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Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) Speaking of 2 things being true at o

Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) Speaking of 2 things being true at once, what's amazing about BBSs/USENET/IRC/etc. especially in the early years was that they had: - online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you sounded like. It wasn't white people and black people talking together. It was just people. Genuine friendships developed between people that otherwise probably would have never connected because of societal barriers. - online discussions where people were insanely cruel. Prior to getting online, I thought I understood how mean people could be. Boy was I wrong. It was a real learning experience to be on the receiving end of vile hatred, bigotry, insults, just... meanness. There are interests I walked away from because the toxicity of the community was too much to deal with.

mostly_lurks 4y ago
I think you might want to reflect for a minute on why you thought "but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone?" was an appropriate response to a black person talking about their experience of racism. I recognize you believed yourself to be mitigating the effect of your statement by prefacing it with "Not disputing your bad experiences," but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience, or at least pulling focus away from it in an unhelpful way.
- JLCarveth 4y ago
  And you're here dismissing their experience because they're not black. See the issue?
  - mostly_lurks 4y ago
    Being dismissive of the experiences of members of oppressed groups is objectively more harmful than being dismissive of someone not part of a similarly oppressed group.
- meowkit 4y ago
  And to counter your claim here - someone's "lived experience" is not a sufficient ballast for blindly accepting an anecdote. People's memories suck. And more often than not subjective experiences don't map onto reality, especially when negative or stressful emotions are involved. One negative experience on an IRC/forum can cloud a person's entire recollection simply on the basis of the Negativity Bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
  - The5thElephant 4y ago
    The point isn't to figure out whether these communities were a net positive or negative. I wasn't a target of any of the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc on these forums and chat rooms but I sure saw a lot of it everywhere I participated at a level that was kind of ridiculous in some cases. It clearly had impact on the people it was targeting, the degree to which it "clouds a persons recollection" is entirely irrelevant. Is your point that their recollection should be dismissed? That they were too sensitive? It's unclear what this response's intent is.
    - dcow 4y ago
      I think the point was that you can’t debate or argue with anecdotes, in essence dismissing both comments.
- dbrueck 4y ago
  Hmm... this sounds an awful lot like, "because you're responding to a comment made by a black person, the only acceptable response is one of total agreement". I think you might want to reflect for a minute on the importance of nuance in a discussion, and the net effect of trying to police comments on others' behalf. I completely believe the commenter's experience, but I also witnessed the opposite a lot (and was deeply encouraged by it), and it's not wrong for me to chime in and point it out. And guess what? Experiencing vitriol on the internet directly contributed to me being more sensitive to things like racism. Although I've been on the receiving end of racist remarks offline, it wasn't until the internet that I caught a glimpse at how hurtful people could truly be. Again, not wrong for me to pipe up about it.
  - The5thElephant 4y ago
    But it is unclear what you are disagreeing with. They never said that there was nothing positive in those communities. So what is the point of your comment? To make sure no one leaves this thread thinking that those communities were a net negative or something? I understand the desire to defend something you were a part of and got something positive out of, but the original commenter isn't criticizing people for enjoying or benefiting from those communities, they are pointing out that they had a clear negative impact on people who were targeted by those types of awful comments.
    - dcow 4y ago
      It’s unclear because you’ve concocted it. You’re asserting that there’s disagreement when there never was. I don’t strictly blame you for perpetuating ill rhetoric, but at least be aware that you’re responding to a stance that the comment in question never took in a fever to defend a black OP that never asked for any help and frankly IMO doesn't need it based on the high quality of their comment.
    - dbrueck 4y ago
      This is a discussion site, so not every comment needs to fit neatly in a 'agree' or 'disagree' bucket. That said, I'm in agreement with the comment I was replying to, and not actually defending anything at all - I meant for my comment to be taken at face value, nothing more.
- naasking 4y ago
  > but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone.
  - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    > Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone. But it implicitly implies the negative experiences were similar in scale unless otherwise noted. It downplays the very large weight that racism adds to the negativity of that experience even if the intent is a noble one of making that person not feel alone.
    - dcow 4y ago
      Or, maybe you’re the one projecting negativity for assuming that the existence of another anecdote downplays the black one in play? I give it no such credence.
      - mostly_lurks 4y ago
        "My mother died today." "Well, lots of peoples mothers died today." Do you not see how that response is problematic? How it downplays the person's experience?
        dcow 4y ago
        Thats not an accurate reduction.
  - mostly_lurks 4y ago
