Sarah Lacy attacked by crowd during interview with March Zuckerberg - sexism or bad journalism?

The F Word have alerted me to the ruckus over Sarah Lacy's interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW, and all I can say is WOW. Apparently Lacy bombed. CNET reported that from the beginning of her interview she "repeatedly interrupted him" and that the crowd started to get more and more irritated with her. So irritated, in fact, that at one point someone shouted from the audience, "Talk about something interesting!" The shouter was met with cheers and Lacy angrily responded with: "Try doing what I do for a living! It's not that easy." However, the group of enraged 16-year-old Facebook obsessed nerds weren't having it. There were then more boos, more sassy comments from Lacy, more angry jeering...rinse. Repeat.

CNET reckons that she "out-and-out bombed", and that perhaps this was merely a case of making a bad interview style choice and that Lacy choosing to act over familiar and flirty with Zuckerman was just the wrong way to go. Feminists are saying this is a case of sexism, and that she was treated that badly because of her gender. One commenter on CNET even said that the heckling audience members acted "like a bunch of pimple faced 16 year old boys mad at the girl dungeon master". However, someone else seems to think that this is just a perfect example of "the love/hate relationship that geeks have with the women who try to invade their territory". Invade their territory? Ooof.

Unfortunately, I think the ever-so-slightly misogynist commenter has a point. A lot of men, and geeks, do look at The Geek World as being male, and that women, especially good looking women, are "invading" their space. Maybe Lacy's flirtatious interview style with Zuckerberg drew too much attention to the fact that YES! She's a woman! and the men in the audience's brains all melted because a girl had just captured their flag...or something.

The same commenter follows up his "invading their territory" comment by saying that if women in tech treat the Geeks "with respect and genuinely act as one of them" you will be rewarded by getting "treated like Veronica Belmont or Cali Lewis". Apparently Sarah Lacy didn't treat them with enough respect and acted to much like not one of them. So, really, Lacy was responsible for her own FAIL. Wow. I think I'm catching on! That's like when women wear revealing clothing and then get raped...she should have known better, right? See? She was ASKING FOR IT, really...

Another angry commenter didn't like this whole idea that Sarah was being attacked because she has a vagina, but rather because she just plain sucked. In a comment titled "GENDER BS", Drumdance wrote:

"This is BS. The VERY NEXT SESSION in the SAME ROOM was by Kathy Sierra i.e a woman. Her presentation was brilliant, which is why her sessions are packed every year. No backlash against her. Do you think it might have something to do with the quality of the content?"

"Sarah Lacy might be a good writer (I haven't read her stuff for BusinessWeek) but she clearly is not a good live interviewer. I thought the same thing about Kottke a couple years ago when he interviewed Dooce."

It's hard for me to come to a conclusion on this. Was Sarah Lacy treated like crap because she just didn't approach her interview the correct way, and evidently bombed? Was she treated so badly because the Geeks were mad that a chick invaded their territory? Would Sarah Lacy have been better received if she had only respected the Geeks more, and had only tried harder to act like one of them? ("One of us. One of us.")

I am more than willing to accept that yeah, maybe her interview skills did suck a bit. I don't know for sure, I wasn't there. However, there's a big part of me that wonders who the hell thinks it's okay to start ganging up on a journalist interviewing the CEO of a company? No matter how bad it sucks, fucking keep your mouth shut and don't be a jerk. Have a little maturity. But saying all that, it's the whole "act like one of them" and "have some respect" comment that just puts me over the edge.

Should she have brought a small offering upon her arrival, as a sign that she shows respect for their culture? Perhaps a small animal sacrifice? Should she have dressed differently to blend in? In that case I'm sure real sure Lacy is just kicking herself right now wondering why she didn't just throw on a pair of Converse, some funky plastic glasses and wear a black and white Fruit Of The Loom T-shirt with ironed on letters that spell out OH HAI.

I suppose the logical answer is that it was a combination of all of the above that lead to the Zuckerberg Lacy Scandal. Therefore, I leave you with this update from Lacy's Twitter account:

"seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things."

Cate Sevilla is the Editor of Dollymix. She doesn't have anything against Converse, OH HAI or funky plastic glasses. Or real Geeks for that matter. Just the asshole, misogynist, jerk ones that don't actually ever do anything techy besides going to tech conferences and heckling female journalists.

Andy Merrett

Bad journalism. It's quite offensive to suggest that geeks don't respond well to women. Appalling stereotype.

Actually, what most don't respond well to is someone wasting their time at a geek conference, not asking quite a shy, reserved, but highly intelligent guy about the things that actually matter to HIM and to the AUDIENCE.

Or flirting with him. Or pretending that they actually know something about the subject (Facebook) when they clearly don't.

Many comments I've read suggest that there were plenty of male interviewers who could have made an equal hash of the whole thing. It doesn't always take a geek to interview a geek, but someone who has a basic knowledge of the subject matter helps. Oh, just a little.

