Not just patronizing, but continuation of the shitty, harassing behaviour that got him in trouble. Giving flowers is easily read as a romantic gesture.
Well, to me it's fairly clear that this guy probably has a very misogynistic view of the world in general, and that he genuinely doesn't have the self-awareness to realize how inappropriate and douchey his behavior is (I guess anyone with that sort of behavior doesn't have that self awareness).
The problem is that when "we" call him and out and shame him, he'll play the apology game because he's smart enough to realize that that's what you should do - but his underlying thought patterns and behaviors will remain the same.
So, what do we do/what can be done for people like this, who have lived for several decades with their way of thinking, to actually shift their perspective and make them be respectful towards women/minorities/etc. beyond just mere PR reasons? (or, to state the same problem in different words, how do I make my 70 year old uncle Mitch respect black & gay people "for real"?)
> or, to state the same problem in different words, how do I make my 70 year old uncle Mitch respect black & gay people "for real"?
You can't. General sentiment changes over time as people "age out" of society and those with other beliefs enter the majority. See: Gay marriage tolerance, recreational drug tolerance, etc.
While the content of the e-mail is of course noxious and appalling, what's really awful is the sense of entitlement exuded by this. It isn't just an obnoxious proposition: it's an attempt at coercion. "I won't leave until you sleep with me" isn't usually put so clearly by harrassers, but there you have it.
> Following that story, Curda – who is divorced – yesterday Tweeted that his email had been “hacked”.
Isn't "I've been hacked!" becoming a pretty trite excuse these days for when one is caught in an embarrassing situation involving e-mail, technology, etc.? It almost invariably turns out to be a fairly bald lie. [0]
In particular, the bit about the persistent apologies. From the Reddit link:
He's distanced himself from the situation - his nauseating apology texts are dripping with the clueless narcissism that deeply engrained chauvinism is made of: "I know you said not to contact you anymore but I have to apologize so I can get over this... This has turned out almost the exact opposite as I thought it would [sic] and has caused me inexplainable [sic] discomfort .... I just have to come out and say it, I like you."
Also, some of the stories in the comments had similar elements, like:
This exact thing happened to my current gf after she was raped. She just wanted to bury it and he kept pushing his guilt on her for about a year sporadically begging for forgiveness and for her to help him convince himself it wasn't actually rape.
The initial behavior is bad enough, but the continued demand for interaction and forgiveness is entitled and pathetic.
Incidentally, I'm curious as to why I saw this link on the front page of HN from my phone, but when I jumped on the desktop to comment, I was unable to locate it anywhere on at least the first four pages of HN. Now it seems to be back on the second page.
> Incidentally, I'm curious as to why I saw this link on the front page of HN from my phone, but when I jumped on the desktop to comment, I was unable to locate it anywhere on at least the first four pages of HN. Now it seems to be back on the second page.
Yeah, that's happened to me very consistently over the past few months. I'll see a link on my phone in the first 10 positions, switch to my desktop (where I'm logged in) to comment on it, and it has just disappeared from the front page.
Given the frequency at which I observe this, I suspect the mods do this (maybe programmatically, maybe not) with articles that are likely to be "controversial".
> I suspect the mods do this (maybe programmatically, maybe not) with articles that are likely to be "controversial"
We do this (no need to suspect—it's not a secret) but the greater effect comes from user flagging.
Why do we do this? Because hot controversies automatically get upvotes due to being hot and controversial. If there were no countervailing factor, HN's front page would consist of those, plus celebrity stories, trends of the moment, and the like.
The site's mandate is for stories that are intellectually interesting. That's far from the most powerful kind of interesting, so it needs to be protected from the other kinds.
Moderators doing this is not a perfect solution or even a good one, but it works, and has worked this way for years. We're definitely interested in finding a better solution long-term, though. In the meantime, I think most (though not all) of the users flagging stories are doing so responsibly and with the mandate of the site in mind.
"Hey <initial>. I will not leave <city> without having sex with you. Deal?”
Aw, poor thing, he doesn't even have the mental bandwidth to use different copy for his messages :( Maybe someone can start a company to generate unique sounding sexual harassment messages? I predict a $10M acquisition.
The bigger question is how did he manage to send (1) 2 messages with practically identical content, (2) one via email, another via text, so he probably retyped the second one, (3) using the correct initials for each woman, and (4) without any spelling mistakes, while he was completely drunk (according to his own testimony. Something stinks here.
Yeah, show some promise for fuck's sake. Like Nip Alert, Big Head's app. It gives you the location of a woman with erect nipples. Now that's something people want.
Sad of course, Damaging to Pavel no doubt, but was there any learning? This I don't know. Will this stop Pavel the next time he drinks too much with an attractive entrepreneur? Will it let Gesche simply cut off contact with folks like Pavel in the future without a second thought?
In the ideal outcome people who are making misogynistic and inappropriate comments will get marginalized and their success and influence will fade, while people who are targets are able to shun such people without hesitation experience success and acceptance. And thus purge this sort of behavior from the community.
That will take a while I think.
Given my experience of how long its taken to go from 'business as usual' to today, about 15 - 25 more years.
How patronizing.
[1] http://thenextweb.com/voice/2014/08/20/sexual-harrassment-te...