{"id":67362,"date":"2015-07-14T09:34:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T14:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67362"},"modified":"2015-07-14T11:43:18","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T16:43:18","slug":"tumblr-threatened-my-life-the-problem-with-non-diverse-workforces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/07\/14\/tumblr-threatened-my-life-the-problem-with-non-diverse-workforces\/","title":{"rendered":"Tumblr Threatened My Life: The Problem with Non-Diverse Workforces"},"content":{"rendered":"

SocImages has a Tumblr<\/a> where all of the posts that pop up here (and more) get re-posted and go all over the internet. And a few days ago it gave me this post.<\/p>\n

While I was working on the page, I saw a really interesting example of the kind of thoughtlessness that happens when designers aren’t thinking about all their potential users. Here’s a screenshot of what I encountered; it’s a timeline of all the things that had happened on the page in reverse chronological order, except the very top line, which is the interesting part. It reads:<\/p>\n

SCREAM: You’ll never see it coming. TONIGHT.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s a screenshot:\"5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a female and, more importantly a woman-on-the-internet, my first\u00a0gut reaction was that I was going to have to forward it to the FBI. You see, it’s an ad for something on MTV — and I realized that in the 2nd<\/em> second — but, in the 1st<\/em> second, I thought it was someone threatening to kill me.<\/p>\n

I don’t mean to be overly dramatic about this. Even in the 1st second, my reaction was more well, hell<\/em> than omg I’m gonna die<\/em>, but I do wonder whether the ad\u00a0managers\u00a0at Tumblr or MTV ever considered the possibility that this way of advertising might be genuinely scary to someone, even if just for a second. I wonder if the managing team has anyone on it who is also a woman-on-the-internet. Or anyone who’s job it is to specifically think about the diversity of their users and how different strategies might affect them differently.<\/p>\n

One doesn’t have to be routinely subject to threatening comments and messages to have the reaction I did. I could be\u00a0someone who just left an abusive partner, someone who’s been attacked before, a witness in a criminal trial, a doctor who performs abortions\u00a0or, christ, a black preacher in the South. Or maybe just someone who doesn’t appreciate an advertisement that, through an intended double meaning, implies that I, personally, am about to be attacked.\u00a0That’s not funny, or fun, to everyone.<\/p>\n

This kind of thing seems to happen all the time. Another example might be the Nikon camera feature, designed to warn you if someone blinked, that thinks Asian people have their eyes closed<\/a>; the HP face-tracking webcam that can’t see black people<\/a>; the obsessive health-tracking app that can’t be deleted off your iphone, even if you have an eating disorder<\/a>; or the fact that it seems to track\u00a0everything except menstrual cycles, making female-bodied people\u00a0invisible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is one of the arguments for why businesses need diverse staff. Greater diversity — especially if everyone is explicitly given permission to raise issues like these — would make it far more likely that\u00a0companies could avoid these gaffes and make products better for everyone.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SocImages has a Tumblr where all of the posts that pop up here (and more) get re-posted and go all over the internet. And a few days ago it gave me this post. While I was working on the page, I saw a really interesting example of the kind of thoughtlessness that happens when designers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,23633,55,2090,129,23703,20059,343,285,133],"class_list":["post-67362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-economics-corporations","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-media-social-media","tag-tvmovies","tag-raceethnicity","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/7.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67434,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67362\/revisions\/67434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}