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When Nerds Collide (2014)

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Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#111
post #74
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, I’m real confused. Why do you talk about “try to join nerd communities” with regard to the dongle thing? Do you know something we don’t? That seems more like a policy of exclusion from your side – ala obviously a real nerd wouldn’t ever find something inappropriate or be clumsy in how they complain about something. This whole thing is a way of cordoning yourself off, isolating yourself from criticism, shunning o…

Some scumbag got a guy fired by publicly shaming him on twitter for making a joke to his friend in a private conversation. That is one of the most hostile, weird, and hateful ways I've ever seen someone behave. It's a perfect example of counter-productive, oppressive behavior that was outlined in this article. Do you think getting that guy fired is going to suddenly change his sense of humor? Not likely. If anything,…

Hold on. The only scumbag that got the guy fired was his employer. Will your boss fire you if you get harassed on Twitter?

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#112
post #49

This article is delightfully thoughtful. Her other post is also worth reading: https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-had-a... It makes me wonder though how much nerd culture is driven by forms of autism. Those wishing to end oppression women should be careful that they are not instead perpetuating the oppression of autistic people.

Those wishing to end oppression women should be careful that they are not instead perpetuating the oppression of autistic people.

A valid concern, but I think it's worth being careful not to lump all well-intentioned dissent onto the spectrum. I'd hate it if autism became a go to label for dismissal of social analysis that doesn't fit into someone's preconceived notions and narratives.

I have seen it a bit, and it's usually when people are locked into their ideological turf wars and get confronted with ideas that don't easily fit within that existing framework. It's ugly and presumes that non-complacence to norms that would prevent the idea from occurring is a sign of a neurological disorder and an excuse to dismiss the idea without giving it any thought.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#113
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some scumbag got a guy fired by publicly shaming him on twitter for making a joke to his friend in a private conversation. That is one of the most hostile, weird, and hateful ways I've ever seen someone behave. It's a perfect example of counter-productive, oppressive behavior that was outlined in this article. Do you think getting that guy fired is going to suddenly change his sense of humor? Not likely. If anything,…

Hold on. The only scumbag that got the guy fired was his employer. Will your boss fire you if you get harassed on Twitter?

Yes, if someone launches an Internet lynch mob of social justice warriors at me that threatens the business, of course I would be fired.

No company wants to be perceived as "the place that employs the most-hated sexist in the world" if they depend on selling to regular people. An Internet lynch mob can ruin SE rankings, launch DDoS attacks, etc. Anything that attracts one is a liability.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#114

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

I'm in "nerd culture". If it's too brittle to fit the needs of people in it, to hell with it. Change or die. I'm reminded of Grigori Perelman's critique of mathematicians: "But almost all of them are conformists." "It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated." If anyone of us is a nerd and can't improve their own culture, GTFO. And take your "dongles"…

> Change or die.

Change or be killed, at your hands, it sounds like.

Can you blame people for fighting back against that?

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#115
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What they aren't free to do without push-back is to tell others who want to do gardening that they should tolerate their abuse. I agree with Angorak that there is nothing in what we do that would require people being assholes which is why I, too, find it unacceptable. The real problem is that there is no coherent definition of abuse and people who are better at playing the social game use that skill to define every…

That's exactly the reason why I put up CoCs for example - we define what is inacceptable in a certain space and put it in clear writing to avoid gaming. It binds the organizers as much as the attendees. It cuts out the play. For example, CoCs for dating environments look very differently then those for confs. (did you know there are cuddling meetups and they have very strict rules to ensure people feel comfortable?)…

The way I see it, any space with written rules (e.g. CoCs) are essentially spaces with restrictions that dilute cultures so that several cultures with a narrow shared interest can mingle productively. Codes of Conduct are essentially anti-cultural for the sake of achieving collaboration between cultures that share a common interest. This isn't a bad thing. It's certainly productive in ways and produces something of value, but it is necessarily limiting of cultures (and sub-cultures).

The moment you're thinking in dichotomous terms like "the organizers" and "the attendees", you're not talking about culture. The moment you cut out the play, you're not talking about culture. Every culture has varying degrees of play (that go well beyond the amount of play allowed by any CoC I've seen), and that play is acceptable but only known to members of whatever in-group is in question. Introducing rules that eliminate the play inherent in cultures is okay when you do so for the purpose of letting members of disparate cultures to interact safely with each other. The big concern hackers have and that the author of the article we're discussing is getting at, is that the values from which CoCs are fashioned are fine within the confines of the events where they are enforced, but when those values are foisted upon every hacker and nerd sub-culture (including the abrasive ones) and attempts to squelch the diversity of cultures, then it no longer represents intersectionality inclusive of weirdos.

