Examples: "Money Shot" with kitten spreadings its legs and "Great Products...Get you LAID".
[1] https://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/how-to-pitch-a-vc-or-a...
edit: link directly to slides and deleted nested comment.
The kitten and "money shot" is absolutely unnecessary, but I get the coarse language for "paid, made, laid"- the idea is that compelling products and services target base desires.
Your argument is similar to the argument for having swimsuit models in tabloid newspapers. NYT is a better product.
Not if "sells more" is a measure of product betterness.
(Besides swimsuit models never harmed anybody -- the NYT helped sell war with huge human toll with BS government-fed info).
> Your argument is similar to the argument for having swimsuit models in tabloid newspapers. NYT is a better product.
The argument is right, because better (as in NYT vs. tabloids, or as in better in worse-is-better) products don't win on market. If you can target base desires, you'll beat products delivering utility.
Edit: aside, it's interesting (and frustrating) that comments on HN are often assumed to be arguments. Here for a discussion, not to defend a thesis.
Call me old school, but I still think that JWZ post "Groupware Bad" is one of the most important in the history of blogging.
This quote from the linked article (from Chris Sacca) seems apt:
Over the last week, I have spoken with friends, friends of friends, heard from people from my past including stories of how I’d behaved, and read incredibly thoughtful and courageous essays. I’ve learned that it’s often the less obvious, yet pervasive and questionable, everyday behaviors of men in our industry that collectively make it inhospitable for women.
There is definitely a pervasive issue here in software culture as it relates to women, and maybe singling out and punishing individuals is the only way to combat it—but my first inclination when making moral judgements is to consider intent. When I see those slides above, I see the work of someone whose 'filter' and sensitivity to not offending people is lower than average. I do not see immoral activity, however.
I will gladly look at more info. on McClure's offenses if anyone wants to share—and I'm perfectly aware he may not be an instance of what I'm about to mention here—but, we recognize there is a systemic issue with gender equality in software which needs to be fixed, but is there maybe a better strategy than punishing individuals who get caught displaying symptoms of the admitted, systemic issue? (or do we retract the claim that there's a systemic issue? —cause those things are at odds: is it the fault of the culture these people are a part of, or have they personally done something egregious? We could mistakenly go too far in either direction, but maybe our aim will be better if that part of the issue is at least considered...)
At the same time, however, you are only addressing my first sentence, and my question remains about how to best deal with this: even granting the above, I'm still left with the impression that this guy is largely socially tone deaf and non-malicious, and a product of his culture: so is it possible to make corrections without 'treating the symptom' (i.e. punishing individuals who happen to display symptoms of a systemic issue)—or maybe that's the only way we can get at it?
If you look at it this way, then punishing every incidence is critical if you want to change attitude towards them (albeit in a contextually-adjusted severe manner, of course).
But for people just "following how things are done", the disincentive is chance_of_being_caught * punishment_for_being_caught.
If only the second term in that equation changes as a result of the current push, then I feel like it just creates more inequality and doesn't change the underlying problem as much.
So yes, punishment for all to some degree that's more than a wrist slap.
Not in a puritan country. People have lost their jobs for making a "dongle -> dick" joke speaking to their friend at a conference because someone overheard...