4 ms·

There is another side to it. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/

SwellJoe 12y ago
There are many sides to it, and I don't think it's useful to make it "us against them" on most fronts. I believe a lot of useful, and a lot of hurtful, stuff came out of those various very personal articles and blog posts discussed in your link. But, I do find it interesting that the author of the piece you've linked seems to believe it was women and feminists who made the majority of the "neckbeard" and fedora images...when, in fact, they are the work of predominantly young male redditors and occasionally 4channers. There are several subreddits devoted to this kind of humor, and from what I can tell they are disproportionately (even for reddit) occupied by young males. So, there are many other sides to it. Nerds get shit from a lot of directions...not just from women. It sucks to be a nerd. And, it sucks to be overweight. It sucks to be a minority. It sucks to be a woman. It sucks to have a disability. It sucks to be poor. Humans are awful to one another in so many ways. Sometimes, it's worth considering whether we should say what we're thinking...not because we want to be politically correct. But, because sometimes the things we say can contribute to maintaining a culture of oppression, and if we are decent human beings we prefer not to contribute to empowering oppression with the weight of numbers. And, if we are striving to be more than merely decent, we'll spend some time trying to stamp out those internalized oppressions that make it hard to see when we're being assholes to our fellow human beings.
- moultano 12y ago
  In what way can anything that Scott Aaronson said be construed to be contributing to maintaining a culture of oppression? Patriarchy and structural oppression are useful models for understanding lots of things, but they are not isomorphic to reality, and you do not deserve to be pilloried for explaining your experience in some other terms. This is why people find the internet SJW community so distasteful. Not only are they completely ineffective at improving the lives of the people they claim to be fighting for, but they also delight in doing active harm to defenseless people for merely using another model of the world in some circumstances. You might also be interested in some of Scott Aaronson's followup. http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2221 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2221
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    "In what way can anything that Scott Aaronson said be construed to be contributing to maintaining a culture of oppression?" I don't believe Scott Aaronson said anything contributing to or maintaining a culture of oppression. Though, as others have pointed out, his language does seem to indicate women are not complete human beings with their own needs, wants, fears, problems, etc. in his mind (or, at least, were not complete human beings during the painful time in his life when women were a source of seemingly overwhelming distress to him). I believe Scott Aaronson is a genuinely nice guy (not in the pejorative sense). He got caught in the cross-fire of a battle being waged on the Internet between people who aren't always as genuinely nice as he is. But, that doesn't alter the fundamental reality that there is structural oppression, and many young white men on the Internet are willing participants, beneficiaries, and proponents of it, including in communities that I wish with all my heart were above it (such as reddit, and HN, which are communities that I love and that are frequented by many people I respect and admire). I want to occupy communities that work hard to be inclusive of people that haven't been welcomed into tech communities the past. I'm willing to be more careful about what I say to achieve that (and, I'm a middle class white guy in America, I do not have a history of needing to watch what I say, so it's foreign to me, too). Not for fear of offending someone, but for fear of pushing away voices that aren't like me. I don't want an echo chamber where a bunch of middle class white guys rant at each other all day.

SwellJoe 12y ago

There are many sides to it, and I don't think it's useful to make it "us against them" on most fronts. I believe a lot of useful, and a lot of hurtful, stuff came out of those various very personal articles and blog posts discussed in your link. But, I do find it interesting that the author of the piece you've linked seems to believe it was women and feminists who made the majority of the "neckbeard" and fedora images...when, in fact, they are the work of predominantly young male redditors and occasionally 4channers. There are several subreddits devoted to this kind of humor, and from what I can tell they are disproportionately (even for reddit) occupied by young males. So, there are many other sides to it. Nerds get shit from a lot of directions...not just from women. It sucks to be a nerd. And, it sucks to be overweight. It sucks to be a minority. It sucks to be a woman. It sucks to have a disability. It sucks to be poor. Humans are awful to one another in so many ways. Sometimes, it's worth considering whether we should say what we're thinking...not because we want to be politically correct. But, because sometimes the things we say can contribute to maintaining a culture of oppression, and if we are decent human beings we prefer not to contribute to empowering oppression with the weight of numbers. And, if we are striving to be more than merely decent, we'll spend some time trying to stamp out those internalized oppressions that make it hard to see when we're being assholes to our fellow human beings.

moultano 12y ago
In what way can anything that Scott Aaronson said be construed to be contributing to maintaining a culture of oppression? Patriarchy and structural oppression are useful models for understanding lots of things, but they are not isomorphic to reality, and you do not deserve to be pilloried for explaining your experience in some other terms. This is why people find the internet SJW community so distasteful. Not only are they completely ineffective at improving the lives of the people they claim to be fighting for, but they also delight in doing active harm to defenseless people for merely using another model of the world in some circumstances. You might also be interested in some of Scott Aaronson's followup. http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2221 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2221
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  "In what way can anything that Scott Aaronson said be construed to be contributing to maintaining a culture of oppression?" I don't believe Scott Aaronson said anything contributing to or maintaining a culture of oppression. Though, as others have pointed out, his language does seem to indicate women are not complete human beings with their own needs, wants, fears, problems, etc. in his mind (or, at least, were not complete human beings during the painful time in his life when women were a source of seemingly overwhelming distress to him). I believe Scott Aaronson is a genuinely nice guy (not in the pejorative sense). He got caught in the cross-fire of a battle being waged on the Internet between people who aren't always as genuinely nice as he is. But, that doesn't alter the fundamental reality that there is structural oppression, and many young white men on the Internet are willing participants, beneficiaries, and proponents of it, including in communities that I wish with all my heart were above it (such as reddit, and HN, which are communities that I love and that are frequented by many people I respect and admire). I want to occupy communities that work hard to be inclusive of people that haven't been welcomed into tech communities the past. I'm willing to be more careful about what I say to achieve that (and, I'm a middle class white guy in America, I do not have a history of needing to watch what I say, so it's foreign to me, too). Not for fear of offending someone, but for fear of pushing away voices that aren't like me. I don't want an echo chamber where a bunch of middle class white guys rant at each other all day.