The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
blog.davewilkinsonii.com
The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#2He has a planet sized ego made of tissue paper. Not much point in engaging to be honest because you just get to join the end of a line of victims. Live and let live?
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#3The good thing with online bullies is that they often don't have all that much power. You can be content to ignore them. And sure, maybe sometimes a sharp reply is needed, but stick to the facts, don't get dragged into the mud.
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#4[deleted]
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#5The thing that stuck out to me the most was the tone more than anything else, really. It felt like his tweets were written in caps lock ...
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#6Yes, posting one big ad hominem attack because you got your ego bruised will really help make the tech community a better place.
Nothing more constructive than a nice dose of character assassination.
The author is basically doing exactly the same as Zed Shaw, only using more words and less four letter ones.
Edit: Correction, this is post is more insidious than simply calling someone a fucking moron on Twitter. Both are wrong, but only one of them can be excused as a very human impulsive reaction.
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#7> These people hurt our communities. They lurk in IRC channels waiting to harass new programmers. These are the types of people who discourage women from participating in classrooms and within our open source communities. These high-and-mighty types that only desire to proclaim their superiority and describe to you the exact composition of your inferiority, even if you are merely trying to learn.
Zed Shaw discourages learning and opensource, rly? You probably missed the Learn X The Hard Way series he puts up a shitload of work in so newcommers can actually learn efficiently to code. And what on earth that has to do with women?! You're seriously barking at the wrong tree.
//edit: btw for your amusement http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw... enjoy
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#8Zed Shaw is proof online tech communities are not entirely unlike professional wrestling. He would have been another decent author nobody talked about had he not been smart and turned heel with his online persona.
I don't know him. I only occasionally come across something he's written. But I'll be damned if I wasn't angry to see a post about him on Hacker News.
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#9Scott Hanselman held a session on this at Alt.net Seattle a few years back, called "Why so mean?" At the time, in the Alt.net community, we had some pretty nasty people. The picture of Scott suggesting the session is pretty great: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExperiencingALTNETSeattle2009O...
Recording of the session used to be here: http://www.kyte.tv/shanselman#uri=channels/240253/361169 but it appears that the service might be dead (or just blocked here at work)
Overall I think Zed is overreacting. It's so easy to do. I would guess he may just be one that may not be able to discern tone through text very well (most people can't, I think). That said, I have a lot of respect for Zed and his contributions, such as Learn Python The Hard Way.
Re: The Zed Shaw Phenomenon
#10Is this so uncommon though? Ever since I was in school I've felt like the rare nerd who actually liked other people and wasn't a colossally negative dilweed. They pervade all aspects of our industry and culture, from grumpy neckbeards to mouthy wankers, and I'm honestly not seeing many signs of improvement. Everyone wants to be seen as cool, especially if we've spent most of our lives being dorks. Unfortunately this leads to everyone trying to be edgy and witty all the time and missing out on the human element; though a lack of empathy and social skills is hardly exclusive from the tech world.
We need more strong personalities without the mouthy egos behind them, and without the over-self-promotion I find off-putting in the design-side of the industry. Is it possible to be a popular, opinionated programmer without being a dick? I hope so, as whether we want them to or not; people are often on the lookout for a role-model.
And hell, I got insulted by ZS just for saying I liked a keyboard player. I think his opinion on the matter is wrong, but I'm not popular enough on Twitter to win that argument. Not that I like partaking in arguments on Twitter anyway.