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Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

zedshaw.com

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Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#11

Post by bouncingsoul »

I've never said anything about a Zed Shaw link before, but this has my hands up in the air.

What comes to my mind is a fumbling art student who's been called out on a bad piece, so he's now claiming it's a parody of bad work, or, no wait, actually the reaction of everyone to the poor piece is the piece.

He trots out the persona argument all the time, but I won't give it to him. A persona isn't a set of fake glasses, nose and mustache you can wear whenever you don't want something attached to people's image of you. People with personas make a great effort to separate them from their real selves – wearing costumes, using different names, and actually behaving differently. Ranting from zedshaw.com under the name Zed Shaw doesn't fit my idea of a persona.

Also, it bothers me that the supposed real Zed Shaw uses this deletion to criticize people and put them down (for taking his "persona" seriously) – something his "persona" was well known for.

Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#13

Post by jerf »

andrewl-hn wrote: post #8
andrewl-hn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question about how the Web archive works: can Zed ask them to turn down the archived copy and if he does will they remove it? Does anybody know if Zed released his early blog posts under Creative Commons? Because if he did anybody can republish his old rant today.

Oh, I just noticed at the bottom of the archived page: 'Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.' The new Zed's blog doesn't have a CC reference, BTW

You really shouldn't CC-license things blindly. They are useful, but not appropriate in all circumstances. I see no reason to CC-license your blog posts. (Copyright gives you no control over ideas and fair use means people can quote you in most circumstances quotes are useful, so you're not really giving anything useful away anyhow.)

Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#14

Post by tptacek »

icey wrote: post #7
tjic wrote: post #3

How to blog like Zed Shaw: 1) say outrageous thing 2) wait 3) retract outrageous thing; criticize people / society / the world for getting all atwitter over outrageous things 4) repeat

What other things has he retracted?

He didn't retract this one.

Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#15

Post by icey »

tptacek wrote: post #12

Anyone want to take a bet on how many more times Zed Shaw can get to the top of Hacker News and Reddit by talking about talking about Rails?

You have to admit that he's a hell of a marketer. (In the PT Barnum sense of the word.)

Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#16

Post by neilk »

bouncingsoul wrote: post #11

I've never said anything about a Zed Shaw link before, but this has my hands up in the air. What comes to my mind is a fumbling art student who's been called out on a bad piece, so he's now claiming it's a parody of bad work, or, no wait, actually the reaction of everyone to the poor piece is the piece. He trots out the persona argument all the time, but I won't give it to him. A persona isn't a set of fake glasses,…

The blog was called "Zed's So Fucking AWESOME", and he had his name in flaming letters and silhouettes of strippers on the blog, as I recall. Did you really think it was a sincere effort?

There may be a part of Zed Shaw that is Fucking Awesome and that is highly opinionated (the audacity to even have an online persona, and to start software projects, points to a large amount of ego). But it was clearly always a self-parody. Unfortunately, self-parody doesn't work on the internet. Everyone always takes you at face value.

Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#19

Post by bouncingsoul »

neilk wrote: post #16
bouncingsoul wrote: post #11

I've never said anything about a Zed Shaw link before, but this has my hands up in the air. What comes to my mind is a fumbling art student who's been called out on a bad piece, so he's now claiming it's a parody of bad work, or, no wait, actually the reaction of everyone to the poor piece is the piece. He trots out the persona argument all the time, but I won't give it to him. A persona isn't a set of fake glasses,…

The blog was called "Zed's So Fucking AWESOME", and he had his name in flaming letters and silhouettes of strippers on the blog, as I recall. Did you really think it was a sincere effort? There may be a part of Zed Shaw that is Fucking Awesome and that is highly opinionated (the audacity to even have an online persona, and to start software projects, points to a large amount of ego). But it was clearly always a self-…

Did you ever know a kid who would say something mean and then quickly follow it up with "JK!"? That kid was annoying.

I don't think it was a sincere effort. That's my point. Zed just wanted to be able to say mean things about people and not experience any consequences for it. And that's silly.

This fumbling around now is annoying. If he wants to be a mean person he should be a mean person. If he wants to be nice he should say he doesn't want to be mean anymore and be nicer. Changing his behavior and saying it's because I wasn't smart enough to handle his persona – and by the way don't criticize him for anything he said... What is that?

Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)

#20

Post by [deleted] »

fiaz wrote: post #5

I really didn't care much for the original post, and I could care less about this one too. I DO care about any engineering accomplishments Zed has to offer (almost all are great) - but that's about it.

[deleted]
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