Why again are we concerned about what 4chan thinks?
Good question..
What 4chan thinks of HN
201–210 of 265 posts
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#202Sadly, most of the things on there are true. We can try to deny it all we want, but most of the stuff that's there is true. The power of anonymity is that you get to voice honest opinions without tying it up with your identity and/or feeling responsible for it. Of course, this can be argued otherwise too, by citing some (bad) comments as example from that thread, but for the most part, what you see there are honest c…
At least the density of "go" posts on the front page was spot-on.
> Why Go Is Better Than You And Everything You Own And Why It Always Will Be
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#203Sadly, most of the things on there are true. We can try to deny it all we want, but most of the stuff that's there is true. The power of anonymity is that you get to voice honest opinions without tying it up with your identity and/or feeling responsible for it. Of course, this can be argued otherwise too, by citing some (bad) comments as example from that thread, but for the most part, what you see there are honest c…
> How Redis+Memcached+Node.js+Go+MongoDB+MariaDB+postgres+Clojure helped my start-up scale (from 10 to 20 hits per day)
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh I was in tears by the third Stallman posting. It looks like he was posting the same things in other threads as well. Stallman spamming
There are actually rampaging Stallman bots that will post those. It's pretty great, actually. New startup idea: Stallman-as-a-service.
Well, here's Stallman as a shell 1-liner
curl -s "http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman" |grep "" | grep -v -E "(Chapter|href|Source:)" | perl -MList::Util -e 'print List::Util::shuffle ' | head -n1 | sed -E -e "s###g"Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#205It's funny because it's true.
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#206Sadly, most of the things on there are true. We can try to deny it all we want, but most of the stuff that's there is true. The power of anonymity is that you get to voice honest opinions without tying it up with your identity and/or feeling responsible for it. Of course, this can be argued otherwise too, by citing some (bad) comments as example from that thread, but for the most part, what you see there are honest c…
They forgot the classic:
> Why we should have an honest discussion about sexism in tech [dead]
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
4chan, like any diverse online community, has a lot of awesome people using it. And, yet, 4chan spawned this: http://jezebel.com/what-happens-when-a-13-year-old-4chan-cam... And, this: http://www.dailydot.com/society/adria-richards-4chan-raid-se... And, this: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/internet/2012/06/dear-inte... I'm speaking of the culture of the place. Every individual user has the ability to not participa…
>And, it is so often white males targeting women (and, worse, young girls). since when? since they make good headlines? Most people who get ousted are narcissistic 16 year old's. They just arn't sympathetic to a news reel, and almost always the instigating factor for 4chan going to town on someone is narcissism. Adria and Anita being two fantastic examples of such. My sympathies to Allie though. Definitely not a smar…
"since when?"
You've been to 4chan before, right? I just took at look. I could point to a half dozen deeply disturbing threads happening as we speak. They are conversations being held predominantly by young white males about even younger girls, some of whom have had their real identity revealed by the creepy stalking that 4chan is so well known for.
"Most people who get ousted are narcissistic 16 year old's."
So, all 16 year olds, then. Every teenager is self-involved. Their brain isn't finished yet. That's no excuse for a bunch of grown men to wage war on them.
"Adria and Anita being two fantastic examples of such."
So, you believe what happened in those cases was a sane, rational, and fair response to someone saying something that 4channers disagreed with? You call them "narcissists", one because she wanted to make some videos about sexism in video games and she asked some people to voluntarily give her a few bucks to do it, and the other because she thought it was inappropriate to make stupid dick jokes at a conference attended by women and young girls.
See, here's the thing...you could convince me that Adria Richards could have handled that situation with more subtlety. But, the response of 4chan? You believe that was justified? I honestly have a hard time wrapping my head around that kind of mindset.
And, Anita literally did nothing to anyone. She wanted to make some videos. Don't like the concept of videos about sexism in video games? Don't contribute, don't watch them. That's what I did, and the videos never bothered me one bit because I never saw them (didn't need to, as I already knew video games were sexist as hell). Huh. How hard was that? In what world is it OK to wage war on someone for expressing their opinion? In that world, anonymous forums become the only place one can express an opinion without fear, because their are vigilante gangs standing at the ready to try to destroy you at the first sign that they might disagree with you.
That it's considered justified by so many within that community because of, I guess, how strongly someone disagrees with the opinions being stated, is disturbing.
If 4chan only went after people with power, I would cheer them on. Politicians? Hell, yeah, go for it. Tom Cruise? Fuck, yeah. Bankers? Why not? Abusive cops? I'm OK with that too. But, they often don't. They go after easy targets; they're often bullies (while absurdly wearing the badge of "standing up for the little guy"). One of the easiest targets is young girls, and 4channers go after young girls daily.
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
You haven't brought up any. But some are pretty common. I'm just arguing that PC prevents free thought and the dispassionate analysis of evidence, since it applies moral values to the evidence itself and it prejudicially strikes out some plausible hypotheses. For example, I don't buy that racism is the sole reason for the underrepresentation of some ethnic minority groups in tech because other ethnic minority groups…
You would hardly be fired for saying "Tech is not racist". I'd argue that you are wrong as would others, but you're just being hyperbolic.
Actually, I would argue that his opinion that tech is not racist is in the mainstream. It would not cause an eyebrow to be raised in the vast majority of tech offices I've worked in. That's the funny thing about a lot of these arguments against "political correctness"; the opinions most folks who use that term hold are the ones that white men have held for centuries. It's not at all surprising that there are still lots of white men that hold those opinions. And, given the incredible imbalance of white men in tech (even taking into account the Asian factor, the US tech industry is still a strikingly white and male industry), it is not difficult to hold those old positions without ever being questioned or challenged on them.
It's only because these views so rarely get challenged that it causes such a fierce response.
Source: I was one of those white guys who thought tech was a super great place where anyone with the skills could get ahead and there was no glass ceiling for women and their was no reason black folks couldn't do great in the industry if they just had an interest in tech. I recognize all this because I was there. I just wish I had a better way to help other people understand how their privileged position makes it very difficult for them to see and understand why the tech industry has both an extremely sexist and white supremacist culture.
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#209This one is my favourite -"Things I've learned from coding for a month" -"Ten ways to become a better programmer" - by the guy who's been coding for a month
This. These kinds of posts always make me roll my eyes. Frequently they get hundreds of upvotes. Makes me wonder about the quality of submissions from the fields I understand much less (sciences, humanities, politics, etc.).
Yeah, but that last thing holds for nearly everything – whenever I read an article on, say, physics, I cannot help but wonder whether the articles on (e.g.) the war in Iraq were produced with the same complete disregard of correctness.
Re: What 4chan thinks of HN
#210I'm actually really surprised they seem to think that the HN community is anti-sexist. Compared to 4chan, maybe, but from my experience it isn't at all.
I imagine because 'doing shots with your boss is a sexual thing and a dumb idea, and someone kissing you is an unwelcome advance but not assault' is a point that resonated with a lot of people.
'Kissing your subordinate at work' is also a dumb idea, of course. But, from reading the reports of the other people there, this was an illegitimate accusation of sexual assault, and what amounted to a dumb guy who escalated an existing sexual situation doesn't deserve to have his life ruined.
The thread was shut down because it could cause a flamewar. That felt like a statement that the body shot girl's criminal accusations (yes, sexual assault is a crime) had merit but any discussion or counter argument did not.
The idea that saying both men and women should not create sexual situations in the workplace is not 'sexist'. Not is questioning an unmerited accusation of criminal behaviour.