[3] Disrupt events, generally held early in the fall of each year, are conclaves which bring together representatives of startup companies, industry insiders, and interested others for presentations and networking, typically also including the opportunity for collaborative hackathon sessions.
[4] This generated a mixed response from the assembled crowd, running the gamut from indignation to uncomfortable laughter to genuine appreciation of the "twisted kind of standup" intended by the presenters.
Response was immediate and primarily negative; journalist Abby Ohlheiser wrote that the app's intent, the agglomeration of photos of men staring at partially clothed female cleavage, effectively trivialized the right of women to consent.
"[5] Commenting on the affair in The Guardian, journalist Amy Gray faulted conference organizers, whom she presumed knew about the content of presentations beforehand based upon mandatory pre-convention uploads of personal and project information.
[1] Gray felt the Titstare affair emblematic of a duality in the tech world, which was on the one hand perfectly meritocratic in theory, while in practice being an industry which "runs on privilege, with sexist and juvenile behaviour based on gender stereotypes being routinely displayed".