I always take this individual with a grain of salt. I originally supported her as that she was an enthusiast and talking about making things. However, she has a strong tendency to dramatize things and it's very easy to get caught up in her net.
Context: She started raking a maker site (I think it was instructables) about quietly dropping Chinese character support. She went a huge tirade that it was racism and it was intentional. I suggested that hey it's probably a dumb product owner/business decisions. Then she starts arguing with me that "she knows tech." She then quote tweets me so she can target her audience against me also manages to call me a mansplaining tech bro. (And blocks me)
Nearly everything she produced tried to focus it on getting attention, from 360 youtube videos to emphasis her sexual features, to selling 3d nude scans, overly dramatic videos to increase viewership. On top of that she's snaps any any journalist who doesn't cover her exactly how she wants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu#Vice_article
She called it Sinophobic, not racist, which seems fair. In the most charitable light, instructables was apathetic about their Chinese users. I can't imagine how bad their engineering org would have to be for this to be an unintentional change.
I'm guessing you're one of deleted replies so we'll never know for sure, but from the tone of this comment I doubt your reply was respectful.
>Welcome to tech. It's less likely malice and more likely you have a pretty dumb product owner that "doesn't see business value". And there you have agile....
I agree with you - the tone is quite disrespectful, especially starting off a message to a tech expert with "Welcome to tech."
I mean, looking at those tweets myself, i wouldn't bat an eye at the receiver paraphrasing either one of them years later as racism or mansplaining, respectfully; sounds accurate to me (I guess, with their watered down meanings, since we get so much exposure to people trying to throw those words around at the drop of a hat)? Although, i can only see her side of dialogues.
Regarding that exchange in isolation, I certainly offer my criticisms. Fwiw, I otherwise appreciate (heck, am a fan of, even) her approach to what she does and her participation in public discussions to offer her perspectives (notwithstanding all the commentary about state-imposed censorship on her public conduct up to this point); i just hadn't seen any exchanges like that before.
Yep that's the one. I deleted my account after the takeover by Musk.
That was quite a while ago. You're right, apparently she didn't say mansplaining, at least in that tweet she didn't (not sure about the others I can't see the full statement anymore). But the conversation we had was incredibly insulting to me, she ended up quote tweeting me to amplify her attack, and blocked me. It was super weird to have a disjointed conversation where she doesn't seem to understand prioritization/feature cutting by businesses.. but yet she yells racism/sinophobia.
> she doesn't seem to understand prioritization/feature cutting by businesses
I think this is an incredibly patronizing perspective. She works/worked as a software developer for many years.
Instructables used to support Chinese characters, and someone made a decision that broke that support and it got pushed to prod. (Did someone change the text encoding of UGC and migrate the DB without thinking about other languages?!) At best it was the result of incompetence and apathy.
FWIW, it looks like instructables has Chinese character support again today. I bet her tweets played some role in getting that fixed.
> Instructables used to support Chinese characters, and someone made a decision that broke that support and it got pushed to prod. (Did someone change the text encoding of UGC and migrate the DB without thinking about other languages?!) At best it was the result of incompetence and apathy.
Or alternatively, something somewhere was not built to design UTF-8 (since, you know, its an actual hard problem) and it was a short term "get this out the door before tonight" solution. Which having been in the industry long enough at this point is probably the most likely reason. Not some unfounded "hate" for Chinese people. Wu's rant is unhinged and insulting. It's so typical of online discussion to immediately go to "-splaining", "-ism", "-phobia" the second something happens someone doesn't like. To ice the cake she even talks about "tech bros" (the implied tone being white men).
> I bet her tweets played some role in getting that fixed.
Being a crybully is a not a virtue. I found this part the most hilarious:
> If a CAD company gets tagged by one of the largest digital fabrication accounts on Twitter, and doesn't respond? That is your answer.
Sounds a lot like "silence is violence". Another laughable term used to crybully people. Unhinged thirst trap is completely unable to understand how tech orgs actually work. News at 11.
> To ice the cake she even talks about "tech bros" (the implied tone being white men).
It is interesting how you are projecting meaning onto her use of "tech bro"? I'm guessing you're a white tech bro?
It's interesting how men in tech get extremely offended by her lack of deference to them. I think it probably is a result of her appearance as a nonwhite "bimbo-aesthetic" engineer - (especially white) tech bros feel like she should address them as a superior and their egos feel threatened when she does not.
You're calling her a crybully. I'd argue this comment I'm replying to is a much clearer example of "crybully" behavior. I hope you can reflect on why you reacted in this way.
> > she doesn't seem to understand prioritization/feature cutting by businesses
>
> I think this is an incredibly patronizing perspective. She works/worked as a software developer for many years.
tons of people work in the software developing business and yet fail to understand prioritization. I don't think it was the issue with Wu, but it's not surprising in general
Context: She started raking a maker site (I think it was instructables) about quietly dropping Chinese character support. She went a huge tirade that it was racism and it was intentional. I suggested that hey it's probably a dumb product owner/business decisions. Then she starts arguing with me that "she knows tech." She then quote tweets me so she can target her audience against me also manages to call me a mansplaining tech bro. (And blocks me)
Nearly everything she produced tried to focus it on getting attention, from 360 youtube videos to emphasis her sexual features, to selling 3d nude scans, overly dramatic videos to increase viewership. On top of that she's snaps any any journalist who doesn't cover her exactly how she wants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu#Vice_article