5 ms·

It makes me cringe when I see the term "depression" being used lightly, and in this instance in my opinion used for marketing. It uses the depression the title

It makes me cringe when I see the term "depression" being used lightly, and in this instance in my opinion used for marketing. It uses the depression the title and it does not many any further mention of it or justifies it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Tuberculosis used to be considered a fashionable illness.
- mek6800d2 4y ago
  From a brief review of Peter Kramer's Against Depression (2005): Consumption (tuberculosis) was viewed as a somewhat fashionable disease, a sign of an artistic and intellectual nature. (It was probably viewed that way by artists who contracted it; the greater "unwashed masses" who also were afflicted with the disease had no such pretensions.) Of course, tuberculosis eventually succumbed to medicine and fell out of fashion. (It is still a problem in communities underserved with health care.) To a certain extent, depression has some of that cachet attributed to consumption by earlier generations, but Dr. Kramer thinks that depression will eventually go the way of tuberculosis and be cured with medicine. I've suffered from severe, treatment-resistant, unipolar depression for over 25 years. I respect those who are able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and don't let depression define their lives, but there are a lot of us who are not that strong, for whatever reason, and for whom depression majorly colors our lives.
renewedrebecca 4y ago
idk- in a way, it kind of makes sense to me... When you're depressed, especially if it's a chronic condition, having "comfy" things around you definitely helps. (I totally get your argument too, though)
Entinel 4y ago
I get where you are coming from but this seems like gatekeeping to me? Who here determines whether or not the author is depressed? Do they need to delve into their past traumas to satisfy the critics?
- Majestic121 4y ago
  They don't need to do anything, but using depression as a marketing gimmick is bad taste and will be judged poorly. If that is gatekeeping, well ok.
  - Entinel 4y ago
    I don't see it as a marketing gimmick. I see it as "I'm depressed and this helped me so this might help other people who are depressed.
    - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
      By this metric, any good software or development practice is an antidepressant. And...they aren't not in a sense, but it's just such a strange and, I guess, selfish? self-centered? solipsistic? way to frame and label the idea of doing things correctly and comfortably in a professional setting. Like, the common factor of good or bad software characteristics isn't that they're going to send every user into a depression or bring them out of one. A bad feature might annoy users, and if it annoys them enough it might contribute to depression, but putting the entire burden of depression on a single software tool is like a carpenter claiming that a single bad hammer gave them depression.
  - feet 4y ago
    What, exactly, are they bringing to market?
mattarm 4y ago
I see people more and more putting their not so neurotypical issues front and center, especially among the young. I see this among my own children and their friends. Saying with a light tone "and then I had a full blown panic attack" or "I didn't want to go because I was depressed." I suspect this is just part of a greater acceptance of mental health issues in society in general, but I'm not sure they realize the weight these terms can have for some people, or that they can come off as making light of something that is quite serious for many people.
- fwip 4y ago
  Many of the people using these are clinically diagnosed with depression, anxiety, etc. They may be making light of it, but it's not unserious for them - they're just open about their struggles.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Agreed. I also believe that many of them are attempting complex diagnoses with zero training.
    - fwip 4y ago
      Perhaps. Most of these diagnoses are done by a doctor or a therapist asking you to fill out a questionnaire (written or verbal) and then just summing up the points. You can do this online yourself.
    - nisegami 4y ago
      That's only slightly less training that psychiatrists and their ilk.
  - Wesmio 4y ago
    I would still be very curious how this openess becomes a negative feedback cycle. I have big sleeping issues, have/had depression and a neurological issue with my nerves. But while I'm very aware of those issues, I'm not reflecting on them in public nur do I center my daily life around them. I do talk about it sometimes but only in short amounts. Enough that people might tell me they have the same issue (family -> genetics) or they have a better understanding why I might just have concentration issues at the moment. The author made it very obvious if not front and center that she/it doesn't feel part of a biological gender role and redefined that. I'm wondering why my life still doesn't rotate around things I can't really change while for others it's a fundamental part of their life/how they express themselves. There is also a blog from someone similar where that person draws quite bad images of some character. The question would also be why others evaluate their own doing in a way that they wouldn't present medicare drawing skills on the internet vs. expressing yourself anyhow. What if the self reflection is broken? What if not giving any feedback to stuff like this holds their own development? I have to say I find it easier to focus on the technical things but I do get triggered by those things as well. It's hard to determine if that person is okay or not. There was also someone at a save space who got crazy aggressive and said that if person x is doing y again they will hit her in the face. Is that really the definition of save space were you give a person which such crazy aggression issues space or would you expect that person to get professional help? Being open to whom? To the internet? Why? And now shouldn't the internet also be a save space for everyone else?
kixiQu 4y ago
Where is "marketing" coming from here? If you read more of her stuff, I think it's clear that it's presented as sort of a personal space. When written for an audience that isn't The General Hacker News Audience, things like that... work differently. It might be her and like two friends in a group chat that were bouncing this around and maybe talked about how it's relevant and she wrote this up to sketch out the idea more. When the opening says "there's still software out here that makes me feel happy to use" and the concluding paragraph says "Obviously, not all software needs to fit into this" I just don't think you can judge this by the standards of A Manifesto Seeking New Adherents.
gw99 4y ago
There is the voice of someone who has never actually been in the position of getting into an actual pit of depression over the toolchain you have to use. No joke but I was doing some work on VSTO in Visual Studio Classic a few years back and it really did me in. Every day was this unpredictable nightmare that was going to attack me over and over again. I dreaded getting up in the morning in the end and developed a reputation for being late and unreliable, which are two things that aren't my usual self. It took me a few weeks to realise it was early stages of depression. Since then I spend a lot of time carefully evaluating tools and software before I ever consider using it or taking on work that involves it. This is to avoid the mental toil that is almost endemic in really horrible bits of software. Quite frankly this article nails it. Software has to be comfy or it can fuck off before it hurts me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Minor49er 4y ago
The author likely has it though. On his about page [1], he says " ..i hate my body, and to a somewhat lesser extent hate my brain (and even my mind)." Clearly tech is an outlet for finding comfort for the author [1] https://catgirl.ai/pages/robot/ https://catgirl.ai/pages/robot/
- pgcj_poster 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure that the author of "catgirl.ai" is not a "he." From that same page: > i would very strongly object to being called a man anywhere > i like 'it' pronouns for myself, [...] and 'she' is still acceptable, i'm still close enough to a girl for that to be okay.
  - throwaway22032 4y ago
    The page quite obviously describes someone who is severely mentally damaged.
  - Minor49er 4y ago
    I didn't read the entire page, but the title of the blog is "Gay Robot Noises"
forgotmypw17 4y ago
I have depression, I think it is an apt title. Whether the software I'm using is cooperating with me can be the difference between me getting something done or giving up completely. And it is largely about traits described in this article.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

