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Sex Pong. Clickbait Maybe?


toddtmw

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Marty Goldberg posted this link in several Atari groups on FB. He helped the author reach out and contact a number of female Atari employees from BITD and give their perspectives as a counter-point to the stuff last week regarding the rescission of Nolan's GDC award.

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Shirley left Atari in 1999 with a salary of $US125,000

 

Errr... isn't that like 3 years after the reverse-merger when Atari was just a name in limbo? Or maybe a misprint and they meant 1989 though that's only 3 years after her big promotion.

 

Just scanned through the rest, will have to read later. It all sounds feasible though except the date mentioned above.

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"That's a nice dress. But I find the hands on the hips to be an aggressive gender performance, a stance which represents our decades-long struggle against the pervasive patriarchal/heteronormative cartel that informs the imbalanced power structures behind today's otherwise professional relationships in Information Technology. Executives, be warned! Your can no longer hide your misogynist activities under the corporation's skirt."

 

PS: TRIGGER WARNING. I had initially wondered if this was an offshoot of last week's side-topic on PLATO, but reading the article made it pretty clear that this was it's own story in response to current events.

Edited by jmccorm
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See, those who lived it, tell it like it was... not how some of todays' groups 'wish' to perceive a past they know nothing of...

 

I'm probably going to go back and read this one more time. As a more serious reply, I wanted to say that the author really did a quality job with this.

 

I found it interesting that it began with a story of female employment and wages. (As an aside, I remember tracking down for an interview an Apple executive who's early career began with Atari. It was nice to see that an important leader at a top-tier technology company had gotten her first foot in the industry's door at Atari.) While many leaders from the 70s have been and will continue to be honored, so many of them would have perpetuated the gender-based hiring disparity and pay disparity which actively harmed female employees. The story seemed to suggest that Nolan's Atari was actually progressive in that regard.

 

Nolan wasn't directly accused of harming women. It was the appearance of a boy's culture, and through our historical goggles, that got him centered out for attention. Compare/contrast to a more modern story of a boy's club in technology, and I think you'll see an incredibly large difference between the boy's club of Atari and an actual boy's club story of today. A company hot-tub in the 1970s with a co-ed day seems far more innocent than a dedicated kink room with used prophillactics and underwear left over from the regular mid-day employee activities.

 

It seems like it was the appearance of impropriety which tinged Nolan's reputation more than any actual personal impropriety on his part. Setting the tone is important, and that was absolutely his responsibility, to be sure. Even then, complaints seem scarce and actual damage even more scarce. But then again, that wasn't a time where woman would be running to the courts for satisfaction. They would have endured or left. Or even avoided the industry.

 

Such a regrettable story. But we do give awards to historical figures based upon our modern-day judgments of people, and not just through the eyes of that period. Just five years ago, we still wouldn't have seen this aspect of Nolan's career in favorable terms, but events since the Presidential election have made our collective judgments that much harsher.

Edited by jmccorm
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Today I see mob mentality, group think. I witness an attack on nearly every word, every thought expressed that isn't working towards the latest take on any subject. It appeared that this phenomena started to ramp up in 2007, accelerating all the way to 2015 or so and sky rocketing ever since. It's crazy to watch groups swing to polar opposites on subject matter in a few months depending on whom a subject that is to be scrutinized applies to. In the interest of sanity you have no choice to stay the course and realize there may be no point in debating or arguing after all, since the people involved are so fluid in what they say or will do faced with the exact same circumstances, but with a different face in focus. I simply feel bad for them at this point. Reason doesn't speak to the rationalization mentality. Only long term experience on a level playing field with no more safety nets will allow growth, wisdom and understanding. Those are the only tools that will get the job done allowing the individual to mature, grow up and finally moderate the emotions, accept reality, and obtain intellectual honesty.

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It's crazy to watch groups swing to polar opposites on subject matter in a few months depending on whom a subject that is to be scrutinized applies to. In the interest of sanity you have no choice to stay the course and realize there may be no point in debating or arguing after all, since the people involved are so fluid in what they say or will do faced with the exact same circumstances, but with a different face in focus.

 

That sounds like code for politics. Is that the reference that you're making?

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It's an observation, politics aren't allowed. It's sanitized as much as possible so as to not pick sides or even identity, as such I'm sure it may read like politics (neutral, dry, sanitary and lacking indication of identity), but clearly it isn't. Expect almost all future postings to become edited or neutral in as many aspects as possible, while this may cause confusion... it's no guarantee there still can't be some problem or issue found. Please accept my apologies for using punctuation and or capitol letters as my children have informed me that on forums and messaging apps this also is now bad form. I really can't keep up.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Errr... isn't that like 3 years after the reverse-merger when Atari was just a name in limbo? Or maybe a misprint and they meant 1989 though that's only 3 years after her big promotion.

