This writer is really clueless as to what high school is like for those on the bottom of the heap -- I mean, really, no idea at all.
For that reason, it's hard to listen to what else he has to say, no matter how relevant or (potentially) awesome.
Obvious that he's never been the low end of the totem pole. It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.
It seems to be different depending on where you are. The geeks at my high school (myself included) are, at least respected, and in the cases of many of my friends actually have a social life. (I'm too busy with the internet for that.) On the other hand, I know some people from other places who've had terrible experiences, so it's really hard to generalize.
It definitely varies. I was not all that invested in programming at all, spending most of my time biking and playing music, but as a "smart kid" there was lots of ostracizing going around, just because I didn't play the main sport that everyone plays.
What I take away from this is the importance of growing up - you get through those stages and move into a more nurturing community of people that support what you create, not the details of how you created it.
"Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London, and his intellectual successors have shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are socially sensitive beings and aware of such things."
Growing up is important. But early stress does have long-term consequences.
I thought that was the point of the essay. We're all old (and hopefully mature enough) now to accept that maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular.
An outside perspective is almost always useful in figuring things out. I found this essay hit home. I was definitely in the nerd group, and if I had read this in high school, it would've helped.
> maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular.
I can agree with this to a point - by the time high school rolls around, yeah, the unpopular kids probably have adopted a set of behaviors that contributes to them being unpopular. However, those behaviors are probably defenses developed against some early damaging experiences. And who is responsible for those experiences? In my experience, it was those same jocks (or whatever) inflicting their damage all the way up.
Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.
To be completely honest, if I were to go back to elementary school and look at when I first started being divided from other kids, I'm almost certain it would have begun with me being an arrogant brat because of my intelligence. When you're bright, it's too tempting to try and rise above teasing by claiming superintelligence. I'm not saying that arrogance is a bad thing, but I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault. Of course, such an admission makes persecution less likely to happen. It's a nice circle.
Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.
To discuss a problem, you need to get to its root. The root of the problem is twofold: people on one side are too willing to ostracize themselves, and people on the other side don't want to spend time learning about people. My belief is that it's not the responsibility of others to spend time trying to understand you. I think that bullying is a problem, but frankly, if nerds were ostracized but not actively bullied I would find a hard time blaming the other kids and not the nerds. I actually discussed this problem with a professor: my solution to this problem would be twofold. First, get the other kids to realize why nerd things are cool. If people think programming is really super neato, then suddenly programmers are neato too. (It worked with math in my school: once you like math, then math geeks are pretty awesome kids. By my junior year all of the math kids hung out with the jock/class clown group.) At the same time, though, you've got to do the same in reverse. Teach the nerds to appreciate the non-nerds. Intolerance works both ways, and there are a lot of people willing to dismiss sports players or actors or musicians or artists or preps as stupid and meaningless, and what this essay's all about is that in my experience, the nerds are usually a lot less tolerant than the other people. My first day in college, when my roommate arrived, I was unpacking a virtual library, and he was carrying a volleyball, and my first impression was that we wouldn't get along because he wouldn't "understand" me. This year's taught me a lot about how you can be smart and not be a nerd, and I honestly think that the nerds are less aware of this than the other groups.
> I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault
Again with this theory. Should battered wives admit that they are partially at fault because they annoyed their husbands? Should rape victims admit that they are partially at fault because they led a guy on? People are responsible for _their own actions_. No more, no less. If this means that the people you're talking about are guilty for being arrogant and annoying, then fine. I have no problem with that. But they are not responsible for the crimes committed by others.
> my solution to this problem would be twofold.
I think it's funny that you think you can solve this problem, and that we can all live in egalitarian bliss.
I think it's funny that you think you can solve this problem, and that we can all live in egalitarian bliss.
You know that you're the reason I wrote this article, right? This is exactly the HN attitude that made me freeze my main account away. People who take things that other people say and extend them to drastic proportions just so they can be dicks about it.
