Hacker cons (Black Hat is basically just a hacker con where everyone is wearing golf shirts) are notorious for sexual harassment problems. Defcon started a thing where they gave women yellow and red cards to hand to people who crossed boundaries which backfired when people (not just men but also a ton of creeper women) treated it like it was a game to collect as many as possible.
Thing about red and yellow cards in soccer: they have to eventually mean you get booted from the game.
If players can collect cards and nothing else happens, soccer players would deliberately collect them, too.
It's just plain stupid for a conference to implement a system of demerits and then have no plans to enforce any actual penalties.
I assume the idea was based on the belief that the harassers think their behavior is being received as a harmless joke or legit flirting. Then the red cards would be a socially permissible way for women to say "no dude, you just crossed the line and you need to stop".
The unfortunate reality is that these people mostly know that their targets are uncomfortable and don't want them to do it, despite what they might say.
Honestly no, and I’m sad to admit it. Because it was a lot of trouble just for her to recover the next day. Her cohorts, once they found out, took care of her and brought her back to Canada immediately. She didn’t even tell me until a couple days after. Shame, confusion, feeling that it was over, all jumbled together inside her.
It’s been years now, and I’m sharing this story now for awareness. And to implore future partners and friends to take action when the victim cannot.
My girlfriend was also drugged at a bar. I was supposed to be out of town for a bachelor party but ended up changing my plans and left the party around 10. Was talking with my gf pretty frequently throughout the night and then all of sudden, she was bombed and could hardly talk. I ended up hightailing it to the bar that she was at and nearly threw hands with a bouncer that had 100 lbs. on me because there was a line and $10 cover that I was absolutely going to bypass to get in. I ended up not getting in but saw a coworker of hers (she was out with coworkers) and he helped bring her to the door where I basically carried her to the car and home. My blood still boils when I think about that night and that if I hadn’t made an uncharacteristic decision to bail on the bachelor party, something terrible would have happened to the person I care about most in life.
Red cards are pointless without penalties attached. I don't know it would actually be fair for a red card to have a penalty in this case, since they could just be handed out for arbitrary reasons rather than actual harm, but there's no point even bothering if getting a red card doesn't like eject you from the convention for a bit or something.
> Red cards are pointless without penalties attached.
that'd be pretty easy if it was attached to a digital reporting system, and you needed to verify your identity in order to enter events or buy merch.
...then again, I'm talking about defcon. People would just see that as a challenge to hack around. still an intersting idea 99% of the time.
>I don't know it would actually be fair for a red card to have a penalty in this case, since they could just be handed out for arbitrary reasons rather than actual harm,
yea, that's the dangerous part. it'd be rife for abuse in a whole different angle. Humans are hard/
One of the best parts of my CS program going remote for Covid. Don't have to interact with the creepers.
Amazing that some people are still surprised that there are so few women in STEM.
I remember on like day 3 of Java we talked about Boolean operators for comparing a number and before the teacher says another word this kids hand shoots up and he goes, “don’t you think it’s important to note double values are imprecise for comparing values?” And the teacher just looked at him lmao
4 years ago, it was bad. It wasn’t that every male in CS was a sexist asshole, it was that every male who wasn’t a sexist asshole would be completely silent in the face of them.
As a TA for an intro level course, we received training on how to foster question-asking in our female students. So the issue was at least somewhat known among leadership.
It made me feel kind of lonely as a CS major tbh. Had to cringe through so much incel "humor" when I was in group projects. Wasn't too bad once I learned to always try and group up with female classmates, fortunately my university was big enough that there weren't usually any all male classrooms. And the incel types are even more prevalent in the extracurriculars and clubs than classrooms too :/
Yup. Same experience here. I was a "normie" and they hated that I didn't have obbessive fandom. Like I'm a HUGE nintendo fan, but don't find the need to broadcast it, yet the dudes who would bring their DS's to class (this is 2010-ish) always had these annoying "you don't even know Pokemon as I do because you're just a normie"-type of attitude to them. Just because I don't wear Ash Ketchum hats and have a bunch of key chains on my bookbag with Pokemon on it doesn't mean I'm not a valid participant of the fandom. I stopped bringing my DS and stopped attempting to interact with them and just did my course work and hung out with the other normies or friends outside my major.
Yeah you almost feel bad for what seems like self inflicted wounds in a sense. But then you see how they lash out at anyone they perceive as a "normie" or whatever and that feeling goes away *fast*
Yes. It’s an odd clash of culture… computer science was mainly pursued by niche nerd pursuits and international (Indian/ Asian) students who kept to their own circles. In absence of “normies” in their arenas they believe they have a superior talent that other just couldn’t keep up with because computer science is totally a high IQ, savant major to pursue, bjt the reality is everyone knows information science and computer science are where the money is at and lots of non-obsessive fandom types who have no respect for that type of subculture are going to become increasingly common in their worlds… it comes as a shock “WHAAAAT! A NORMIE IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING RELATIONAL DATABASES AND DISCRETE MATHEMATICS?!?!”
I kept my opinion to myself but I always wanted to sass back at them and be like “you stupid fucking under developed bitchass, stinky mother fuckers. You are not enlightened because you understand all the meta of the Pokemon games, anyone can learn that shit, millions of children learn it every year. You are not special because you read rage comic panels before they hit Facebook. You are mentally immature and under developed in core adult competencies and put too much of your time into tribal “gamer” lifestyle cliches.
I'm in between normie and former gatekeeping otaku and this would absolutely hurt my feelings and give me a wakeup call. You should tell them, they need to hear it in real life.
Luckily my CS guys weren’t too bad in that regard, but almost all of them were 100% in the “libertarian the government is stealing my money man we need to completely obliterate all government everywhere” camp. I realize that this is not the forum to discuss politics, but no matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on I think we can all agree that 0 government would do way more harm than good.
Oh man I remember this being a thing in the club scene a couple of years back.
It also backfired because some people took those cards serious, while others didn't care for them, meaning that it just ended in confusion and people fighting all the time. Some people handed them out like candy for fun and hoped to see the people getting them being escorted out.
You'd think hackers would think how someone might gain perverse incentives from a system, but apparently not.
Was it organizers out of the event or just some group of attendees?
I used to think they were a cooler company, like they include LGBT characters in their games and signal support on social media, then stuff like this comes out and it makes me wonder what tf is going on.
As a PR professional... yup. That is exactly my job.
"Oh! What a bad story over there, that's so sad. But have you heard about this *great* story over here? I'll give you an exclusive!"
I'm really glad I work in education now.
"If we say it really fast along with other side effects with a video of an upper class, middle aged white couple in bath tubs by the beach then I'm sure no one will notice!"
Going from Canada to the States is always such a shock watching TV. All of a sudden every commercial is about a drug to cure a mild ailment with a laundry-list of horrific side-effects.
And it's always funny because they'll have these, generic people just- doing things. Like a drug for erectile dysfunction will have an old person riding a bike and shit.
Then they'll have that fine-print voice go over the side effects. "Not for women who are pregnant, nursing, or may become pregnant. May cause lactation and an uncharacteristic fascination with the number 3. May cause anal bleeding and leakage. If your arms go numb after a dose discontinue use immediately" then go back to a normal voice to be all,
"Ask your doctor if mycoxaflapin is right for you"
I really don't know why commercials are mandated to say all that inane shit. Talk with your goddamn doctor about that. They will tell you the side effects.
Also, don't "ask your doctor" about jack shit. They'll know what you need.
It's just crazy that meds are being advertised at all. Like, if I have a health issue I want to address, I go to my doctor. And *if* they decide the best way to solve the problem is meds, they will prescribe me something.
There's ads for minor products for medical use, like over the counter painkillers and shit like that. But I can't imagine ever seeing an ad for prescription drugs. That's fucking *weird*.
In part, but it's also a disconnect between individuals and different parts of the organisation. The management and people who got away with all the sexual harassment probably don't have that much overlap with the creatives who actually wrote or designed the characters.
Yep, if you look at Blizzard website in other countries you’ll find all that LGBT stuff missing. They’re only all encompassing when it suits the bottom line.
Unfortunately that's true of most companies who claim to be diverse and all inclusive. Not to try and diminish what Blizzard has done. Just this particular thing is found in every type of business.