    Hate directed at black people, who have been exploited, oppressed, enslaved, killed, and more for over 400 years has a more significant and problematic impact than hate directed at other, more privileged groups. Recentering the conversation away from the black person's experience is a form of dismissal, not validation. An abuser on IRC calling a black person the n-word is objectively more harmful than an abuser on IRC calling pretty much anyone else pretty much any slur.
- boppo1 4y ago
  I think you might want to reflect for a minute that you are playing the exact DEI game that the OP is complaining about. You are dismissing your parent post's argument without addressing content of the argument. Essentially, your post boils down to "Don't argue with Black people. "Lived Experience" trumps all rhetoric and discussion. In the future, please keep your thoughts and concerns to yourself." You are fostering a culture without room for discussion. You are also presuming to speak for the Black person two posts up. Solidarity is important, but shutting people down based on racial context isn't it.
  - mostly_lurks 4y ago
    I was not engaging with the argument made by the post I replied to because the poster's argument is completely beside the point. When someone says "I experienced racism because I'm black," the appropriate response is not "Well, actually, lots of people who aren't black experienced that terrible thing." So what if lots of non-black people experienced that terrible thing? That's not what we're talking about here. Your statement is re-centering the conversation away from the black person who's describing their experience. And you know what? It's the black people who are being routinely discriminated against, incarcerated, and killed because of racism, so maybe it's irrelevant to say "my feelings were hurt on IRC too."
    - boppo1 4y ago
      Are you Black?
Mezzie 4y ago
I can't speak to not being white, but I can speak to being female and gay in those spaces. I'm a 3rd generation geek/techie/hacker and the hostility really ramped up when I hit puberty. 8 year old me was treated decently: I got a lot of shit for asking stupid questions and me + my intelligence was insulted regularly (since most people didn't know I was a child), but the rape threats and constant sexual comments starting when I was about 11/12 and had the audacity to let people know I was a girl were terrifying. There was also a clear difference in how I was treated when people knew I was female versus when they were assuming I was male. By the time I was 18 and considering what to do with my life, CS and programming weren't options to me because I didn't want to put up with that crap for the rest of my life.
- hnuser123456 4y ago
  As a straight white dude, yeah there were a lot of nerd spaces with white dudes that imagined they were surrounded by other white dudes and some of them felt no need to be inclusive. But I wouldn't judge any profession too deeply solely by the behavior of teenagers who express interest in that profession. They're going to act like teenagers no matter which profession. Find a big enough young hacker space and you'll be able to find the more mature subgroups within.
  - The5thElephant 4y ago
    I know for a fact a lot of the people participating in these communities were fully adults, and the age of the people being racist does little to mitigate the impact it has on the people on the receiving end of it. I find it really bizarre how many people here are insistent on diminishing or excusing the experience the original commenter had.
    - hnuser123456 4y ago
      I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too. That's humanity. I bet they haven't gotten as far as me since then, and that's an attitude that anyone who has faced pointless discrimination should keep in mind.
John23832 4y ago
> Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) So the opportunity to make many different people feel excluded is better? I'm not sure what you're getting at?
- slackfan 4y ago
  So you're arguing equality is bad, therefore some people need to be more equal than others?
  - John23832 4y ago
    I'm not.
- dbrueck 4y ago
  The point was an answer to this question: > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do". I can't know exactly what it was (and is) like, but the diversity of awfulness in some of those communities allowed me to experience meanness on a level I had never experienced before, which in turn has helped me feel more empathy towards those who deal with things like sexism and racism both online and offline. Before, I had only an intellectual understanding that those things were terrible, which led me to under-appreciate just how much they can hurt. Perhaps I still under-appreciate it (who knows?), but I'm definitely closer to understanding than I was before, and that's a good thing.
  - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    > The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do". Prefacing "I know your experience" with "In a (very|somewhat) limited way" is vitally important.
oceanplexian 4y ago
> Online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you sounded like. We actually had real diversity and inclusion before these rent-seeking social media corporations and their fake DEI came in and ruined it. On IRC no one knew I was a 14 year old, or an 80 year old retiree, or male or female, or black or white, whatever.
- fsociety 4y ago
  This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often made on IRC/BBS, which were a reflection of society. Anyone who spent a good amount of time in these communities know it was a problem - hence why some very small invite-only communities were formed. So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you identify as in a text channel unless you let them. But it does not remove the fact that these communities could often have bigoted pockets.
  - parasense 4y ago
