> I also think she might be rather narrowly defining the personality type of a "hacker", and dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words:

> I also think she might be rather narrowly defining the personality type of a "hacker", and dismissing behaviors that she doesn't find valuable (in her words: "ephemera -- popularity, beauty and fitting in"). I read that more as "where do your passions lie?" People have many interests, but few passions, and passions demand sacrifices. When push comes to shove, hackers will give up popularity and fitting in for the sake of hacking - not because they don't care about those things, but because they'd rather be hacking. Girls who are told that the most important thing for them is to be beautiful and popular are deprived of the opportunity to develop a passion for hacking, because their passion for popularity chokes out other competitors. I don't think it's harder to be a hacker if you're interested in social media or graphic design, but if you'd rather be tweeting about your latest logo design than figuring out how to fix a bug, you might not be a hacker.