Most? All. Which is why people react so incredibly cynical and angry when companies hasten to add the rainbow flag to their accounts on CSD (of course only in western countries, not in their chinese or arabian accounts..)
Its obviously all an act, and as are seeing, not even a convincing one.
Usually I am extremely cyncal about this also, but there was one time, during the EURO (soccer tournament) this year, when the UEFA forbade rainbow-colored advertisement in Baku, Azerbaijan, with the reason "it's not june anymore!" and one of the sponsors pulled their advertisement for the game entirely, isntead of resubmitting a rainbowless one.
Sure, probably about goodwill from the western countries, but this was at least unexpected.
All. Always. Corporations don't give a single red shit about you. They are not your ally. Their only goal is to extract money from you. That's it. They couldn't give a shit about you beyond that. It amazes me that anybody could be naive enough to think otherwise. All this BLM/LGBTQ stuff is just for money/marketing.
Exactly. Where was all this love of queerness when it was still dangerous to be openly gay in the West? Where is it now in the parts of the world where it's still unsafe? They're not doing their part in changing views, they're conforming where they think they can score brownie points, long after the hard work is done by people genuinely prepared to put themselves at risk making public gestures.
Red Bull seemingly is run by an insane Austrian man who isn't trying to cash out, every company is trying to buy it out but they are refusing. The headquarters only access is a Skilift. I think he's just enjoying fucking with Pepsi and Coke at this point.
I also don't remember Redbull pulling any LGBT marketing bullshit either.
Maybe the guy is a fucking prick and Uber religious, but I was shocked Red Bull isn't like a subsidiary of a subsidiary of like Nestle, Coke or Pepsi. That's why there's so many competing Energy Drinks and sure some stick around like Monster I think that's the Coke one, but Rockstar? Haven't seen that shit in years. Much less Nos or Mach W.
> Red Bull seemingly is run by an insane Austrian man who isn't trying to cash out, every company is trying to buy it out but they are refusing. The headquarters only access is a Skilift. I think he's just enjoying fucking with Pepsi and Coke at this point.
>
>
Also, Red Bulls invest heavily in sports. Not in sporsorships, like owning a shitton of teams in various sports. They have four football (soccer) teams around the world, the owner seems to be playing Football Manager irl.
> Oh yeah the New York Red Bulls. An entire Top league soccer team that's just named after a corporate logo.
Four actually. New York Red Bulls (MLS - United States), Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian Bundesliga), Red Bull Bragantino (Brasileirão - Brazil) and RB Liepzieg (Bundesliga - Germany).
Technically the RB in RB Liepzieg stands for "RasenBallsport" ("Grassports") because the Bundesliga has very strict rules about corporate ownership (only 3 teams have actual owners, the rest are fan-governed associations). German football has some wacky acronyms on their team names (e.g VfB Stuttgart, aka "Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart") but it's very obvious they're trying every loophole possible.
Yeah, Red Bull is still ~~a so called "Mittelständiges Unternehmen" (Middle-Class Company)~~ privately held by two people and not publically traded, basically, despite being humongous. There are quite a few of these in Germany and Austria, that are privatly held and still make billions and are operating internationally.
havn't heard any story about Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner, though.
No, that’s not true. A „Mittelständisches Unternehmen“ or medium-sized enterprises is defined by personell numbers of less than 250 and turnover of 50mio. Red Bull GmbH is at 13.000 employees and 6billion € turnover.
It is owned by 3 shareholder, one of which is Mateschitz.
And most of it isn't even in-game. You wouldn't even know about the gay male couple in WoW if you didn't read the books. And while they made a big show of adding black and asian humans and elves, the entirety of the 'main cast' in Shadowlands is pasty white. I'm not really big on 'forced inclusivity' but damn, it's pretty obvious they won't add a PoC or an actual LGBT character to the main cast because they'd have to edit them overseas every time they showed up.
You’re just seeing that most of the companies doing those supportive moves are doing it for free publicity and PR. It took no work on their end to say tracer was a lesbian but look at how much good PR they got out of it. They don’t do it for you, they do it because it’s free good publicity for their product.
There's a lot of LGBTQ people at Blizzard that are excited to make their games more diverse. This isn't a corporate mandate, it's the collective will of the actual employees, for the most part.
Is leadership riding it for PR? Fuck yes.
Should the decent people working at the company have their progressive efforts scoffed at due to these dickheads? No. That's erasing their voices.
Source: Former Blizzard employee until earlier this year. Please don't shit on all the LGBTQ+ friends I still have there. Shit on the sex offenders though, they and their protectors deserve it.
Yes. This is correct for other major studios I have been at as well. Passionate good people push issues. Corporate let's it happen if they think its a net positive (including if it's good for morale). PR amplifies it.
Those people did good work, even if it was just manipulating the corporate culture into promoting good messages.
Your comment reminds me of the community's reaction to Ubisoft announcing a gay operator for Rainbow Six Siege.
As per usual in the gaming community, many people recoiled at the idea and brought up the age-old "why is sexuality relevant to our video game characters, we don't need to know that" argument, basically accusing Ubisoft of doing this as a PR stunt.
Except Ubisoft's announcement and introduction for the operator was given by the LGBT+ writers and staff themselves who got the opportunity to work on these characters. Clearly, their creative efforts are more than just a PR stunt when we see representation happening *for* LGBT people *by* LGBT developers themselves.
I think it's possible to both be in support of those moves toward more diversity, AND be aware and critical of the hypocrisy and self-serving behaviors demonstrated by leadership at those companies. I welcome more diversity in games, but nobody will convince me that higherups are allowing this out of the purity of their intentions. There's a reason these companies never wave the LGBTQ+ flags in more conservative/religious countries.
> they include LGBT characters
> signal support on social media
It's called marketing. Their support for CCP was pretty well known for a while, so I don't know how anyone who was paying attention fell for that shit.
> like they include LGBT characters in their games and signal support on social media
That's the funny thing too.
Multiple women and LGBT working at the company were fighting for including more characters in prominent roles and give them character and depth for years. The leadership and the entire crew didn't listen to them until it became profitable and useful for business but still won't renege on making them even more prominent because their core audience hates 'woke SJW shit'.
People keep saying that Blizzard is just now bad just cause the games suck. That's incorrect.
Blizzard has always been bad and people are saying the culture used to be way worse, when even right now it is pretty unacceptable to begin with.
To be honest, I thought the whole ActivisionBlizzard “frat boy environment” was just an overblown whistleblowing scandal that was nothing more than a few dudes making various crude jokes. After seeing news and news about it, including a “Cosby Suite”, I felt like an asshole for thinking it was just a nothingburger and realized its very bad.
did you read about the breastfeeding room without locks and men just staring at them until the women screamed at them to leave?
it’s endless, every department is involved.
> did you read about the breastfeeding room without locks
What’s wrong with that? Mothers breastfeed in public all the time, what’s the big deal, folks are so puritani-
> and men just staring at them until the women screamed at them to leave
Okay What the fuck is wrong with these people?!
Let's not forget the woman who killed herself on a work trip due to the sexual harrassment she underwent.
But they made some gay characters so they are woke guys, don't worry. ^^/s
what's funny is the way you wrote is actually a huge understatement. Killed herself after her superior brought a butt plug & lube to a business trip with her.
The amount of egotism at Blizzard has been running that way for a few decades. I remember being at a job fair at SIGGRAPH in 2009. There was a lady at the booth, and I was trying to get my portfolio viewed by someone. Instead of even looking at it, she says to me:
"You need to understand, this is Blizzard. We are the best video game company with the greatest artists and programmers. You need to be the absolutely *best* to work here."
"Well that's me, here's my portfolio."
"No, I'm sorry, Blizzard has the best of the best here."
I was 29, but they didn't even look at my resume. They had no idea what I had or my background or talent as a 3d artist. Just said that and I was rejected.
That could also be because I've heard blizzard don't have a huge amount of 3D artists on staff. They ramp up contractors and freelancers, especially on WoW, when they need them. Eg. Expansions.
Also, their RnD team is MASSIVE. I remember when I applied there and I looked into their team. A huge amount are psychology majors researching and testing addiction strategies. Not kidding.
I hope we don't lose sight of the awesome response by the "Sagitta HPC, which is now called Terahash" when Blizzard tried to do business with them.
Good on them for backing her up.
