For Katie Bouman, One Day of Science Fame Turned into a Nightmare of Trolling | Hacker News Reader

For Katie Bouman, One Day of Science Fame Turned into a Nightmare of Trolling

nbcnews.com

43 pointsmatt407712 comments

It should be noted that this community here was among the worst in this regard.

This isn’t about measuring the exact contribution she may or may not have made to the project. It’s that there are limitless stories of „meet the man behind <x>“ where that question just never crosses anyone’s mind. See "The Man Behind Windows PowerShell" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15250349

Yet for her, the discussion was easily dominated by attempts to tear her down, a few defenders, and entirely transparent attempts to differentiate her case from all the others that avoid the obvious reason.

Absolutely. It's a trend I've noticed on HN for some time now unfortunately. Stories with women tend to generate a lot of hysteria around men not being treated fairly or other nonsense.

It's the exact same thing that occurred when there was a program for women to help increase the number of female startup founders and teach them to code [1] or when a manager at Facebook quit over being harassed [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464269

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18932815

I think it's a fear many have of someone possibly, maybe getting an unfair break. To me it feels a lot like the same reaction I see over the concept of welfare. Can't let anyone past because maybe, possibly, some of them are getting it undeservedly.

In my opinion the fear that others get something they didn't earn or didn't deserve is one of the bigger problems we need to combat in society. It's the biggest foe of social systems that could help raise us all up. And it seems to me it might be an underpinning reason to why some are so afraid to let a woman have some attention that she probably fought her whole professional life for a chance to earn.

There's also the odd trend I've noticed of trying to attribute the gender imbalance and the lack of women in technical and scientific fields to genetic factors, implying (sometimes stating outright) that women are simply incapable of comprehending logic, complex mathematics, keeping attention to detail, etc.

Some (or many, judging by the threads here) people seem to assume that a woman in a position of any prestige in such a field must be there due to some feminist agenda giving seats to unqualified women in the name of gender equality, or the leftist press giving women undeserved credit.

It's particularly odd because I suspect many of the proponents of these views are too young to remember the 1960s or 1950s, yet their views on women seem regressive even by that standard, and far more vicious.

People attribute genetics or hormones to difference between men and women when they can't find other reasons, and this comes from all side of the political spectrum. Violence and aggression is attributed to biological aspects of men, emotional instability and lack of "cold logic" in women. Risk taking and shorter life span in men, nurturing behavior in women.

It is regressive and the science used in support is spotty at best and more often poorly correlations with a massive dose of cultural bias.

I was surprised to see all the people on this site (who should know better) trying to evaluate someone based on lines of code.

Also, it seems like this article is falling surprisingly fast down the front page. dang can you confirm whether this is getting aggressively flagged?

A couple of previous HN discussions (of the actual black hole picture, not the trolling):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19624226

Whenever a woman does anything, it seems to get de-raily attention that goes weird places. I love how that gets captured in this video of the song "Don't Speak" by No Doubt.

https://youtu.be/TR3Vdo5etCQ

The idea of a massive pop hit being about male commentary about female achievement was very intriguing.

So I actually looked up the lyrics and I am pretty sure it is about a breakup.

I left a link to the video, not a link to the lyrics. Of course the song is about a breakup -- a very famous break-up.

The lead singer Gwen Stefani is the only female member of the band. She initiated a relationship with Tony Kanal, another member of the band:

During a party where No Doubt performed in mid-1987, Stefani tried to kiss Kanal when the two went for a walk. Kanal initially rejected her, later commenting, "It was pretty much an unspoken rule that nobody dates Gwen...almost like a bunch of brothers and our sister." He gave in, and the two began dating secretly. The band was suspicious of them, warning Kanal against dating her, but he denied the relationship.

While the band was working on its third album Tragic Kingdom, Kanal broke up with Stefani. She later explained that he was feeling "claustrophobic" in the relationship since he did not have any previous experience being in one. She stated that the break-up "took ages" because the two were close friends and Kanal did not want to hurt her. After the break-up, he offered to leave the band, but Stefani replied that she wanted him to stay. Many of the songs on that album were written by Stefani about the breakup, most notably "Don't Speak". Many years later, Stefani co-wrote her song "Cool" about their relationship as friends for her 2004 debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Kanal

But if you watch the video closely, it shows the male band members being shoved aside while photographers make Gwen the focus of a photo shoot. Then it shows the guys whispering to each other and, at some point, the guys all hold up a hand as if voting in agreement. Gwen's body language clearly signals frustration, disagreement and defeat, like "Aw, come on!"

Gwen got a lot of media attention as a female lead vocalist of an otherwise all male pop band. A lot of interviews (articles, other coverage) ended up focusing on her and ignoring the male band members.

She became a star in her own right and household name, but a lot fewer people know the names of the other band members. In fact, I always have to look up Tony Kanal's name. I can never remember it.

“The theory claims that Chael wrote 850,000 lines of code, which he says is also wrong, adding there are 68,000 lines of code total in the current software“

If I write a line of code and then revise that line later have I written one line or two?

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