6 ms·

About the RMS Cancellation

17 points by blueflow 6y ago

core-questions 6y ago
> Don’t people sometimes reflect upon themselves, “are we the baddies”? Don’t people see a value in having a moral ground? That's not the point. The point of this cancellation is the exercise of power; it makes those who are perpetrating this action feel powerful, and closes the loop of a feedback cycle of justification. Intentions and facts do not matter, because ultimately in this new era there is no path to redemption, no mechanism by which an apology can be accepted. The point is not consistency or actually building a safer or better world - if it were, RMS would rightly be considered a saintly figure for his contributions to the world. The creation and popularization of Free Software is a higher moral act than anything any social-justice keyboard warrior will ever accomplish, no matter how many luminaries they take down. No, the point is to exercise power, to show any straight white (or white-presenting) male that they are vulnerable, and to ensure that more and more of us hide our heads lest we be the tall blade of grass that gets the scythe. This is, of course, our new privilege.
- magnostherobot 6y ago
  > [...] ultimately in this new era there is no path to redemption, no mechanism by which an apology can be accepted. I'm pretty sure the mechanism is: backing down from your position of power, apologising, being quiet in the community, and finally reintegrating once you've shown that you've learned from your past mistakes. Prison is (ideally) a non-voluntary version of this, and many countries rely on prisons to rehabilitate people. On a smaller scale, I've seen this happen in friend groups: friend does bad thing, everyone tells them they've done a bad thing and that they need to absorb that, friend disappears for a year or two, keeping in touch with some of the group, and when they return they have the people they stayed in touch with to vouch for their personal improvement. There's plenty of movies where this happens to the protagonist near the end (although usually the format mandates that their transformation takes less than a year). > [...] RMS would rightly be considered a saintly figure for his contributions to the world. Good people can do bad things; the best people improve from them (see the above movie-protagonist analogy). Returning someone to a position of power without adequate evidence that they've changed their ways means that they have no personal incentive to put in the effort and improve themselves - they can return to the status-quo, which means the people that were disadvantaged before remain so. > No, the point is to exercise power, to show any straight white (or white-presenting) male that they are vulnerable, [...] People do use power when they attempt to de-platform someone, but I don't think that it's being used here for the sake of it. This person has done some crummy things, and refusing him his position should be a wake-up call to him that he has misused the power he was trusted with (this is the "everyone tell them they've done a bad thing" step in the friend-group analogy). It would also prevent this person from misusing the position's power further. Making people feel vulnerable might sound bad at first, but the alternative is that some people are invulnerable, which (to me) is a terrifying prospect. Being able to do anything with no social consequences would allow people to serially commit to doing horrible things, without ever losing their ability to continue doing them. > [...] and to ensure that more and more of us hide our heads lest we be the tall blade of grass that gets the scythe. I'm not totally sure how this metaphor works, with respect to what the length of a grass blade represents. If it represents how poorly the person treats women then the metaphor works, but doesn't really seem to support your rhetoric.