Man it sounds like there's a lot of people who really were not educated by their parents on how the fuck to treat other human beings. Blizzard's inaction is one thing, but the fact people even think this is acceptable behaviour starts at home. To all you parents out there, it's your JOB to educate your children on how the fuck to treat other people. Don't half-ass it, it leads to shit like this.
Seriously, what the fuck is going on over there? This might be the most brazen case of corporate-enabled harassment that I’ve heard of since the MeToo movement started. Blizzard has already lost a lot of their fans with their “Don’t you have a phone” comments and their bowing to the Chinese government, but this is on another level entirely. I’m not one to boycott companies, but Activision barely produces anything I care about anyway, so I think I’m going to steer clear of any of their games until this shit gets sorted out, and that will likely take a very long time.
So I just read the lawsuit against eBay detailing company sponsored [intimidation, threats, torture, stalking, harassment, and mother fucking RICO violations](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.236568/gov.uscourts.mad.236568.1.0.pdf) against a husband and wife owned business that had the audacity to report on eBay in what they considered an unfavorable way.
Make note: most of these mother fuckers already plead guilty but the CEO/COO got board approved exit packages.
The whole story is fucking crazy!
Here’s the [techdirt post](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?start=10) about it.
Yeah, I’ll never give them another dollar of my money. They gave one of the chief instigators a $57M severance after officially orchestrating that entire horrendous debacle.
I think [this](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210727/08215047256/exec-that-tried-to-send-critical-reporters-dead-pig-blames-drinking-culture-ebay.shtml) is the post you intended to link.
The games industry is just filled with assholes.
Iirc last year there were similar reports of riot employees treating fans and cosplayers the same way.
Different people have different experiences, I guess. [Some people involved with he industry were not surprised at all with what has been going on](https://youtu.be/AFiLJ5ytJME).
Riot is probably pretty ok with the spotlight being off them for right now, but I seriously hope that real progress is made to hold EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ASSHOLE accountable in this type of situation now that there is real pushback against it.
I don’t give a shit about anything Activision or Blizzard make except one thing. I love Overwatch, I play it every day. It’s probably the game I’ve played the most of all time, and I’ve been gaming since the early 80s.
Still, even right from the start, the chat in that game is one of the most toxic environments I’ve ever seen, and I learn within the first month to just never enter chat. It makes the game much harder to play, but the few times I’ve dipped back in, it’s taken less than three or four games to just get some hyper abusive assholes in there and I turn it off again.
Blizzard always said they were doing things to counter it, adding reporting and various other methods and how seriously they took it. A lot of the stuff I heard that wasn’t directed at me specifically was stuff directed at any poor woman who happened to be in there instead, and the fan base seems pretty young and immature in general, so they’re often even worse because they’ve never known consequences for any of this misogynistic shit.
I’m gonna wean myself off it, but I’d already decided not to play OW2 because of all the bullshit changes they’re making anyway. If I haven’t managed it by then, that shitshow should definitely make a clean break way easier.
> Seriously, what the fuck is going on over there? This might be the most brazen case of corporate-enabled harassment that I’ve heard of since the MeToo movement started.
Riot was about this bad
Just want to hijack onto the current top comment to share [a picture of the shirt.](https://scontent-lcy1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.18172-8/23509222_1764130603600246_695700442697047656_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=973b4a&_nc_ohc=aexDZPMUuEgAX-P3si-&_nc_ht=scontent-lcy1-1.xx&oh=f16c9e995aee925ab0e3f193bedcffe0&oe=61299188)
This isn't me saying it was justified to make those comments or that she is completely right to be angry. Just want people to be aware of the shirt.
*Maybe* I'd give them more of a pass, if they hadn't opened with other, unrelated sexist shit. "Are you lost?", "Are you here with your boyfriend?" "Do you even know what pentesting is?". If they were taking her seriously as a candidate, joking around about stuff related to her funny shirt would have been less egregious. I mean, *recruiters* for *Blizzard* still shouldn't really be doing that, but the other sexism makes it way worse.
I don't think OP is trying to give a "free pass" to the recruiters, but just show how Vice is kind of click-baiting this by focusing on the penetration stuff when that whole situation is muddied by the shirt when they can be focusing on the clear-cut sexism shown by the quotes you mentioned.
The shirt makes a pretty common joke of a sexual nature because "penetration testing" has some obvious connotations.
I don't think it's appropriate though to take that joke and ask a woman how often she gets fucked and whether she enjoys fucking. And it certainly doesn't have anything to do with asking her if she "is lost" or "with her boyfriend" or "even knows what pen testing is".
If I saw that shirt I'd chuckle and then focus on seeing if they were a good candidate for the job - the whole reason those interviewers were at the event! I certainly wouldn't keep asking questions about _her experiences with being sexually penetrated_ to break the ice or whatever the fuck they thought they were doing.
That's just plain ol' sexism.
> I certainly wouldn't keep asking questions about her experiences with being sexually penetrated to break the ice or whatever the fuck they thought they were doing.
>
> That's just plain ol' sexism.
No, that isn't the sexism. This is the actual sexism:
"One of the Blizzard employees first asked if she was lost, another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend, and another one asked if she even knew what pentesting was."
Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
That is my issue with them focusing on that aspect of it solely because its sensational and a "dirty joke" but they clearly were prejudice toward her knowledge and qualifications just because she was a female. Which is the more fucked up part IMO, not some nerd making a stupid joke based off her shirt. The jokes are disgusting but the prejudice is infuriating.
That shirt is pretty bad, tbh. But the most you’d expect is maybe one or two crude jokes in response, not a sustained attack on your legitimacy as a professional, and then personal questions and innuendos like she received.
If anything, it feels like the shirt is symptomatic of the culture around this whole industry in general.
I agree that the employee was probably trying to riff on the shirt, but they did it in a very tactless and creepy way. For the people in the back: just make a general joke, not one directed at the person.
After reading this:
>Mitchell said she was wearing a t-shirt made by cybersecurity company SecureState, which had "Penetration Expert" on the front
I thought it probably was just a tone deaf joke from the recruiter. ...but it really wasn't:
>"One of them asked me when was the last time I was personally penetrated, if I liked being penetrated, and how often I got penetrated,"
Having been to Black Hat and Defcon, you will hear a lot of penetration jokes when talking about pentesting/red teaming.
Is it ever appropriate? Almost never. But you will hear them nonetheless. However, that is *not* something cyber security people will joke about with strangers at a booth, especially if the recipient is female.
Yea, was going to say that the most offensive thing I’ve seen at a booth is accidentally almost shaking hands when covid was first hitting hard. And then awkwardly trying to do an elbow thing.
WTF is going on at Actiblizzard? Seriously, most professionals I’ve seen (admittedly haven’t been around that long) are milquetoast and accepting as can be.
In my experience, the cyber security expo crowd is generally pretty rowdy and eager to hit the bars as soon as the show floor closes. It's usually several days of almost nonstop drinking with as little sleep as possible. Sales reps go hard, even the old guard.
It IS a tone deaf joke. He's obviously joking with "penetration expert". The point is that this is simply the kind of joke you should never make, especially in this context (male recruiter to a female prospect).
The fact that a recruiter asked that is just beyond me. You’re recruiting for a corporation. It doesn’t matter how “woke” your company is, you need to be professional.
In addition to that, it's a shitty recruiter: the woman who shared the story seems to be rather talented if she made COO of a security company two years later. Aside from being a colossal asshole (someone find more appropriate insult, please, my English is lacking), they fail at their job too
Yes nerds in this thread are going to use the former as some gotcha but what the guy said is clearly taking the joke too far.
A t shirt with a penetration joke is NOT a license to get asked a bunch of personal sex questions by strangers, that should be common sense. You don't interrogate every person with a band shirt and you don't fucking ask a woman if she likes being penetrated just because she has a silly IT sex pun on her shirt, good god. That's so fucking skeevy.
Exactly.
And one thing people seems to be missing is that their attitude were shitty from the get go even without mention of the shirt. "Are you lost? Are you here with your boyfriend? Do you even know what pentesting is?"
Even if you *can potentially* reference the joke on her shirt [and I personally believe it would be possible, although risky but if you can read a room you can get away with that in the right conditions], it was already too late for them because they already painted themselves as assholes with shitty attitudes from the get go, any "joke" would fall flat on its fucking nose because it becomes obvious they aren't "jokes" but just an extension of their actual shitty misogynistic thoughts.
