Wow, what a bunch of babies. I'm sorry, I just don't see how sending a "mic drop" email could ruin so many lives in just a few hours. It's not like it sent some NSFW gif or random insults or something. Accidentally sent one? Just send a new email to the person with a link to an article about it and say, oops, I got pranked, sorry?
What a thoughtless, jerky attitude. Two seconds of poking around Twitter would have found you many real examples of horrified GMail users dealing with the fallout from this "prank", not just people dealing with a job search and potential employers, but people writing very emotionally charged e-mails, like condolence notices to people on the death of their child.
Which now has a Minion GIF in it.
It is one thing for a prank to do something to the UI of a product, like invert the colors or display Comic Sans. It is quite another when it alters the content of the very messages you are passing.
I was referring mainly to the people quoted in the article, but rest assured, if it changed your font to ComicSans or inverted the colors, countless people would still say their lives have been damaged beyond repair.
As I understand it, the gag was triggering on the normal send button too, at least for some.
How would you know you sent one, or got pranked, if you used the normal send button? I'd be pissed in that scenario if it was work related. Bosses famously often lack senses of humour.
I'm not joking. If you're livelihood is so at risk that you could lose it over a minion gif you have a terrible unhappy life. It was a house of cards ready to fall at any moment anyway. You'd be much better off / happier having to find a new job / wife / whatever else is causing so much pain in the long run.
Speaking from experience of a job triggering a stress induced bout of trigeminal neuralgia that made me want to die. After two weeks of that I quit my job of five years and found a much lower stress one.
It's one thing that you don't understand what it's actually like to live on the edge. Maybe you haven't experienced it. I don't wish for you to experience it.
But it's another frankly repulsive thing for you to act superior and give such awful advice to those people.
Maybe you should experience what it's like. Try and give you a better idea of what it's like to be a few dollars away from being homeless. Have your children removed from your care because you cannot provide from them. Have your entire life thrown away if you lose your job.
Not everyone can just "find a new job". Why don't you come here in Greece and ask the majority of the population why they can't find a job?
Your comments in this thread used way too much inflammatory language and crossed the line into incivility, culminating in accusing people of being sociopathic. Please don't do that. It's no picnic to be around someone bursting with indignation, even when one agrees with them.
The HN guidelines ask you specifically not to call names in comments, whether or not someone else says bad things. You called a lot of names; that's understandable on a subject that evokes strong emotion, but those also are the occasions where the guidelines most apply. Had you followed them and edited those bits out, your comments would have been more persuasive, and also more dignified.
Sorry, you're right. I'm guessing you're talking about my other comment then? I agree it was too strong, but by the time I wanted to edit it it wasn't editable anymore.
I just picked one comment to reply to, but the problem was across all of them. The above one is also too 'strong', to use your word, in a personal way.
I sympathize with the emotion behind it, but when you weaponize it like that and direct it at somebody, you break the bonds of community here—which are so weak to begin with, that protecting them has to be everyone's priority.
I HAVE experienced what it is like. Its insulting that you would make assumptions. If you are living in such a terrible place you really are better off with a fresh start. Speaking from experience. If a minion gif can "ruin your life" it was already a infix able house of cards. I've updated my previous comment with details.
I seriously doubt that you have. You wouldn't be writing nonsense about a "fresh start" or "finding a new job/wife" otherwise. Even steps much more insignificant than those are simply impossible for a vast amount of people on this planet.
No, you quite clearly haven't, and it's insulting for everyone in that position that you would pretend you have.
As for your experience per your edit, I'm sorry you had such a high stress job and it's good to hear you got a better one, but that's not at all the situations I was talking about.
Have you been in a situation where you don't know how to pay the rent, will get kicked out if you don't and have no place to live if you get kicked out?
Have you been in jail for something meaningless and experienced employer after employer declining even having you in an interview because of the red flag?
Have you been part of an economy where the majority of the population cannot find a job because nobody is hiring, because nobody has money left?
If you had a job in any of those situations, you'd be damn glad to have it and you wouldn't be looking for a "fresh start" just because the conditions are not ideal.
> No, you quite clearly haven't, and it's insulting for everyone in that position that you would pretend you have.
You're assuming that someone who differs from you in opinion (not their view of the facts), is stupider than you, less experienced than you, and dishonest. That's not an argument, that's just peer pressure.
edit: and whoever flagged it, I'd love to know what kind of criteria they were using (flagged: not feeling my pain deeply enough?)
I'm not assuming. He edited his post with a story which has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of thing we're dealing with here.
Being in a high stress job and being able to leave it to get a better one is not the same thing as being in a situation where you cannot lose your job lest you risk your children, your home etc.
And even without such an edit, it's ridiculously easy to tell he hasn't been in that situation. If you go around telling people "pah, they just need a fresh start, new job, new wife", you've not been in a situation where you understand this isn't always an option. Good for you, but you live in one hell of a bubble.
Is it really this hard to understand the issue here? How long have we spent collectively explaining very basic functionality of systems to the elderly, to our parents, friends, etc?
There is no way anybody loses his jobs because of this. How hard is it to link one of the million articles about this to whoever you sent that email too? It's not ideal but pretending that it'll have drastic consequences is ridiculous and completely destroy whatever point these people want to make.
This doesn't upset me. This doesn't upset you. This doesn't upset hundreds of thousands of people and as unfunny as this is, I'm sure many are laughing about it.
However, it can upset some people. Some people who would mistakenly click the button because, god forbid, they forgot not to use the internet at all on April 1st, and that mistake would appear in an extremely important conversation.
And that mistake would appear during career discussions. And that mistake would get someone not hired, or fired, or whatever.
You guys want to complain, talk about how they should "look harder", how they should "take responsibility" and "own up to their mistakes", how they should "be happy not to work somewhere people are so uptight"? Have some fucking empathy.
I'd wager the majority of HN is well off, or well off enough that they don't have to worry about the rent or their water bill. But I'd like to see some of the people here struggling to make ends meet. Maybe you won't be so sociopathic about the potential for serious harm.
But you _are_ upset at the _idea_ of people potentially being upset by it. This thread makes you sick. Are you suggesting it's classist to observe the prank as harmless?
I understand where you're coming from, and I understand how someone may have clicked it by accident. I am struggling to empathize with the recipient who would see this, and a follow-up email explaining it was a mistake, and let that affect them.
The prank doesn't upset me. Where did I suggest that the thread doesn't upset me? Damn right the thread upsets me. People are downvoting left and right those that dare to suggest jobs are not a commodity you can just throw away and replace a week later. Not for everyone.
And no, there's no classism at play. It's purely and simply a lack of empathy. A lack of understanding of what it's like to be in a situation where losing your job may cost you your home, your children or even your life.
> I am struggling to empathize with the recipient who would see this
Then don't empathize with the recipient. Plenty of bosses are jerks. But empathize with the sender, who would lose a job they cared about and can't necessarily get a new one like they grow on trees.
Shouldn't you also ask for empathy in people who are upset by it? They seem to have the least empathy of everybody, if they are going to fire somebody over animated GIF.
I am merely pointing out that it's a little unfair, or perhaps absurd, if a person who points out a lack of empathy in other people (people who get upset at those GIFs to the point of hurting someone) gets blamed - by you - for a lack of empathy with their victims.
Unfortunately, people like that probably won't come to HN and leave comment - cool, I just fired someone over it! But they absolutely should get the blame.
