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I was interested to notice how I formed my initial guess about the man's credibility.

The factors included:

- How attractive was he vs. the woman?

- I noticed he has 7 kids, and went to Providence College. So I'm guessing a devout Roman Catholic, which would mean he (publicly, at least) has a world view that values marital fidelity.

- In his LinkedIn profile [0], he claims that his family started basically a charity ice-cream shop. And the start date is 5 months before the first alleged sexual harassment. I guessed that a family with a distressed marriage would probably be unable to pull that off.

- On the other hand, IIUC, it seems like he's in marketing, which would mean he's got experience managing his companies' brand as well as his personal brand. So that raised my guard a little.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanolohan/



I always try to avoid making a guess on someone's credibility in these situations. Such stories are usually polarised for various reasons. In the past, whenever I've made guesses, I'm wrong half the time. My reasoning for one situation was that the harasser was known for making dirty jokes and was misinterpreted, but oh no, he turned out to be a creep.

It's always horrifying to make the wrong call on this, so it's just best avoided until evidence on either side solidifies. We also want to create an environment safe for victims to speak up, even if that means false positives every now and then.


FWIW, I agree that it's important to withhold judgment until all sides of a story have been presented.

I just posted my initial thought process because I found it interesting.


It's fun to gauge personalities like this, but the outcomes can be reversed in a human way as well.

Attraction is personal. Someone can, for example, be biased for and against certain ways people look, and so, their selection don't match the supposed attractiveness. And also, attraction is not just looks. A beautiful person can reek of body odor, for example.

Being religious can't just imply morality, it can imply hypocrisy too. People sometimes lead a very different personal life, compared to their public life, and religion works well for that.

Similar thing applies to the charity ice-cream shop. People take on all kinds of projects in a distressed situation. For one thing, it can be an excellent way to not care about the original problems. It's a thing for example that troubled couples try for children, in order to better their relationship.

The only thing that's worthy of consideration is the marketing angle. But even then, there are a lot of shitty marketers in the world. And many people who can build a certain image, and yet they don't work in marketing.




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