It must be nice to have the luxury of choosing to keep one's identity small rather than having a big identity foisted upon oneself by society, history, and the circumstances of one's birth.
Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
11–20 of 321 posts
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#12> Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?
I talk it he has not ever participated in Javascript or baking discussions.
It turns out that discussions have often nothing to do with identity, and a lot with depth of knowledge and depth of conviction. Shallow knowledge & deep convictions are what leads to disaster.
Maybe it's not labels, but the desire to position yourself as an expert, even if you don't really understand the problem.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#13> people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that
“that” being things that are not political or religious.
What vaccines and 5G have shown is that you do not need to be qualified to talk about a topic. A strong opinion about anything is what qualifies you to be an expert in 2021.
Based on that article and my memory, this is a phenomenon that has happened in the last 10 years. Why this may be the case is something I’m not sure of. There are some possibilities. Perhaps the rise of mainstream social media allowed everyone to find their people, which emboldened people with minority opinions. Or maybe rising income inequality is making people feel increasingly powerless and this influences them to assert themselves in areas outside of politics and religion.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#14> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript” I got some bad news for 2009 PG from the future…
> Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums? Or knitting, or Rust, or the second amendment, or patents, or bitcoin, or Prop 13, etc.
emacs or vi?
windows or linux?
Kirk or Picard?
Marvel or DC?
Han shot first!
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#15> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript” I got some bad news for 2009 PG from the future…
Further down the article you will see:
>For example, the question of the relative merits of programming languages often degenerates into a religious war, because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#16> people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that “that” being things that are not political or religious. What vaccines and 5G have shown is that you do not need to be qualified to talk about a topic. A strong opinion about anything is what qualifies you to be an expert in 2021. Based on that article and my memory, this is a phenomenon that has happened in the last 10 years.…
A strong opinion AND a large Instagram following.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#17I’m confounded by the advice to avoid conflict by restricting one’s identity. By all means, don’t conflate your preference with your identity. But this is an awful way to address people whose actual experienced identity is needlessly a source of conflict.
I spent most of my life shielding myself from admitting I’m queer, and nearly all of it shielding myself from admitting I’m non-binary and admitting I’m autistic, using this logic.
That didn’t prevent conflict, it just made it harder for me to navigate and almost certainly harder for people who mean well toward me to navigate as well.
My identity keeps growing and it only gets better for me and the people I keep in my life.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#18From a social perspective, identities make us just as we make them. One is born in identities outside of their control. And it is not possible to separate yourself from an identity as easily as the author argues. But people can agree on clear rules of engagement, evidence, and interpretation, for a _better_ interaction.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#19> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript” I got some bad news for 2009 PG from the future…
God those were simpler times back then.
Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
#20> “As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript” I got some bad news for 2009 PG from the future…
> Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums? Or knitting, or Rust, or the second amendment, or patents, or bitcoin, or Prop 13, etc.
Second amendment is religious text.