Why you don't see me interacting with Bob Stone
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| Dudley Dursley, bully, and his pack of friends |
Robert "Bob" Stone describes himself on his LinkedIn profile as:
XR Pioneer since 1987; Emeritus Professor; Human Factors Specialist.
"XR's loveable curmudgeon" 🤣. All comments on LinkedIn are my own, but
they're damned good ones 😉
He has a huge About section. Bob Stone's name on LinkedIn is Prof Bob Stone.
I have 2 problems with Bob Stone, the first is much larger than the second.
- Bob Stone is a misogynist, a woman hater.
- Bob Stone is a coward. He prefers to attack out of direct view and runs with a pack.
Bob Stone is a Misogynist
February 7, 2022 Bob Stone attacks Timoni West, Chief of VR/AR at Unity
Andy Fidel shared a Fast Company article by Mart Sullivan entitled "The metaverse is 'particularly hard to predict,' says Unity's AR/VR chief, with a quote "According to Timoni West, humans are good at grasping some of the big themes of tech revolutions yet to come-- and are terrible at getting all the details right."
Prof Bob Stone wrote: No shit Sherlock (eyeroll emoji)
**Note: my captures above both show Bob's original writing: 'No shit Sherlock' and his later modification 'No s**t Sherlock'. Notice that he felt he needed to not use a direct swear word, but that his original position of scorn was fine.
Wil McReynolds wrote: I actually lol'd at that.
Tom Hedges, Group Vice President Marketing and Brand Communications (not sure if that is the same Tom Hedges, but is in England) replied to Bob Stone: Prof Bob Stone don't ever change.
Prof Bob Stone replied to Tom Hedges: I'll try not to! There's just so many overnight "I've been dealing with the Metaverse for decades" proclaimers, it drives me mad. 95% of it is c**p (trying to be polite)!
Tom Hedges replied again to Bob Stone: Prof Bob Stone I couldn't agree more. So much BS out there!
I replied to Bob Stone: You could be more polite.
Andy Fidel wrote: Heather Elizabeth Dodds, Ph.D. Agree, Timoni West has always been on-point regarding spatial computing. (stars emoji) Wish there was an audio version of the conversation.
Andy Fidel replied to Bob Stone: There are polite ways to express one's opinion. Let's be mindful of our words and most certainly welcome new imagineers to explore teh wonders of immersive reality.
That being said, Timoni West is no rookie. A great mind and spokesperson in our field (stars emoji)
Prof Bob Stone replied to Andy Fidel: Andy Fidel (cry emoji)
Steven Jupp, Original Architect of the EyA- The Platform Readying the World for a Radical Change (also in England, pretty sure this is the correct LinkedIn account) replied to Bob Stone: (laugh cry emoji) (laugh cry emoji)
This rudeness and vulgarity really did shock me the first time I saw it.
Now I would not accuse Bob based on only one instance. He's gone on to ride around LinkedIn with a posse of men particularly engaging in maligning women in the XR industry. If you examine Bob's frequent posts, you'll see that the replies to his posts are, by a very wide margin, by accounts that one would identify visually as men.
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| Source: NIH News in Health |
Here he attacks Andrea S. Professional VR/XR Artist, by calling the question she poses as "nonsense".
And I stood up to Bob Stone as a bully by speaking up: Bob has a history of being rude and dismissive of the comments of XR women. I pay him no mind.
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| Simple advice. And it works. |
Bob Stone is a Coward
But Bob Stone is also a coward. If you look at his LinkedIn posts, you can easily see a trend. He re-post the posts of others to his network with his added comments, and rarely if never tags back the original post author. In this way, Bob is "roasting" others, a bully trait.
As an aside, Bob also carries a big chip on his shoulder, it appears to me, thinking of himself as an XR industry mover and shaker but now has-been. He is almost always referring to time, old time, his time, or time past (history) in his posts. It's so common that I'm sure he's got a problem with his own aging and feeling left out of the current XR industry. Therefore, he keeps banging the drum that he thought of it first, he discovered it first, he did it first, and everyone else is slow to the game.
Me thinks you protest too much, BobI decided to look and collect ideas for this blog post after seeing Bob post about the dismal AI art in this post (who happens to be a person of color).
I was stunned that he would rant about AI art when his own profile image is, to me, AI art.
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| Robert "Bob"Stone, aka Prof Bob Stone, LinkedIn profile image as of February 2026 |
I also noticed that all of the replies appear to be made by men. Sadly, two of these men I considered colleagues--you can tell by the "1st" link number by their accounts in these captures. I'll be ex-linking with them after I click Publish on this post.
Does Bob even notice that professional XR women are shying away from interacting with him?
I found more than I was expecting to discover. I would like to re-iterate. I'm about to show you one week (only) of Bob Stone's LinkedIn posts and just the top few lines b/c I'm not bothering to loose brain cells by actually reading his rants. BTW, Bob is into double exclamation points.
Hang on tight. We're going reverse in time.
1. Bob attacked Craig Frehlich's recent LinkedIn post. Coincidentally the zebra head also
set me off but I am used to being disgusted by much of Craig's posts. I'm going to crop the post here because I found it very
disturbing. Apparently AI really cannot understand zebras. 
2. Bob says "we did this in the early 1990!!" and other snide comments.
3. Just being angry
6. One line but Bob is angry. Again.
7. Pride from one of his first students
Sometimes it is tempting to reply asking how long he's been in the industry, just to see him get riled up.
But nah.
Not. Worth. The. Energy.
He's a curmudgeon, aye? Loveable? Attacks women in 2022 and continuing with minorities in 2026? Allegedly.
Me thinks, not so loveable.
Proverbs 22:10 Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; quarrels and insults are ended.