The organizers of the popular Louisville tech conference DerbyCon have announced that 2019 will be the final year they will hold the event — due to social justice warriors ruining everything fun, as usual.
In a lengthy statement, the DerbyCon team explained that they are ending their run because of a “vocal group of people creating negativity, polarization, and disruption, with the primary intent of self-promotion to advance a career, for personal gain, or for more social media followers. Individuals that would have us be judge, jury, and executioner for people they have had issues with outside of the conference that has nothing to do with the conference itself.”
Over the past couple of years, there have been a number of incidents in which authoritarian social justice warriors and members of the left disrupted tech conferences to go after people with differing political views — despite the fact that politics has little to do with these events.
At last year’s conference, a woman named Lindsey Ledford had a total meltdown because someone wrote the word “boobies” on a board that was asking people what helps them deal with stress.
https://twitter.com/deborahlindseyl/status/1048401891913334785
Ledford didn’t stop there. She also complained to DerbyCon sponsors because the conference had beard combs as swag, but nothing specific for women. She then whined about the popular “Hack Naked” shirts from the Security Weekly podcast, because they feature a mudflap girl. These shirts are pretty much a staple at all InfoSec conferences (I have one in my closet from Defcon).
https://twitter.com/0DDJ0BB/status/647784533186736128
In another incident at last year’s annual HOPE hacker conference, leftists began demanding that a man in a MAGA hat be removed from the venue. They screamed and shouted at the attendee claiming that he was a Nazi, and demanding that security remove him.
When the security guards refused and defended the attendee after someone attempted to steal his hat, high profile social justice warriors hopped on Twitter and went to the activist press to continue causing problems.
These leftist tantrums have made DerbyCon too miserable to run for the organizers.
“Instead of working hard in research, being a positive force in the industry, or sharing their own unique experiences (which makes us better as a whole), they tear others down in order to promote themselves. This isn’t just about DerbyCon, it is present at other conferences as well and it’s getting worse each year,” the release continued. “We’ve spoken with a number of conference organizers, and each year it becomes substantially more difficult to host a conference where people can come together in large group settings. It’s not just conferences either. This behavior is happening all over the place on social media, in our industry, targeting people trying to do good. As a community, we add fuel to fire, attack others, and give them a platform in one massive toxic environment. We do this all in fear of repercussions from upsetting others. Until this pattern changes, it will continue to get worse.”
https://twitter.com/DerbyCon/status/1084886700164304897
The organizers acknowledge that there are real issues that need to be addressed at these conferences, but that the activists are inventing issues that they “would never expect to have to handle from other adults.”
“This year, we had to handle issues that honestly, as an adult, we would never expect to have to handle from other adults. Conferences in general have shifted focus to not upsetting individuals and having to police people’s beliefs, politics, and feelings. Instead of coming to a conference to learn and share, it’s about how loud of a message a person can make about a specific topic, regardless of who they tear down or attempt to destroy. To put it in perspective, we had to deal with an individual that was verbally and mentally abusive to a number of our volunteer staff and security to the point where they were in tears,” the statement explained.
The statement explains that they had no idea how to handle the activist and that they were too fearful of repercussion to remove them, in order to “not upset the masses.” When what would normally be a non-issue blows up on social media, it can ruin the reputation of the entire conference, the staff and anyone else who may have been involved.
“We looked at hiring third-party crisis management companies to deal with people directly, we looked at having entire companies run the conference where we would become more of the direction and vision, but at the end of the day, that is not why we started DerbyCon. It’s taken a personal toll on our lives, our businesses, and our friends, and it has gotten to the point where we don’t want to manage it anymore,” the statement explained.
Journalist Tim Pool made a video on Tuesday discussing the SJW takeover of the hacker scene.
“I have seen the fringe Identitarian left growing within the hacker community. At DEFCON 2017 I was getting veiled threats so I decided not to attend in 2018 — because nothing could be done about it,” Pool told The Gateway Pundit. “I’m not surprised to see how bad its gotten.”
Pool and DerbyCon’s organizers aren’t the only ones in the InfoSec community who are fed up with social justice warriors. A Google Doc has been circulating in these circles with a “timeline of SJW bullshit at tech conferences.”