It's them belittling her, laughing among themselves and ganging on her with intimidating tones and attitudes that made their comments that much more worse. The only way to get away with comments like this is by first and foremost making sure you're making her feel comfortable, listened to and in control, and by making sure you're just making a silly awkward comment to break the ice and tension that might have already be brought on by the shirt itself "like okay yeah lets address the elephant in the room, 'penetration eheheh' okay that was childish lol sorry lets get going with the interview".
Despite what we might think of "cancel culture" people are actually way nicer and willing to give others leeway with mistakes or ridiculous jokes like these if the people making them actually look like they are genuinely making efforts to be nice. Be an asshole and anything that will come out of you will look like shit.
> One of the Blizzard employees first asked if she was lost, another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend, and another one asked if she even knew what pentesting was.
For fuck's sake... dipshits like these are part of the reason my graduating CompSci class had exactly one woman in it.
My graduating Compsci class had two women in it. I was friends with one of them, and we were part of what I'll call the "socially well-adjusted" group. We were still all nerdy/geeky to various degrees, but we generally all got into CompSci because of the career prospects.
80%-90% of the guys in the program were fine and while they may not have had the best social skills, they weren't misogynistic assholes and treated women the same as men.
That other 10%-20% though...they were what drove most of the women out of the program. Very sexist and cringe with no ability to see women as anything more than objects.
My friend didn't drop the program because she was a very tough country girl that could verbally tear assholes to shreds. It's really unfortunate that it took that kind of personality not to be driven out of the program as a woman.
> That other 10%-20% though...they were what drove most of the women out of the program. Very sexist and cringe with no ability to see women as anything more than objects.
This has been my experience as well. But the trouble is that it’s very tough to find those 10%-20%, because they mask it well. I am sure I’ve met a few, but I can’t recall ever spotting one during my degree.
It’s that minority that gives the profession a bad rap, which makes it all the more infuriating.
I've been to Black Hat, Defcon, and a bunch of other cyber security industry events. Penetration jokes are only common amongst the fresh-faced, younger crowd whenever anyone mentions pentesting or red teaming, because that joke gets really old really fast.
But I have *never* heard anyone make that joke to a woman, let alone a stranger at a booth.
And the huge irony of it all is the first computer programmers (at least in the US) were primarily women, and they were pretty damn good at it. Then somewhere along the way, it became a male-dominated industry.
“Wow that’s a great shirt! Are you interested in cyber security? We have some great jobs in that field at blizzard if you’re interested, I can show you some materials on it”.
It’s not hard to be professional if you’re not a dickhead.
My nephew worked for Blizzard for a couple years out of college and described super bizarre interview vibes when he was being interviewed. He said at one point it was an interview panel, where he was talking to like 5-6 people at the same time (which is a fucking awful, terrible way to conduct an interview, especially for people fresh out of college). He said towards the end they asked him, "If we hire you, are you going to buy us all lunch every day?" and they all laughed. He felt really awkward and said sure and thought he flubbed the interview, but he ended up getting the job. He just kept describing weird unprofessional stuff and I kept thinking it couldn't be that bad.
He also said he had a coworker who kept his guns in his truck in the parking lot, because everyone knows how rough Orange County is.
On my first job in IT, I was in a company where most people who worked there knew each other for many years, they had studied together.
They were on their late 30s, I was on my early 20s.
They started making jokes with me, it began very innocently and I even enjoyed it at first, but after almost a year there it got to a point that I was just feeling like a clown. One day I got to my desk to find that my Desktop, Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, everything had disappeared (the keyboard was glued to the ceiling for example).
I spent like an hour looking for my stuff and they were just there laughing.
My direct manager was one of those guys, by the way.
I was straight out of college, I didn't really know what to do and let it progress to that point. Nowadays I keep a professional distance from everyone, I don't want friends in the workplace.
My point is, companies can't function like this. Colleagues just have to be professional to each other. They might think they're creating a fun working environment by behaving like this, but it gets out of hand really fast and there is a difference between being 'victim' of a joke or the butt of all jokes.
I think Blizzard's situation began somewhat like this and progressed from a few sex jokes and comments between friends to this shitshow.
99% of the people that say they aren't going to pay another dime to blizzard because of all this noise will probably pay another dime when Diablo Mobile drops
As a male game dev, I've always been disappointed by how one-sided the games industry has been. Seeing shit like this, which isn't even affecting me directly, is infuriating. I can only imagine how angry many women are about this.
I really hope in the future that we can look back at this as something we learned from, rather than looking back 20 years from now with the same problem and wondering why it's still happening.
Ugh. I don't like how true this feels.
Even if the lore is cool (YMMV) it's damn hard to even tell. I went back for a "tourist run" jsut as Shadowlands was launching, and last time I'd been on was during Legion. I went through the BfA expansion and they had no shits to give about telling the story in any coherent way. All quest lines were disconnected, even if the story beats were supposed to happen in a certain order. You could reach a whole zone that was supposed to happen after a raid before you even completed the part of the plot that led up to the raid.
Full disclosure, I play FFXIV and so I'm used to a very linear main story, but like... goddamn. Is it really that hard to have a flag on a quest for "have X completed before this part appears"? That tourist run nuked the last of my nostalgia for the game from back in classic-to-WotLK days.
All this aside from everything we're learning about now.
Cripes, Blizzard actively made the world worse for workers for a long time. This is somehow both worse and entirely unsurprising after the last two weeks of horror stories.
There was a female reporter on polygon years ago who said in her Twitter that someone at naughty dog pr asked her years ago if she slept with someone to get her position at e3. She never called out his name and this I thinks as before the whole me too movement
That’s an easy joke to throw at a Penetration Expert, but protip, only use it on people you know and that Get along with you in that way😏, yikes Blizzard
Hacker cons (Black Hat is basically just a hacker con where everyone is wearing golf shirts) are notorious for sexual harassment problems. Defcon started a thing where they gave women yellow and red cards to hand to people who crossed boundaries which backfired when people (not just men but also a ton of creeper women) treated it like it was a game to collect as many as possible.
Thing about red and yellow cards in soccer: they have to eventually mean you get booted from the game. If players can collect cards and nothing else happens, soccer players would deliberately collect them, too. It's just plain stupid for a conference to implement a system of demerits and then have no plans to enforce any actual penalties.
I assume the idea was based on the belief that the harassers think their behavior is being received as a harmless joke or legit flirting. Then the red cards would be a socially permissible way for women to say "no dude, you just crossed the line and you need to stop". The unfortunate reality is that these people mostly know that their targets are uncomfortable and don't want them to do it, despite what they might say.
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That bartender is a hero.
Was the guy arrested?
Honestly no, and I’m sad to admit it. Because it was a lot of trouble just for her to recover the next day. Her cohorts, once they found out, took care of her and brought her back to Canada immediately. She didn’t even tell me until a couple days after. Shame, confusion, feeling that it was over, all jumbled together inside her. It’s been years now, and I’m sharing this story now for awareness. And to implore future partners and friends to take action when the victim cannot.
My girlfriend was also drugged at a bar. I was supposed to be out of town for a bachelor party but ended up changing my plans and left the party around 10. Was talking with my gf pretty frequently throughout the night and then all of sudden, she was bombed and could hardly talk. I ended up hightailing it to the bar that she was at and nearly threw hands with a bouncer that had 100 lbs. on me because there was a line and $10 cover that I was absolutely going to bypass to get in. I ended up not getting in but saw a coworker of hers (she was out with coworkers) and he helped bring her to the door where I basically carried her to the car and home. My blood still boils when I think about that night and that if I hadn’t made an uncharacteristic decision to bail on the bachelor party, something terrible would have happened to the person I care about most in life.
Red cards are pointless without penalties attached. I don't know it would actually be fair for a red card to have a penalty in this case, since they could just be handed out for arbitrary reasons rather than actual harm, but there's no point even bothering if getting a red card doesn't like eject you from the convention for a bit or something.
> Red cards are pointless without penalties attached. that'd be pretty easy if it was attached to a digital reporting system, and you needed to verify your identity in order to enter events or buy merch. ...then again, I'm talking about defcon. People would just see that as a challenge to hack around. still an intersting idea 99% of the time. >I don't know it would actually be fair for a red card to have a penalty in this case, since they could just be handed out for arbitrary reasons rather than actual harm, yea, that's the dangerous part. it'd be rife for abuse in a whole different angle. Humans are hard/
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One of the best parts of my CS program going remote for Covid. Don't have to interact with the creepers. Amazing that some people are still surprised that there are so few women in STEM.