 

Just scanned through the rest, will have to read later. It all sounds feasible though except the date mentioned above.

Exactly what I noticed, I emailed the writer about it. This is simply impossible, I have never heard of any person surviving from the 70's until the 90's at Atari, in fact there were just a handful of people at Atari left in 1991 and 1992. In 1999 there was no Atari anymore....the name was in other hands....but there was no true company.. If this story is true, then why is Shirley's surname not mentioned ?

 

To be honest I thought this was yet another article about how bad women were treated at Atari at first....so I didn't read on much longer when I read that statement about her leaving Atari in 1999.

This is sad, as the article tries to clarify what really happened and is much closer to the truth than all the insanity written by those tight-assed people who think they know what happened by extracting some words out of a book which (is known for its errors) and greatly inflating them.

Edited by Level42
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People with Atari were also in JTS until 1998, when liquidation started full force, some were paid as part of that process til 1999. There was also the matter of stocks and other instruments that had to be dealt with. Memory is a subjective thing, I catch people saying they made such and such money in 2018... as they're filing on their taxes, but it's a 2017 earnings with a filing for 2017 being submitted in 2018. I don't go nuts about it. You might want to ask questions of that nature instead. Now please follow what happened with that paper... as that whole fiasco unfolded. Look up stock swap and the like. If you research you will find. Since JTS was at first considered closely held. I could easily still associate that with Atari as well. I suspect no one has dug as deeply as some would like, but it been researched well enough to be comfortable for some.

 

Also I think that's Elaine Thompson, later married became Elaine Shirley, that is referenced at points in the article. Though there was more than one Shirley at Atari. 600XL is Shirley, but some called it surly or surely depending on their feelings about the project and whom it was nick named after.

 

I wonder if this will make it's way to where-ever that the questions were being tossed.

 

Drinks some more water at the cooler, walks away. Probably done with the conversation.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Today I see mob mentality, group think. I witness an attack on nearly every word, every thought expressed that isn't working towards the latest take on any subject. It appeared that this phenomena started to ramp up in 2007, accelerating all the way to 2015 or so and sky rocketing ever since. It's crazy to watch groups swing to polar opposites on subject matter in a few months depending on whom a subject that is to be scrutinized applies to. In the interest of sanity you have no choice to stay the course and realize there may be no point in debating or arguing after all, since the people involved are so fluid in what they say or will do faced with the exact same circumstances, but with a different face in focus. I simply feel bad for them at this point. Reason doesn't speak to the rationalization mentality. Only long term experience on a level playing field with no more safety nets will allow growth, wisdom and understanding. Those are the only tools that will get the job done allowing the individual to mature, grow up and finally moderate the emotions, accept reality, and obtain intellectual honesty.

It is tribalism pure and simple. They only care about their side (tribe) scoring points. They may argue "green is good, red is bad" today, but "red is good, green is bad" tomorrow, the intellectual inconsistency of that is lost on them. As long as their side scores a victory is all that matters. This is why it's impossible to reason with them. This is common not only in politics, but also many other aspects of human life, like sports fans, console wars, etc.

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Exactly what I noticed, I emailed the writer about it. This is simply impossible, I have never heard of any person surviving from the 70's until the 90's at Atari, in fact there were just a handful of people at Atari left in 1991 and 1992. In 1999 there was no Atari anymore....the name was in other hands....but there was no true company.. If this story is true, then why is Shirley's surname not mentioned ?

What about the Arcade division, 'Atari Games'? They lasted until 2003 according to Wikipedia. If she started at Atari under Bushnell when they were just an Arcade manufacturer, it's plausible she stayed with that division.

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Something that I think is missing in all this is just because things were happening that look bad on paper doesn't mean the women involved weren't also a part of that scene. If Atari grew out of a free love, hook-up culture, then how the women viewed the environment is as important as what happened.

 

In other words, we've always looked back at things like Woodstock and seen men and women participating in drugs and sex equally. Today we're more likely to call it a giant sea of female victims. Which is it?

 

I'm going to cover my bases and mention that I always believe you have to be respectful when someone declines, but a sexually charged atmosphere isn't necessarily a predatory one and it seems like the women at Atari had their power as well.

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