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Comment by TheEzEzz | Hacker News Reader

Hi all, pwnee programmer here. Thanks for all the support! I'm headed out to our meeting with MS in about an hour.

I'd like to quickly add: I'm good friends with all the people in the pictures (except the monkey). The humor was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I apologize if it came off as offensive. My 'wife' in the story is actually a great guy I met in Thailand. I don't believe he would be offended by the caption.

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Wasn't offended, but I was put off by how immature parts of the article were. The game itself is quite an achievement, and while I certainly don't expect suits and ties, I think the tone undermines your effort and accomplishments thus far.

You could have just posted the video and a PayPal link, and probably brought in 4-figures+ by the end of the day. The game stands alone, you don't need to sell us on how high-larious and cheeky you can be.

Asking people for money scares me. A lot. We could certainly use some though. This post was just a quick tongue-in-cheek piece, mostly to calm my own nerves. We didn't post it to HN and weren't looking to get a lot of attention.

I personally thought the photos were hilarious and "got" that they were humor, clearly intending to show a progression of suitable partners as you descended deeper into the code cave and away from respectable corporate employment working for the man, eventually resulting in being with a monkey. At no point did I assume these were necessarily real partners.

My attempt at feedback: If you are trying to promote a game you made, promote the game. I have no clue why there are all these pictures of you with random girls, but I can tell you that it lost my interest far before I ever read a word about your game.

Personally, I liked the humor. It shows you're an actual human and not a program yourself.

I'm always amazed at the commentators on HN who advocate that you should never offend anyone in the slightest way, ever. <sarcasm>After all, it's clearly not a strategy that works for anybody. Just look at Zed Shaw or Giles Bowkett.</sarcasm>

Just want to point out that your perception of what is offensive is going to be strongly skewed from the perspective of everyone else. That's just human psychology and relative experience; because you're the originator of all the humor and jokes, you know exactly where the wit stems from. Anyone who is not you (or a close friend of yours) does not, and no matter how much you say "It wasn't meant to be offensive, people who know me know it's my sense of humor," that's not a sentiment that strangers can judge. So they're likely to go with their gut and have a negative first impression. Simple as that.

People on HN are most likely more tolerant/forgiving of this as long as the hacking is good. I doubt that suits at Microsoft or any other corpopration will be. There's just not much point in risking offending someone who has the ability to ax a deal when the humor in question -- from the average outsider's perspective -- adds absolutely nothing to the enjoyment of the explanation.

I think I'm in that "more tolerant" crowd, but the pictures made me stop reading pretty quickly. Just doesn't look like something I'll be interested in even if the content is good.

Exactly my experience.

Frankly, it's quite immature and it's the sort of thing that belongs on http://programmersbeingdicks.tumblr.com/

People on HN are most likely more tolerant/forgiving of this as long as the hacking is good.

Really? Have you read this thread? Any time there's anything remotely immature or misogynistic posted, the comments tend to focus way more on that than the actual content. Not saying that it's bad or good, just pointing out that I'd say HN is MORE sensitive than most places to this sort of thing.

Given the relative maturity and (geographic) diversity of the demographic here, I think we give a pass to a lot of design/taste-related faux pas, as long as the idea/discussion is great. But the content in the OP arguably crossed the line, thus the high number of complaining comments.

Hi danso, I agree it's difficult to correctly gauge how others will react to any piece. For this blog post I had my three sisters read it -- as well as about half a dozen other people from diverse backgrounds -- and no one found it offensive. Of course, that's not a guarantee that no one anywhere will find it offensive.

The first picture is a bit edgy, I agree. Perhaps that colors the interpretation of the remaining pictures. But the following pictures are really not offensive at all. The next picture is of a woman molesting me (in a pretty PG way). Then there is a picture of a man kissing me. The last picture is of a monkey. That seems pretty harmless by most standards. But I can certainly see how the first picture may set people up to interpret the remaining pictures in a different light.

I don't mean to overstep my bounds here (and it's not any of my concern anyway), but when people are telling you that something's offensive [1], responding with an assertion that "it's not offensive at all" and an explanation of why that's so is a HUGE RED SIGN that you're ... not getting it. Whether you're right or wrong.

[1] I think the word "offensive" is overused these days — I wouldn't say I was offended by your post but I did find it very distasteful.

Jordan, your sense of humor isn't limited to just to your story, you can also find it in your team's biography: TJ's main role, it seems, is to "look attractive" and your artist, Anders, is "sexy".

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