    > This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often made on IRC/BBS Nice straw man argument you got there... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man But I'll take the bait... > Anyone who spent a good amount of time in these communities know it was a problem... Interesting. I've been on IRC for decades, and while any online forum has the feature where trolls are capable of making awful remarks for the lulz, it's been my observation those are outliers, and NOT an actual problem for focused communities. > So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you identify as in a text channel unless you let them. hrm... yeah, there is a dichotomy there, but not the false kind, more of the ying/yang kind. The same feature that fosters diversity is the same feature that allows for trolls. > But it does not remove the fact that these communities could often have bigoted pockets. There is no reason to practice fatalism here, or characterise rare events as common place. This is probably a variation of another fallacy called reductio-absurdism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Ultimately IRC has admins, moderators, and the ability to mute other people. That is why good prevails over evil on IRC, and why IRC has remained the place for smart people to connect online for so so very long... longer than any other mode of chat communication.
The5thElephant 4y ago
Sure, virulent about everything that differed from the "engineering norm". How often were comments made mocking, stereotyping, or denigrating whiteness and white people? I can tell you not nearly as many as were made punching down at everyone else, and not nearly as harsh or gross. The argument isn't that there was no good to be had from those communities, it's that you can't dismiss or ignore the bad that they put out as well.
- mc32 4y ago
  I would not disagree, but wouldn't that follow the demographics of the population to a big extent? If we examine other communities in other languages, what were their dispositions, who did they target or not target? Did blondes target blondes or non-blondes, etc. In other words did it or does it show disproportionality? If it's disproportional then that indicates it's outside the global norm. The above does not mean the global norm is an acceptable norm but helps calibrate and figure out how good or bad things were or are.
  - The5thElephant 4y ago
    How is that relevant? Yes communities tend to be prejudiced against things outside their assumed norm and the anonymity of the web makes it easy for them to express it without repercussion. That doesn't make the negative impact it had on people in those communities not real. Furthermore in regards to race specifically I would argue there probably were very few online tech/engineer communities anywhere in the world that widely targeted and denigrated white people until maybe just recently, and even then they are likely not popular or widely participated in. I'm struggling to understand what the point you and other commenters here are trying to make responding to the original comment.
lettergram 4y ago
> Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) The red head jokes were endless.
noobermin 4y ago
Tbf, I miss the former dearly but am happy the latter is gone, particularly from forums. I don't know why people online felt they could be so abusive and harsh to others for no reasons. The taunting and garbage on twitter is mild (yes with "cancel culture" and all that) than the sheer virtriol that was just common place on forums in even the mid to late 00s.
dimmke 4y ago
Yeah not to defend how bad those spaces were but my memories of technical IRC channels on like Freenode was that they were mostly about helping people and discussing the technology the channel was about. You never had to disclose any aspect of your identity. Your gender or ethnicity. You were just a username. The only thing someone could find out about you was your general location based on IP address but even that could be masked if you want. I understand closer relationships formed on IRC I’m just saying, you could go there for help without experiencing prejudice. There was no expectation of revealing your real self.
- jldugger 4y ago
  Man, IRC was so toxic in many regards. Two stories: On EFnet, there were aggressive racists in positions of authority. References to burning crosses, etc. Many of the earliest bash.org quotes originated there, including the idea that "the bash.org 'worst' quotes list is just "the best racist jokes list." The place was in generally incredibly abusive, and frequent channel and nick takeovers. The expectation of anonymity was a feature that enabled this behavior. On Freenode, things were better. Pseudonymity let you hide from others but less so admins. But still there was a period of time where everyone was getting PM's about an IRC network where black people were banned (also, the thing was offensively named). It got so bad they had to institute a system to prevent DMs from unregistered accounts. You may also recall that one of Ubuntu's earliest contributions was a Code of Conduct, and that this was relevant because the #debian-* help channels were borderline abusive. So yea, you didn't have to identify yourself, just humiliate and dissociate.
throwaway894345 4y ago
This was what I was thinking. There were lots of jerks on those forums[^1], but I didn't see many racists. Frankly, I don't know how anyone would be able to ascertain others' races in the first place. [^1]: as far as I can tell, no one was welcome to ask questions unless they could first prove that they were smarter than everyone else about computing, in which case you wouldn't actually need to ask questions in that forum in the first place
account42 4y ago
I think your second point is really important: A lot of instances of what people perceive as -isms are relaly just people being mean not because youf your race/gender/whatever but because you annoyed them somehow or just because they can, and then reaching for whatever traits of yours they can to get to you. Lumping this with actual hate for people with different traits is only going to make honest discussion impossible.

