Based on this more specific info, I don't actually think this is offensive at all, and it's actually rather funny.
However, as with all jokes, it's how you tell 'em. I can imagine this all being done in a family friendly way. I can also imagine it being delivered in a wholly inappropriate drooling-pervert manner. We can't know unless we see a video.
As jalkut says in the blogpost, the jokes write themselves. You could deliver this entire talk in a deadpan manner, reading out all the "dirty words" as if they're perfectly normal, and all the dirtyness is in the minds of the audience. This is the beauty of innuendo and double entendre, it allows you to be dirty without actually being dirty.
There is a long tradition of this on BBC radio going back to the 60s, where unbelievably, unutterably filthy things have been talked about at 6:30pm, when children are having their dinner, via the potent medium of deadpan innuendo. The key is that everything should have be able to be parsed perfectly innocently, so if your children ask what it means you can tell them with no embarrassment. There have been things said at dinner time in this manner that would likely otherwise never have been allowed to be broadcast, at any time of day or night.
In this case however, based on the OP reaction, I think it's more likely that the presenter was gurning his way through the talk, giving suggestive "LOL DICKS!" messages through his speech mannerisms and body language. These were likely the root cause of the uncomfortableness.
But as I say, all this is speculation without video of the session.
I actually don't think they're funny. That's not code for "I think they are inappropriate" (which at a developer's conference, I think they are inappropriate), but rather I don't find them humorous. It's the kind of easy humor people try for when they're not actually funny. I find listening to this sort of thing painful because I feel sorry for the speaker - trying to be funny, failing, and having to deal with it.
With that said, even if the speaker did as you said and was completely deadpan, I would still think it's inappropriate. It's just not the appropriate place to even attempt to make those references, no matter how you do it. Among friends, I make and laugh at raunchy jokes. But professional environments should be more inclusive than that.
You're right, they're not innately funny. They're incredibly juvenile and that is what could potentially make them funny: the incongruity of reading such sophomoric nonsense in a deadpan manner could potentially be very amusing.
It would probably have been appropriate to start off with a warning that the content would deal in off-color double-entendres, giving attendees with different sensibilities a few moments to leave and go to another session.
And maybe a warning in the program beyond the name of the session.
If only the author had some way of knowing she might be offended. Then this whole incident might have been avoided!
Oh wait, never mind: "I sat down to listen to a talk that I could tell by the title of the talk, was going to be inappropriate. I thought to myself, I’m at a respectful Mac conference... I’m sure it will be ok...The speaker prefaced his talk by basically stating there was a little substance, but that most of the topics were being presented simply because of the sexual or otherwise inappropriate jokes that could be formed from the topics..."
The author is being quite inconsistent here. On the one hand, she thought she was at a "respectful Mac conference". On the other hand:
...this experience and other similar encounters I have had in the last three years as a Mac developer...
So even though she's previously been exposed to dirty jokes before at mac events, she still thinks that "I’m at a respectful Mac conference...I’m sure it will be ok."
In this case, it's just a little bit conceivable that the "dirty words" in the session title could refer to "things to avoid", like over-releasing objects, excess drawing, etc.
Or the "dirty words" might be private APIs, which like actual dirty words would get your app rejected by Apple, but might be of interest to people writing for jailbroken devices.
So in the case of this session's title, there are conceivable alternate interpretations that a person might hope to be the case.
Thus, if a session is going to involve double entendres or ribald humor, it would be best to indicate so in the conference materials, so that attendees can best decide what to attend. (The problem with this would be if session presenters all wound up adding less-appropriate material)
"There is a long tradition of this on BBC radio going back to the 60s, where unbelievably, unutterably filthy things have been talked about at 6:30pm, when children are having their dinner, via the potent medium of deadpan innuendo."
Precisely. The humor involved sounds like the kind of thing you hear on Radio 4's News Quiz. Some of which is simply a BBC newsreader reading clippings from the media that have double meanings. (a non-sexual example: "The Bristol RSPCA is giving discounts on pet chipping. 15 pounds for cats and dogs, 10 pounds for old-age pensioners")
Needless to say, the News Quiz loves to talk about UK shadow chancellor Ed Balls.
It's possible, of course, that the speaker's presentation was rather less deadpan. But still, the woman who posted the complaint did have some warning of the content and tone.
I was thinking more of Humph on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
"Samantha has to nip out now with her new gentleman friend. Apparently, they've been working on the restoration of an old chest of drawers. Samantha is in charge of polishing, while he scrapes the varnish and wax off next to her."
"Samantha nearly made it - she's been detained at the last minute in the city's Latin quarter. An Italian gentleman friend has promised to take her out for an ice-cream, and she likes nothing better than to spend an evening licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan."
To the uninitiated, try and imagine these being said by an 83 year old man who doesn't appear to realise that there is any other way to understand them, and that they are perfectly ordinary sentences. Oh yes, and samantha is an entirely fictional person who is constantly alluded to but doesn't exist. There's a moral question for you...
I don't find them funny, I find them interesting and useful. It's a discussion on interesting aspects of the Cocoa libraries. The common theme is that dirty minds could find the names of certain calls naughty. But it's not discussed or the point of the slides at least.