Tuberculosis used to be considered a fashionable illness.

mek6800d2 4y ago
From a brief review of Peter Kramer's Against Depression (2005): Consumption (tuberculosis) was viewed as a somewhat fashionable disease, a sign of an artistic and intellectual nature. (It was probably viewed that way by artists who contracted it; the greater "unwashed masses" who also were afflicted with the disease had no such pretensions.) Of course, tuberculosis eventually succumbed to medicine and fell out of fashion. (It is still a problem in communities underserved with health care.) To a certain extent, depression has some of that cachet attributed to consumption by earlier generations, but Dr. Kramer thinks that depression will eventually go the way of tuberculosis and be cured with medicine. I've suffered from severe, treatment-resistant, unipolar depression for over 25 years. I respect those who are able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and don't let depression define their lives, but there are a lot of us who are not that strong, for whatever reason, and for whom depression majorly colors our lives.

renewedrebecca 4y ago

idk- in a way, it kind of makes sense to me... When you're depressed, especially if it's a chronic condition, having "comfy" things around you definitely helps. (I totally get your argument too, though)

Entinel 4y ago

I get where you are coming from but this seems like gatekeeping to me? Who here determines whether or not the author is depressed? Do they need to delve into their past traumas to satisfy the critics?

Majestic121 4y ago
They don't need to do anything, but using depression as a marketing gimmick is bad taste and will be judged poorly. If that is gatekeeping, well ok.
- Entinel 4y ago
  I don't see it as a marketing gimmick. I see it as "I'm depressed and this helped me so this might help other people who are depressed.
  - not_kurt_godel 4y ago
    By this metric, any good software or development practice is an antidepressant. And...they aren't not in a sense, but it's just such a strange and, I guess, selfish? self-centered? solipsistic? way to frame and label the idea of doing things correctly and comfortably in a professional setting. Like, the common factor of good or bad software characteristics isn't that they're going to send every user into a depression or bring them out of one. A bad feature might annoy users, and if it annoys them enough it might contribute to depression, but putting the entire burden of depression on a single software tool is like a carpenter claiming that a single bad hammer gave them depression.
- feet 4y ago
  What, exactly, are they bringing to market?

