github history in an
> attempt to understand her struggles as a self-taught programmer; I figured
> that there was no struggle at all! Self taught programmers are full of
> numerous questions, but she didn’t seem to have any! Neither is there any
> progression of all the tasks she did.

This is just one of possible approaches. For example, I actively ask very
rarely, the most you could find on SO would be upvotes to answers.

With this approach, the author would probably conclude I didn't write my
weather watchfaces myself, as there are almost no public traces of me doing
so. And yet.

[https://apps.garmin.com/en-
US/apps/2de2ee03-0f81-4668-b885-1...](https://apps.garmin.com/en-
US/apps/2de2ee03-0f81-4668-b885-120def9f07c4)
[https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/56aeaa675fc3f1c...](https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/56aeaa675fc3f1c4c700005b)

~~~
petagonoral
Well, after a couple years of development, you have the vocabulary &
terminology to search for & find your answers.

Starting out, you wouldn't have that.

~~~
onion2k
You might have a mentor (eg a parent) to ask instead though. Having no SO
profile is _not_ a sign you don't ask questions.

~~~
stOneskull
this is true of course.

and lots of people don't use github.

they're just a couple of the signs.

i could even let go that she didn't know how to express what the expression
was and even not knowing how to make a string uppercase.

they're little signs but they aren't where she was eventually busted.

------
076ae80a-3c97-4
She may not be good at developing apps but she is good a lying...

> I’m not sure who is the “someone else” here. The app is published from
> Ravinder Singh Arora’s (my Dad) account. I can’t sign up for an Apple
> Developer account because I’m <18\. And _I created the app on my own_ :)

[https://medium.com/@harshitaisanerd/im-not-sure-who-is-
the-s...](https://medium.com/@harshitaisanerd/im-not-sure-who-is-the-someone-
else-here-e03f1e13fa40)

~~~
cruisemaniac
This seems to be the part that upset a lot of people including the OP.

------
TorKlingberg
It's not plagiarism, it's a team putting the 16-year-old in front for the
media attention. The crypto currency space is full of dodgy stuff, so not
surprising.

The author of this post seem to have it out for the girl personally, which is
unnecessary.

~~~
FRex
She personally claims to have written it all on her own, in the press release
she also says she was intern at Sales force in Bangalore, attended MIT Launch
and her profile says she is a "16 year old programmer and entrepreneur" along
with a link to "my app".

She also called the person disputing that a jobless disturbed bully, harasser
and troll and due to internet "siding with her" the author was met with abuse
for "harassing a kid" and insults despite the proof they provided about app
possibly being a team work or work of someone else.

And if all her social media posts are "a team" then this is even more
unethical.

~~~
TorKlingberg
Yes, that's what the current social media climate is like unfortunately. An
internet mob harassing someone seems to be the default answer to everything,
and each person participating thinks they are fighting for justice or
something. I just don't think HN piling on is going to help.

~~~
jtriangle
So you're saying that we should just let people lie and get away with it?
Because right now she's getting away with it.

------
ealexhudson
I have to say, I found the "story" very leading. A lot of inconclusive
evidence labelled a lot stronger than it deserves, especially the
"confession".

The reality of a lot of app development now is that you can go a long way by
not doing very much. Ok, so the git graph shows another developer committed
many more lines: since when have we, as an industry, taken KLOC as a serious
measure of anything?? Those lines of code could well be XML UI structures or a
bunch of config spat out from an IDE.

Is she an amazing developer? No, she admits as much - she claims 10k lines of
code, a bunch of which may have been StackOverflow'd, and she doesn't claim
experience. She says she has trouble with Python.

Such a big deal over such a minor thing.

~~~
rep_movsd
I actually have the entire source code so I have enough evidence. Obviously I
can't reveal it since it would be illegal.

But she gave it to me of her own free will, and if you think 10000 lines can
be SO'd then you live in a bubble

~~~
simias
If you want us to believe you without giving any proof you'll have to give us
more evidence. Why did she give you the (incriminating) source? Why can't you
reveal it? What in said source code convinces you she didn't write it?

~~~
rep_movsd
You can see in the conversation screenshot that she uploaded code on Google
drive at my request - my only intention was to review the code. Yes she
trusted me that much - in fact there are a lot of peoples code I have reviewed
and fixed.

The code is too complicated for a beginner to have written. There are
generator expressions, lambdas and what not in there.

I could go ahead and post the previous conversations where I was struggling to
get basic programming concepts into her head, but shes already gone rabid in
trying to discredit me. More material from my side will make her react even
more extremely.