"He was being obtuse"

Oh for goodness sake. Get to know the guy. A decent interviewer would have brought the best out of him. Don't blame Mark for poor hosting.

Cate

After watching the video,I think her overly familiar attitude was definitely not right. Unfortunately, all the things she was doing wrong, were all essentially feminine: giggling, the way she was moving her legs, the flirtatious lilt in her voice. So I think this set her up for even harsher criticism.

After watching the video, it occurred to me that if this were a white male journalist, people would not be acting like that right in front of her. I'm not saying that he wouldn't have suffered as harsh criticism, but I think they would have treated him with more respect. I also think that the criticism he would have faced wouldn't have been so "in your face" and that people wouldn't be shouting out snarky insults during a Keynote address of a major conference.

Here's another great analysis of this: http://www.profy.com/2008/03/11/women-20-sarah-lacy/

Simon M

Saurabh: "Have some fucking respect, is right. Those people are the one taking the risks and doing the very hard job of putting themselves up for your approbation or contempt. What are you risking, shouting anonymously from the darkness? In the online world there's a word for that behavior: troll."

Trolls are rarly anonymous in the online world, for starters - if anything, most that I've come across seem to relish building a "name" for themselves. It's not a comparison that works IMHO.

And while it's true that audience members risk little by heckling. That's only if they're in step with the overall mood of the entire audience.

Go to any live comedy show and you'll see hecklers. Really vicious ones, often. When they're on point and with the audience, the entire audience rallies behind them. When the hecklers are doing it just to show off, or on a wrong point, they'll often get heckled or booed themselves.

So hecklers *need* to keep the audience on their side, just as journalists who get up on stage to interview people need to.

"Those people are the one taking the risks and doing the very hard job of putting themselves up for your approbation or contempt."

My point precisely. If the audience remains entirely quiet and passive, the journalist and interviewer gets no approbation, contempt or deserved praise. They get nothing. It renders any live interview pointless.

I'm a journalist - writing for some of the other Shiny sites as well as plenty of other places. I've done live interviews with an audience. It is absolutely nerve-wracking. I have utmost respect for anyone who gets up and does that day in, day out - who can control an audience and keep an interview on track and interesting. But that is a highwire skill - not everyone can do it. I can't do it well, certainly.

And in this case, it appears Lacy couldn't do it this time round. To the extent of not being able to mollify or control the crowd, she got it wrong. To the extent of being able to wrench good answers out of her interview also.

Hey, I wasn't there - maybe there was a cabal of troublemakers out to get her. But from all the commentary linked to in the post above, it doesn't seem to be the case - more that the audience genuinely on mass didn't respond well to her approach, her questions and particularly her interrupting Zuckerberg.

Given that, the namecalling and swearing at the audience members on here seems a bit over-the-top personally. It feels very "how dare they criticise" - which is a bit odd considering how critical people are being of a crowd they weren't actually in.

saurabh

"There's a long and great tradition of audience members taking matters into their own hands when things aren't going right."

There might be a long tradition of heckling, but there's not a "great" tradition. Have some fucking respect, is right. Those people are the one taking the risks and doing the very hard job of putting themselves up for your approbation or contempt. What are you risking, shouting anonymously from the darkness? In the online world there's a word for that behavior: troll.

Simon M

"However, there's a big part of me that wonders who the hell thinks it's okay to start ganging up on a journalist interviewing the CEO of a company? No matter how bad it sucks, fucking keep your mouth shut and don't be a jerk. Have a little maturity"

If you agree to step up onto a podium and interview someone live, then your job is partly to come up with probing questions and partly to control a live, volatile crowd. It would seem Lacy did not expect to have to, or do, the latter.

And since when is it a good idea for audience members at live events to remain quiet and utterly passive? It would make these things far more dull than they already are if we all just sat there like sheep. There's a long and great tradition of audience members taking matters into their own hands when things aren't going right.

It would be a different matter if this was an isolated group of misogynist geek-boys who were targetting Lacy as a woman. But from the eyewitness reports on Cnet and elsewhere, this wasn't the case. The audience was disgruntled with her approach. And there was widespread positive response to the heckles. And the heckles reported were on her subject matter and performance.

Perhaps she would have been treated differently if she was a man. And that would be shameful. But that's not what's being considered here.

And why on earth would or should people keep quiet, "no matter how bad it sucks"? There's something joyful about going to a dreadful movie and laughing at it. Same goes for those golden moments on chat shows when guests do something so wrong-headed, unpredictable or idiotic it becomes genius. And same goes for live events. No point in it being live without unpredictability - without some spark of life from the audience. It seems to me you're equating "maturity" with passivity. Wrongly.

Sarah Lacy attacked by crowd during interview with March Zuckerberg - sexism or bad journalism?

Sarah Lacy attacked by crowd during interview with March Zuckerberg - sexism or bad journalism? - Comments

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