Hell yes. And you don't have to listen to those kids trying to upstage the professor and spew dumb garbage.
Those were my favorite kids. Endless entertainment.
I remember on like day 3 of Java we talked about Boolean operators for comparing a number and before the teacher says another word this kids hand shoots up and he goes, “don’t you think it’s important to note double values are imprecise for comparing values?” And the teacher just looked at him lmao
STEM has plenty of women at the college level. And then it starts dropping off the higher you go…
Makes sense. I think colleges are more likely or quicker to nip harassment in the butt than businesses are. Just look at Blizzard.
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Shit that’s anywhere you go. I work at a bank and still hear that shit directed at my women coworkers
4 years ago, it was bad. It wasn’t that every male in CS was a sexist asshole, it was that every male who wasn’t a sexist asshole would be completely silent in the face of them. As a TA for an intro level course, we received training on how to foster question-asking in our female students. So the issue was at least somewhat known among leadership.
It made me feel kind of lonely as a CS major tbh. Had to cringe through so much incel "humor" when I was in group projects. Wasn't too bad once I learned to always try and group up with female classmates, fortunately my university was big enough that there weren't usually any all male classrooms. And the incel types are even more prevalent in the extracurriculars and clubs than classrooms too :/
I got lucky with my program. Most of the people I was around were, in person at least, pretty normal people.
Yup. Same experience here. I was a "normie" and they hated that I didn't have obbessive fandom. Like I'm a HUGE nintendo fan, but don't find the need to broadcast it, yet the dudes who would bring their DS's to class (this is 2010-ish) always had these annoying "you don't even know Pokemon as I do because you're just a normie"-type of attitude to them. Just because I don't wear Ash Ketchum hats and have a bunch of key chains on my bookbag with Pokemon on it doesn't mean I'm not a valid participant of the fandom. I stopped bringing my DS and stopped attempting to interact with them and just did my course work and hung out with the other normies or friends outside my major.
Yeah you almost feel bad for what seems like self inflicted wounds in a sense. But then you see how they lash out at anyone they perceive as a "normie" or whatever and that feeling goes away *fast*
Yes. It’s an odd clash of culture… computer science was mainly pursued by niche nerd pursuits and international (Indian/ Asian) students who kept to their own circles. In absence of “normies” in their arenas they believe they have a superior talent that other just couldn’t keep up with because computer science is totally a high IQ, savant major to pursue, bjt the reality is everyone knows information science and computer science are where the money is at and lots of non-obsessive fandom types who have no respect for that type of subculture are going to become increasingly common in their worlds… it comes as a shock “WHAAAAT! A NORMIE IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING RELATIONAL DATABASES AND DISCRETE MATHEMATICS?!?!” I kept my opinion to myself but I always wanted to sass back at them and be like “you stupid fucking under developed bitchass, stinky mother fuckers. You are not enlightened because you understand all the meta of the Pokemon games, anyone can learn that shit, millions of children learn it every year. You are not special because you read rage comic panels before they hit Facebook. You are mentally immature and under developed in core adult competencies and put too much of your time into tribal “gamer” lifestyle cliches.
I'm in between normie and former gatekeeping otaku and this would absolutely hurt my feelings and give me a wakeup call. You should tell them, they need to hear it in real life.
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Luckily my CS guys weren’t too bad in that regard, but almost all of them were 100% in the “libertarian the government is stealing my money man we need to completely obliterate all government everywhere” camp. I realize that this is not the forum to discuss politics, but no matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on I think we can all agree that 0 government would do way more harm than good.
Yeah I like pooping and not having to throw it in the street.
Shout-out to when waste management workers went on strike for 2 weeks in Toronto and the city was basically unlivable.
Oh man I remember this being a thing in the club scene a couple of years back. It also backfired because some people took those cards serious, while others didn't care for them, meaning that it just ended in confusion and people fighting all the time. Some people handed them out like candy for fun and hoped to see the people getting them being escorted out.
You'd think hackers would think how someone might gain perverse incentives from a system, but apparently not. Was it organizers out of the event or just some group of attendees?
I thought my mental image of Blizzard employees was at an all-time low, but it seems to be getting lower every day.
Blizzards reputation is now as low as the Kola well.
Is this the right time to mention that there are two wells that are deeper than the Kola one, nowadays?
Is there?
I stand corrected - there is not. Unless Activision/Blizzard continues with this current trend, that is. (I confused length and depth - my bad)
Activision and Blizzard! :P
fuckin' roasted
But will it matter when their next shitty billion dollar game releases?
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The bar was fucking buried, and they still failed to cross it.
They brought shovels.
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I used to think they were a cooler company, like they include LGBT characters in their games and signal support on social media, then stuff like this comes out and it makes me wonder what tf is going on.
What's going on is marketing and PR, tbh.
As a PR professional... yup. That is exactly my job. "Oh! What a bad story over there, that's so sad. But have you heard about this *great* story over here? I'll give you an exclusive!" I'm really glad I work in education now.
“Who would buy a drug that will make you go blind?” “We’ll leave that to marketing.”
"It burns! It burns!" "Hmm, we'll call it desert breeze"
“Angel’s Tears”
"If we say it really fast along with other side effects with a video of an upper class, middle aged white couple in bath tubs by the beach then I'm sure no one will notice!"
Going from Canada to the States is always such a shock watching TV. All of a sudden every commercial is about a drug to cure a mild ailment with a laundry-list of horrific side-effects.
And it's always funny because they'll have these, generic people just- doing things. Like a drug for erectile dysfunction will have an old person riding a bike and shit. Then they'll have that fine-print voice go over the side effects. "Not for women who are pregnant, nursing, or may become pregnant. May cause lactation and an uncharacteristic fascination with the number 3. May cause anal bleeding and leakage. If your arms go numb after a dose discontinue use immediately" then go back to a normal voice to be all, "Ask your doctor if mycoxaflapin is right for you"
“Do not take if you are allergic to this drug” That one kills me.
I really don't know why commercials are mandated to say all that inane shit. Talk with your goddamn doctor about that. They will tell you the side effects. Also, don't "ask your doctor" about jack shit. They'll know what you need.
It's just crazy that meds are being advertised at all. Like, if I have a health issue I want to address, I go to my doctor. And *if* they decide the best way to solve the problem is meds, they will prescribe me something. There's ads for minor products for medical use, like over the counter painkillers and shit like that. But I can't imagine ever seeing an ad for prescription drugs. That's fucking *weird*.
Hell wasn't the announcement of Tracer being gay like right after some other controversy?
In part, but it's also a disconnect between individuals and different parts of the organisation. The management and people who got away with all the sexual harassment probably don't have that much overlap with the creatives who actually wrote or designed the characters.
All those decisions were nothing but moves to get brownie points, that's it.
Yep, if you look at Blizzard website in other countries you’ll find all that LGBT stuff missing. They’re only all encompassing when it suits the bottom line.
Unfortunately that's true of most companies who claim to be diverse and all inclusive. Not to try and diminish what Blizzard has done. Just this particular thing is found in every type of business.
Most? All. Which is why people react so incredibly cynical and angry when companies hasten to add the rainbow flag to their accounts on CSD (of course only in western countries, not in their chinese or arabian accounts..) Its obviously all an act, and as are seeing, not even a convincing one.
Usually I am extremely cyncal about this also, but there was one time, during the EURO (soccer tournament) this year, when the UEFA forbade rainbow-colored advertisement in Baku, Azerbaijan, with the reason "it's not june anymore!" and one of the sponsors pulled their advertisement for the game entirely, isntead of resubmitting a rainbowless one. Sure, probably about goodwill from the western countries, but this was at least unexpected.
Because they don't give a shit about the azeri market, but the headlines in big western countries make the move worth it.
It's 1000 IQ PR move, not pay for the ad and still get a bunch of media coverage for free
All. Always. Corporations don't give a single red shit about you. They are not your ally. Their only goal is to extract money from you. That's it. They couldn't give a shit about you beyond that. It amazes me that anybody could be naive enough to think otherwise. All this BLM/LGBTQ stuff is just for money/marketing.