My biggest question and open challenge to her is this:

If she wrote all of it -

1) Show us the git log

2) If she insists aviral corrected and merged the code himself, show us the
original fragments of code she sent, or show us the mails containing fragments
of code if she emailed it to him.

If aviral was really a mentor, why would he use this crude method of
collaboration, he'd explain how to use git and github to her to raise pull
requests, commit code and so on.

Even the most pleb developer uses github and manages to commit code and so
forth to it in a few days. Just look at the number of git repos with hello
world like code in them.

I'm sure she'll come up with some excuse why the above is impossible like "we
deleted intermediate stuff and mails", or "I dont know how to use git", or
whatever hamstering.

I saw bullshit I called it. The burden of proof is on her. I have much more to
lose by lying than she does. I have a life, a career and people will surely
take the word of a teenage girl over a man in his 30s. She could instantly
destroy all my credibility and reputation by showing proof.

In the unlikely event that she can provide proof that can convince without
doubt, then I'll eat my words. If she can't then its her word against mine - I
have nothing to lose or gain by her rise or fall, I don't even own Macs,
iPhones or do mobile development.

I have no motivation to lie. I've built apps all my life. She has every
motivation to - this is her ticket to getting into the USA.

Also what about the guy who was told directly by aviral that aviral developed
the app for a small sum of money under an NDA?

Aviral has even tweeted something to the effect of "I lost respect for this
guy who made a private conversation public". That's damning evidence.

~~~
ryandrake
> The burden of proof is on her.

The burden of proof is normally on the person making the accusation. All
you’ve offered is your opinion: “there’s no way she could have written it” and
some hearsay.

If I accuse you of being a fraud should you have to prove that you’re not?

------
sus_007
Wow, I was always a bit skeptic about this from the beginning. Already after
reading her medium article I was convinced there is something fishy going on.
Here I was putting together a simple web app after months of cramming
textbooks & video tutorial series (as a 19 years old) & there she was winning
acclaim for her fake commitment.

------
stillsut
I would like thank this 'namc' for putting in the journalistic-legwork to get
us all closer to the truth. And also letting us draw our own conclusions.

I think what's upsetting to me is not really this case in particular, but that
I couldn't imagine any reputable tech journalism organization being able or
willing to publish an expose like this. So cheers to all you HN citizen
journalist digging into the commits and asset names to give us an idea what's
behind the Press Release.

------
unvs
> but coding =! app development

That's a pretty funny typo from someone defending themselves against
accusations of not knowing how to program.

------
MarkCole
This reads a lot like an attack. Yes its clear they did not program their app
100% themselves. I fail to see how it's such a big deal. Especially one that
requires posts on multiple platforms targeting her.

The other developers seem happy for her to take the credit, presumably as its
good for marketing. Who is this really hurting?

~~~
FRex
When someone very prominently says they made an app, someone else says they
didn't and the first person responds with calling them jobless, disturbed and
a harasser then the gloves are off. And it hardly reads like an attack to me
anyway, there are no insults, no ill wishes to her career or life, it's just
very firm.

~~~
MarkCole
> the first person responds with calling them jobless, disturbed and a
> harasser then the gloves are off

Well that reaction seems to have come after they were harrassed, called a dumb
kid, and a lying piece of shit[1]. This is a 16 year old, they're going to
make mistakes. This level of hate for something very minor is really out of
proportion.

They did after all contribute at least partly towards the app, so it's more of
an exaggeration than an all out lie.

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/jFbQR](https://imgur.com/a/jFbQR)

------
shamdasani
I'd like to weigh in on this as a 16 year old. By no means am I an experienced
programmer [1], but I feel as if I am learning all that I can. Sure,
stackoverflow and Google are there to help, but I make sure that I understand
whatever I write.

This girl is using her age as a marketing tactic, and I understand the point
of the author, but this post goes too far. Instead of pointing out her faults
by making a big deal on his blog, the author should reach out to her and
explain his opinion in a mature manner. I don't think it is right to expose
someone publicly just for making a mistake.

[1]: [https://shamdasani.org](https://shamdasani.org)

------
current_call
Who cares? Even if she is a fraud, the result of pointing this out is only
going to give her more support and attention.

The only reason young or female developers get weird media attention is
because the same companies who abuse visas and get convicted of wage fixing
are trying to get more cheap labor. They pour money and volunteers into
charities and media; offers dwindle.

------
gymshoes
This happens a lot in India. There's a fraud by the name Ankit Fadia, who
still sells plagiarised material and holds hands on 'ethical hacking'
conferences.

