4 ms·

You're basically correct. The frustration many of us have, largely people slightly older than the core HN crowd, is that for a brief moment in the 90s and early

by seneca 3y ago

You're basically correct. The frustration many of us have, largely people slightly older than the core HN crowd, is that for a brief moment in the 90s and early 2000s we didn't have any of this dogma that could demand you nod along. You could be openly gay, openly Christian, conservative, leftist, or apolitical. There were groups that still tried, but they were all too weak. The cultural conservativism of the 80s had no real hold anymore, and the political correctness of the 90s was mostly a joke. People would make fun of their opponents, but everyone openly disagreed. You wouldn't be fired from your job, or banned from otherwise unrelated communities. We really thought that the internet was going to keep making this better. Instead we ended up with the most restrictive and widespread regime that has existed in most of our lifetimes. Luckily that seems to be losing its hold, but the specific doctrine isn't really the point. The frustration is that we had something closer to the ideal, however imperfect, and completely lost it, and have almost an entire generation that has been taught to think that that's a good thing.

naasking 3y ago
I think that's mostly true. The rise of New Atheism seemed to coincide with the start of decreased tolerance. Coincidence or cause, I'm not sure.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  It has nothing to do with New Atheism. You will find just as much drama - if not more - in religious communities of all kinds. I think it has more to do with social media culture, which seems perpetually hyped emotionally. You can't release a press release without claiming to be absolutely super excited for you guys about $mildly_interesting_new_thing. You can't run a non-trivial YouTube or TikTok channel if you don't over-emote wildly all the time. [1] IG is full of people who are incredibly #amazed and #grateful and add the hashtags to prove it. I'm currently watching a YT series where some people visit abandoned parts of London tube stations. There's an insane level of constant emoting. It's like children's TV. Everyone is smiling and happy and just fantastic, and everything they see is awesome, amazing, incredible, and absolutely their favourite thing ever. Which is weird when they're mostly just filming dusty old abandoned corridors, some of which have some historical interest. If this is normal for you, you can't say "I really don't like what happened so I'm going to resign" without turning it into a widescreen tentpole weepy drama movie experience. However or whenever this happened it's clearly normalised now. I think we're going to be stuck with it for a while. [1] I've known people who tried to cut down on the emoting and their stats went right down.
galangalalgol 3y ago
We had a world built entirely of people who were technical for the love of it. Those who were fascinated with computers and the internet before there was real money in it as a career. When no one cared about computers and left us alone the community built by a largely neurodiverse group had rational rules that made people that would fall into the inneagram 8 category feel comfortable. Not just neurodiverse either, despite the stereotype of the neckbeard with pocket protector women were better represented in the 70s and 80s computing community than later on. We may have surpassed that mark now though, I haven't compared numbers recently. Edit: I used the term neurodiverse and then implied we all fell into one category of personality. That seems to conflict, but what I meant was that we didn't differ much in the way that we differed. It was a gatekept community of a certain category of people where the gatekeeper was just interest in the subject absent any monetary motivation.
foldr 3y ago
> for a brief moment in the 90s and early 2000s we didn't have any of this dogma that could demand you nod along. You could be openly gay, openly Christian, conservative, leftist, or apolitical. An awful lot of people didn't have the luxury of being openly gay in the 90s and 2000s. Depending on how old you are, this is naive at best or disingenuous at worst.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  An awful lot of people still don't have the luxury of being openly gay in the 2020s, because they happen to live in militant theocratic states. People on the activist left often seem to conveniently forget this, in a way that can only be fairly described as "naive at best or disingenuous at worst".
  - foldr 3y ago
    >An awful lot of people still don't have the luxury of being openly gay in the 2020s, because they happen to live in militant theocratic states. Are you talking about Iran or Florida? :) But more seriously, your overall response is quite cryptic. I can’t answer for the ‘activist left’, whoever you take them to be.

by seneca 3y ago

naasking 3y ago

I think that's mostly true. The rise of New Atheism seemed to coincide with the start of decreased tolerance. Coincidence or cause, I'm not sure.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
It has nothing to do with New Atheism. You will find just as much drama - if not more - in religious communities of all kinds. I think it has more to do with social media culture, which seems perpetually hyped emotionally. You can't release a press release without claiming to be absolutely super excited for you guys about $mildly_interesting_new_thing. You can't run a non-trivial YouTube or TikTok channel if you don't over-emote wildly all the time. [1] IG is full of people who are incredibly #amazed and #grateful and add the hashtags to prove it. I'm currently watching a YT series where some people visit abandoned parts of London tube stations. There's an insane level of constant emoting. It's like children's TV. Everyone is smiling and happy and just fantastic, and everything they see is awesome, amazing, incredible, and absolutely their favourite thing ever. Which is weird when they're mostly just filming dusty old abandoned corridors, some of which have some historical interest. If this is normal for you, you can't say "I really don't like what happened so I'm going to resign" without turning it into a widescreen tentpole weepy drama movie experience. However or whenever this happened it's clearly normalised now. I think we're going to be stuck with it for a while. [1] I've known people who tried to cut down on the emoting and their stats went right down.

galangalalgol 3y ago

We had a world built entirely of people who were technical for the love of it. Those who were fascinated with computers and the internet before there was real money in it as a career. When no one cared about computers and left us alone the community built by a largely neurodiverse group had rational rules that made people that would fall into the inneagram 8 category feel comfortable. Not just neurodiverse either, despite the stereotype of the neckbeard with pocket protector women were better represented in the 70s and 80s computing community than later on. We may have surpassed that mark now though, I haven't compared numbers recently. Edit: I used the term neurodiverse and then implied we all fell into one category of personality. That seems to conflict, but what I meant was that we didn't differ much in the way that we differed. It was a gatekept community of a certain category of people where the gatekeeper was just interest in the subject absent any monetary motivation.

foldr 3y ago

> for a brief moment in the 90s and early 2000s we didn't have any of this dogma that could demand you nod along. You could be openly gay, openly Christian, conservative, leftist, or apolitical. An awful lot of people didn't have the luxury of being openly gay in the 90s and 2000s. Depending on how old you are, this is naive at best or disingenuous at worst.

zozbot234 3y ago
An awful lot of people still don't have the luxury of being openly gay in the 2020s, because they happen to live in militant theocratic states. People on the activist left often seem to conveniently forget this, in a way that can only be fairly described as "naive at best or disingenuous at worst".
- foldr 3y ago
  >An awful lot of people still don't have the luxury of being openly gay in the 2020s, because they happen to live in militant theocratic states. Are you talking about Iran or Florida? :) But more seriously, your overall response is quite cryptic. I can’t answer for the ‘activist left’, whoever you take them to be.