Oh, IBM. What were you thinking? In a fiasco similar to the European Union's ill-conceived "Science: It's a Girl Thing" video, IMB has been called out by actual women scientists and engineers for this video:
The Twitter response is at once angry, hilarious, and sad:
I code.
But it's to mess around with salamander DNA sequences, not hair dryers.
Minor details.
#HackAHairDryer
— Cathy Newman (@cenewman0) December 7, 2015
I like makeup and hair care. I also like building robots. Guess which one I'd like to see @ibm promoting to women? #HackAHairDryer
— Randi Lee Harper (@randileeharper) December 7, 2015
Tell this woman to #HackAHairDryer - I dare you. pic.twitter.com/vkr4PHARzj
— Miles Kurland (@Malacandra) December 7, 2015
@IBM shame I don't use a hairdryer. I guess that's the end of my career in STEM. Brb quitting my astrophysics PhD. #HackAHairDryer
— Jessica V (@ThatAstroKitten) December 7, 2015
Here's to every woman at @IBM who tried to stop #HackAHairDryer but wasn't listened to
— Shannon Turner (@svt827) December 7, 2015
Are we #womeninstem going to get a 'mea culpa' apology for the patronising #HackAHairDryer nonsense, @IBM?
— Dr Mel Thomson (@DrMel_T) December 7, 2015
According to Business Insider, IBM has declined to respond.
UPDATE: It's been pulled.
Shannon Turner's tweet was especially well put.
ReplyDeleteThat was the sad one.
DeleteUnfortunately the video has been removed ... But I noticed that a lot of newspapers wrote about the topic. It seems that IBM apologized for the campaign in the meantime.
ReplyDeleteBut the fact remains that it happens again and again that such campaigns are released to the public. Do they still want bad news to get more attention? Would be interesting to see the results if such a campaign would be generated by crowdsourcing :).
Regards
Marie