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There's a community of screaming angry children (not an insult, I mean literal teenagers and younger) who've got some sort of persecution complex and complain o
by arjie 10y ago
There's a community of screaming angry children (not an insult, I mean literal teenagers and younger) who've got some sort of persecution complex and complain often about "censorship". Almost uniformly, the work of these people is not useful to anyone but them. And it is only useful to them in a sort of self gratifying perpetuation of their beliefs coupled with outrage.
If you're an individual, I would advise steering clear of these groups. It's not productive to be a member.
I think it's today's variant of the BSD v GPL, or Linux v Microsoft flame wars. It's an addictive thing to participate in. You have a team and you strongly present membership and identity.
It's less about the principles behind it and more about which principles you can bring to serve your identity as part of the group membership.
For an individual, this is a mental trap. You expend a great deal of effort on identification and none on being better. It's not worth it.
I think the Ellen Pao thing was one of these identity rites. She was the opposite, and things others could be forgiven for would be heinous crimes if she'd done them.
- dukeluke 10y agoAn us-vs-them mentality definitely amplified the outrage, but it began for legitimate purposes. Reddit really was a bastion of free speech in its early days, which was fantastic because people with thoughts that didn't align with the PC culture could find a place they liked. The community was afraid the changes implemented by Pao would be a slippery slope to conforming to the mainstream PC culture and reacted accordingly. And looking at how Reddit has changed in the last few years, I would say those fears were not unfounded in the least.