Here is the document in full and unedited (contains adult language):
Timeline of SJW Bullshit at Tech Conferences
July 2012: Red Card/Yellow Card/Green Card
Idea by KdotCdot to hand out Red/Yellow/Green cards at Defcon depending on the supposed bad behavior of males. It was quickly pointed out that the cards would become collectors items and have the opposite of the desired effect.
https://singlevoice.net/redyellow-card-project/
http://archive.is/qTHN7February 2013: Violetblue’s Talk Pulled From BSidesSF
Violetblue was set to give a talk on sex, drugs and harm reduction. Valerie Aurora, from the Ada Initiative, was worried that it would trigger someone who had been sexually assaulted (more likely, she just wanted attention for her and her group). Violetblue ended up being pushed into not giving the talk.http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/44107008572/what-happened-with-my-security-bsides-talk
http://archive.is/kk0XRMarch 2013: Donglegate
Adria Richards gets bent out of shape over people making dongle jokes and puns about forking repos behind her. They were not directed at her in any way, but she posted a picture of the guys and at least one got fired. This caused a big hubbub where Adria ended up getting fired too.
Quote from Jon Ronson interview Adria Richards
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson
http://archive.is/R3pes““Somebody getting fired is pretty bad,” I said. “I know you didn’t call for him to be fired, but you must have felt pretty bad.”
“Not too bad,” she said. She thought more and shook her head decisively. “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me, sitting in front of him. I do have empathy for him, but it only goes so far. If he had Down’s syndrome and he accidently pushed someone off a subway, that would be different… I’ve seen things where people are like, ‘Adria didn’t know what she was doing by tweeting it.’ Yes, I did.””
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oLK8b8drL8
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richards
August 2014: BSidesLV Tower of Condoms
Gawker writer Nitasha Tiku gets bent and goes all sex negative because there was a tower of condoms built at BSidesLV. Somehow, this is said to make women feel unwelcome. Disregard that there were a lot of women helping build the tower, and there is also a large gay contingent at the Vegas cons that might want to promote safe sex.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/nothing-says-welcome-to-our-tech-conference-like-a-towe-1617722289
http://infosystir.blogspot.com/2014/08/soapbox-rant-sexism-bsideslv-bonehenge.html
January 2015: Yogapants Shmoocon 2015 (Yogagate)
SJW avriette gets upset about “Mascots, March Madness & #yogapants” talk on social engineering because it was somehow objectifying of women. SJW proceeds to virtue signal, sane people tell them they are full of shit, some white knights come out and one compares yoga pants on slides to shoving people in lockers.
http://www.iamit.org/blog/2015/01/sensationalism-doing-more-damage-than-good/
http://theprez98.blogspot.com/2015/01/hacker-cons-and-speech-codes.html
March 2016: LambdaConf and Curtis Yavin
Because of statements Curtis Yavin (Moldbug) made about race and IQ, some other speakers pulled out of LambdaConf. Apparently the previous year Yarvin has been disinvited from Urbit at the Strange Loop.
https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d#.beznosmdk
http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/04/tldr-of-lambdaconf-drama.html#.WNnYEY61vMU
May 2016: Article about being microaggressed at lock pick village
August 2016: Defcon Hacker Jeopardy
People whined about Hacker Jeopardy having categories like dick, pussy and answers about porn, and a scantily clad woman bringing men beer. The whiners disregard that there were a ton of “trigger warnings” letting you know what type of event it was, there was half naked man bring women drinks, and that a woman won the game.
September 2016: Nodevember & No Platforming Douglas Crockford
Douglas Crockford got disinvited from Nodevember because SJW nutjobs thought he was slut-shaming the web by calling the old version promiscuous. Also, someone interpreted him talking about Nashville Hot Chicken as talking about “hot chicks”. Real tech talk got rejected, but they accept crap like this.
http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford
January 2017: Marlene Jaeckel and RailsGirls
Female software engineer of 20 years banned from Women in Tech groupsMarlene Jaeckel, volunteered her time to mentor and teach new women in tech through RailsGirls and RailsBridge. After it was discovered that she doesn’t think every shortcoming in life is due to sexism or the patriarchy, she was banned from both groups without an explanation.
https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/thoughts-from-the-editor-172e93eccbb1#.orz2zg59t
January 2017: “Counting” of # of women at various security conferences.
@SushiDude seems to have an obsession with counting women vs. men at conferences.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=sushidude%20women%20men&src=typdJuly 2017: “Wall Of Creep”
The “Wall Of Creep” Twitter account was setup for what seems to be doxing people that offend others. Turns out to be mostly whining about microaggressions. The account has since been deleted.https://twitter.com/Wall_of_Creep
March 2018: Hack Naked Logo Triggers
Dinah Davis whines on twitter about the Security Weekly podcast’s “Hack Naked” trucker mudflap girl logo.https://mobile.twitter.com/Dinah_Davis/status/976170600996761604
http://archive.is/ZgoUwThe logo has been around since 2006, and less popular versions have a naked buff or fat man instead. Soyboy talks about boycott for a show and asks for the company name when:
1. She said who it was in the first tweet.
2. It’s Free.
3. Dinah linked the wrong twitter handle for.https://mobile.twitter.com/mlevison/status/976563499836039169
June 2018: Will Has Your Nudes
@Lex_is whines about IllWill having “probably has your nudes” in his bio for a talk at HOPE.
https://twitter.com/lex_is/status/1011720718667714560IllWill eventually gets deplatformed, but HOPE claims it was for other reasons.