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > I'm pretty sure the mechanism is: backing down from your position of power, apologising, being quiet in the community, and finally reintegrating once you've shown that you've learned from your past mistakes. This requires that you actually accept that your punishment is deserved; which implies giving into the Woke Mob. Not all of us are interested in doing that. Not all of us care so much about "disadvantaged" people, especially in the area of open source which has been as close to a true meritocracy as the species has ever created. > This person has done some crummy things RMS is clearly autistic, so whatever "crummy things" he's done need to be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe a boulder of it. I don't care what RMS thinks of women, honestly; I care what he thinks about code and computers and freedom. Why would you look to him for an example of how to treat or think about women? It would be like looking to him for how to think about the NFL or about the coronavirus or something: totally outside of his wheelhouse and ultimately not that important to what he contributes to and works on. > Being able to do anything with no social consequences would allow people to serially commit to doing horrible things, without ever losing their ability to continue doing them. The problem is that the Woke Mob has co-opted the control of the definition of what is horrible, and expands it continually over time into areas that were not always considered horrible; and what's more, they apply it retroactively. Giving those assholes access to controlling what happens in computing is not exactly a win for the species.
    - krapp 6y ago
      >Not all of us are interested in doing that. Not all of us care so much about "disadvantaged" people, especially in the area of open source which has been as close to a true meritocracy as the species has ever created. >I don't care what RMS thinks of women, honestly; I care what he thinks about code and computers and freedom. God, I love it when the mask comes off completely.
      - core-questions 6y ago
        Implying I put a mask on. Do you think I'm bothered or intimidated by the fact that I hold a contrarian opinion? I think RMS is a net good in the world. 99% of everything he's ever said and done has been some weird superposition of cringe and prophetic. The entire world owes him a debt of gratitude, but instead he's being slow boiled like so many other folks. I find it disgusting, and cowardly. Go on ahead and pretend "equity" is somehow progress for as long as you want; eventually, when you're living in a failed state along the lines of South Africa, you'll understand.
- ggm 6y ago
  yes. This kind of introspection is common, necessary. The question is, Not "does RMS have a path to redemption" (sorry about use of a religious or semi-religious word) but "what story do we tell the world, (re)appointing him to leadership" If you want to be horrid, you could call it a branding problem. There is a reason no ford in current production is called Edsel, despite Edsel Ford being a nicer person than his father.
phendrenad2 6y ago
Cancellation is just the new hammer, to everyone, everything looks like a nail. People are just going through the motions, like when a new JavaScript trend comes along. Soon people will realize that reality is often nuanced, and often people who have apologized don't deserve to be cancelled (not sure if RMS has apologized).
- tlb 6y ago
  > Soon people will realize that reality is often nuanced Why do you think this is going to happen soon after 2021 and not any other time since homo sapiens developed language? Obviously many things are different now, so your statement isn't a-priori implausible. But I guess I'm not feeling an overall societal trend towards accepting more nuance.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    In 2021 it got a new name and a new definition, as "the things that other people do that I don't like". Instances of it that we do don't count, because reasons. It'll pass in a year or two, when they've come up with a new thing to admit to. (In this domain, every accusation is a confession.)
    - bingbong70 6y ago
      I don't think 'cancel culture' exists... the internet exposes users to a tremendous amount of bad faith actors, taking a quick assessment and acting to save your own time is the natural response to the wave of BS.
      - blueflow 6y ago