No, we're not going to have egalitarian bliss. We're human beings. We have flaws. Those flaws won't go away. My "solution" is one that I think would work better than the endless "be diverse" speeches kids get. I think that it might make a lot of smart people a lot happier. It won't fix everything, but it might at least help. But no, you won't address the ideas I put forth. You'll nitpick. You'll be an absolute snot just so that you can gain the upper hand in an argument. And so you might reach a point where I and people like me get tired of your bullshit and walk away, and then you'll declare yourself the victor because you were the last person to make a post in my comment thread, but all you're doing is making the person on the other side want to punch yourself in the face. In a microcosm, that's my essay: you're probably not a stupid person, but you're deliberately avoiding facts to paint a one-sided portrayal of what I'm saying, and it's pissing me off. If we were having this argument in real life and I was a more naturally violent person, I'd probably hit you, and then in your eyes I'd become the bully and you wouldn't be guilty of anything. That's the problem here, and it's incredibly common amongst programmers, and it sucks.
I have no problem with that. But they are not responsible for the crimes committed by others.
They're interconnected. You're like the American attitude after 9/11 that terrorists were wholly evil Satanic creatures with no motive. I'm arguing back and saying that the people on the other side are doing bad things, but that that's a separate issue from what I'm talking about. If you're guilty about being arrogant and annoying, then when you get teased and beaten up it's not causeless. You caused this. And the other side is more at fault then you are, but don't act like you're a saint.
Should battered wives admit that they are partially at fault because they annoyed their husbands?
If you get beaten and do nothing about it, it's your fault that it goes on. See, two sides of the same struggle can both be guilty. The husband is more at fault, but if the battered wife acts like there's nothing she can do then she's to blame for it going on.
Same with rape. If you get raped and do nothing about it, you're letting the other guy get away. The other guy isn't innocent. This isn't a blame game where it's the victim's fault entirely. But the victim does not exist in a vacuum, and the fact that the problem still exists suggests that in some way the victim is complicit about the problem.
Is McDonald's to blame for making people fat? Partly. But they exist to provide something for people who are asking for it. Fat people are to blame for their being fat. Perhaps not entirely 100% to blame, but they can stop themselves, and they're not, and so it's partly their fault.
One day I might write something about how much bullies suck, but other people are already doing this. I don't like being generic. So I thought I would write a little thing about how nerds are often partially to blame for their oppression, and that they refuse to take responsibility for themselves, not expecting anybody to submit it to a place where people like you would get to spray their spittle around without ever once addressing what I'm saying.
I never comment on HN. I just observe. But what you just wrote above deserves a response, and much more to come.
First off, on what planet do you think it's alright to hurt someone physically for anything they say? You'd actually punch someone in the face who's arguing with your stupid comments?
Second, if you get raped and do nothing about it that's your fault? I think Andrea Dworkin just ate her fist. One of the most vile offensive acts a person can do to a weaker person and you say it's the victim's fault? That they're somehow complicit?
Third, battered women deserve their beatings? Didn't you say that you wrote your stupid poorly written blog post in response to the whole Porno Ruby Conference Offending Women news lately? How in the _hell_ can you even pretend to claim you give a rat's ass about women if you think any of the above?
Alright, I gotta stop before I step into territory where I get banned from HN. However, I have one statement I'd like to see you fumble a reply to:
I can fully understand your hatred of geek arrogance, since I can't stand it myself, but even at my most obnoxious I never said that rape, beatings, torture, and abuse of the weak were defensible.
Every person who has been abused never deserved the _level_ of abuse they received. Whether it's children, or women, or just someone who's different, the abuser is always more powerful and enjoys hurting people weaker than them. Because of this, they take any tiny little offense and turn it into a reason to nearly kill another human being. Even if the victim changes every single thing about themselves to please the abuser, it's not enough.
The abuse continues, not because of the victim, but because it satisfies the abuser.
No! Of course it's not okay to hurt somebody. If I made it sound like that I fucked up big-time.
What I said was that it's the attitude above that leads to physical violence. When somebody starts wanting to punch somebody in the face, it comes from that particular level of dickery.
I am not at all a violent person. I don't fight people, I don't hit people. I don't have a personality that leads to fights. The closest I get to violence is posting angry things online. And I'm certain that writing all these responses at 7 in the morning might have dimmed my writing a bit, but I never once implied violence.
What I said, again, was this:
If we were having this argument in real life and I was a more naturally violent person, I'd probably hit you, and then in your eyes I'd become the bully and you wouldn't be guilty of anything.
