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Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

pulkitsharma07.github.io

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Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#2
This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#3
post #2

This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

Yeah, all cultures are the exact same. Very appropriate dismissal.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#4
post #2

This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

Wasn't this the same problem in all the previous Hacktoberfests?

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#6
post #2

This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

> This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it".

You have completely skipped the why. The answer in the article is so much more nuanced and complicated than "because a popular YouTuber asked them to do that".

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#7
post #2

This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

I disagree. I think the key point was that most Indians don't even know what they're doing is immoral. And the post spends majority of its space explaining why this problem is kind of unique to India.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#8
post #4
post #2

This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

Wasn't this the same problem in all the previous Hacktoberfests?

was not that popular (first one being in 2016)

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#9
> Somehow Indian parents will become self sufficient, so that children are free to do and discover what they actually want.

This bit near the bottom (under "improbable futures") really struck me as necessary, and not just an Indian problem. The pressure to be generally successful and support their immediate family is hard enough on anyone, but adding onto that the pressure to be able to care for your parents when they're old is even worse.

I'm not saying people shouldn't care for their parents, or that people shouldn't live in multi-generational households, but humanity really needs to figure out how to care for our older members without requiring huge sacrifices from their children. Some countries have mostly figured this out with strong social safety nets, but many... have not. And beyond that, we shouldn't have to rely on a social safety net. Increasing income inequality makes it harder and harder for people to build enough wealth during their lives so they can retire comfortable, or even at all.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#10
I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today.

This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source, to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the role played by maintainers. Chances are that they are oblivious to what happens on the other side of the table, and open source projects are abstract entities (which might as well be run by Github, or some other bureaucracy!) A useful reminder that the celebrated “hustle” is susceptible to the unintended consequences of Goodhart’s law.

If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating their initiative.

For all those who advocate for growth hacking techniques, or annoying ads, this is exactly how scummy most such techniques / dark patterns feel to users. I don’t think that is geographically localized in any way.

As for comments trying to characterize “Indian culture”, it’s really complicated! With a population of ~1.4B people, you’ll easily get a LOT of examples for any kind of behavior (including stark polar opposites, sometimes competed to optimality). The same people writing such articles will often also turn around and write articles about the lack of entrepreneurial hustle in India and the need for more jugaad :smh:

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