mostly_lurks 4y ago

I think you might want to reflect for a minute on why you thought "but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone?" was an appropriate response to a black person talking about their experience of racism. I recognize you believed yourself to be mitigating the effect of your statement by prefacing it with "Not disputing your bad experiences," but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience, or at least pulling focus away from it in an unhelpful way.

JLCarveth 4y ago
And you're here dismissing their experience because they're not black. See the issue?
- mostly_lurks 4y ago
  Being dismissive of the experiences of members of oppressed groups is objectively more harmful than being dismissive of someone not part of a similarly oppressed group.
meowkit 4y ago
And to counter your claim here - someone's "lived experience" is not a sufficient ballast for blindly accepting an anecdote. People's memories suck. And more often than not subjective experiences don't map onto reality, especially when negative or stressful emotions are involved. One negative experience on an IRC/forum can cloud a person's entire recollection simply on the basis of the Negativity Bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
- The5thElephant 4y ago
  The point isn't to figure out whether these communities were a net positive or negative. I wasn't a target of any of the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc on these forums and chat rooms but I sure saw a lot of it everywhere I participated at a level that was kind of ridiculous in some cases. It clearly had impact on the people it was targeting, the degree to which it "clouds a persons recollection" is entirely irrelevant. Is your point that their recollection should be dismissed? That they were too sensitive? It's unclear what this response's intent is.
  - dcow 4y ago
    I think the point was that you can’t debate or argue with anecdotes, in essence dismissing both comments.
dbrueck 4y ago
Hmm... this sounds an awful lot like, "because you're responding to a comment made by a black person, the only acceptable response is one of total agreement". I think you might want to reflect for a minute on the importance of nuance in a discussion, and the net effect of trying to police comments on others' behalf. I completely believe the commenter's experience, but I also witnessed the opposite a lot (and was deeply encouraged by it), and it's not wrong for me to chime in and point it out. And guess what? Experiencing vitriol on the internet directly contributed to me being more sensitive to things like racism. Although I've been on the receiving end of racist remarks offline, it wasn't until the internet that I caught a glimpse at how hurtful people could truly be. Again, not wrong for me to pipe up about it.
- The5thElephant 4y ago
  But it is unclear what you are disagreeing with. They never said that there was nothing positive in those communities. So what is the point of your comment? To make sure no one leaves this thread thinking that those communities were a net negative or something? I understand the desire to defend something you were a part of and got something positive out of, but the original commenter isn't criticizing people for enjoying or benefiting from those communities, they are pointing out that they had a clear negative impact on people who were targeted by those types of awful comments.
  - dcow 4y ago
    It’s unclear because you’ve concocted it. You’re asserting that there’s disagreement when there never was. I don’t strictly blame you for perpetuating ill rhetoric, but at least be aware that you’re responding to a stance that the comment in question never took in a fever to defend a black OP that never asked for any help and frankly IMO doesn't need it based on the high quality of their comment.
  - dbrueck 4y ago
    This is a discussion site, so not every comment needs to fit neatly in a 'agree' or 'disagree' bucket. That said, I'm in agreement with the comment I was replying to, and not actually defending anything at all - I meant for my comment to be taken at face value, nothing more.
naasking 4y ago
> but I think you'll find that the net effect of your comment is still one of dismissing a black person's lived experience Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > Pointing out that those venues were full of anti-everything hate is not dismissing a black person's experience, it's validating it, while pointing out that he's not alone. But it implicitly implies the negative experiences were similar in scale unless otherwise noted. It downplays the very large weight that racism adds to the negativity of that experience even if the intent is a noble one of making that person not feel alone.
  - dcow 4y ago
    Or, maybe you’re the one projecting negativity for assuming that the existence of another anecdote downplays the black one in play? I give it no such credence.
    - mostly_lurks 4y ago
      "My mother died today." "Well, lots of peoples mothers died today." Do you not see how that response is problematic? How it downplays the person's experience?
      - dcow 4y ago
        Thats not an accurate reduction.
- mostly_lurks 4y ago
  Hate directed at black people, who have been exploited, oppressed, enslaved, killed, and more for over 400 years has a more significant and problematic impact than hate directed at other, more privileged groups. Recentering the conversation away from the black person's experience is a form of dismissal, not validation. An abuser on IRC calling a black person the n-word is objectively more harmful than an abuser on IRC calling pretty much anyone else pretty much any slur.
boppo1 4y ago
I think you might want to reflect for a minute that you are playing the exact DEI game that the OP is complaining about. You are dismissing your parent post's argument without addressing content of the argument. Essentially, your post boils down to "Don't argue with Black people. "Lived Experience" trumps all rhetoric and discussion. In the future, please keep your thoughts and concerns to yourself." You are fostering a culture without room for discussion. You are also presuming to speak for the Black person two posts up. Solidarity is important, but shutting people down based on racial context isn't it.
- mostly_lurks 4y ago
  I was not engaging with the argument made by the post I replied to because the poster's argument is completely beside the point. When someone says "I experienced racism because I'm black," the appropriate response is not "Well, actually, lots of people who aren't black experienced that terrible thing." So what if lots of non-black people experienced that terrible thing? That's not what we're talking about here. Your statement is re-centering the conversation away from the black person who's describing their experience. And you know what? It's the black people who are being routinely discriminated against, incarcerated, and killed because of racism, so maybe it's irrelevant to say "my feelings were hurt on IRC too."
  - boppo1 4y ago
    Are you Black?

