[vonklaus]

I know you are trolling, but people legitimately are asking this question so I will respond.

>I can't even get a straight answer as to why they're upset. >they're >they

Reddit is 160 million people because it is a huge online community. Calling them children and referring to them as a contiguous unit of alike individuals is laughable. So there isn't a straight answer why some subset of 160 million people are angry but a lot of them are for various reasons.

>I have no need to dislike Ellen or feel slighted by the woman being fired

Brendan Eich was way more qualified to run Mozilla than Pao is to run reddit. He was really fucking good at his job and is one of the smartest engineers in tech. He couldn't effectively do his job and had to resign. It doesn't matter if the backlash was fair, it was impacting the company negatively. Pao is not the right person to run reddit, hasn't made great decisions, is followed by personal scandal and is generally detested by the community(which is reddits product). She has to step down whether you feel slighted about it or not.

[nahiluhmot]

What makes you think parent is trolling?

[vonklaus]

Calling people emotional children and upset kids is just flame inducing. Maybe that person wasn't actually trolling but it was obvious crafted to illicit an angry response.

[dredmorbius]

Even where trolling is highly probable, "assume good faith" is generally a better tactic.

[dschulz]

*elicit

[psychometry]

Don't you think you're being a bit premature in your assessment of Pao? She's an interim CEO who's been on the job mere months. Shutting down the subreddits she did needed to happen in order for reddit to be viable long-term. This latest issue is just about disaffected male teenagers looking for a reason to get mad at the new female CEO. It's so transparent and so pathetic.

[oldmanjay]

I'm curious about something - do you feel like the obvious bigotry in your statement is justified? It's almost entirely unlikely that you have any real demographic information about the people you are slagging, never mind any actual knowledge of people's reasoning, so from my POV, your statement is borne of pure prejudice. Care to convince me otherwise?

[psychometry]

You have no idea what bigotry is. It's possible to criticize the actions of a group of people without being prejudiced and my assessment is based on actual posts and comments that I've read over the past week. Seeing what kinds of content is upvoted gives you a sense of the overall sentiment and it's hard to rationalize the vitriol of the user base in response to this particular event.

Also, reddit's age and gender demographics are not hard to find: http://thepowertoprovoke.com/the-blog/2014/02/reddit-demogra...

[mucker]

I actually think he has a much firmer idea of what bigotry is than you do. I'm actually astounded that you would flaunt your ignorance of the word.

[oldmanjay]

Interesting opening sentence in your reply. I didn't bother reading past it since starting with an insult like that is as good an excuse to ignore your thoughts as I need. Thanks for making it easy!

[dang]

Please, both of you and everyone else, follow the HN guidelines when commenting on this site. That means replying civilly and substantively, or not at all. This is the rule here, irrespective of how wrong or provocative another user may be.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[vonklaus]

> This latest issue is just about disaffected male teenagers looking for a reason to get mad at the new female CEO

> It's so transparent and so pathetic.

I just don't find it obvious that it is because she is a woman. I also didn't realize it was only socially mal-adjusted male teenagers who are calling for her ouster. 200K people signed the petition to find a new CEO. Why do you think this is just angsty women hating teenagers?

[axlprose]

It's also not "obvious" due to the fact that this whole uprising started with the firing of a female employee. If this demographic of over 160 million users is in fact made up of largely "women hating teenagers", why would they get so riled up and defend a woman that lost her job? It just doesn't add up.

What's obvious here, is people trying really hard to frame almost every bit of internet drama possible into some kind of gender war. It's just disingenuous and disgusting.

[evan_]

You mean this petition:

https://www.change.org/p/ellen-k-pao-step-down-as-ceo-of-red...

Which doesn't list any actual specific grievances, but does mention the completely irrelevant gender discrimination lawsuit she was involved with? The one that supporters are signing with openly misogynistic and racist slogans and nicknames? The one that's full of duplicate signatures and obviously fake names? That's the petition you're talking about?

[psychometry]

Let's not forget the genius of not wanting someone who will "sue her way to the top". To the top of what...reddit? She's already the CEO. Whoever wrote that pretty much explicitly dislikes her for the gender discrimination lawsuit and has little to say about her job performance.

Really, it's right out of the men's rights playbook: Pretend everyone always gets by on merit alone and anyone disputing that fantasy must be trying to cheat their way through life.

[vonklaus]

Why do you think this is some sexist conspiracy? She lost the lawsuit against KPCB, she tried to blackmail them by threatening appeal and it does speak to her job performance. She was dismissed because she didn't have:

“the ability to lead others, build consensus and be a team player.”[0]

Many people seem to cling to the trope that women are being oppressed and intentionally singled out. This isn't one of those cases. Why do you think it is?

[0]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/magazine/whats-really-at-s...

[nailer]

According to the trial, Pao slept with a married colleague and then tried using it as leverage for the next few years. It's ugly but certainly a relevant aspect of Pao's character.

[evan_]

Strange, I've never heard anyone make that claim before nor can I find it in any write ups of the case.

That she slept with a married man is public record but "used it for leverage" doesn't seem to have been part of the testimony. I'm afraid you may have been duped by a person with an agenda to make Pao look bad.