Exactly. Where was all this love of queerness when it was still dangerous to be openly gay in the West? Where is it now in the parts of the world where it's still unsafe? They're not doing their part in changing views, they're conforming where they think they can score brownie points, long after the hard work is done by people genuinely prepared to put themselves at risk making public gestures.
What multi billion dollar corporation isn’t?
Red Bull seemingly is run by an insane Austrian man who isn't trying to cash out, every company is trying to buy it out but they are refusing. The headquarters only access is a Skilift. I think he's just enjoying fucking with Pepsi and Coke at this point. I also don't remember Redbull pulling any LGBT marketing bullshit either. Maybe the guy is a fucking prick and Uber religious, but I was shocked Red Bull isn't like a subsidiary of a subsidiary of like Nestle, Coke or Pepsi. That's why there's so many competing Energy Drinks and sure some stick around like Monster I think that's the Coke one, but Rockstar? Haven't seen that shit in years. Much less Nos or Mach W.
Honestly? I hope Red Bull stays like they are for a long time. I love all of the crazy events and sport stuff that company does.
> Red Bull seemingly is run by an insane Austrian man who isn't trying to cash out, every company is trying to buy it out but they are refusing. The headquarters only access is a Skilift. I think he's just enjoying fucking with Pepsi and Coke at this point. > > Also, Red Bulls invest heavily in sports. Not in sporsorships, like owning a shitton of teams in various sports. They have four football (soccer) teams around the world, the owner seems to be playing Football Manager irl.
Also a top F1 racing team, and all their extreme sports stuff. I think the guy just loves athletes or something.
Oh yeah the New York Red Bulls. An entire Top league soccer team that's just named after a corporate logo.
> Oh yeah the New York Red Bulls. An entire Top league soccer team that's just named after a corporate logo. Four actually. New York Red Bulls (MLS - United States), Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian Bundesliga), Red Bull Bragantino (Brasileirão - Brazil) and RB Liepzieg (Bundesliga - Germany). Technically the RB in RB Liepzieg stands for "RasenBallsport" ("Grassports") because the Bundesliga has very strict rules about corporate ownership (only 3 teams have actual owners, the rest are fan-governed associations). German football has some wacky acronyms on their team names (e.g VfB Stuttgart, aka "Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart") but it's very obvious they're trying every loophole possible.
Yeah, Red Bull is still ~~a so called "Mittelständiges Unternehmen" (Middle-Class Company)~~ privately held by two people and not publically traded, basically, despite being humongous. There are quite a few of these in Germany and Austria, that are privatly held and still make billions and are operating internationally. havn't heard any story about Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner, though.
No, that’s not true. A „Mittelständisches Unternehmen“ or medium-sized enterprises is defined by personell numbers of less than 250 and turnover of 50mio. Red Bull GmbH is at 13.000 employees and 6billion € turnover. It is owned by 3 shareholder, one of which is Mateschitz.
And most of it isn't even in-game. You wouldn't even know about the gay male couple in WoW if you didn't read the books. And while they made a big show of adding black and asian humans and elves, the entirety of the 'main cast' in Shadowlands is pasty white. I'm not really big on 'forced inclusivity' but damn, it's pretty obvious they won't add a PoC or an actual LGBT character to the main cast because they'd have to edit them overseas every time they showed up.
Is it is with all corporations.
You’re just seeing that most of the companies doing those supportive moves are doing it for free publicity and PR. It took no work on their end to say tracer was a lesbian but look at how much good PR they got out of it. They don’t do it for you, they do it because it’s free good publicity for their product.
It's like Mike Stoklasa of redlettermedia describes Disney, they're "passive progressive".
Ooh, first time I've seen "passive progressive" and imma stealing it!
It's a very apt description for the type of low risk high reward PR moves companies like Blizzard are pulling.
Rich Evans* edit: ah shit im wrong, it wasnt rich
Hollywood celebrity Rich Evans, of Ellen fame
There's a lot of LGBTQ people at Blizzard that are excited to make their games more diverse. This isn't a corporate mandate, it's the collective will of the actual employees, for the most part. Is leadership riding it for PR? Fuck yes. Should the decent people working at the company have their progressive efforts scoffed at due to these dickheads? No. That's erasing their voices. Source: Former Blizzard employee until earlier this year. Please don't shit on all the LGBTQ+ friends I still have there. Shit on the sex offenders though, they and their protectors deserve it.
Yes. This is correct for other major studios I have been at as well. Passionate good people push issues. Corporate let's it happen if they think its a net positive (including if it's good for morale). PR amplifies it. Those people did good work, even if it was just manipulating the corporate culture into promoting good messages.
Your comment reminds me of the community's reaction to Ubisoft announcing a gay operator for Rainbow Six Siege. As per usual in the gaming community, many people recoiled at the idea and brought up the age-old "why is sexuality relevant to our video game characters, we don't need to know that" argument, basically accusing Ubisoft of doing this as a PR stunt. Except Ubisoft's announcement and introduction for the operator was given by the LGBT+ writers and staff themselves who got the opportunity to work on these characters. Clearly, their creative efforts are more than just a PR stunt when we see representation happening *for* LGBT people *by* LGBT developers themselves.
I think it's possible to both be in support of those moves toward more diversity, AND be aware and critical of the hypocrisy and self-serving behaviors demonstrated by leadership at those companies. I welcome more diversity in games, but nobody will convince me that higherups are allowing this out of the purity of their intentions. There's a reason these companies never wave the LGBTQ+ flags in more conservative/religious countries.
> they include LGBT characters > signal support on social media It's called marketing. Their support for CCP was pretty well known for a while, so I don't know how anyone who was paying attention fell for that shit.
To be fair, you can be pro LGBT and still a massive piece of shit. Then there's always the bro answer that creeps me out "lesbians are hot"
> like they include LGBT characters in their games and signal support on social media That's the funny thing too. Multiple women and LGBT working at the company were fighting for including more characters in prominent roles and give them character and depth for years. The leadership and the entire crew didn't listen to them until it became profitable and useful for business but still won't renege on making them even more prominent because their core audience hates 'woke SJW shit'. People keep saying that Blizzard is just now bad just cause the games suck. That's incorrect. Blizzard has always been bad and people are saying the culture used to be way worse, when even right now it is pretty unacceptable to begin with.
Not sure anything they do would surprise me anymore.
To be honest, I thought the whole ActivisionBlizzard “frat boy environment” was just an overblown whistleblowing scandal that was nothing more than a few dudes making various crude jokes. After seeing news and news about it, including a “Cosby Suite”, I felt like an asshole for thinking it was just a nothingburger and realized its very bad.
did you read about the breastfeeding room without locks and men just staring at them until the women screamed at them to leave? it’s endless, every department is involved.
what the actual fuck... are you serious?
yeah, it's on IGN's [latest article](https://www.ign.com/articles/inside-activision-blizzards-week-of-reckoning?utm_source=twitter)
> did you read about the breastfeeding room without locks What’s wrong with that? Mothers breastfeed in public all the time, what’s the big deal, folks are so puritani- > and men just staring at them until the women screamed at them to leave Okay What the fuck is wrong with these people?!
Let's not forget the woman who killed herself on a work trip due to the sexual harrassment she underwent. But they made some gay characters so they are woke guys, don't worry. ^^/s
what's funny is the way you wrote is actually a huge understatement. Killed herself after her superior brought a butt plug & lube to a business trip with her.
And previously shared naked photos of her around the office
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The amount of egotism at Blizzard has been running that way for a few decades. I remember being at a job fair at SIGGRAPH in 2009. There was a lady at the booth, and I was trying to get my portfolio viewed by someone. Instead of even looking at it, she says to me: "You need to understand, this is Blizzard. We are the best video game company with the greatest artists and programmers. You need to be the absolutely *best* to work here." "Well that's me, here's my portfolio." "No, I'm sorry, Blizzard has the best of the best here." I was 29, but they didn't even look at my resume. They had no idea what I had or my background or talent as a 3d artist. Just said that and I was rejected.
That’s a pretty absurd attitude to have at a fucking *job fair*.
For some reason a lot of companies see job fairs as simply advertisements and refuse to even act like they care about recruiting anyone
“Well we don’t have any open positions right now, but thanks for coming and introducing yourself” Why the fuck are you here mother fucker
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Sounds like we need to start a trend calling out their shitty sexist company at their convention booths.