Mezzie 4y ago

I can't speak to not being white, but I can speak to being female and gay in those spaces. I'm a 3rd generation geek/techie/hacker and the hostility really ramped up when I hit puberty. 8 year old me was treated decently: I got a lot of shit for asking stupid questions and me + my intelligence was insulted regularly (since most people didn't know I was a child), but the rape threats and constant sexual comments starting when I was about 11/12 and had the audacity to let people know I was a girl were terrifying. There was also a clear difference in how I was treated when people knew I was female versus when they were assuming I was male. By the time I was 18 and considering what to do with my life, CS and programming weren't options to me because I didn't want to put up with that crap for the rest of my life.

hnuser123456 4y ago
As a straight white dude, yeah there were a lot of nerd spaces with white dudes that imagined they were surrounded by other white dudes and some of them felt no need to be inclusive. But I wouldn't judge any profession too deeply solely by the behavior of teenagers who express interest in that profession. They're going to act like teenagers no matter which profession. Find a big enough young hacker space and you'll be able to find the more mature subgroups within.
- The5thElephant 4y ago
  I know for a fact a lot of the people participating in these communities were fully adults, and the age of the people being racist does little to mitigate the impact it has on the people on the receiving end of it. I find it really bizarre how many people here are insistent on diminishing or excusing the experience the original commenter had.
  - hnuser123456 4y ago
    I find it bizarre you're diminishing mine. I got roasted by leetcode pros and othered by turbonerds too. That's humanity. I bet they haven't gotten as far as me since then, and that's an attitude that anyone who has faced pointless discrimination should keep in mind.

John23832 4y ago

> Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) So the opportunity to make many different people feel excluded is better? I'm not sure what you're getting at?

slackfan 4y ago
So you're arguing equality is bad, therefore some people need to be more equal than others?
- John23832 4y ago
  I'm not.
dbrueck 4y ago
The point was an answer to this question: > Do you know VIRULENTLY anti-black (or woman, or gay) these communities were? I can't begin to describe it. The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do". I can't know exactly what it was (and is) like, but the diversity of awfulness in some of those communities allowed me to experience meanness on a level I had never experienced before, which in turn has helped me feel more empathy towards those who deal with things like sexism and racism both online and offline. Before, I had only an intellectual understanding that those things were terrible, which led me to under-appreciate just how much they can hurt. Perhaps I still under-appreciate it (who knows?), but I'm definitely closer to understanding than I was before, and that's a good thing.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > The answer is: "in a somewhat limited way, yes, yes I do". Prefacing "I know your experience" with "In a (very|somewhat) limited way" is vitally important.

oceanplexian 4y ago

> Online discussions where a lot of things just didn't matter. Race, gender, etc. just didn't matter. You got judged on the merit of your ideas, not what you looked like, not what you sounded like. We actually had real diversity and inclusion before these rent-seeking social media corporations and their fake DEI came in and ruined it. On IRC no one knew I was a 14 year old, or an 80 year old retiree, or male or female, or black or white, whatever.