Seems like a reasonable talk. I was actually all set to defend the point of the author of the article, having read the article, but now seeing the slides I don't really see anything at all troublesome here. It's a valid tech talk.
But as you say, perhaps the video of the session would indicate the slides were ignored and it was a wild free for all of obscenities and bigotry.
>I can't imagine how you could present those slides in anything other than a perverted manner.
Off the top of my head:
* Feign outrage, deliver the talk as if you are furious at apple for including such filth. "WHAT IF MY CHILDREN WERE TO HAPPEN UPON THIS API?!?" and so on.
* Feign acute embarrassment, as if one has been forced to deliver a talk about programming but cannot concentrate because of the distress these perfectly normal method names cause to your repressed puritan 1950s mind. Mumble, sweat, stammer, dart your eyes around but never actually say anything bad.
* Deliver the talk deadpan, but become increasingly upset at the audience's inevitable laughter at the bad words. Admonish them loudly for being so low-minded. When you deliver the last and crudest method name, with suitably overloaded timing, throw your notes to the ground and storm off the stage during the laughter.
I would support any criticism of a lack of female presenters and so on. But "criticizing" humor is in my view the highest form of arrogance existing. Telling other people what they are allowed to find funny and what not is just pure hypocrisy. If someone can't look behind a few unfunny remarks and pull the "I AM OFFENDED" card, any further argument seems impossible. I think there is a need besides the reductio ad hitlerum to introduce a reductio ad affendendum.
'A few' seems to be the operative phrase here. At least in the one talk, it sounds like the entire talk was just an excuse to make dirty jokes, and actually had a lack of content. If the even itself is meant to be professional, then don't bring in presenters that are more interested in being comedians than actually teaching.
The subject of the talk should have alerted any potential visitor of upcoming profanities. Plus the situation with these conferences is most of the time a mixture of speakers trying to appeal to different levels of audience members-from students to professionals, from academics to business. I think these are two different issues, one the lack of content and the other her complaining on the presentation.
If a talk turns out to be disappointing there is always the option to leave, sneak into another talk, have a break, go outside, bond with other "leavers" and so on. There will always be individual preferences in regards to conference presentations and content but expecting that they have all to fit to ones personal preferences (and values) seems a bit unrealistic.
I would liken it to going to a talk at OSCON entitled, "What's Wrong With Microsoft," and finding out that it is just a string of Microsoft jokes. Sure one could have expected that at an Open Source conference. Sure one can walk out of the talk.
But am I barred from blogging about my disappointment with the level of professionalism/maturity at the conference? Does my ability to walk out invalidate how that talk reflects on the conference as a whole?
Those seem like stretches. I really can't see the slides fitting with feigned outrage considering the very first joke is "You said 'member'." and, a bit later, "autorelease — Enjoy while you can."
Feigning embarrassment is possible but extremely unlikely, given every "dirty word" has a comment at the end of its section emphasizing the joke.
I appreciate your comments, though. It's always good to have someone representing the other side in a reasonable manner.
No, I'm equating a conference session, likely one of several running at the time, described in the title itself as involving "dirty words", to a class on sexual behavior.
If you go to a session that says it involves dirty words, you really shouldn't be surprised or offended when it involves dirty words, or at least attempts at saucy double entendres.
Admittedly, one might think "dirty words" wasn't meant so literally - perhaps it meant "words that describe things you shouldn't do, like 'over-release'". That ought to have been made clear in the conference materials.
I think the real thing here is that if the entire point of the session is to make dirty programming jokes, does the content of that session really provide anything to the conference? I don't think many people go to conferences expecting it to be like a comedy club... Just sayin'
I suppose it depends on the technical content. The session was pretty much using groan worthy euphemisms as a way of selecting a limited set of things to cover. That slice through the APIs may cover different things than other sessions that deal with more monolithic topics like 'Core Animation' or 'Core Data'.
When that is the stated purpose of the talk, then one has the option to avoid it. It doesn't seem fair to attend a talk that warns you of its nature, and then complain about it.
Based on this more specific info, I don't actually think this is offensive at all, and it's actually rather funny.
However, as with all jokes, it's how you tell 'em. I can imagine this all being done in a family friendly way. I can also imagine it being delivered in a wholly inappropriate drooling-pervert manner. We can't know unless we see a video.
As jalkut says in the blogpost, the jokes write themselves. You could deliver this entire talk in a deadpan manner, reading out all the "dirty words" as if they're perfectly normal, and all the dirtyness is in the minds of the audience. This is the beauty of innuendo and double entendre, it allows you to be dirty without actually being dirty.
There is a long tradition of this on BBC radio going back to the 60s, where unbelievably, unutterably filthy things have been talked about at 6:30pm, when children are having their dinner, via the potent medium of deadpan innuendo. The key is that everything should have be able to be parsed perfectly innocently, so if your children ask what it means you can tell them with no embarrassment. There have been things said at dinner time in this manner that would likely otherwise never have been allowed to be broadcast, at any time of day or night.
In this case however, based on the OP reaction, I think it's more likely that the presenter was gurning his way through the talk, giving suggestive "LOL DICKS!" messages through his speech mannerisms and body language. These were likely the root cause of the uncomfortableness.
But as I say, all this is speculation without video of the session.