    The problem about society is that you can't cut out social
    interaction from humans. Any attempt to do so is doomed in
    my opinion.
Exactly. CoCs cut out many types of interaction by humans. That's okay and that's good. The problem is when the values that led to those CoCs are indiscriminately applied to everyone that participated in an event even when they no longer are participating in an event. One sub-culture might be abrasive. It's good that that abrasiveness is not allowed in shared spaces like meetups and conferences, since it allows those without the capacity to handle abrasiveness to participate. It ceases to be good when people try to enforce those values against people even outside venues that proscribe CoCs.

    What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that.
It's fine to oppose when such opposition is limited to venues like meetups and conferences, but universal opposition applied at all times and all places, is inherently not inclusive of abrasive people.

highly relevant: http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137392506516022&w=2

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#116
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything what you describe as inherent and necessary to nerd culture. What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that. I certainly never "left the world" and certainly not because I found all those things useless or oppressive. I can still nerd out on a multitude of subjects from music to board games to digital culture and I do prefer to do it with people that don't use this culture as a reason to…

I don't want to get into the nerd vs geek debate here but my interpretation of TFA was that it was specifically talking about the types of people that simply didn't want to play the social hierarchy game. Just being interested in and doing nerdy/geeky things does not place you in that group (unfortunately the terminology we have does a poor job of distinguishing this). I also don't think there is any implication that…

> Just being interested in and doing nerdy/geeky things does not place you in that group (unfortunately the terminology we have does a poor job of distinguishing this).

The two groups are not identical, but the probability of being uninterested in playing the hierarchy game increases significantly when conditioned on being a nerd (and even more so, being in the infosec scene, where the author and I spend most of our time) to the point that they dominate the social scene.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#117
post #5

> When weird nerds watch the cool kids jockeying for social position on Twitter, we see no difference between these status games and the ones we opted out of in high school. [...] “corporate culture” that’s as loudly promoted and roughly as genuine as the “school spirit” These bits resonated with me more than I had expected. The declaration "life is not like high school" is only partially true. College offers a tempo…

> Even among two nations equally authoritarian in practice, the one where the population all knows and recites the social-mores of democracy is much much better-off and more likely to achieve them. This is off-topic, but I disagree strongly. Some of the very worst authoritarian countries (N. Korea, Iraq under Hussain, a depressingly large number of African countries) all share a total devotion to "democracy" and "ele…

I think the author actually meant the social-mores of classical liberalism (freedom of speech, etc), which protect, imperfectly, from both regal tyranny and the tyranny of the majority.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#118
post #67

I was shocked, visibly, when I found out that no one at the first startup I worked at played tabletop RPGs. I was shocked again when they looked down on me because I did. In a city that prides itself on "weirdos", I was the wrong kind of weird. In college I poured over Steven Levy's Hackers , hoping one day I would be able to meet the tech elite. I jumped at the first chance I got to work out here, hoping I'd finally…

Have you tried going to one of the many meetups for people interested in games, instead of going to meetups for people interested in startups? http://www.meetup.com/find/?allMeetups=false&keywords=games&... Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you, because I know plenty of people who play games in SF. They're all over -- seemingly every tech company out here has a game night. And I'm not someone who likes to play,…

Hint: startups are the new Dungeons & Dragons.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#119
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that. Why? Why can't hyperion2010, or anyone else, have an abrasive culture if they want to? There is nowadays some controversy about, best as I can tell, gamers who like abrasive gaming, ie. shoot and insult each other. I can see how one might not want to participate, but why the need to force them to stop? Wouldn't leaving them to it be a reasonable solution? If som…

The problem here is that hacking, gardening or whatever else people do is not "owned" by those who practice it currently or did before others and neither should it be. If they wanted to start their own Abrasive gardening club, where they would be abrasive to each other, then not many people would complain. I don't think it would be healthy, but they are free to do so. What they aren't free to do without push-back is…

> If they wanted to start their own Abrasive gardening club, where they would be abrasive to each other

If a few people founded a company like this and became successful, some people who joined later would complain about the abrasiveness.

And if the complainants happened to be from certain "protected classes", abrasiveness would be legally prohibited.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#120
post #74
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, I’m real confused. Why do you talk about “try to join nerd communities” with regard to the dongle thing? Do you know something we don’t? That seems more like a policy of exclusion from your side – ala obviously a real nerd wouldn’t ever find something inappropriate or be clumsy in how they complain about something. This whole thing is a way of cordoning yourself off, isolating yourself from criticism, shunning o…

Some scumbag got a guy fired by publicly shaming him on twitter for making a joke to his friend in a private conversation. That is one of the most hostile, weird, and hateful ways I've ever seen someone behave. It's a perfect example of counter-productive, oppressive behavior that was outlined in this article. Do you think getting that guy fired is going to suddenly change his sense of humor? Not likely. If anything,…

From http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/books/7933/exclusive-extrac... which was linked here not long ago:

I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life?

“I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”

So I guess it poisons his view of the entire gender.

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