fsociety 4y ago
This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often made on IRC/BBS, which were a reflection of society. Anyone who spent a good amount of time in these communities know it was a problem - hence why some very small invite-only communities were formed. So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you identify as in a text channel unless you let them. But it does not remove the fact that these communities could often have bigoted pockets.
- parasense 4y ago
  > This ignores the rampant racist/sexist comments often made on IRC/BBS Nice straw man argument you got there... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man But I'll take the bait... > Anyone who spent a good amount of time in these communities know it was a problem... Interesting. I've been on IRC for decades, and while any online forum has the feature where trolls are capable of making awful remarks for the lulz, it's been my observation those are outliers, and NOT an actual problem for focused communities. > So yes, the idealism is there. No one knows who you identify as in a text channel unless you let them. hrm... yeah, there is a dichotomy there, but not the false kind, more of the ying/yang kind. The same feature that fosters diversity is the same feature that allows for trolls. > But it does not remove the fact that these communities could often have bigoted pockets. There is no reason to practice fatalism here, or characterise rare events as common place. This is probably a variation of another fallacy called reductio-absurdism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Ultimately IRC has admins, moderators, and the ability to mute other people. That is why good prevails over evil on IRC, and why IRC has remained the place for smart people to connect online for so so very long... longer than any other mode of chat communication.

The5thElephant 4y ago

Sure, virulent about everything that differed from the "engineering norm". How often were comments made mocking, stereotyping, or denigrating whiteness and white people? I can tell you not nearly as many as were made punching down at everyone else, and not nearly as harsh or gross. The argument isn't that there was no good to be had from those communities, it's that you can't dismiss or ignore the bad that they put out as well.

mc32 4y ago
I would not disagree, but wouldn't that follow the demographics of the population to a big extent? If we examine other communities in other languages, what were their dispositions, who did they target or not target? Did blondes target blondes or non-blondes, etc. In other words did it or does it show disproportionality? If it's disproportional then that indicates it's outside the global norm. The above does not mean the global norm is an acceptable norm but helps calibrate and figure out how good or bad things were or are.
- The5thElephant 4y ago
  How is that relevant? Yes communities tend to be prejudiced against things outside their assumed norm and the anonymity of the web makes it easy for them to express it without repercussion. That doesn't make the negative impact it had on people in those communities not real. Furthermore in regards to race specifically I would argue there probably were very few online tech/engineer communities anywhere in the world that widely targeted and denigrated white people until maybe just recently, and even then they are likely not popular or widely participated in. I'm struggling to understand what the point you and other commenters here are trying to make responding to the original comment.

lettergram 4y ago

> Not disputing your bad experiences, but do you know how virulent some of those communities were to just about everyone? :) The red head jokes were endless.

noobermin 4y ago

Tbf, I miss the former dearly but am happy the latter is gone, particularly from forums. I don't know why people online felt they could be so abusive and harsh to others for no reasons. The taunting and garbage on twitter is mild (yes with "cancel culture" and all that) than the sheer virtriol that was just common place on forums in even the mid to late 00s.

dimmke 4y ago

Yeah not to defend how bad those spaces were but my memories of technical IRC channels on like Freenode was that they were mostly about helping people and discussing the technology the channel was about. You never had to disclose any aspect of your identity. Your gender or ethnicity. You were just a username. The only thing someone could find out about you was your general location based on IP address but even that could be masked if you want. I understand closer relationships formed on IRC I’m just saying, you could go there for help without experiencing prejudice. There was no expectation of revealing your real self.

jldugger 4y ago
Man, IRC was so toxic in many regards. Two stories: On EFnet, there were aggressive racists in positions of authority. References to burning crosses, etc. Many of the earliest bash.org quotes originated there, including the idea that "the bash.org 'worst' quotes list is just "the best racist jokes list." The place was in generally incredibly abusive, and frequent channel and nick takeovers. The expectation of anonymity was a feature that enabled this behavior. On Freenode, things were better. Pseudonymity let you hide from others but less so admins. But still there was a period of time where everyone was getting PM's about an IRC network where black people were banned (also, the thing was offensively named). It got so bad they had to institute a system to prevent DMs from unregistered accounts. You may also recall that one of Ubuntu's earliest contributions was a Code of Conduct, and that this was relevant because the #debian-* help channels were borderline abusive. So yea, you didn't have to identify yourself, just humiliate and dissociate.

throwaway894345 4y ago

This was what I was thinking. There were lots of jerks on those forums[^1], but I didn't see many racists. Frankly, I don't know how anyone would be able to ascertain others' races in the first place. [^1]: as far as I can tell, no one was welcome to ask questions unless they could first prove that they were smarter than everyone else about computing, in which case you wouldn't actually need to ask questions in that forum in the first place

account42 4y ago

I think your second point is really important: A lot of instances of what people perceive as -isms are relaly just people being mean not because youf your race/gender/whatever but because you annoyed them somehow or just because they can, and then reaching for whatever traits of yours they can to get to you. Lumping this with actual hate for people with different traits is only going to make honest discussion impossible.