That's not me threatening. In fact, the one "threat" I made was the one where I lock out my Hacker News account because debates like this are a waste where nobody learns a damn thing. The point I was making was that chairface's comment was aggravating and glossing over points in a way that was smarmy and obnoxious. (His response to the parent post clarified a lot, so props to him.) That's an attitude that's not just on Hacker News. A friend of mine had it when he'd constantly pester a violent kid just to provoke a reaction. He'd get clocked in the eye and tell us all what a savage that other kid was. The point of my stupid poorly written blog post was that this is a common attitude amongst nerds when they handle things socially. They'll do things that they know will alienate them because they think the alienation is forthcoming anyway. In doing that they give themselves some "control" over their hopeless state.
I mean, I'm certain I'm talking to somebody who knows what I'm talking about. I've seen a lot of people dismiss your blog posts because of the "ZED'S SO FUCKING AWESOME" logo or because of your many elongated, poorly written rants. I'm too lazy to search back, but I've gotten into a lot of Zed debates on this site where you get slammed because your old web site was just begging for people to call you immature. You obviously knew that would happen and you went on doing it anyway, so you fit into the category of people I'm talking about here.
You're quoting me saying a lot of shit I didn't say, Zed. Cut that out; if you're going to get pissed off at me get pissed off at me for what I believe.
I never said violence was defensible. I have friends who have been molested and harassed and hurt. I think it's one of the most terrible things there is. And this entire argument is such a loose tangent from the argument I originally made that it was stupid of me to respond in the first place. I'm aware of that. There's a difference between an abused woman and an abused nerd. Nerd abuse is largely petty in nature. I know maybe two kids in my nerd group who got into fights, ever, and neither of those was a case of random abuse: both sides wanted to pummel the other side. So when the argument sifted away from petty and towards serious, my response should have been: that's not the same thing. Abuse and rape stem from an entirely other side of human existence than things like teasing and name-calling.
Child abuse is not name-calling. If you're suggesting that calling somebody a name is child abuse, you're off your fucking rocker. If a nerd is getting hit and hurt for what he's saying and doing, there's something pathological behind that happening; when a nerd is ostracized because he acts like a jackass, he's responsible for its happening.
The point I was trying to make, half-asleep, earlier today was that people who are getting seriously abused should take action to stop the abuse. If you're getting beat up or raped then you should take action to stop it from happening, because otherwise you're letting a guilty person get away with a crime. The only blame on the other person is letting the criminal get away. They aren't responsible for the horrible things being done to them.
But now I'm just repeating myself, and to be honest I can't tell if you just flew off at me because you think I said a terrible thing or if, like your critics claim, flipping out just gets you off. If it's the former, then I've clarified myself, and I'm sorry for sounding like I meant something I absolutely do not. If it's the latter, we've got nothing left to talk about.
Alright, let's walk through your little essay on violence, which gets progressively worse as you run your mouth:
> You'll be an absolute snot just so that you can gain the upper hand in an argument. And so you might reach a point where I and people like me get tired of your bullshit and walk away, and then you'll declare yourself the victor because you were the last person to make a post in my comment thread, but all you're doing is making the person on the other side want to punch yourself in the face.
Point #1, disagreement means that you have the right to punch someone in the face. Although, I can't understand why I'd want to punch myself in the face if I was winning an argument against you.
> If we were having this argument in real life and I was a more naturally violent person, I'd probably hit you, and then in your eyes I'd become the bully and you wouldn't be guilty of anything.
Point #2, debate with you and your gross stupid generalizations gives you the right to be violent, AND when you commit violence on someone else they should feel guilty because they deserve it. Their accusations of oppression and violence are unwarranted because they dared to piss you off with words.
> If you're guilty about being arrogant and annoying, then when you get teased and beaten up it's not causeless. You caused this. And the other side is more at fault then you are, but don't act like you're a saint.
Point #3, you believe that harming someone physically and emotionally is a valid response to verbal remarks, and that this violence is "not causeless". Doesn't matter what "causes" it, it's the wrong response, therefore the cause is irrelevant. Additionally, you believe that a person does not have the right to non-violently be as weird as they want. You think they should adapt their behavior to please the more violent members of our society.
>> Should battered wives admit that they are partially at fault because they annoyed their husbands?
