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When Nerds Collide (2014)

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Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#131

Post by throwaway9324 »

hueving wrote: post #113
Potando wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would never have reached the proportions it did if it wasn't for all the people "defending" the guy and then keep bringing it up time and time again to make an argument.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#132

Post by bluedino »

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…

>> You know why Alan Turing was awesome? It's because he wrote awesome code.

Alan Turing is awesome, now. But he wasn't universally thought highly of at the time, was forcefully subjected to medical treatment for his 'condition', and was harassed and basically blacklisted in his professional and personal lives.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#133

Post by MollyR »

I found the part of the article where it talks about the what if situation about Japan getting rid of work visa to be really interesting. Honestly it shocked me, and has changed the way I think.

Also I never thought of it this way, but feminism/brogrammers are super similar in the way they try to colonize nerd culture.

A lot of unskilled people are trying to get a career in tech for its perks. They are not good at it or as good as they should be for the industry standard. When they get called on it, they hide behind something like feminism.

Essentially it's all about grabbing power in our community via subversion rather than skill. And This is a problem because computer programming is intensely logical problem. It requires a lot of skill.

I'm glad I read this article, I feel like I understand people like Linus Torvald a little bit more.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#134

Post by 67726e »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #121
karmacondon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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,…

Software development is a job, but the original post wasn't talking software development. It's talking about being a nerd. Sure, I have nerd "creds" and could easily fit in with any stereotypical group, but I don't claim any nerd status nor appear like it to the outside observer. I not gonna tell my group of friends to stop playing DnD or making shitty jokes no matter how embarrassing it is in public, and I expect the same courtesy. The problem I see is that folks seem to have this idea that they have a right to never feel offended. Well tough shit, you don't. You shouldn't be harassed, but if you don't find a group of folks ideals to your liking, well that's just life. Again, we're not talking professional lives here, but that of a subculture. Unfortunately, the problem is an overlap of folks who can't maintain a professional demeanor.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#135

Post by JonnieCache »

jnbiche wrote: post #102
bad_user wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My disdain has always been for social rules that never made sense - i.e. in order to be liked, you have to look good, dress in a certain way, talk in a certain way, belong to certain groups . I don't want to be different, it isn't my desire to be seen as a geek, however it pisses me off that people judge books by their covers and in order for me to follow rules, well, those rules have to make sense. For the project I…

> Am I a cool geek, a weirdo, a nerd? Point is, I don't really care, never did. Thank you. Personally, I find this desire to put everyone into neat categories depressing.

http://xkcd.com/1220/

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#136

Post by reitanqild »

throwaway9324 wrote: post #131
hueving wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would never have reached the proportions it did if it wasn't for all the people "defending" the guy and then keep bringing it up time and time again to make an argument.

You got it kind of backwards.

He was already fired by the time the "East side of Internet" reacted.

As for this being brought up again and again: it is a very good example and I can't recall the person in question ever coming up with a real apology.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#138

Post by eaton »

hueving wrote: post #74
arrrg wrote: 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,…

> 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.

A conference attendee overheard another conference attendee making dick jokes in a public space at a conference, violating the terms of the CoC that he'd agreed to before attending. She reported him and posted it on her Twitter feed, complaining about it. He was reprimanded by the conference organizers, and apologized

When he returned to his work, he was fired—and he immediately posted to HN that she'd gotten him fired. He found a new job, while she was subjected to two years of personal threats, identity theft, employer-targeted DDoS attacks, and chan grief. She still is to this day.

If you think that reporting someone for violating an conference code of conduct is the 'most hostile, weird, and hateful' way you've ever seen someone behave, you aren't watching very closely.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#139

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway9324 wrote: post #131
hueving wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would never have reached the proportions it did if it wasn't for all the people "defending" the guy and then keep bringing it up time and time again to make an argument.

[deleted]

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#140

Post by Lawtonfogle »

modfodder wrote: post #68
dropit_sphere wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is what [the forces of D]iversity [are] (or should be) fighting against, it really is trying to make it merit based which goes against our survival instincts, even those of the "nerds". How exactly do you expect a group to react when you push against its survival instincts? Feminism is accused of this most often, so I'll use it as an example: some have accused the feminist movement of sexism because it simultan…

Well, I would say that first, the threat feminists are often fighting against is the threat of bodily harm and behavior that leads to bodily harm (1 out of 6 women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape¹). Compare this to the threat that nerds are fighting against today, the threat of having to accept those that they deem unworthy. Secondly, I'm not arguing nerds shouldn't have a safe space. But that s…

>Well, I would say that first, the threat feminists are often fighting against is the threat of bodily harm and behavior that leads to bodily harm

Good ol manspreading, such a threat, very scary.

As to the rape statistics, those numbers are highly inflated and less inflated numbers show that men are almost as likely (if not equally) to face sexual violence (but far less likely to report it and far more likely to have it dismissed) and that men are more likely to face physical violence.

>the threat of having to accept those that they deem unworthy

This is a deceitful caricature of the threat being faced by nerds.

>preclude nerds from learning basic social skills in order not to harass members of the opposite sex

And here the blame is placed on nerds who have tried to isolate themselves because of a large inability to learn such social skills. Some can't learn, others can learn but it is exhausting to imitate the skills for an 8+ hours. Some may even get the basics, but every once in a while they still commit some social transgression they don't understand. So they made safe spaces... which happened to become profitable because some of what they did in those spaces had great business potential. And now they being invaded by profit-chasers and blamed for the social weirdness that they already did the best they could to get remove from others having to experience.

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