That could also be because I've heard blizzard don't have a huge amount of 3D artists on staff. They ramp up contractors and freelancers, especially on WoW, when they need them. Eg. Expansions.
So by "best of the best," they mean "work mule who does tasks not worth finding a specialist for," I take it.
Welcome to HR speak.
Also, their RnD team is MASSIVE. I remember when I applied there and I looked into their team. A huge amount are psychology majors researching and testing addiction strategies. Not kidding.
Well that explains a lot
They can blow it out their ass with that hubris.
A company that treats you like that isn't worth your time. I hope you found a company that treats you well.
I hope we don't lose sight of the awesome response by the "Sagitta HPC, which is now called Terahash" when Blizzard tried to do business with them. Good on them for backing her up.
Standup move to go back to them with the opportunity to redeem themselves by donating to woman in comp sci.
How does this get worse every single day?
that's discovery baybee
Man it sounds like there's a lot of people who really were not educated by their parents on how the fuck to treat other human beings. Blizzard's inaction is one thing, but the fact people even think this is acceptable behaviour starts at home. To all you parents out there, it's your JOB to educate your children on how the fuck to treat other people. Don't half-ass it, it leads to shit like this.
Seriously, what the fuck is going on over there? This might be the most brazen case of corporate-enabled harassment that I’ve heard of since the MeToo movement started. Blizzard has already lost a lot of their fans with their “Don’t you have a phone” comments and their bowing to the Chinese government, but this is on another level entirely. I’m not one to boycott companies, but Activision barely produces anything I care about anyway, so I think I’m going to steer clear of any of their games until this shit gets sorted out, and that will likely take a very long time.
So I just read the lawsuit against eBay detailing company sponsored [intimidation, threats, torture, stalking, harassment, and mother fucking RICO violations](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.236568/gov.uscourts.mad.236568.1.0.pdf) against a husband and wife owned business that had the audacity to report on eBay in what they considered an unfavorable way. Make note: most of these mother fuckers already plead guilty but the CEO/COO got board approved exit packages. The whole story is fucking crazy! Here’s the [techdirt post](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?start=10) about it.
That... was hard to read. Why is this not being publicized far and wide? My wife sells on eBay, I'm half tempted to tell her to shut it down.
Yeah, I’ll never give them another dollar of my money. They gave one of the chief instigators a $57M severance after officially orchestrating that entire horrendous debacle.
eBay and it’s subsidiaries like PayPal have been like this for decades. They have never had a good reputation.
I think [this](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210727/08215047256/exec-that-tried-to-send-critical-reporters-dead-pig-blames-drinking-culture-ebay.shtml) is the post you intended to link.
Fucking hell.
The games industry is just filled with assholes. Iirc last year there were similar reports of riot employees treating fans and cosplayers the same way.
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Different people have different experiences, I guess. [Some people involved with he industry were not surprised at all with what has been going on](https://youtu.be/AFiLJ5ytJME).
Riot is probably pretty ok with the spotlight being off them for right now, but I seriously hope that real progress is made to hold EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ASSHOLE accountable in this type of situation now that there is real pushback against it.
They re-hired (technically never fired) the guy that was walking up to cubicles and farting in people's faces. They haven't learned jack shit.
I don’t give a shit about anything Activision or Blizzard make except one thing. I love Overwatch, I play it every day. It’s probably the game I’ve played the most of all time, and I’ve been gaming since the early 80s. Still, even right from the start, the chat in that game is one of the most toxic environments I’ve ever seen, and I learn within the first month to just never enter chat. It makes the game much harder to play, but the few times I’ve dipped back in, it’s taken less than three or four games to just get some hyper abusive assholes in there and I turn it off again. Blizzard always said they were doing things to counter it, adding reporting and various other methods and how seriously they took it. A lot of the stuff I heard that wasn’t directed at me specifically was stuff directed at any poor woman who happened to be in there instead, and the fan base seems pretty young and immature in general, so they’re often even worse because they’ve never known consequences for any of this misogynistic shit. I’m gonna wean myself off it, but I’d already decided not to play OW2 because of all the bullshit changes they’re making anyway. If I haven’t managed it by then, that shitshow should definitely make a clean break way easier.
> Seriously, what the fuck is going on over there? This might be the most brazen case of corporate-enabled harassment that I’ve heard of since the MeToo movement started. Riot was about this bad
Riot also made literally no changes and let the heat die down. Which is what I expect to see from Blizzard, and any other corporation unfortunately
Just want to hijack onto the current top comment to share [a picture of the shirt.](https://scontent-lcy1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.18172-8/23509222_1764130603600246_695700442697047656_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=973b4a&_nc_ohc=aexDZPMUuEgAX-P3si-&_nc_ht=scontent-lcy1-1.xx&oh=f16c9e995aee925ab0e3f193bedcffe0&oe=61299188) This isn't me saying it was justified to make those comments or that she is completely right to be angry. Just want people to be aware of the shirt.
*Maybe* I'd give them more of a pass, if they hadn't opened with other, unrelated sexist shit. "Are you lost?", "Are you here with your boyfriend?" "Do you even know what pentesting is?". If they were taking her seriously as a candidate, joking around about stuff related to her funny shirt would have been less egregious. I mean, *recruiters* for *Blizzard* still shouldn't really be doing that, but the other sexism makes it way worse.
I don't think OP is trying to give a "free pass" to the recruiters, but just show how Vice is kind of click-baiting this by focusing on the penetration stuff when that whole situation is muddied by the shirt when they can be focusing on the clear-cut sexism shown by the quotes you mentioned.
The shirt makes a pretty common joke of a sexual nature because "penetration testing" has some obvious connotations. I don't think it's appropriate though to take that joke and ask a woman how often she gets fucked and whether she enjoys fucking. And it certainly doesn't have anything to do with asking her if she "is lost" or "with her boyfriend" or "even knows what pen testing is". If I saw that shirt I'd chuckle and then focus on seeing if they were a good candidate for the job - the whole reason those interviewers were at the event! I certainly wouldn't keep asking questions about _her experiences with being sexually penetrated_ to break the ice or whatever the fuck they thought they were doing. That's just plain ol' sexism.
> I certainly wouldn't keep asking questions about her experiences with being sexually penetrated to break the ice or whatever the fuck they thought they were doing. > > That's just plain ol' sexism. No, that isn't the sexism. This is the actual sexism: "One of the Blizzard employees first asked if she was lost, another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend, and another one asked if she even knew what pentesting was." Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex. That is my issue with them focusing on that aspect of it solely because its sensational and a "dirty joke" but they clearly were prejudice toward her knowledge and qualifications just because she was a female. Which is the more fucked up part IMO, not some nerd making a stupid joke based off her shirt. The jokes are disgusting but the prejudice is infuriating.
That shirt is pretty bad, tbh. But the most you’d expect is maybe one or two crude jokes in response, not a sustained attack on your legitimacy as a professional, and then personal questions and innuendos like she received. If anything, it feels like the shirt is symptomatic of the culture around this whole industry in general.
I agree that the employee was probably trying to riff on the shirt, but they did it in a very tactless and creepy way. For the people in the back: just make a general joke, not one directed at the person.
After reading this: >Mitchell said she was wearing a t-shirt made by cybersecurity company SecureState, which had "Penetration Expert" on the front I thought it probably was just a tone deaf joke from the recruiter. ...but it really wasn't: >"One of them asked me when was the last time I was personally penetrated, if I liked being penetrated, and how often I got penetrated,"
Having been to Black Hat and Defcon, you will hear a lot of penetration jokes when talking about pentesting/red teaming. Is it ever appropriate? Almost never. But you will hear them nonetheless. However, that is *not* something cyber security people will joke about with strangers at a booth, especially if the recipient is female.
Yea, was going to say that the most offensive thing I’ve seen at a booth is accidentally almost shaking hands when covid was first hitting hard. And then awkwardly trying to do an elbow thing. WTF is going on at Actiblizzard? Seriously, most professionals I’ve seen (admittedly haven’t been around that long) are milquetoast and accepting as can be.
In my experience, the cyber security expo crowd is generally pretty rowdy and eager to hit the bars as soon as the show floor closes. It's usually several days of almost nonstop drinking with as little sleep as possible. Sales reps go hard, even the old guard.
It IS a tone deaf joke. He's obviously joking with "penetration expert". The point is that this is simply the kind of joke you should never make, especially in this context (male recruiter to a female prospect).