> If you get beaten and do nothing about it, it's your fault that it goes on. See, two sides of the same struggle can both be guilty. The husband is more at fault, but if the battered wife acts like there's nothing she can do then she's to blame for it going on.
Point #4, victims very commonly are, by definition, unable to defend themselves. Either due to psychological controls, physical domination, or economic realities. What worries me the most about this statement is that you claim both sides are guilty, which implies that you feel some women deserve the beatings. If you knew anything about abused women and children you would know that no amount of changing stops the abuse. It is entirely the fault of the abuser because they are the one with the power, and they are the ones using it.
> Same with rape. If you get raped and do nothing about it, you're letting the other guy get away. The other guy isn't innocent. This isn't a blame game where it's the victim's fault entirely. But the victim does not exist in a vacuum, and the fact that the problem still exists suggests that in some way the victim is complicit about the problem.
Point #5, you believe that victims of rape did not do enough to defend themselves, and therefore are complicit and responsible for their lack of skills. Obviously your fictionalized and trivialized movie version of rape doesn't involve nearly as much violence as it really has.
> One day I might write something about how much bullies suck, but other people are already doing this. I don't like being generic.
And with this, in one single statement, you define how much of an idiot you are. If you don't like being generic, then why the hell were you nothing but a bag of gross generalizations in your stupid little essay?
It's not worth it to get into a pissfest. I don't care enough. One comment:
If you don't like being generic, then why the hell were you nothing but a bag of gross generalizations in your stupid little essay?
It's not an essay. It's a blog post. I write fast and I write long and I publish everything that I write because I adhere to the belief that perhaps something I write will help somebody with something. I treat my blog like a blog. It's not a professional platform. The stuff I do in my life I keep entirely separate from all the things I write. If I ever got to the point where my sole source of fame was a web site with my name on it, I'd consider myself to have done a piss-poor job with my life. Same if the only thing I had going for my name was an ill-conceived rant clustered around by people who prefer rage to straight thinking.
As it is, I've gotten responses from people to this that've thanked me for writing it. That means that for 20 minutes' work it was time well-spent. My frustration doesn't come from disagreement. It comes from the fact that my post, which is about as good as 20 minutes' worth of quick typing can get you, got put on Hacker News, which is a place where intelligent people discuss meaningful things, when this is a piece that deals in overgeneralities.
When I wrote this piece, my thought wasn't "How can I capture the high school experience?" It was "What is it about this type of programmer that really annoys me?" I hit on my conclusion, which I still stand by, and wrote all the thoughts I've got on the subject matter, typed it quickly, and put it online. I thought it would get a handful of responses. Nothing big, because it's not big or at all important. I wrote two or three things yesterday that I think are better than this particular piece.
But you just ignored the post I just made to focus on my original post, which I've already apologized for. It's obvious that of the two people I said you might be, you're the latter. You're ranting at a mindset that I don't actually have just so that you can be Fucking Awesome Zed now that your blog's been toned down. If you really want to get pissed off at me for things I don't believe, you have every right. But I'm through with this. I expected better from you.
Well then, if you didn't believe these things, then why did you write them?
What amazes me about you is that, despite all this ranting against nerds you feel slighted you, you are actually behaving exactly the way you claim they do.
Let's pull from your twitter:
"It took all of a few hours for me to fall out of love with Hacker News. Nerds suck."
Alright, so you wrote an inflammatory piece, people on HN fairly directly, clearly, and politely (given the topic) responded, and you react by playing the victim.
I mean, do you even read what you write Rory? You basically just did exactly what you were claiming nerds do. You acted in a fowl mean spirited way, and then proceeded to get your ass kicked, and then claimed it was all the nerds fault for attacking you.
Not at all! My ideas are entirely open for discourse. I don't think for an instant that what I wrote was immaculate and untouchable.
The reason I'm pissed off about this whole thing is that it's a bad essay. It's not worthy of pulling up and discussing. And this is a crowd that's never going to agree with the things I've said, and yet because it's Hacker News I find the need to argue anyway, knowing it's going nowhere, and so it's a huge time sink over a piece that doesn't deserve this attention.
The people politely responded? I wouldn't have gotten involved at all if that was the case. The reason I got an account was because I was being called things like a "sad, angry little man," and maybe I'm thin-skinned but stuff like that really pisses me off.
