4 ms·

I love Rust but the ideological posturing and swathes of people who in their hearts are grifters is truly disappointing. Framing a technical presentation you d

I love Rust but the ideological posturing and swathes of people who in their hearts are grifters is truly disappointing. Framing a technical presentation you disagree with as "making you uncomfortable" in highly manipulative fashion definitely deserves to be called out in public.

pas 3y ago
ideology (culture!) is important. your second point seems trivial, after all let's assume that most of us live and act accordingly (manipulation is bad, and if there's something uncomfortable about a presentation, then it should be directly addressed, etc) but your first seems very interesting. can you please elaborate on who these grifters are, and how to identify them?
- shakow 3y ago
  > how to identify them? They abuse their influence to demote a keynote selected by the agreed-upon keynote selection scheme, because it makes them “uncomfortable”.
  - pas 3y ago
    but how do we know who was it?
  - ssokolow 3y ago
    According to the discussion in /r/rust/, one person falsely claimed that they were speaking on behalf of Rust team consensus and the RustConf representative they talked to got burned by taking their word for it rather than asking for confirmation. I'm still trying to find confirmation of which message it was though. If it was the initial invite that was "issued without authorization", then the revocation would make more sense.
depr 3y ago
Indeed it should not be surprising that the community (leadership) who from the outside seems among the most concerned with codes of conduct, inclusion and so on, is actually not so virtuous at all. I am all for many of the stated goals of "woke" or whatever you want to call them, but it is really reminiscent of the politician who wants to ban porn but has his entire computer filled with it.
- vasco 3y ago
  Everyone has similar character flaws, but insecurities and cognitive dissonance make some need to virtue signal because they fear the crowd will think they are intolerant and their brain can't deal with the fact they might have some lizard brain thoughts from time to time. To deal with this they go to the extent of branding themselves "good person walking here", uh, sorry: "allies".
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  What if there are people who need laws, rules, processes to keep something at bay because they are actually suffering from addiction to the very thing they need to regulate. If they believe that thing is wrong and they see how hard it is to resist, they of all people may jump on a bandwagon.
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
    Yes, the "impose my beliefs on everyone" crowd.
  - mpalmer 3y ago
    Except people who involve themselves in dev communities aren't babies, and this parental impulse of protecting people from ideas YOU think are bad is completely toxic and self defeating. Being afraid of disagreement is a cancer in our discourse.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      I agree. I was suggesting something even worse: they have internal disagreement and guilt and are regulating others based on that. Any discourse makes them feel worse about it, so they regulate that too.
cookieperson 3y ago
I haven't seen grifters in the community. But there definitely are narcissists and other ucky personality types. This is true of ALL communities... As soon as a niche group offers a position of power/importance the turds will line up to battle over it. Best advice I have is, avoid the whole situation and have fun. If you really want this kind of stuff to be part of your career, this is what that kind of career path is... lots of politics, drama, defending a title, etc. Conferences can be good for meeting people, and I guess self promotion. But it's just like anything else, there's going to be people who will do anything to meddle regardless of merit. There's going to be "cool kids" and "losers". If you seek equanimity, you won't find it in a hierarchical power structure. Blogs are way better than talks anyways.
orangetuba 3y ago
I couldn't agree more. This is pure manipulation.
redeeman 3y ago
this is well in line with the woke culture, everything is about feelings, and not rational arguments. They need trigger warnings, and if things hurt some feefee's, its simply unacceptable regardless of factual matters. that is why it is so disruptive in a professional setting, and kills all real honest cooperation
- VerminOctopus1 3y ago
  This is an absurd post, these tirades against the boogeyman of “woke culture” are so tiresome. Engage with the content of the blog post instead of deferring to this tribal bullshit.
  - marcellus23 3y ago
    That _is_ the content of the post. It’s not like people are arguing about grammar or the webpage style. People are talking about the words the author used and the ideas the author communicated.
  - grt_thr 3y ago
    [flagged]
- Capricorn2481 3y ago
  Just completely pulling your agenda out of your ass on HN, huh?
jasmer 3y ago
I think the framing of 'uncomfortable' is just a poor choice of words among a bunch of people it would seem have difficulty with these things. My gosh this is all out of proportion.
epistasis 3y ago
I really love Rust, and I'm very encouraged to see this "ideological posturing" happening in public. There is a wide wide world out there, and just as having an easy to use crate system is important, so is having a large community. You don't get to a large community by being exclusive, but by being inclusive.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Who was being exclusive, exactly? And how?
  - epistasis 3y ago
    Don't think of it as an active act of creating exclusion, but of a state that just happened. Doesn't matter how, it could be completely natural, unintentional, and just how growth happened. It is also almost certainly the case that nobody is being actively excluded (well except maybe from a keynote). But appearances matter, and why have a poor appearance that could come from a bad place when a better one is possible?
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      OK, but what can be done then to avoid this "poor appearance" exactly? The black speaker pulled out. It's their decision to make. What can be done?
      - epistasis 3y ago
        Continue on with the conference, learn from the current situation, and try again in the future. That's why I'm encouraged that this conversation is happening, because it's the path to the better future. The only really wrong response to this would be to shut down, close one's mind, and decide that the problem is the controversy itself, rather than the greater social situation of which this conference is just one small part. It's a programming language, it's not meant to solve social problems, after all. But governance and social structures are inherent to programming languages, and they should try to fit into the larger social structure of society (around the world) and if they want to be widely adopted, learn to appeal to wider and wider audiences.