        There are vast social circles in society where public shaming and defamation are a shunned approach to social conflict. I'd go as far that this is the silent majority of people and its just tech people who don't get it right. Not quite far from the observation that many tech people lack social skills. To address your point - from an tech-outside view, there is definitely something like "Cancel-Culture", but its difficult to realize if you don't have an alternative perspective on handling conflicts.
neolog 6y ago
Some stories about objectionable things may have taken place in the 1980s, but it's hard to tell the timeline.
- ggm 6y ago
  Certainly, there were stories about how wierdly asocial RMS was, couch-surfing for conference attendances around the 80s. Pretty much anyone I knew, said "never again" after hosting him. it was over 30 years ago now, and I can't recall names so please, don't do a <citation required> on me.
howeyc 6y ago
I applaud the effort of hoping for self-reflection. This will likely gain very little traction here. Those engaging in cancelling don't see themselves as the "baddies." They view themselves as above reproach.
abxytg 6y ago
If I'm reading this correctly your issue was not that he was mischaracterized as those things, but that rightly naming him those things is mean? What a soggy rebuttal. If its slanderous, show us. If it's not slander it's true, and it's not "mean" to label an abuser so. The linked letter puts forward proof. Are you refuting that wholesale?
vonsydov 6y ago
What's the evidence presented to the court of cancellation ?
vonsydov 6y ago
Collecting signatures using pull requests is pretty cool though. I suppose dissenters can fork this ?
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago
>Don’t people see a value in having a moral ground? Did this person even read what they wrote? RMS advocates for child rape. He is a pedophile. I don't really care about his other comments but he unequivocally defends child rape. On that basis alone, he needs to be removed.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  Not everyone agrees that he "defends child rape". I've seent hat accusation several times, but that's not what he said. Can I start calling for you to suffer because you advocate cannibalism? Does it matter if you ever have or not? Or is the fun of being part of the herd more important than the observation of reality?
  - kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago
    Not everyone agrees that Trump lost the election, yet here we are. Some opinions shouldn't be listened to.
    - h2odragon 6y ago
      > Some opinions shouldn't be listened to. Agreed! So don't listen. Why does everybody have to be protected from something you disagree with? BTW; do you recall the fuss over the Netflix "Cuties" thing not long ago? are you cancelling Netflix?
- spfzero 6y ago
  Except that you’re wrong about everything you say. He’s not a pedophile, by any definition, etc. he doesn’t defend any type of child rape, whatsoever, obviously, if you actually understand what he has said.
pshc 6y ago
Is that the whole argument--that it isn't nice to call people names? How about addressing the substance of the complaint?
jhanschoo 6y ago
> The second sentence calls him three slurs - misogynist, ableist, and transphobic. What a ignorant attempt at a rebuttal. The letter substantiates aren't characterizing RMS as such without substantiation: they link in the letter to what they believe is behavior that displays these characterizations. > https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix
geoah 6y ago
Clicking the URL for me loads the post and then redirects me to a weird anti-LGBT propaganda anime video Copying the URL into a new tab doesn't trigger the redirect. Video is probably NSFW and LOUD: https://f0ck.me/b/c7aceabf.webm https://f0ck.me/b/c7aceabf.webm
- geoah 6y ago
  The site seems to be loading https://yin.neocities.org/main.js https://yin.neocities.org/main.js which checks the referrer and redirects the user to that video if they are coming from hn/reddit/twitter. JS contains the following comment: // much of the tech community is the kind of person that spent time infront of the computer instead of learning social competence. // not all of you are arrogant pricks, but the soup is poisoned now.
  - axbytg 6y ago
    What a fucking loser posts his own blog then adds the site be posted to to a 'cesspools' blocker because he is so entrenched in being hateful
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