I know this is a defensive thing to say, but my Twitter post was half in jest. If I was pissed off at Hacker News, I wouldn't be here. Does that make me as bad as the people I was blaming? Probably. This isn't a personality quirk that I'm entirely at peace with; it's certainly still a part of me. I don't think I'm perfect and I'd never pretend to me. The fact that I write so much about these things is because they're parts of me I still don't like. I think I've been saying that from the start.
So if you want to fly off-the-handle at me for getting annoyed because a community I really like had a huge uproad over a piece of mine I really didn't care for, feel free. I probably deserve it; I act immature at times; I say things without thinking. You're older than I am and more well-known than I am and so by all means you're probably in the right. I'd just hope you would find better things to do with your time than squabble over a 3 AM ramble by a college freshman.
Now I noprocrast this account away, because I'm finished.
If he didn't care, he wouldn't have gone out of his way to make a blog theme that screamed "Obnoxious asshole" and then gone on to rant about things that got him called an obnoxious asshole. I'm not saying that those two things make him an obnoxious asshole, but then, Zed never once assumed the attitude of "I can't believe people are calling me an obnoxious asshole." I'm certain he didn't care that they were, and so in his mind it's totally okay.
If he complained about people not calling him sensitive with that logo of his, then I'd call him out for being a hypocrite. That's what I'm doing with nerds: I think that nerds go out of their way to be disliked and then complain that nobody likes them.
You crossed a line here. A woman who annoys her husband and is beaten as a result is guilty of being annoying. She is not guilty of domestic assault, not even a little bit. A woman who leads a man on and is then raped by him is not a little bit guilty of rape. She is guilty of leading a man on. I agree it's important to focus on things under our control, but there's a difference between taking active control over one's life and taking moral responsibility for other people's actions. The fact that we use the word "responsibility" to refer to both these things -- the common aspect being an attitude of initiative and self-reliance as opposed to helplessness and blaming -- confuses rather than clarifies the issue.
Using the dual nature of the word "responsibility" is a common ploy to distribute blame to everybody equally when discussions of blame become counterproductive. That can be appropriate in some situations, especially team situations, but applying it to rape and domestic abuse is way over the line. It's repellant.
> You know that you're the reason I wrote this article, right? This is exactly the attitude that made me freeze my main account away. People who take things that other people say and extend them to drastic proportions just so they can be dicks about it.
Look man, you said you had a solution to the problem. What I said is hardly a leap. You have a funny definition of "drastic proportions".
> But no, you won't address the ideas I put forth. You'll nitpick. You'll be an absolute snot just so that you can gain the upper hand in an argument. And so you might reach a point where I and people like me get tired of your bullshit and walk away, and then you'll declare yourself the victor because you were the last person to make a post in my comment thread, but all you're doing is making the person on the other side want to punch yourself in the face...
You're descending into ad hominem territory here. Please don't.
I didn't address your solution because I don't think there is one, and I don't see value in arguing about it. Perhaps I misunderstand the problem you're trying to solve.
> They're interconnected.
I never said they weren't - I limited my discussion to the assigning of blame, which I took to be your primary subject as well. But now, it seems to me that you are not separating the issues of "cause" and "blame" the same way I am.
To be clear, of course the victims are part of the cause of any particular confrontation. It couldn't happen if they weren't there, so there's at least that. What I object to is assigning _blame_ to them. Causes for these things are shared - blame is given to one side or the other for their own actions.
Your commentaries on battered wives and rape focus on what happens _after_ the incident. I am asking about the incident itself. The blame for the raping and the beating lies solely with the aggressors.
> Is McDonald's to blame for making people fat? Partly.
No. McDonald's is to blame for making fatty food. There's a difference.
Look man, you said you had a solution to the problem. What I said is hardly a leap. You have a funny definition of "drastic proportions".
I use hyperbole. I ought to have said "proposed" solution. Either way, your response was snide and still hasn't addressed what I said in that point. I think that what I proposed would help the two sides understand each other in a way they don't know, and in my experience the more people get to know each other the better they get along. The disconnect at the moment is that nerds think other people are wasting their time, and other people think nerds only do what they do because they haven't got anything else going for them. When you make people like stuff, they form bonds.
