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When Nerds Collide (2014)

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Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#281

Post by Thriptic »

tedks wrote: post #191
hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

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…

It's definitely spot-on. I think it has a great example of anti-feminist/male-privileged mindset: > Desire for civility and freedom from objectification is "censorship" > Wanting to not support misogynists/rape apologists/rape denialists/sexual predators is worse than the soviets > My fear of social ostracism is as or more valid than your fear of being raped > My chosen "identities" are as important as the assigned s…

> If progressive values are not hacker values, the hacker values will be, should be, and must be destroyed.

To presume that every aspect of your value system is superior to every aspect of everyone else's value systems is both astoundingly arrogant and also authoritarian. Improvement of societal values can't come about without minority groups being allowed to practice alternative value systems, as abhorrent as they might seem to the mainstream. As long as these groups aren't dramatically harming someone (ie: slavery, killing homosexuals etc) then I don't see what the problem is with this. The progressive values you espouse would have likely been popularly embraced much sooner had society not used it's force to clamp down on people practicing alternative values; yet now that your value system is gaining societal support, you are suggesting that society do the exact same thing to different people employing alternative values.

I would encourage you to be a bit more open minded. You might find that elements of hacker culture's or other cultures' values are superior to elements of your value system, and fuse those aspects into your existing values to make a superior system. At the very least, if progressive values are universally superior to hacker values then they will naturally win out over time. There is no need to to advocate the silencing of dissenting voices.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#282

Post by LordHumungous »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #274
LordHumungous wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's face it, 90% of companies in this industry produce nothing but meaningless bullshit. If you work at one of the few companies that is making the world a better place and not just selling ads, social media, games, or other diversions for rich people then my advice may not apply to you. I don't work for one of those companies, and I prefer to dispense with the notion that anything I'm doing is for the improvement…

> If you work at one of the few companies that is making the world a better place and not just selling ads, social media, games, or other diversions for rich people then my advice may not apply to you. Unfortunately, I don't (and it depresses me). But then again, I treat my work as a neccessary evil, and I (try to) care about the product's face value, not underlying notion of it making money. That's for sales people…

That's a good point. Being a craftsman means caring about the quality of your work.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#283

Post by Argorak »

karmacondon wrote: post #110
samastur wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is flat out wrong. If a group of people start a hacking or gardening social subculture, then it is "owned" by them. If people start a goth subculture, others who join subsequently don't have a right to say "I don't like all the make up and candles and satantic stuff. If you want to start another club and call yourselves by a different name, that's fine. But you don't 'own' being goth." If someone doesn't like th…

I recommend you to attend a meeting like the Wave Gotic Treffen in Leipzig. You'll see exactly those things happen and it's called "generation change".

My other pet project for a long time was moderating a metal board - what do you think happened when people came up with Nu Metal? It was an outrage.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#284

Post by tedks »

rthomas6 wrote: post #203
tedks wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely spot-on. I think it has a great example of anti-feminist/male-privileged mindset: > Desire for civility and freedom from objectification is "censorship" > Wanting to not support misogynists/rape apologists/rape denialists/sexual predators is worse than the soviets > My fear of social ostracism is as or more valid than your fear of being raped > My chosen "identities" are as important as the assigned s…

I agree with you 100%, but I feel the need to point out that you can still be a "weird nerd" and have progressive values. I do not think hacker values and progressive values are mutually exclusive, but I think they are orthogonal.

I agree completely. In fact, I think that the only hacker values that are true hacker values are progressive, and that the people invoking "hacker values" to justify misogyny, objectification and sexualization of women, etc., are going against hacker values in a truly insidious way.

But if anyone thinks otherwise, they should know they are on the losing side of history in every regard.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#285

Post by Kalium »

Buge wrote: post #267
djcapelis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meredith is a hacker under any definition. So that trait definitely is not descriptive of her.

I meant the 4 in the list (women, bisexuals, Texans, engineers).

The last item is "engineers who aren't hackers".

I have no idea if Meredith is bisexual or Texan.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#286

Post by mcguire »

angersock wrote: post #21
Terr_ wrote: 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…

The fact that we even have a collective shared-ideal of "we judge you by your work" is an achievement worth celebrating and continuing, even if we individually fail at it, or even fail at it a lot. And that's the problem I've got with a bunch of the attacks I'll commonly see that are based on privilege: the entire idea is that "well, no, that cool hack doesn't count somehow, because you're a member of $MALIGNED_GROUP…

Have you written awesome code? More specifically, are you known for having written awesome code?

If not, are you a part of hacker culture? If you are, why are you an "us" and not a "they"?

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#287

Post by [deleted] »

LordHumungous wrote: post #276
hexadecima wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this US vs THEM mentality. Yes, you were the nerd that might have been excluded from other people's world because they didn't deem you 'cool enough'. But now you are excluding others from joining your world. Are you not as bad as the people who made you feel displaced? Why not take the stance that you can be better?

Heres a dirty little secret about "real nerds". As far as bullying and exclusion goes, they give as good as they get. I knew some so called nerds in high school who were picked on. I knew more who socially isolated themselves by being arrogant jerks to everyone else, especially those they considered to be of lower intelligence. I dont fit the real nerd stereotype. I played football and I don't like dnd. I resent the…

[deleted]

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#288

Post by vor_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #229
hexadecima wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this US vs THEM mentality. Yes, you were the nerd that might have been excluded from other people's world because they didn't deem you 'cool enough'. But now you are excluding others from joining your world. Are you not as bad as the people who made you feel displaced? Why not take the stance that you can be better?

Because they're not joining, they're invading , and we have all the reasons to feel afraid that we will get pushed out again. And honestly, I'm fine with the fact that tech has grown beyond the culture that created it. I'm uncomfortable that what this "extended tech industry" produces is often a bastardization of what we so loved and cared. I get it, different priorities, I'm fine with that too. What I am not fine wi…

> And it probably would still be fine if social justice crowd just stayed away.

I have no sympathy if you feel uncomfortable or threatened by people who expect you to treat others with respect, especially when you use terms like "invading" and prop yourself up as a paragon of intellectual pursuits.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#289

Post by vor_ »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #172
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing) You seem very sure about when Adria Richards (the lady involved in "donglegate") "tried" to join the nerd community. And yet you're wrong. Here's a partial bio from a recent article: "She was introverted, smart, and "weird" (according to the other kids)—a burgeoning nerd. By age 17, sh…

Is the dongle thing even remotely defensible? She got a man fired over a private conversation. One of the rules of civilized behavior is that you don't do that .

It was a public conversation.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#290

Post by vor_ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #160
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference there that goth is a subculture, while tech and software development is a job. Sure, there's also various subcultures in the software development industry, but there isn't one big subculture there. There's the abrasive brogrammers, there's the sensitive political correctness advocates, there's the quiet nerd that just wants to be left alone, there's the hiring manager looking for new employees,…

> I think the difference there that goth is a subculture, while tech and software development is a job. And here I think is the crux of the problem; it's what the article was about. Tech became mainstream, and attracted people who look at it as a job. From the point of view of us native nerds, we became colonized and are being pushed back from the thing we built as our little place in the universe where we would feel…

> From the point of view of us native nerds

I can't stand nativism anywhere I smell it.

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