I had no idea at all that I was de facto "under his protection" or in some sense being vouched for merely because he spoke to me regularly until he stopped speaking to me. I have been behind the eight ball on Hacker News ever since, though my only crime is that some influential man finds me attractive and his only crime is he doesn't want anyone to know that.I appear to be the only
He never took me seriously. Here is him acting like an awkward sixteen year old who has no idea how to talk to a girl and and trying to BE ENCOURAGING or SOME STUPID SHIT:
...you should write a book about what you're going through, or at a minimum a very well documented website...It's CRINGE because I had a health site at the time AND the link to it was listed in my profile and he clearly didn't bother to look at my profile before attempting to be CHARMING or some shit. I had a terrible, terrible, PLEASE-KILL-ME-NOW headache that day, couldn't for the life of me figure out how to POLITELY point out his error without cutting my own throat what with it being an overwhelmingly male forum, me being female and he was already one of the top three guys on the leaderboard at the time.
Being "rude" to him publicly would be like visiting a foreign nation and spitting in the face of the king. NOT EXACTLY how you win friends and influence people, so I said NOTHING as the least worst option I could come up with.
So, on the one hand, he let me stay in his social circle and didn't run me off and on the other hand his silence put a chill in the air around me. He wasn't vouching for me. He wasn't explaining to people why he stopped speaking to me. Etc. So I was allowed to EXIST in his presence but I was clear it also meant no doors were opening for me professionally because of how he treated me.
I happened to KNOW this particular man really liked me -- it's a long story, one I have worked to keep OFF the internet as much as possible while trying to navigate this bullshit -- and couldn't prove it and couldn't seem to really do anything about it. I was clear that publicly embarassing him would be political suicide, picking fights with him would be political suicide, making accusations I couldn't back up would be political suicide...etc ad nauseum.
One thing I did do to manage this mess is I wrote a series of posts about it and VOUCHED for his good character and swore he was doing nothing wrong. There was NO affair or anything like that.
At one point, I wrote a piece linking out to multiple other pieces summing up the whole crazymaking MESS and had the link to that in my HN profile for some weeks. After it had a few hundred page views, my experience of HN was less shitty and I removed the link from my profile and eventually removed all those posts from public view because I do NOT want to be known to the world as "the piece of ass Jacques Mattheij never sealed the deal with but LONGED FOR, poor baby."
This is not the claim to fame that I desire.
There is no telling how many OTHER MEN crushed on me and were even LESS NICE about it, possibly talking trash behind my back via email, private message, whatever.
I KNOW for a fact people have talked trash about me "behind my back," including Naomi Wu, and some jackass on lobste.rs who private messaged my would-be cofounder, Sean, who is the person who gave me an invite to the site.
Sean is the age of my children and one day asked some question on Hacker News and I emailed him to say "I remember seeing BLAH in a book whose title I can't recall and thought you might like to know." I didn't post it publicly because I have been on HN long enough to know they are like rabid wolves if you can't cite your fucking sources and it wasn't anything important.
Sean was willing to talk to me, something most men are NOT, and the start of this relationship was super innocent and he didn't seem to be hitting on me. Then one day he cried on my shoulder and it turned out he had personal problems.
I chose to act like a FRIEND and we talked for a bit more. I ALSO told him up front I would NOT be the other woman, so when he began having THE FEELS because I was being SO NICE, I sent him packing.
Some time later, we tried to resume our friendship. At some point I told him he was wasting my time and I was willing to talk to him IF he had SOMETHING to actually talk ABOUT and he was like "I have this project I would like to start..."
He wanted to create an HN clone and I was like "OK. DO THAT. You can email me again WHEN you have an MVP for me to critique."
He's smart and talented and was having trouble staying focused, so this helped him get shit done and ...I frankly don't recall how this all went, but somewhere in there I agreed to be a moderator and then things went sideways between us again, but BRIEFLY we talked about monetizing it and splitting the proceeds.
So he invited me to lobste.rs and then some ASSHOLE private messaged him who knew me from HN and was like "WHY did you invite HER???" and he was like "She's SMART...etc"
And the moderator on lobste.rs was a butt to me and in the conversation linked to in my HN comment some fucking IDIOT was like "Are you FAMILIAR with HN and Reddit?" and I REFRAINED from saying "YES, are YOU? I'm probably the highest ranked woman on HN and you don't recognize me, so how fucking FAMILIAR with it ARE YOU???" and also NO ONE else there pointed out his error even though I recognized HN user names in the discussion.
So I concluded it was a misogynistic cesspit and stopped showing up. It is exactly what the jackass moderator shaped it into -- a space WORSE than HN about sexist bullshit and HN was 98 percent male when I originally joined.
I am on track to DIE OF POVERTY. I used to say on HN stuff like "If I can't do X..." and some jackass would act like I was being egomaniacal and sometimes someone would point out "I think her point is she's the highest ranked woman here and can't open doors, so who can?"
That's very, very, very handwavy paraphrasing.
Anyway, if you are a woman and feel like doors just DO NOT OPEN FOR YOU, the internet is worse than meatspace about being a place where ONE ASSHOLE'S CRUSH and vindictiveness can follow you everywhere you go and he can be talking trash about you to people you have no idea he talks to privately.
If you are a guy and have ANY aspirations to NOT BEING A SEXIST DOUCHEBAG: Maybe stop and wonder if some ASSHOLE you are talking to who is dragging some woman perhaps has his nuts caught in the slamming door and TRY to judge women on THEIR behavior and accomplishments, and consider discounting trash talk by desperate for a date losers and the like.