You're descending into ad hominem territory here. Please don't.
I need to apologize to the people I've argued with in this thread, because I've been much angrier and snappier in these responses than is appropriate for Hacker News. This morning I woke up to find a bunch of emails from people telling me my blog was broken in IE and I found this on the top of Hacker News. I've been writing a post for a little while now that I was going to submit here; I only submit things here if they're quality things. This is part of my daily writings, where I spill out a bunch of things on my mind without thinking about them, admitting all the while that I'm not putting careful thought into my writings. So to find that sort of thing here and discussed by people calling me a sad angry little man really just isn't a good way for me to start the day, and it's not how I want to approach my work. So I'm mad because I'm finding myself seriously debating something I wasn't exactly serious about in the first place, but I've got a sense of propriety about my writings and so I refuse to let people dis what I've said without defending myself. You've stood out to me as one of the people who's most deliberately ignoring the things that I'm saying, though this response was a lot better. Again: apologies.
Causes for these things are shared - blame is given to one side or the other for their own actions.
Okay. By that standard I'm blaming the nerds for deliberately setting up a situation wherein they're persecuted, when they could easily avoid the entire situation by not being so deliberately hostile. Does that work?
> Either way, your response was snide and still hasn't addressed what I said in that point.
Well, for what it's worth, I wasn't trying to be snide. If the problem was solved, it really would be egalitarian bliss. I really don't know how this could be taken as "dickery".
My response to your proposed solution, if you're interested, is that it's unworkable. I actually skipped most of it my first time through, because the first thing you said about it was "First, get the other kids to realize why nerd things are cool" with no explanation as to how this could possibly be done. Convince me that you can dictate what is cool and what is not on a large scale, and then I'll give some weight to your plan.
See, even now, my talking about this comes off as confrontational, to no effect. I still think it was better for the original conversation to leave it out.
> You've stood out to me as one of the people who's most deliberately ignoring the things that I'm saying
Have I ignored something else that annoys you?
> By that standard I'm blaming the nerds for deliberately setting up a situation wherein they're persecuted, when they could easily avoid the entire situation by not being so deliberately hostile. Does that work?
Sure. The way it's written, it seems like you are referring to all nerds, but I will assume that this is not the case.
See, even now, my talking about this comes off as confrontational, to no effect. I still think it was better for the original conversation to leave it out.
Nah, that's a completely sensible point. I don't think it's hard to make programming seem cool, though: there are some very awesome things that've been made. WeFeelFine comes to mind. Talk about how something beautiful like that was made and it'll at least make people realize more that programmers can be artists, too. (Not the best example, but it's what first comes to mind.)
Have I ignored something else that annoys you?
Nope.
Sure. The way it's written, it seems like you are referring to all nerds, but I will assume that this is not the case.
Yeah. I could revise this, but I don't think it would be worth it. It wasn't a major piece of writing, in any event.
For fairness' sake you should also focus on what the unpopular do to other people: how they bring down a conversation, unwittingly sabotage their friends' efforts at looking sane and approachable, pick the wrong moments for racy jokes, and hijack conversations towards topics they find interesting but nobody else does. In hindsight, I can see that I wasn't always a pleasant person to be around. High school kids don't feel like they have a lot of social capital to blow on dorks.
I'm pretty sure it was already balanced by the preponderance of extended meditations on the indignities suffered by nerds. It's not like jocks blog insightfully about their social anxieties. Hell, I don't think most popular kids understood what was going on at all. They were just going on instinct. It's nice to see some actual analysis about the other side of the equation for a change, and it seems like a bad idea to immediately swing the focus back to the side that we already understand.
Well, that's what discussions are made of. I think it's silly of you to suggest that I shouldn't say anything without making sure to reiterate the original author's points.
I think it's silly of you to say it's "much more helpful" to "focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular" when we've all been over that ad nauseam. Everybody knows it's bad to be mean to people. There's nothing to be learned from it. Plus, it's somebody else's pathology, not ours. Since we already understand it and can't directly fix it, the only possible effect of us dwelling on it is to distance ourselves from responsibility by focusing on the aspect of the problem that isn't under our control. Not only is that behavior pointless and self-serving, it's actually psychologically damaging because it externalizes our locus of control.
