Adria Richards will probably marry a tall guy that looks kind of like Francis Chan…
I know my writing comes off as hostile way too easily—because, like my complexion, my tone of writing voice is “dark.” So before too many sentences go by let me seriously and respectfully praise the depth and balance of the social-media personality of Adria Richards. I’ve just finished watching Adria’s video on dating and I am pleased to see a real, technical woman being honest and open on the Internet—actually living in public instead of acting—bad acting. I have not formally done the research but I am flippantly certain that most of the females on YouTube.com talking about dating are clinical personalities, underage girls and ladies who appear menopausal.
There will be more of my paragraphs of praise for Adria Richards but before that let me say that I’m not writing this out of some ulterior double speak (really). In her dating video, Adria confirms what I knew for at least a year: she has a distinct un-attraction for vegans (or vegan-like, gluten-free behavior). I do eat fish—but her Instagram photos of food, proudly celebrating meat and dairy, strongly suggests to me that—like my mother—Adria would be slightly offended by my view of her photos and her sensual relationships with certain kinds of food that I must avoid.
Moreover, I am too old for Adria: even though she has the resume of a 55 year-old IT operations dude—she looks like she’s 23 years old! She also travels frequently and I’ve spent most of my time sitting alone writing code (although I build computers too in spite of my developer-ness). Sure, I’ve finally reached a level in my practice that would allow me to start travelling—my start would be too timid and conservative compared to lavishness Adria dotes on globetrotting.
Adria is a practicing master of social-media networking and live-audience professing. Her blog is case study of socializing technology—so her new role as a technical evangelist for SendGrid is utterly perfect for her. In many ways she has exceeded her “mentor” and friend Scott Hanselman by not locking down with a huge, homogeneous-post-Sinofsky-distortion-field-generating company like Microsoft yet achieving the same job title—I’m sure she knows of Miguel de Icaza, who turned down passionate job offers from Microsoft (yet simultaneously Miguel has deep, research-based respect for Microsoft technology—hint, hint Adria). Miguel is building something smaller where he has a bit more and basic human rights—and the moves Adria make look very similar…
What Adria is doing strikes me as authentically courageous. Her role-modeling for women—especially women of color—seems effortless and organically charming. Her transparency is not vulgar, not steeped in the context of a lack of information. She could become CEO of Yahoo! tomorrow and nothing I have seen of her on the Web could be used against her to undermine her professional authority and capacitance for respect—yet she is open to her human side on the Web, free from the Byzantine need to conceal and pose.
So, yes, it was her dating video that really surprised me—but what inspired me to write about her was her blog post, “Honesty And Integrity In Life.” Okay folks… this may be a Los Angeles thing but, over a few decades of captivity within Hollywood entertainment, I’ve noticed a thing called ‘plausible deniability.’ So when Adria makes a post like “I’m Applying For A Job At Google”—which is eerily similar to my Blog post “Drifting on a Life Raft 60 Days after Being Laid Off”—Adria has eliminated the possibility of denying that she applied for a job at Google—just like I am unable to deny that I applied for a job at Yahoo!... after being unemployed for about three months…
This ability to deny the existence of certain phenomena is key for a certain “life” styles—that can be as lucrative (and unsustainable) as the billions made by Apple’s Steve Jobs. In the realm of “intimacy,” the ability to deny shit is also key so Adria gets my respect for being committed to the truth (so, Adria, you have the right to be afraid of commitment—because there is commitment to the truth and there is commitment to socializing with the option of marriage with or without the truth).
So she insists that she never marry and never have children. I feel (without any real natural or super-natural research) that she will marry (but not have children—unlike the current CEO of Yahoo!). I’m thinking it’ll be a tall guy that looks like Francis Chan. Clean cut… slick moral sociability… meat eating… and cosmopolitan…
So the very “dark,” “morose” (Moorish) thing I have to write in context of Adria Richards is that, like my non-friend Tsehaie, there are not enough bacon-eating Black-Jew tech-hotties in the world like Adria Richards. There are too few of you! Right about now, I can only think of Denise Jacobs. After years and years on the Internet, using the largest search engine on the planet within the largest social network known to mankind, I can only come up with two names: Adria Richards and Denise Jacobs—Black, authentically-technical, social-networking women active right now…