17 points by blueflow 6y ago

> Don’t people sometimes reflect upon themselves, “are we the baddies”? Don’t people see a value in having a moral ground? That's not the point. The point of this cancellation is the exercise of power; it makes those who are perpetrating this action feel powerful, and closes the loop of a feedback cycle of justification. Intentions and facts do not matter, because ultimately in this new era there is no path to redemption, no mechanism by which an apology can be accepted. The point is not consistency or actually building a safer or better world - if it were, RMS would rightly be considered a saintly figure for his contributions to the world. The creation and popularization of Free Software is a higher moral act than anything any social-justice keyboard warrior will ever accomplish, no matter how many luminaries they take down. No, the point is to exercise power, to show any straight white (or white-presenting) male that they are vulnerable, and to ensure that more and more of us hide our heads lest we be the tall blade of grass that gets the scythe. This is, of course, our new privilege.

magnostherobot 6y ago
> [...] ultimately in this new era there is no path to redemption, no mechanism by which an apology can be accepted. I'm pretty sure the mechanism is: backing down from your position of power, apologising, being quiet in the community, and finally reintegrating once you've shown that you've learned from your past mistakes. Prison is (ideally) a non-voluntary version of this, and many countries rely on prisons to rehabilitate people. On a smaller scale, I've seen this happen in friend groups: friend does bad thing, everyone tells them they've done a bad thing and that they need to absorb that, friend disappears for a year or two, keeping in touch with some of the group, and when they return they have the people they stayed in touch with to vouch for their personal improvement. There's plenty of movies where this happens to the protagonist near the end (although usually the format mandates that their transformation takes less than a year). > [...] RMS would rightly be considered a saintly figure for his contributions to the world. Good people can do bad things; the best people improve from them (see the above movie-protagonist analogy). Returning someone to a position of power without adequate evidence that they've changed their ways means that they have no personal incentive to put in the effort and improve themselves - they can return to the status-quo, which means the people that were disadvantaged before remain so. > No, the point is to exercise power, to show any straight white (or white-presenting) male that they are vulnerable, [...] People do use power when they attempt to de-platform someone, but I don't think that it's being used here for the sake of it. This person has done some crummy things, and refusing him his position should be a wake-up call to him that he has misused the power he was trusted with (this is the "everyone tell them they've done a bad thing" step in the friend-group analogy). It would also prevent this person from misusing the position's power further. Making people feel vulnerable might sound bad at first, but the alternative is that some people are invulnerable, which (to me) is a terrifying prospect. Being able to do anything with no social consequences would allow people to serially commit to doing horrible things, without ever losing their ability to continue doing them. > [...] and to ensure that more and more of us hide our heads lest we be the tall blade of grass that gets the scythe. I'm not totally sure how this metaphor works, with respect to what the length of a grass blade represents. If it represents how poorly the person treats women then the metaphor works, but doesn't really seem to support your rhetoric.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure the mechanism is: backing down from your position of power, apologising, being quiet in the community, and finally reintegrating once you've shown that you've learned from your past mistakes. This requires that you actually accept that your punishment is deserved; which implies giving into the Woke Mob. Not all of us are interested in doing that. Not all of us care so much about "disadvantaged" people, especially in the area of open source which has been as close to a true meritocracy as the species has ever created. > This person has done some crummy things RMS is clearly autistic, so whatever "crummy things" he's done need to be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe a boulder of it. I don't care what RMS thinks of women, honestly; I care what he thinks about code and computers and freedom. Why would you look to him for an example of how to treat or think about women? It would be like looking to him for how to think about the NFL or about the coronavirus or something: totally outside of his wheelhouse and ultimately not that important to what he contributes to and works on. > Being able to do anything with no social consequences would allow people to serially commit to doing horrible things, without ever losing their ability to continue doing them. The problem is that the Woke Mob has co-opted the control of the definition of what is horrible, and expands it continually over time into areas that were not always considered horrible; and what's more, they apply it retroactively. Giving those assholes access to controlling what happens in computing is not exactly a win for the species.
  - krapp 6y ago
    >Not all of us are interested in doing that. Not all of us care so much about "disadvantaged" people, especially in the area of open source which has been as close to a true meritocracy as the species has ever created. >I don't care what RMS thinks of women, honestly; I care what he thinks about code and computers and freedom. God, I love it when the mask comes off completely.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      Implying I put a mask on. Do you think I'm bothered or intimidated by the fact that I hold a contrarian opinion? I think RMS is a net good in the world. 99% of everything he's ever said and done has been some weird superposition of cringe and prophetic. The entire world owes him a debt of gratitude, but instead he's being slow boiled like so many other folks. I find it disgusting, and cowardly. Go on ahead and pretend "equity" is somehow progress for as long as you want; eventually, when you're living in a failed state along the lines of South Africa, you'll understand.
ggm 6y ago
yes. This kind of introspection is common, necessary. The question is, Not "does RMS have a path to redemption" (sorry about use of a religious or semi-religious word) but "what story do we tell the world, (re)appointing him to leadership" If you want to be horrid, you could call it a branding problem. There is a reason no ford in current production is called Edsel, despite Edsel Ford being a nicer person than his father.

phendrenad2 6y ago

Cancellation is just the new hammer, to everyone, everything looks like a nail. People are just going through the motions, like when a new JavaScript trend comes along. Soon people will realize that reality is often nuanced, and often people who have apologized don't deserve to be cancelled (not sure if RMS has apologized).