mattarm 4y ago

I see people more and more putting their not so neurotypical issues front and center, especially among the young. I see this among my own children and their friends. Saying with a light tone "and then I had a full blown panic attack" or "I didn't want to go because I was depressed." I suspect this is just part of a greater acceptance of mental health issues in society in general, but I'm not sure they realize the weight these terms can have for some people, or that they can come off as making light of something that is quite serious for many people.

fwip 4y ago
Many of the people using these are clinically diagnosed with depression, anxiety, etc. They may be making light of it, but it's not unserious for them - they're just open about their struggles.
- tomcam 4y ago
  Agreed. I also believe that many of them are attempting complex diagnoses with zero training.
  - fwip 4y ago
    Perhaps. Most of these diagnoses are done by a doctor or a therapist asking you to fill out a questionnaire (written or verbal) and then just summing up the points. You can do this online yourself.
  - nisegami 4y ago
    That's only slightly less training that psychiatrists and their ilk.
- Wesmio 4y ago
  I would still be very curious how this openess becomes a negative feedback cycle. I have big sleeping issues, have/had depression and a neurological issue with my nerves. But while I'm very aware of those issues, I'm not reflecting on them in public nur do I center my daily life around them. I do talk about it sometimes but only in short amounts. Enough that people might tell me they have the same issue (family -> genetics) or they have a better understanding why I might just have concentration issues at the moment. The author made it very obvious if not front and center that she/it doesn't feel part of a biological gender role and redefined that. I'm wondering why my life still doesn't rotate around things I can't really change while for others it's a fundamental part of their life/how they express themselves. There is also a blog from someone similar where that person draws quite bad images of some character. The question would also be why others evaluate their own doing in a way that they wouldn't present medicare drawing skills on the internet vs. expressing yourself anyhow. What if the self reflection is broken? What if not giving any feedback to stuff like this holds their own development? I have to say I find it easier to focus on the technical things but I do get triggered by those things as well. It's hard to determine if that person is okay or not. There was also someone at a save space who got crazy aggressive and said that if person x is doing y again they will hit her in the face. Is that really the definition of save space were you give a person which such crazy aggression issues space or would you expect that person to get professional help? Being open to whom? To the internet? Why? And now shouldn't the internet also be a save space for everyone else?

kixiQu 4y ago

Where is "marketing" coming from here? If you read more of her stuff, I think it's clear that it's presented as sort of a personal space. When written for an audience that isn't The General Hacker News Audience, things like that... work differently. It might be her and like two friends in a group chat that were bouncing this around and maybe talked about how it's relevant and she wrote this up to sketch out the idea more. When the opening says "there's still software out here that makes me feel happy to use" and the concluding paragraph says "Obviously, not all software needs to fit into this" I just don't think you can judge this by the standards of A Manifesto Seeking New Adherents.

gw99 4y ago

There is the voice of someone who has never actually been in the position of getting into an actual pit of depression over the toolchain you have to use. No joke but I was doing some work on VSTO in Visual Studio Classic a few years back and it really did me in. Every day was this unpredictable nightmare that was going to attack me over and over again. I dreaded getting up in the morning in the end and developed a reputation for being late and unreliable, which are two things that aren't my usual self. It took me a few weeks to realise it was early stages of depression. Since then I spend a lot of time carefully evaluating tools and software before I ever consider using it or taking on work that involves it. This is to avoid the mental toil that is almost endemic in really horrible bits of software. Quite frankly this article nails it. Software has to be comfy or it can fuck off before it hurts me.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Minor49er 4y ago

The author likely has it though. On his about page [1], he says " ..i hate my body, and to a somewhat lesser extent hate my brain (and even my mind)." Clearly tech is an outlet for finding comfort for the author [1] https://catgirl.ai/pages/robot/ https://catgirl.ai/pages/robot/

pgcj_poster 4y ago
I'm pretty sure that the author of "catgirl.ai" is not a "he." From that same page: > i would very strongly object to being called a man anywhere > i like 'it' pronouns for myself, [...] and 'she' is still acceptable, i'm still close enough to a girl for that to be okay.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  The page quite obviously describes someone who is severely mentally damaged.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  I didn't read the entire page, but the title of the blog is "Gay Robot Noises"

forgotmypw17 4y ago

I have depression, I think it is an apt title. Whether the software I'm using is cooperating with me can be the difference between me getting something done or giving up completely. And it is largely about traits described in this article.