Dear Fellow Geeks: WTF?

http://alexisohanian.com/dear-fellow-geeks-what-the-fuck

by kn0thing • 13 years ago

30 9 13 years ago

mtp0101• 13 years ago

oh no, people are mean to others sometimes ...welcome to adulthood I think it's easy to forget that some people have real problems that don't involve overreacting to hataz on the internet

jiggy2011• 13 years ago

I didn't read every comment on HN about this whole fiasco, but I didn't see any comments using words like "bitch" or "cunt". So I'm assuming that they got downvoted pretty hard.

I've said this before, but people on "mansphere" blogs flipped out over this whole thing, a lot harder than HN did.

Seems harsh to blame the professional software industry for everything done by internet trolls.

Would be like me seeing troll commments posted on a car forum and saying "damn, mechanics are such assholes".

mnicole• 13 years ago

Exactly, the anonymous internet reacted in a way unfortunately unsurprising of them, but instead of focusing on the fact that trolls-will-troll, people continued blaming the dev community for adding insult to injury. I'm still getting replies to my response to mr-hank from accounts that were made specifically to comment on the matter. Alex is out of place in speaking down to the community this way; Reddit is a very large reason this place and her Twitter account got hailstormed with assholes on this topic (and misinformation about it) in the first place. He needs to look closer to home before he starts telling other people how to handle the blatant sexism and harassment in their communities.

astrodust2• 13 years ago

The general assertion made here, that the community is defined almost entirely by "straight white men over the years", is wrong.

The community has been defined by one thing: People who were affluent enough to be able to afford a computer, a connection to the internet, and on top of all that, the time and inclination to explore and learn.

This excluded virtually everyone in low-income families due to economic reasons. While most men and women were uninterested in personal computers until they became affordable and the software and services available for them was more compelling, in general terms, women seemed even less interested than men in the early days.

The nascent personal computer and internet space had a lot more to it than straight white men. If you were relatively affluent and had the inclination to try, you were a part of that community. Women and non-straight, non-white men have always been an important element of the community. It's just easy to ignore that.

If we stopped assuming all the people in the community were like us, or more importantly, that they were supposed to be like us, we'd probably do a lot better.

We're in an age where anyone can buy a notebook computer, I've even seen homeless people with netbooks they could've purchased by turning in a few thousand empty cans, and the barrier to engaging with the internet is very low. Where the internet used to be exclusive, it's now inclusive and we should be acting accordingly.

cellularmitosis• 13 years ago

  "People who were affluent enough to be able to afford a computer..."

I'd offer the counterpoint of myself (having not written a single line of code until my second semester of college, then going on to become a successful developer), but I was affluent enough to afford college, so perhaps the point isn't worth making.

astrodust2• 13 years ago

If you couldn't afford a computer, you couldn't program unless you were extremely lucky enough to have access to an internet-connected computer that you were free to use. Prior to the mid-1990s, these sorts of things were extremely rare.

I'm not sure what your counter-point is. I was clear that having an inclination was also a barrier. You didn't have, or hadn't expressed any interest, so you weren't part of that group.

benatkin• 13 years ago

It would be better for the reddit founder to remain silent than to post this. It's an attempt to shift blame entirely to the individual users from a centralized platform that picks and chooses its battles, and does so poorly. Throwing around the term "open" where not appropriate doesn't help the cause of openness online.

rdouble• 13 years ago

The dude who runs Reddit is just now noticing there's a huge crossover between geeks and creeps?

elmuchoprez• 13 years ago

Well, I could write a huge long response to this, but it really boils down to one question for me: When one person calls another a cunt on Twitter, what exactly do you think I should do about that?

It's worth noting that every misogynistic, racist, sexist or threatening comment I've seen during this whole thing has been in screen shots because they all get downvoted or reported/removed before they cross my screen, which seems like exactly the right response from the community at large.

Dear Fellow Geeks: WTF?

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