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That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. To me the dissonance ca
by ktRolster 10y ago
That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why.
To me the dissonance came from an unusual definition of the word "rockstar." In the programming context, I've usually heard it as "someone who is really good at programming," but here they are trying to define it as "someone who pretends to be good at programming and harasses everyone around them."
- tptacek 10y agoThis post is using "rock star" in a far more conventional sense than programmers do. To these authors, a "rock star" personality is someone who receives frequent media attention, who is given numerous slots to speak at conferences, and who cultivates an active fandom. It happens that most of these people don't do much real work, but "not doing real work" probably isn't as central to the definition as those other things are.
- Canada 10y agoI believe the most popular label for that is "media whore"
- tptacek 10y agoThat doesn't work either! There are rock star personalities in security who don't seek out media attention, but nonetheless cultivate fandoms and headline conferences. A lot of people are also uncomfortable the the gendering implied in the word "whore". It's not worth litigating here (please let's not), but it's worth knowing about.
- Canada 10y agoWhat makes a media whore is the desire for attention at any cost. It's toxic behavior, thus the pejorative term for it. I wasn't suggesting the article use it. The label doesn't fit any of the other undesirable behaviors they enumerated.
- tptacek 10y agoYou want something past "attention whore", which connotes only aspiration and doesn't capture accumulated social capital. It's the accumulated social capital that makes these people so harmful.