> I think it's silly of you to say it's "much more helpful" to "focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular" when we've all been over that ad nauseam.
When I say it's more helpful to focus on what is done to the unpopular, I am speaking as a parent and an authority figure. And in that position, that focus is well within my locus of control, when it comes to children under my charge. I should have made it more clear that I was speaking from my current point of view.
Furthermore, I spent plenty of time in my youth blaming myself for being beat on, as the author seems to want us to. I assure you, this behavior is also pointless and psychologically damaging. So, to me, there is plenty people can learn from somebody saying "You are not at fault when someone hits you". I am glad you have learned this lesson. But I assure you that not everyone has.
Whoops, I didn't even think about seeing the discussion from that point of view, probably because I'm never in a position of authority over children. It's interesting to note that nobody else here discusses the role of authority figures. It certainly never crossed my mind that parents and teachers were even relevant to the discussion. In my experience, adults were pretty much ignored because they either morally condemned all social jockeying and exclusion (when lecturing the bullies) or dismissed it as meaningless (when comforting the victims.)
My gut reaction to you, as a parent, taking part in this discussion is that people put in a position of authority over children seem to instinctively start denying their own human weaknesses. I'm interested to hear what you would say about that. When it comes to social bullying and exclusion, in my experience, adults never acknowledged that we were going through a difficult process of learning adult behaviors. Implicitly, they pretended that there was no grown-up way to do what we were doing, because social divisions and inequalities did not exist in the adult world.
I think we could have regarded adults as valuable sources of coaching if they had just been honest instead of trying to be perfect, inhumanly pure role models. You know, even socially dominant teenagers are clumsy and self-conscious. They would probably appreciate some tips on how to enforce social boundaries without being jerks about it. That would benefit everyone. As a parent, could you even do such a thing, or would it compromise your authority too much to admit that adults do the same things that teenagers do, only much more subtly and gracefully?
Well, that's a pretty decent analysis for not having thought about it before. I agree that as a child, it seemed that adults had a penchant for denying that they are anything like children, and I think that was a mistake on their part.
Anyway, I'm not too concerned with compromising my authority as a parent. I'm currently more concerned that my kids will be more on the aggressor end of conflicts, and my approach to that has been to tell them parts of my own story, and how I felt when people did mean things to me (they're pretty young, it doesn't get too involved). I suppose they could eventually come to see me as a weakling or something, but I don't really feel that this is a danger right now.
I have a feeling that I might start to feel the need to hide my weaknesses as my kids get closer to their teenage years, but at least for now, I think you and I are pretty much on the same page.
It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.
Everyone's mileage varies. I went to a decent public school in the suburbs, and most people in my social circle belonged to a couple of others tribes as well - I was pretty active in the business competitions (as well as programming). Most other "nerd elites" were in marching band, actors, singers, swimmers, fencers, jugglers, etc. Sure, there were plain old jerks, but they were a certain a minority, and easy to ignore.
I spent all my time on computers, I played Dungeons & Dragons. I spent all my time up until I was about 15 being shat on, and being incredibly angry because I thought I was being persecuted for my intelligence. Then, in my sophomore year, I took a drama class, realized that people didn't care what kind of person I was as long as I was an interesting person who wasn't too obnoxious, and began to move away from my nerdier friends and towards a much more cosmopolitan group of kids that included film buffs and stoners and snarky hipsters. I'm still friends with a lot of my old friends - I go to college with one - and there's still a latent exclusivity where the group of anime/computer people act pretty rude towards people not in the group.
As was said by another commenter, perhaps it's different everywhere you go. I was in a place where I realized later on in high school that all of the torment and suffering towards nerds had some sort of a logical pull. And my school wasn't some sort of utopia: one dweeby kid in marching band had a bag of shaving cream smashed against his face during lunch as part of a hazing routine. What I noticed from that incident was this: while perhaps that one thing was inevitable, a lot of the sympathy I had towards that poor bullied kid dissolved away when he turned that one single incident into a sort of theater for discussing how unloved he was - particularly since that was the sort of thing I did when I was younger, too.
I wish I'd focused more on the programming aspect of this thing, though, because to be honest high school isn't worth talking about in my mind, not in this context. This was a response to an article titled "Rails is (still) a ghetto", where the author took a similarly hyperobnoxious approach to looking at a problem that didn't require anything obnoxious, and the larger problem is that the world of programming is highly inaccessible to non-programmers.
