Designer News
Where the design community meets.
almost 8 years ago from Andrew Wilkinson, Publisher of Designer News
Here is what a reasonable person would do. Send a public or private message to Designer News or Andrew on Twitter, "You guys forgot to add women's sizes on your t-shirts." The response would be, "Oh wow! Dumb mistake! We'll fix it right away!"
Instead, some people get overdramatic. But hey, acting like children seems to be in vogue these days.
I don't agree. There are huge issues with 'call out culture', but in this case the good of a (very benign!) public shaming has far outweighed the bad. This is a community of designers, many of whom will be professionally responsible for making similar kinds of decisions for their startups or organisations in the future. Playing this out in public highlights that these kinds of subtly sexist decisions signal who is and isn't welcome as a customer or member of a community – which, I hope, will result in less of these kinds of mistakes in the future.
This is a design community, where most members share the ethos that the 'little big details' matter. Why are some little big details worth discussing, but others are deemed ridiculous?
but in this case the good of a (very benign!) public shaming has far outweighed the bad
Benign like a tumour maybe, just look at the comment threads and imagine if anyone wants to be associated with a place like this after reading those, this whole matter would have been better solved in private.
Currently it feels like we're trying to clean gum off a sidewalk by firing high pressure sewage at it… but hey! it got the gum off right? RESULT!
Designer News
Where the design community meets.
Designer News is a large, global community of people working or interested in design and technology.
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Why is it ridiculous to try to not exclude people?