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Comment by MyPasswordSucks

8 months ago

It's an ASCII art of a nude woman. So what? It just seems like such a busybody thing to get one's feathers ruffled over.

How about ascii art of a male penis every time you opened your IDE?

The point isn’t what you (MyPasswordSucks) would find objectionable, the point is what the median would find objectionable in a professional setting. Luckily we’ve gotten away from the locker room behavior being the median and now the median is approaching good-manners behavior. This is one of the situations where the Overton window shifting makes us better as a species instead of worse.

  • >makes us better as a species instead of worse.

    IMHO it's made the world worse. We're not sterile robots. To deny us mischievous ASCII art is to deny the very things that make us human. Bring on the IDE penis. Make it widescreen if you like. It's not nearly as offensive as having a censoring big brother overlord telling us what is and isn't acceptable for the workers' enjoyment.

  • As a gay dude, I'd have no problems at all with this out of a garage game developer.

    And any reasonably well adjusted straight male would probably get a good laugh out of the art, same as I would.

    We now live in a world where female colleagues can speak in whispers about how a male colleague is hot/attractive, but male colleagues cannot engage in the same behaviour.

    Trust me, I know. Because of media stereotypes about gays most female colleagues don't have any problem engaging in "girl talk" once they know I'm gay. Like damn I don't care, I'm just a dude.

  • > How about ascii art of a male penis every time you opened your IDE?

    Once again: So what?

    > The point isn’t what you (MyPasswordSucks) would find objectionable, the point is what the median would find objectionable in a professional setting.

    I'm part of this "median" you seem to hold in such high regard. If you try to silence all data points outside your preconceived notion of what the "median" view is, then what you have there isn't a median, but just a few vocal people who happen to be on your side.

  • [flagged]

    • Why would you assume other men want to see that shit either? It's weird, creepy, unprofessional, and weird and creepy. Mostly weird and creepy though. Like are you so lonely and horny that you need to plaster your shit with half-naked women?

      4 replies →

    • Even if you restrict yourself to talking about men, asexual and gay men exist. And honestly, I suspect that such people are more common among developers than among the base population.

      5 replies →

    • >I think everyone can agree women are nicer to look at

      How is this toxic bullshit upvoted on HN. What the actual fuck. No everyone does not agree with your bullshit.

  • > How about ascii art of a male penis every time you opened your IDE

    I already do, it's called VSCode and it definitely operates like a phallus.

It's teenager-ish, and the kind of thing that would make people uncomfortable if they saw it at our own workplaces. We can argue about whether companies 'should' punish people for stuff like this, but I can say for sure that I don't feel like I'm missing out on much here.