pas 3y ago

ideology (culture!) is important. your second point seems trivial, after all let's assume that most of us live and act accordingly (manipulation is bad, and if there's something uncomfortable about a presentation, then it should be directly addressed, etc) but your first seems very interesting. can you please elaborate on who these grifters are, and how to identify them?

shakow 3y ago
> how to identify them? They abuse their influence to demote a keynote selected by the agreed-upon keynote selection scheme, because it makes them “uncomfortable”.
- pas 3y ago
  but how do we know who was it?
- ssokolow 3y ago
  According to the discussion in /r/rust/, one person falsely claimed that they were speaking on behalf of Rust team consensus and the RustConf representative they talked to got burned by taking their word for it rather than asking for confirmation. I'm still trying to find confirmation of which message it was though. If it was the initial invite that was "issued without authorization", then the revocation would make more sense.

depr 3y ago

Indeed it should not be surprising that the community (leadership) who from the outside seems among the most concerned with codes of conduct, inclusion and so on, is actually not so virtuous at all. I am all for many of the stated goals of "woke" or whatever you want to call them, but it is really reminiscent of the politician who wants to ban porn but has his entire computer filled with it.

vasco 3y ago
Everyone has similar character flaws, but insecurities and cognitive dissonance make some need to virtue signal because they fear the crowd will think they are intolerant and their brain can't deal with the fact they might have some lizard brain thoughts from time to time. To deal with this they go to the extent of branding themselves "good person walking here", uh, sorry: "allies".
jvanderbot 3y ago
What if there are people who need laws, rules, processes to keep something at bay because they are actually suffering from addiction to the very thing they need to regulate. If they believe that thing is wrong and they see how hard it is to resist, they of all people may jump on a bandwagon.
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  Yes, the "impose my beliefs on everyone" crowd.
- mpalmer 3y ago
  Except people who involve themselves in dev communities aren't babies, and this parental impulse of protecting people from ideas YOU think are bad is completely toxic and self defeating. Being afraid of disagreement is a cancer in our discourse.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    I agree. I was suggesting something even worse: they have internal disagreement and guilt and are regulating others based on that. Any discourse makes them feel worse about it, so they regulate that too.

cookieperson 3y ago

I haven't seen grifters in the community. But there definitely are narcissists and other ucky personality types. This is true of ALL communities... As soon as a niche group offers a position of power/importance the turds will line up to battle over it. Best advice I have is, avoid the whole situation and have fun. If you really want this kind of stuff to be part of your career, this is what that kind of career path is... lots of politics, drama, defending a title, etc. Conferences can be good for meeting people, and I guess self promotion. But it's just like anything else, there's going to be people who will do anything to meddle regardless of merit. There's going to be "cool kids" and "losers". If you seek equanimity, you won't find it in a hierarchical power structure. Blogs are way better than talks anyways.

orangetuba 3y ago

I couldn't agree more. This is pure manipulation.

redeeman 3y ago

this is well in line with the woke culture, everything is about feelings, and not rational arguments. They need trigger warnings, and if things hurt some feefee's, its simply unacceptable regardless of factual matters. that is why it is so disruptive in a professional setting, and kills all real honest cooperation

VerminOctopus1 3y ago
This is an absurd post, these tirades against the boogeyman of “woke culture” are so tiresome. Engage with the content of the blog post instead of deferring to this tribal bullshit.
- marcellus23 3y ago
  That _is_ the content of the post. It’s not like people are arguing about grammar or the webpage style. People are talking about the words the author used and the ideas the author communicated.
- grt_thr 3y ago
  [flagged]
Capricorn2481 3y ago
Just completely pulling your agenda out of your ass on HN, huh?

jasmer 3y ago

I think the framing of 'uncomfortable' is just a poor choice of words among a bunch of people it would seem have difficulty with these things. My gosh this is all out of proportion.

epistasis 3y ago

I really love Rust, and I'm very encouraged to see this "ideological posturing" happening in public. There is a wide wide world out there, and just as having an easy to use crate system is important, so is having a large community. You don't get to a large community by being exclusive, but by being inclusive.

pdimitar 3y ago
Who was being exclusive, exactly? And how?
- epistasis 3y ago
  Don't think of it as an active act of creating exclusion, but of a state that just happened. Doesn't matter how, it could be completely natural, unintentional, and just how growth happened. It is also almost certainly the case that nobody is being actively excluded (well except maybe from a keynote). But appearances matter, and why have a poor appearance that could come from a bad place when a better one is possible?
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    OK, but what can be done then to avoid this "poor appearance" exactly? The black speaker pulled out. It's their decision to make. What can be done?
    - epistasis 3y ago
      Continue on with the conference, learn from the current situation, and try again in the future. That's why I'm encouraged that this conversation is happening, because it's the path to the better future. The only really wrong response to this would be to shut down, close one's mind, and decide that the problem is the controversy itself, rather than the greater social situation of which this conference is just one small part. It's a programming language, it's not meant to solve social problems, after all. But governance and social structures are inherent to programming languages, and they should try to fit into the larger social structure of society (around the world) and if they want to be widely adopted, learn to appeal to wider and wider audiences.