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Comment by Redoubts | Hacker News Reader

> “When I hear about Soylent, it’s almost as though SlimFast never existed, like Soylent emerged from the ether. Because it’s made by and for men, now we call it tech.”

What the hell?

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What?

There are plenty of "tech" things that are male-centered. Specifically young, single, tech-industry male centered.

So? What does that have to do with Soylent? Their success could be a product of a better logo, better marketing team, pure dumb luck, or a million other things. To insinuate that they're only seen as revolutionary because a man invented it and prior products were made by or marketed toward women is ridiculous.

It's easy to see how someone might conclude Soylent is targeted toward ambitious males (especially in tech, especially single ones), at least from its initial marketing efforts as a meal replacement for career minded folks neck deep in tech. That's how I remember them anyway. It may have changed; I only follow the thing when stuff like this or their "move fast and ~make people sick~ try new recipes" schtick that turns out to be disastrous makes the news.

They're not the same thing by a long shot. Slimfast is essentially a weight loss oriented protein shake, it's got almost no fats or sugars. Slimfast themselves don't even recommend using it for every meal, or using it long term.

Soylent is an actual meal replacement. You can consume nothing but Soylent for as long as you want to. It's not geared towards weight loss, just as an alternative to food. It provides complete nutrition.

Also I can't find anything on the site today, nor can I remember any advertising in the past that would lead me to believe it's a gendered product. SlimFast aggressively advertises towards women, sure, but I fail to see how Soylent is geared towards men.

The concept of Soylent being used at every meals makes me think of enteral nutrition (Isosource or Osmolyte) given in hospital to sick individuals as a primary source of nutrition, usually through an NG or a PEG tube.

Soylent took this concept, took the NG/PEG tubes out of the equation and sold it to those who are alive and well.

The only innovation with Soylent is its triumph of marketing babble.

They have have taken what is possibly one of the least attractive products imaginable -- a product that is expensive, tastes awful and initially afflicts many people with diarrhea... and successfully marketed it.

As a partial counter-point, you should be aware that diarrhea is a very common symptom for the first several weeks when one changes their diet substantially. Drinking more water, eating foods that are easier to digest, ingesting more vegetables -- all these things trigger your body to flush itself.

For most people what looks to be a diarrhea in reality is a mildly violent reaction to the changes of your feeding habits and thus the changes in your metabolism. In rarer cases, I've known people consuming Herbalife who, even though they admit they feel MUCH better, occasionally puke -- that's the rarer form of the body flushing itself.

So this seeming diarrhea is very normal in the first phases of weight loss -- or even simply starting eating healthier and ingesting more water without aiming for a weight loss.

When you want to complain you completely ignore facts. Like the name of SlimFast. The name totally sounds like a meal replacement that is going to maintain weight.

There are other meal replacement drinks, but SlimFast is definitely not one of them. Just seems like the author didn't even take much time to justify their complaints.

What is your objection to that statement?

I had a similar reaction to reading it, more one of "that was off topic and completely unnecessary."

The author spent the entire article making interesting points, and the statement at the end to me implies "Oh by the way, the product/tech is sexist too, and you should see it that way as well." It feels like it was added to ensure that making anyone disagree with her would be put into that camp (i.e. if I as a male were to disagree for any reason, the reason is simply because I am a male, and my opinion is invalid).

There are a lot of possible explanations as to why Soylent gets a different type of coverage than Slimfast (most obvious to me is "it's marketed as a long-term meal replacement with adequate calories, not as a short-term weight loss solution with reduced calories".) Jumping straight to "because sexism" is premature and alienating.

That sort of conclusion-jumping has been normalized to the point where it is frequently used to marginalize those of us on the autism spectrum. For a long time society was making progress towards acceptance, but recently I've noticed a steady uptick in people being unwilling to bear with my social struggles because they write it off as "mansplaining" or similar. When people choose to see everything through a single lens, and to be immediately accusatory toward those who don't share their exact perspectives, it hits those who struggle with social conventions quite hard.

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