Apparently the incident started a thread on /POL/
http://archive.is/F0Z9RJune 2018: HOPE, MAGA, TROLLS & MIXED NUTS
Someone shows up at HOPE in a MAGA hat, aiming to troll http://archive.is/sWyb4 (vice article, so take with a boulder of salt). Guy stole the man’s hat, apparently an Ancom as he filled his write-up with the word “comrade” and said: “The hacker community has always had a libertarian faction, and libertarians tend to be just a hair away from outright white supremacy, so it was possible they were here as attendees.”https://heartsucker.com/blog/2018/07/28/no-hope-for-fascists
Deviant Ollam goes on to defend stealing and violence in a TL;DR diatribe and apparently has little idea what the Proud Boys are.
http://deviating.net/words/?p=1001October 2018: Boobies On Board
Lindsey Ledford (@deborahlindseyl) has a mental breakdown because some people wrote boobies twice and #metoo on the “What Helps You With Stress?” board outside the Mental Health Workshop at Derbycon.https://twitter.com/deborahlindseyl/status/1048401891913334785
http://archive.is/mw2FKMassive overreaction, would someone complain if “penises” had been written instead? She also irrationality said @Breaksec podcast was promoting their podcast by covering up the words with their stickers. No, staff covered up the words to make her happy and the stickers were the most convenient way to do it without scraping the board.
https://twitter.com/deborahlindseyl/status/1048401909353209856
http://archive.is/cF7eqLindsey Ledford also reportedly went on to whine to Walmart (a sponsor) because they had beard combs as swag but nothing specific for women and also whined at the Pauldotcom guys for their “Hack Naked” stickers that had a mud flap girl on them (they also had one with a pudgy man on them). Lindsey also went on to accuse Hacks4Pancakes of “white feminism” (sadly, Lesley later bent over backwards).
https://twitter.com/deborahlindseyl/status/1049327024257552384
http://archive.is/QrJspLindsey/Deborah’s experience at the time appears to have been being a Barista at Starbuck.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseyledford/
October 2018: MAGA Hats & “Oh How Dare Someone Have Different Politics Than Me”!
Hexadecim8 and FalconDarkstar whine about someone wearing a MAGA hat who was security at Derbycon. They make reference to Nazis. Hexadecim8 deleted her tweets like a paranoid coward. Plot twist: The guy in the MAGA hat is of Mexican heritage.https://twitter.com/hexadecim8/status/1048901885288173569
https://twitter.com/FalconDarkstar/status/1048820743763505152
http://archive.is/eR9AlFalconDarkstar was not even there.
https://twitter.com/FalconDarkstar/status/1049114370343464961
http://archive.is/clCGYOctober 2018: It’s OK To Play The Circle Game
People freak out because someone in the lockpick village at Derbycon was playing “the circle game” (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-circle-game). People conflate it with a white supremacy sign (that has largely been debunked despite what NiteOwl thinks) because they are not very intelligent. Viss says the person playing the circle game is the same as the person with the MAGA hat. It was not, Viss is just terribly misinformed and has a history of screaming “Nazi!!!” and losing his head.https://twitter.com/hacks4pancakes/status/1049149451183566855
https://twitter.com/hacks4pancakes/status/1049156701377744896
http://archive.is/28Ys8FOOLS gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for the symbol.
https://twitter.com/BLMGTN_FOOLS/status/1049176573860036608
http://archive.is/jjLenBut millennial dumbasses will not accept it.
https://twitter.com/0DDJ0BB/status/1049313744562675712
January 2019: Derbycon Announces Ending
Apparently the Derbycon organizers had enough drama, and decided Derbycon 9 will be their last.
https://www.derbycon.com/blog/derbycon-9-0-every-beginning-has-an-end/
Scrap stuff not in timeline:
“Coraline Ada Ehmke” creates a Code of Conduct (the contributor covenant) that restricts freedom of opinions. Attempts to force Ruby to adopt it via a bug report.
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004#change-56140
LambdaConf’s makes their own COC called FCOP which aims to make sure devs are not discriminated against based on religion or politics, and to curb public shaming attempts.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/01/11/sjws-tech-conference-political-diversity/
http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/04/tldr-of-lambdaconf-drama.html
Geek Feminism Wiki Timeline of incidents:
https://archive.is/qXJlkHarassment at DEF CON
The Stages of Social Activist Infection
https://medium.com/@dingongoo/the-stages-of-social-activist-infection-3269b7d4a313
