[racket] [plt-edu] the most functional man in the world

Matthias,

It is probably worth less than you suppose.

Unfortunately, women don't always act as good barometers of "skeaziness".

When a woman is asked whether something is sexist or not the implicit question is more like:

"Are you going to be one of those irritating women who are always whining about sexism or are you going to be a 'good sport' so that we go on liking you?"

That question is not identical to:

"Is this sexist or not?"

and is likely not to get the same distribution of answers from women.

I don't put such a high value on being liked as most people --- but I don't actually enjoy finding myself in a roomful of hostile people,
especially ones I've been working with pleasantly up until two minutes or so ago.
I have certainly felt the pressure to go along; I'm surely actually sociable people feel it a lot more.
And if you do speak up every time that it's warranted you'll just turn into Noam Chomsky and never get to your real work, an important point of Paul Graham's.

In short, that various people on the list noticed that there was something off about the "he dates " part of the video, i.e., 
1) it's not actually funny, unless you work really hard, and then it's just funny in a sad kind of way
2) it's not actually in the spirit of the Dos Equis ads
3) it comes across as significantly more sexist than the Dos Equis ads do themselves
is a _strong_ indicator that others will. And that your female students didn't say anything means surprisingly little.

Mark Engelberg says that being designed by students the ad is more likely to appeal to students, who after all are the ones being advertised to. The implication
seems to be that the opinion of the people on the list, who are mostly not students, is hardly relevant. If this were a question merely of effectiveness that might be the case.
But it isn't. The recent fracas about the Virgin Mobile ads makes that point pretty clear. Veiled jokes about rape may have been just right for the potential 
buyers of Virgin Mobile services (I wouldn't know), but the audience for those ads is much larger than the potential buyers.

The more successful "Realm of Racket" is, and of course we all hope for its success, the more eyes will happen upon the video and the more likely the video is to get its 15 minutes of (in)fame, which is hardly desirable.

- mulhern




On Dec 21, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:

> 
> Thank you all for your feedback. 
> 
> FWIW three of the eight student authors are girls, 
> and all of them participated in every step of the 
> creation of the video, from the very inception, the
> story writing, and the production process. None of 
> them had any objections; to the contrary, they found
> it hilarious and fitting with the student culture. 
> [Naturally a girl had to explain to me what the meme
> was. No TV ads in my neck of the woods.] 
> 
> I know y'all are eagerly awaiting the next 'commercial'
> and it is on its way. 
> 
> Happy Holidays. 
> 
> 
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