~~~
zuzuleinen
Well, at least Wikipedia is up to date
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankit_Fadia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankit_Fadia)

------
exBarrelSpoiler
She may be a plagiarist, but that doesn't mean the author of this post isn't
also a bully who should be likewise questioned. There are extremists on both
sides, the truth is in the middle, etc.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Why is this story flagged? It somehow proves the author's point.

~~~
aiCeivi9
It feels a bit like witch hunting and it is probably the reason it got removed
from reddit. Anyway "X got removed so X is true" is a slippery slope if not
outright false.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
It was enough to answer just like she did here:
[https://imgur.com/0ihzIzy](https://imgur.com/0ihzIzy) Personally I believe
her explanations, but then it doesn't look like she was really writing
everything on her own.

------
k__
I once read that a big problem in the industry are already established women.

There seems to be the tendency to think "If I did it in the harsh world, why
should anyone have it easier than me?"

------
skate22
"There is no storyboard, lol. For any iOS dev who is just starting out, making
an application without storyboards is just unbelievable."

When i was 17, for the 2nd iOS app i launched on the app store, i made the GUI
programatically. It was a simple app and trying to combine story boards with
code just confused me.

I haven't investigated this app at all, but seriously? I stopped reading after
that gross speculation.

~~~
jason_slack
Me too. I don't and never have used a storyboard.

------
cruisemaniac
I'm concerned with the parenting thats at play here! "Giving credit where due"
is something so simple yet hugely absent in this incident!

------
Shinchy
I could understand if the App did something amazing, but it's just a basic
Crypto tracking app - there are thousands of these already on the App Store.
I'm sure she did work on it to some extent, it's nothing spectacular. Looks
like a fairly basic 'follow the tutorial' first App, but maybe that's just me.

~~~
sus_007
It's not about the complexity of the app that bothers me, it's the praise she
is getting from people for falsely claiming that she solely developed the app
with negligible help from other devs which turns out to be completely untrue.

------
ryandrake
Wow, this article is reminiscent of that other one a few months ago about that
Chinese lady who made maker videos of herself doing 3D printing and soldering,
and getting accused of fraud because she was a woman.

Are you a “prodigy” for building an app? No. But you don’t deserve accusations
backed by opinion and no evidence either.

------
jacknews
>> he “allowed her” to call the app hers, given certain “circumstances”.

Is this the actual quote? It sounds as though we're meant to read more into
it. The real author could well be a parent, but I guess we're meant to read
that it's a suitor.

~~~
theparanoid
The "real" author was a contractor--it's common to see app development
contracted out on UpWork. I wouldn't read much into the wording since he's not
a native English speaker.

------
staticelf
It's a 16 year old girl that programmed an app, of course you're going to have
a shitstorm when you deconstruct the truth of the matter.

Good post though, I love people who exposes frauds.

------
Froyoh
Cut the witch-hunt

------
ragerino
So what? Apple is selling other people's work as their own since decades.

------
mtlynch
Whatever the truth is, this is a terrible write-up. I'm surprised it's getting
such traction because the "evidence" against her is pretty flimsy or non-
existent.

> I used a spare iPhone to get the app, and then used
> [https://github.com/BishopFox/bfdecrypt](https://github.com/BishopFox/bfdecrypt)
> and
> [https://github.com/BishopFox/bfinject](https://github.com/BishopFox/bfinject)
> to decrypt the app .

>Here are a few things I found :

>No, she did not code the app as she claims. In her defense, she has help from
a few people, but I would call that bluff, given that help construed of over
~~50%~~ 90% of git commits.

What? You can't get the git history by decrypting an app binary.

The post shows a screenshot of a private git repo's commit history but no
explanation of how it was obtained.

The 16-year old girl claims
([https://i.imgur.com/TQzc6TW.png](https://i.imgur.com/TQzc6TW.png)) that the
other author has a high number of commits because he was committing code on
her behalf because she didn't have a Github subscription for private repos.
Fishy because that's a weird workflow, but not beyond a reasonable doubt.

>There is no storyboard, lol. For any iOS dev who is just starting out, making
an application without storyboards is just unbelievable.

Maybe this is lost on me because I'm not an iOS developer, but is the author
just accusing the girl of poor technique? That seems to _support_ the case
that she's an amateur developer.

>So we did a grep for `com` on strings in the decrypted app, you will notice
that on line 929 there is a mention of library which does not exist, and so
I’m inclined to believe, this is who probably the author of original code is.

