Comment by KVFinn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KVFinn | Hacker News Reader

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>Look, whatever “side” of this you’re one, here’s what happened:

>Some guys made some guy jokes about guy stuff

>A woman got offended and did something that was probably an over-reaction

>Some conference organizers over-reacted

>A company (PlayHaven) over-reacted

>The internet (all of us, but especially Anonymous) over-reacted

>Another company (SendGrid) over-reacted

>I’ve been cursed and pilloried and told to go kill myself by people on both sides of the issue, just for writing about these events. People from both sides see what they want to see and, like trained attack dogs, go in for the kill with little consideration, no mercy, no nuance, no shades of grey. They are so blinded by their self-righteousness that they’re perfectly OK with perpetrating more metaphorical violence in the service of their almighty god-blessed cause.

Amazing how things escalate.

At this rate I half expect to see this end in years of trench warfare and mustard gas.

The fact that he said anyone over-reacted is not going to help things.

That's not to say I don't think there were overreactions all around: I do. But it's been my experience that people really don't like to hear that they're overreacting, especially while they're in the middle of overreacting. They dislike it so much that entire schools of thought are now dedicated quite strongly to the proposition that there is no such thing as overreaction.

The author of this article may well have singlehandedly touched off another round of overreaction from all parties involved. And the hell of it is, I agree with his point; I just don't think it was a useful point to bring up.

That's an interesting conundrum that I've grappled with myself. Telling myself counter-productive things like "outrage is a perfectly normal reaction to an outrageous situation".

How should you tell someone that they're overreacting?

This particular subthread caused me to google "no such thing as overreaction".

This is what I found: http://www.pediatricneurology.com/practica.htm

and the most fascinating paragraph from them there was:

'There Is No Such Thing as Over-Reacting

A psychologist I recently met taught me the following: People do not over-react. They react, by definition, appropriately to the meaning a situation has for them. People have "over-meanings," not "over-reactions." When our child blows up over what seems like a trivial issue to us, it may help us to understand that to our child’s mind, this issue must have a tremendous amount of meaning. We could benefit from saying, "Wow, if that’s how it feels to him, we better calmly discuss this," rather than "Wow, he’s overreacting." For example, imagine an ADD child’s tearful screaming over the process of getting dressed. He’s not over-reacting. He is living a tough morning. Maybe that would change our reaction to his behavior. Children’s "over-reactions" are a window into their minds.'

>But it's been my experience that people really don't like to hear that they're overreacting, especially while they're in the middle of overreacting. They dislike it so much that entire schools of thought are now dedicated quite strongly to the proposition that there is no such thing as overreaction.

>The author of this article may well have singlehandedly touched off another round of overreaction from all parties involved.

Interesting. I can see that. What sort of schools of thought are you thinking about here that talk about this sort of thing?

Does anyone have clarification on how people think that the conference people overreacted? All that I have heard seems fairly reasonable.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that one too. It seems that the conference organizers did an excellent job of not over-reacting. They followed their procedures, defused the initial incident discreetly (as much as they could since it was already public knowledge), and updated their Code of Conduct to include a clause to explicitly say not to "name and shame" people.

I don't blame Adria for going into hiding, but 2 weeks from now I doubt anyone will even remember this snafu.

If you don't mind, are you a man or a woman? White or colored?

Author mentions that her action was probably an over-reaction -- which is where I stopped reading the article.

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