tlb 6y ago
> Soon people will realize that reality is often nuanced Why do you think this is going to happen soon after 2021 and not any other time since homo sapiens developed language? Obviously many things are different now, so your statement isn't a-priori implausible. But I guess I'm not feeling an overall societal trend towards accepting more nuance.
- jfengel 6y ago
  In 2021 it got a new name and a new definition, as "the things that other people do that I don't like". Instances of it that we do don't count, because reasons. It'll pass in a year or two, when they've come up with a new thing to admit to. (In this domain, every accusation is a confession.)
  - bingbong70 6y ago
    I don't think 'cancel culture' exists... the internet exposes users to a tremendous amount of bad faith actors, taking a quick assessment and acting to save your own time is the natural response to the wave of BS.
    - blueflow 6y ago
      There are vast social circles in society where public shaming and defamation are a shunned approach to social conflict. I'd go as far that this is the silent majority of people and its just tech people who don't get it right. Not quite far from the observation that many tech people lack social skills. To address your point - from an tech-outside view, there is definitely something like "Cancel-Culture", but its difficult to realize if you don't have an alternative perspective on handling conflicts.

neolog 6y ago

Some stories about objectionable things may have taken place in the 1980s, but it's hard to tell the timeline.

ggm 6y ago
Certainly, there were stories about how wierdly asocial RMS was, couch-surfing for conference attendances around the 80s. Pretty much anyone I knew, said "never again" after hosting him. it was over 30 years ago now, and I can't recall names so please, don't do a <citation required> on me.

howeyc 6y ago

I applaud the effort of hoping for self-reflection. This will likely gain very little traction here. Those engaging in cancelling don't see themselves as the "baddies." They view themselves as above reproach.

abxytg 6y ago

If I'm reading this correctly your issue was not that he was mischaracterized as those things, but that rightly naming him those things is mean? What a soggy rebuttal. If its slanderous, show us. If it's not slander it's true, and it's not "mean" to label an abuser so. The linked letter puts forward proof. Are you refuting that wholesale?

vonsydov 6y ago

What's the evidence presented to the court of cancellation ?

vonsydov 6y ago

Collecting signatures using pull requests is pretty cool though. I suppose dissenters can fork this ?

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago

>Don’t people see a value in having a moral ground? Did this person even read what they wrote? RMS advocates for child rape. He is a pedophile. I don't really care about his other comments but he unequivocally defends child rape. On that basis alone, he needs to be removed.

h2odragon 6y ago
Not everyone agrees that he "defends child rape". I've seent hat accusation several times, but that's not what he said. Can I start calling for you to suffer because you advocate cannibalism? Does it matter if you ever have or not? Or is the fun of being part of the herd more important than the observation of reality?
- kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 6y ago
  Not everyone agrees that Trump lost the election, yet here we are. Some opinions shouldn't be listened to.
  - h2odragon 6y ago
    > Some opinions shouldn't be listened to. Agreed! So don't listen. Why does everybody have to be protected from something you disagree with? BTW; do you recall the fuss over the Netflix "Cuties" thing not long ago? are you cancelling Netflix?
spfzero 6y ago
Except that you’re wrong about everything you say. He’s not a pedophile, by any definition, etc. he doesn’t defend any type of child rape, whatsoever, obviously, if you actually understand what he has said.

pshc 6y ago

Is that the whole argument--that it isn't nice to call people names? How about addressing the substance of the complaint?

jhanschoo 6y ago

> The second sentence calls him three slurs - misogynist, ableist, and transphobic. What a ignorant attempt at a rebuttal. The letter substantiates aren't characterizing RMS as such without substantiation: they link in the letter to what they believe is behavior that displays these characterizations. > https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

geoah 6y ago

Clicking the URL for me loads the post and then redirects me to a weird anti-LGBT propaganda anime video Copying the URL into a new tab doesn't trigger the redirect. Video is probably NSFW and LOUD: https://f0ck.me/b/c7aceabf.webm https://f0ck.me/b/c7aceabf.webm

geoah 6y ago
The site seems to be loading https://yin.neocities.org/main.js https://yin.neocities.org/main.js which checks the referrer and redirects the user to that video if they are coming from hn/reddit/twitter. JS contains the following comment: // much of the tech community is the kind of person that spent time infront of the computer instead of learning social competence. // not all of you are arrogant pricks, but the soup is poisoned now.
- axbytg 6y ago
  What a fucking loser posts his own blog then adds the site be posted to to a 'cesspools' blocker because he is so entrenched in being hateful
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]