Before you read on let me make one thing clear, “man is a sick breed” makes no distinction between sexes. Man in this context refers to humans.
The older I get the more convinced I am that humans are a sick breed, a degenerated form of life that at some point in the past branched-off from (other) animals and deteriorated ever since. It was only after I started writing this post that it occurred to me that I had blogged about this before.
If I wanted to explain my believe convincingly by examples I’d probably have to add one example per day over the course of several weeks or months. I won’t do that even though there’s an abundance of situations every day that remind me just how far off course we’ve wandered. Two samples will have to do for now.
The IT industry is fucked
It was’t me who said the IT be fucked, it was Jess Frazelle in a recent blog post which I’m quoting from here.
Ever since I started speaking at conferences and contributing to open source projects I have been endlessly harassed. I’ve gotten hundreds of private messages on IRC and emails about sex, rape, and death threats. People emailing me saying they jerked off to my conference talk video (you’re welcome btw) is mild in comparison to sending photoshopped pictures of me covered in blood.
And why is she being harassed? Because speaks about ‘Women in Tech’ – or the lack thereof. It’s a subject that’s been bothering me for quite some time. It’s not just that I’m an avid proponent of gender equality it’s also that working in mixed-gender teams is a lot more fun. Besides, I think that just like with any male dominated industry an influx of women would be nothing but positiv for the overall performance of the industry. There are lots of amazing women in IT history!
Jess’ article sparked heated discussions on Hacker News and in the bloggosphere. Well done, Jess!
(Lack of) ‘Women in Tech’ is a subject I first witnessed being discussed at-large at Devoxx 2011 when Tim Bray picked it up. It lead to talks and panel discussions in which Trisha Gee spoke passionately about the cause. She also blogged about it on several occasions.
Cheap Asian laborers have to clean up social media
A 2014-10 Wired article shone a light on how (mostly American) social media companies outsource content moderation to Asia. Tens of thousands of mostly young men and women flag and remove content posted by human scum.
So companies like Facebook and Twitter rely on an army of workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us. And there are legions of them—a vast, invisible pool of human labor.
I can’t begin to image what gruesome pile of crap those poor moderators are exposed to day after day. Image what it does to your mind and soul if need to look at bestiality with children and animals, brutal street fights, animal torture, suicide bombings, decapitations, and horrific traffic accidents for 8+h a day. Sure, most moderators quit after a few months at most but the pictures in their head probably won’t ever fade out completely.
Constant exposure to videos like this has turned some of Maria’s coworkers intensely paranoid. Every day they see proof of the infinite variety of human depravity. They begin to suspect the worst of people they meet in real life, wondering what secrets their hard drives might hold.
See what I mean when I claim that man is a sick breed?