I just want to know how you can hold up the "Rails community" as a positive example of socially well adjusted people, when their acknowledged leader just explicitly approved of a presentation that would obviously result in complaints of sexual harassment in any normal workplace setting (and did result in such a complaint, although given in an almost apologetic tone because she knew that her complaints would not be well received by the Ruby community, and was proven right).
Because the Rails community understands that they are not a community for any other reason other than Rails.
Do I approve of nudity in a presentation? No. But at the same time, even if I found it offensive, I wouldn't turn it into a huge argument and the focal point of a rant against a community.
I'm really, really in the minority with this statement, but I find it very easy to deal with intolerant people. I have friends who are almost certainly racist. A lot of the people I know are casually homophobic. I think that's sickening, but I don't turn that into a rallying point of a campaign. The attitude that I was taught as a kid was that the best way to change things is to lead by example.
Now, being upset over using nude women to draw attention, that makes sense. Voicing displeasure makes sense. But there's a line between that and turning that issue into one that directly attacks the community. When you're part of a community about coding, you'd best be focused on the code. If you don't like DHH, you ignore him. If you don't like Obie Fernandez, you ignore him. The language is what matters, and it's a large enough language that if you know what you're doing, you can find people who are willing to help.
Now, look at the attitude of the Rails community towards beginners: they are incredibly kind and cool and open about it all. (This extends to what parts of the Ruby community I've interacted with.) If you don't know a thing about programming, they'll help you, and they usually come across not as nerds but as socially normal people. I don't know if they really are, but their leaders certainly are: they have their priorities straight. I've never been party to a group of programmers that seemed as normal as the Ruby bunch.
So when DHH applauds the presentation, the message he's giving isn't "RoR approves of this." He's just saying this as a leader. He's saying this as DHH, a rude dude who loves to be crude. The fact that he's the leader is entirely apart from the fact that he's saying this. That's why he's so interesting to read. That's why 37signals is such a good blog. It doesn't matter that they're rich and successful and in charge of stuff: they're a good blog because they write good posts, and all that other stuff is an aside. Meanwhile, in the rest of the programming world people are all-too-quick to judge a person as a single, solid entity. Steve Jobs is evil because iTunes has DRM. Bill Gates is stupid because Windows is ugly. Jason Fried is a jackass who never does work because other people waste their time reading SvN archives. Ruby on Rails is bad because their developers are immature. It's the same approach of solidarity that leads nerds to decide all jocks are stupid, all different people are meaningless, and anything that looks nice can't be nice because it's coming from non-nerds.
I would say, though, while you are deliberately choosing not to ostracize the Rails community, they are deliberately ostracizing people who don't like porn, or at least people who don't like porn at their tech conferences.
Is this any better than a nerd insulting a cheerleader for asking an unsophisticated programming question? Implicitly, they are saying if you aren't cool or hip enough to not be offended by a pornographic presentation, stay away from our conferences.
I think that the porn thing was pretty tasteless on the part of the presenter. But a part of being civil is avoiding confrontations that you don't have to be in. I used to feel really uncomfortable attending religious services because I was an atheist, for instance, but I've come to the conclusion that while it's awful to lie about what you believe, it's pretty icky to force your beliefs on other people. So while I think that the presenter and DHH are being kind of obnoxious, I accept that DHH's good traits stem from that obnoxious attitude, and I can like his product without necessarily liking that attitude.
It also depends on what you mean by "insulting." Frankly, if a cute girl asks me to program, then I will almost certainly tease her as I help out. I think the porn thing was an attempt at tease that ended up being a bit too insulting. There's definitely a line, but usually if you cross that line people will understand so long as you do.
The problem is that it was also the programming community that is pointing out that the guy was being kind of a douche. You are taking a very small portion of the community and extrapolating extremes from that. The plural of anecdote is not data.
For that reason, it's hard to listen to what else he has to say, no matter how relevant or (potentially) awesome.
Obvious that he's never been the low end of the totem pole. It may be different now, but when I was in high school, geeks and nerds got shit on by every group -- the jocks, the actors and actresses. Everyone.