A non-existent library created the app? What is this evidence of?

>Upon reaching out to the the dev in question, he went to the extent of saying
that he “allowed her” to call the app hers, given certain “circumstances”.
Fair enough, we don’t see him bagging MIT scholarships, or all the accolades
the girl is receiving for her app. Let’s pass on some appreciation to the so-
called-mentor?

Why are we not seeing proof that this conversation occurred?

>Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because
~~sweetie~~, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition,
persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself
in this male-dominant coveted industry.

Addressing another developer as "sweetie" is deeply unprofessional. This whole
sentence was dripping with obnoxious arrogance. This is the "investigator"
we're taking at their word?

In case the author changes the post, this is the version that I'm commenting
on: [https://archive.fo/9Jw4R](https://archive.fo/9Jw4R)

~~~
monkeybutt
Apple's IDE has a visual way to generate UI related code, but you can do it
manually. Beginners tend to use the UI WYSIWYG tools to build apps - AFAIK.

Maybe they mean a fake domain for the name of your libs:
com.monkeybuttskunkworks.libs.cryptopricer

------
zuzuleinen
Why is this flagged?

~~~
YouAreGreat
Is flagging on HN distinguishable from overpowered downvote?

------
rep_movsd
Why is this flagged? How can we request unflagging?

Is it all about censorship of harsh truths?

~~~
grzm
Members may flag submissions due to the resulting discussion on HN as much as
the submission itself: the sets of topics that are interesting and topics that
can be constructively discusses on HN are not identical. Both are important to
keep HN interesting. FWIW, it's not flagged at the time I'm writing this
comment.

~~~
YouAreGreat
Quality of HN commentary is down and the flagging epidemic is part of it.

The problem is sinking and killing discussions that already got going. A
minority of selfish users gets to _demolish_ collaborative work that other
users _already invested in._

The incentives are for lower effort from commenters. A downward spiral.

------
malmsteen
That post looks so immature.. who the f __* cares who created an app at the
end of the day ?

If you think it's the fact that she's young that made the app famous, then
create a false young persona and the same with your own app instead. Only
stupid people would care about who built it instead of the actual quality of
the app.

I've lost time even reading even the title of this post.

#firstworldproblems

~~~
sctb
You've been posting a lot of uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, which
violates the guidelines. Could you please (re-)read them and stop?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
not_okay
The author of the article comes across poorly here - this is nothing more than
bullying and harassment of the app developer, just because they didn't meet
the exacting standards of this critic.

So the app developer had some mentorship, and probably copied and pasted a
handful of code snippets she didn't have a deep understanding of. So what?
That doesn't justify this completely over the top reaction.

------
TomK32
Young women interested in programming rare enough, let her get some help, let
her have all the praise, that's okay. In years to come she'll hopefully stick
to the field and that's what is important. Not that she wrote 100% of her app.

What we must never forget, writing the code is just the small part, marketing
and selling software is the bigger challenge. She's obviously good at that and
will prevail no matter what the nit-pickers say.

~~~
kbart
No, it's not ok, because as the original author highlights, such frauds
diminish genuinely working women in tech (as is the author). For the same
reason we don't give medals to the sportsmen that are caught cheating.

~~~
Froyoh
Yes, it is okay.

------
B5E6ftS4tgpiW
As a 16 year old male who has spent years and years hard at work, learning
JavaScript and Rust, it really saddens me that people like this get the
praise. There are lots of us working hard and putting in the hours, because we
are intelligent enough to know that apps are a moonshot and not a key to
success. I am all for gender equality, but it's blatant that the fact that the
"developer" here is female has blown the actual achievement out of proportion.
Maybe I should just get 'the change'. Maybe that's the key to success.

------
arno_app
I‘m sorry but the author is indeed a bully. I get the point why it may be
unethical to copy and claim it’s someone’s own work but afaik the “real”
coders were alright with this.

The author tries with all effort to proof that this kid can’t Code by saying
how experienced he is and that he was also smart when he was her age. For me
this sounds like being very jealous and frustrated.

~~~
geodel
The author is women. And this just seems to be case where family 'helps' kid
to chart their independent path. It is pretty common and I have known many
people who would hire some contractors to write some mobile apps that can be
used to garnish resume for college admissions etc.

People have been doing it forever but with help of social media they can
generate lot of support and sympathy also if they fit in right slot of
identity politics.

~~~
Froyoh
So what the author is a woman?

