There seems to be a lot of chatter about "booth babes", I imagine some US conference has happened with the usual "display of meat" to entice the buyers.

It dawned on me a few decades ago that when I went to the computer trade show in Milan (aka "SMAU", don't ask…) as a child, and then as a geeky teenager, the reason the ladies at the booths wanted to speak to me was that I was perfectly harmless¹ and gave them an excuse not to interact with the Italian males swarming around them…

Pretty sad realisation, really.

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¹ yes, I was perfectly harmless even as a geeky teenager and thought it wonderful that they wanted to know about my school and let me play the video games with them (with an infinite amount of coins!)

@cynicalsecurity did you ask them what university they were attending and what they where studying? graciousness tends to go with brains, and they likely were working to pay for tuition ;)

@jeroen not in Italy :( They were probably the prettiest girls they could find at IBM / Olivetti / HP / etc. offices in Milan and told to turn up in a miniskirt.

At the time I was young, early '80s, I didn't really think about uni, I just thought how cool it was that I got to jump the queue and play with them on the video games with infinite coins.

In later years when I was no longer a beardless boy, this privilege was lost (but, at the same time, I had earned the privilege of playing with the actual machines… wonderful memories of being allowed to play with a pre-production Apollo DN10000 box).

@cynicalsecurity It was probably this: https://infosec.exchange/@screaminggoat/112958220558346758

My tolerance level is pretty high, but IMO this is just straight up offensive without *any* substance.

@buherator wow, that takes outrageous to a completely different level… this is actually worthy of a Palo Alto Networks boycott.

It wouldn't have been OK in the '80s never mind now… I remember pretty extreme miniskirts in the booths in Milan but the objectification level here is off-scale.

@stevelord that too… but we have all seen worse, to be honest.

@buherator

@buherator @cynicalsecurity This is literal objectification by dressing women up as furniture. In what world is that acceptable and who thought that was a brilliant marketing idea?

@Kensan @cynicalsecurity The outcome is obviously that, what I can't wrap my head around is what this outfit was supposed to represent? I mean there must have been an idea similar to "dress up girls in latex because geeks like Matrix" or similar, but I just can't imagine what led to *this*.

@buherator some genius marketing person must have though that they represent something. What exactly is a mystery to me but evidently someone approved it.

@Kensan

@cynicalsecurity @buherator "someone approved it" That's the part I have trouble with. I mean everyone can have a bad idea but apparently not even one single person in that organisation, and I am sure there were multiple people involved in making that decision and green lighting that, went "Hold on a second, maybe this is not such a good idea". In the year of 2024.