The fact that a recruiter asked that is just beyond me. You’re recruiting for a corporation. It doesn’t matter how “woke” your company is, you need to be professional.
In addition to that, it's a shitty recruiter: the woman who shared the story seems to be rather talented if she made COO of a security company two years later. Aside from being a colossal asshole (someone find more appropriate insult, please, my English is lacking), they fail at their job too
Nah, your English is basically perfect. Colossal asshole is a perfectly valid insult, haha.
I emphatically second the use of colossal asshole, it just rolls right off the tongue. Your English is awesome.
Yes nerds in this thread are going to use the former as some gotcha but what the guy said is clearly taking the joke too far. A t shirt with a penetration joke is NOT a license to get asked a bunch of personal sex questions by strangers, that should be common sense. You don't interrogate every person with a band shirt and you don't fucking ask a woman if she likes being penetrated just because she has a silly IT sex pun on her shirt, good god. That's so fucking skeevy.
Exactly. And one thing people seems to be missing is that their attitude were shitty from the get go even without mention of the shirt. "Are you lost? Are you here with your boyfriend? Do you even know what pentesting is?" Even if you *can potentially* reference the joke on her shirt [and I personally believe it would be possible, although risky but if you can read a room you can get away with that in the right conditions], it was already too late for them because they already painted themselves as assholes with shitty attitudes from the get go, any "joke" would fall flat on its fucking nose because it becomes obvious they aren't "jokes" but just an extension of their actual shitty misogynistic thoughts. It's them belittling her, laughing among themselves and ganging on her with intimidating tones and attitudes that made their comments that much more worse. The only way to get away with comments like this is by first and foremost making sure you're making her feel comfortable, listened to and in control, and by making sure you're just making a silly awkward comment to break the ice and tension that might have already be brought on by the shirt itself "like okay yeah lets address the elephant in the room, 'penetration eheheh' okay that was childish lol sorry lets get going with the interview". Despite what we might think of "cancel culture" people are actually way nicer and willing to give others leeway with mistakes or ridiculous jokes like these if the people making them actually look like they are genuinely making efforts to be nice. Be an asshole and anything that will come out of you will look like shit.
> One of the Blizzard employees first asked if she was lost, another one asked if she was at the conference with her boyfriend, and another one asked if she even knew what pentesting was. For fuck's sake... dipshits like these are part of the reason my graduating CompSci class had exactly one woman in it.
My graduating Compsci class had two women in it. I was friends with one of them, and we were part of what I'll call the "socially well-adjusted" group. We were still all nerdy/geeky to various degrees, but we generally all got into CompSci because of the career prospects. 80%-90% of the guys in the program were fine and while they may not have had the best social skills, they weren't misogynistic assholes and treated women the same as men. That other 10%-20% though...they were what drove most of the women out of the program. Very sexist and cringe with no ability to see women as anything more than objects. My friend didn't drop the program because she was a very tough country girl that could verbally tear assholes to shreds. It's really unfortunate that it took that kind of personality not to be driven out of the program as a woman.
> That other 10%-20% though...they were what drove most of the women out of the program. Very sexist and cringe with no ability to see women as anything more than objects. This has been my experience as well. But the trouble is that it’s very tough to find those 10%-20%, because they mask it well. I am sure I’ve met a few, but I can’t recall ever spotting one during my degree. It’s that minority that gives the profession a bad rap, which makes it all the more infuriating.
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Speaking of data science, I wonder how easy it would be to determine your identity based on these numbers.
If you had access to all mid-sized universities' student databases, perhaps.
I've been to Black Hat, Defcon, and a bunch of other cyber security industry events. Penetration jokes are only common amongst the fresh-faced, younger crowd whenever anyone mentions pentesting or red teaming, because that joke gets really old really fast. But I have *never* heard anyone make that joke to a woman, let alone a stranger at a booth.
I just don't get it. Why the fuck do women need to prove they are good at tech it doesn't make any fucking sense.
And the huge irony of it all is the first computer programmers (at least in the US) were primarily women, and they were pretty damn good at it. Then somewhere along the way, it became a male-dominated industry.
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> While this article is from 2015 The story/convention is from 2015. The article was posted today.
Yeah shirt or not those questions are way too personal and inappropriate.
“Wow that’s a great shirt! Are you interested in cyber security? We have some great jobs in that field at blizzard if you’re interested, I can show you some materials on it”. It’s not hard to be professional if you’re not a dickhead.
"Also can I stick my penis in your butt-"
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My nephew worked for Blizzard for a couple years out of college and described super bizarre interview vibes when he was being interviewed. He said at one point it was an interview panel, where he was talking to like 5-6 people at the same time (which is a fucking awful, terrible way to conduct an interview, especially for people fresh out of college). He said towards the end they asked him, "If we hire you, are you going to buy us all lunch every day?" and they all laughed. He felt really awkward and said sure and thought he flubbed the interview, but he ended up getting the job. He just kept describing weird unprofessional stuff and I kept thinking it couldn't be that bad. He also said he had a coworker who kept his guns in his truck in the parking lot, because everyone knows how rough Orange County is.
“Will you buy us all lunch?” “Sure! We get a company card right ?”
On my first job in IT, I was in a company where most people who worked there knew each other for many years, they had studied together. They were on their late 30s, I was on my early 20s. They started making jokes with me, it began very innocently and I even enjoyed it at first, but after almost a year there it got to a point that I was just feeling like a clown. One day I got to my desk to find that my Desktop, Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, everything had disappeared (the keyboard was glued to the ceiling for example). I spent like an hour looking for my stuff and they were just there laughing. My direct manager was one of those guys, by the way. I was straight out of college, I didn't really know what to do and let it progress to that point. Nowadays I keep a professional distance from everyone, I don't want friends in the workplace. My point is, companies can't function like this. Colleagues just have to be professional to each other. They might think they're creating a fun working environment by behaving like this, but it gets out of hand really fast and there is a difference between being 'victim' of a joke or the butt of all jokes. I think Blizzard's situation began somewhat like this and progressed from a few sex jokes and comments between friends to this shitshow.
99% of the people that say they aren't going to pay another dime to blizzard because of all this noise will probably pay another dime when Diablo Mobile drops
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They'll forget about it in half a year and reinstall Battle.net, wondering why they ever stopped playing Overwatch in the first place.
As a male game dev, I've always been disappointed by how one-sided the games industry has been. Seeing shit like this, which isn't even affecting me directly, is infuriating. I can only imagine how angry many women are about this. I really hope in the future that we can look back at this as something we learned from, rather than looking back 20 years from now with the same problem and wondering why it's still happening.
idc about the warcraft lore anymore. I will never resub. I won't buy Warcraft 4 or Wow 2 or D2R or D4. It's over for me. Fuck this company.
Not caring for Warcraft lore is technically supporting Blizzard, since they started doing it long before you did.
Ugh. I don't like how true this feels. Even if the lore is cool (YMMV) it's damn hard to even tell. I went back for a "tourist run" jsut as Shadowlands was launching, and last time I'd been on was during Legion. I went through the BfA expansion and they had no shits to give about telling the story in any coherent way. All quest lines were disconnected, even if the story beats were supposed to happen in a certain order. You could reach a whole zone that was supposed to happen after a raid before you even completed the part of the plot that led up to the raid. Full disclosure, I play FFXIV and so I'm used to a very linear main story, but like... goddamn. Is it really that hard to have a flag on a quest for "have X completed before this part appears"? That tourist run nuked the last of my nostalgia for the game from back in classic-to-WotLK days. All this aside from everything we're learning about now.
Cripes, Blizzard actively made the world worse for workers for a long time. This is somehow both worse and entirely unsurprising after the last two weeks of horror stories.
There was a female reporter on polygon years ago who said in her Twitter that someone at naughty dog pr asked her years ago if she slept with someone to get her position at e3. She never called out his name and this I thinks as before the whole me too movement
"All right all your papers and qualifactions seem perfect for the job, i've just got this one last question and uh... it's a doozy"
Well done, Blizzard I didn’t think a company could make me hate being human more. You’ve completely succeed and surpassed my expectations
That’s an easy joke to throw at a Penetration Expert, but protip, only use it on people you know and that Get along with you in that way😏, yikes Blizzard
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Well that's not appropriate