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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36164 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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(I also hate how Notch, who literally made the game from nothing, has been unpersoned by his former co-workers, the company who bought his game, and the game's community.

Also this (context)

If you're not aware, Notch has a lot of... let's say interesting ideas about the current state of the world and the people in it. There's a lot... but I'll just mention one that is important to me. Notch believes that Trans women are not women, that those who "claim" to be women are mentally ill, and that the concept of Trans-ness is evil. This is the same language that has been used to de-legitimize and put trans women in danger for hundreds of years now.

As a trans member of this subreddit, when I read that milestone, I don't think it reflects what it probably used to. And it's a reminder to me that there are people out there who would excuse the awful views of people who have created things that they enjoy, because it makes them uncomfortable. But I don't think that reflects the user and moderator base of this subreddit, so I wanted to bring up this topic for people to discuss further. Thanks for reading.

Frankly, it seems like there needs to be an explicit other side, which "doesn't tolerate the intolerance". Not right-wing (through inevitably it'd be dominant), just a side which doesn't ever interact/cooperate with the people who engage in these kinds of tactics. I really doubt batshit insane censors are the actual majority.

Like, open source projects with explicit anti-CoC.

I guess I wish I could say this to all the Minecraft coders about their ridiculous disputes: this is a game about fucking cubes and green mutant pigs.

How's the joke go again? The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small, or something to that effect?

It's especially bizarre to me, given the origins of the open source software community lie in techno-libertarians and vague communo-anarchists who eat shit off their feet.

You link to a video of Richard Stallman here, which is fitting since a couple years ago he was more-or-less cancelled for having made comments about one of his former coworkers in a private email chain that fell short of condemning and demonizing him. I think at this point the open-source community more-or-less fell into some form of gentrification where now any difference is no longer seen as worthy or at least tolerable for the bigger goal of giving every user freedom over their own devices (which, sadly, has only gotten worse in recent years), but now a liability that "discredits the movement" and is just plain unpleasant, no matter how valuable they may be to the movement (I mean, he's literally Richard Stallman for god's sake).

You link to a video of Richard Stallman here, which is fitting since a couple years ago he was more-or-less cancelled for having made comments about one of his former coworkers in a private email chain that fell short of condemning and demonizing him.

He was sorta un-cancelled. Link.

OSS movement is now as full of cancel-happy CJWs as many other formerly respected and productive institutions. Nobody cares what you did or what you achieved if you said something that triggers the twitterati. They got Linus himself to bend the knee, what chance anybody else have got?

It's a game for -- well, not really for, at least originally, but certainly popular among -- children, and the members of the community are acting as though this is code that's running nuclear power plants.

To be fair one of the biggest security issues of this/last year affecting a huge number of systems was first found in Minecraft.

The lower the stakes, the greater the rage.

There's the infamous Hanford Parish Council Meeting (with the standing orders): https://youtube.com/watch?v=zy3Kml-F7J0

In the Starsector modding community there are endless squabbles over people using other's sprites, someone installed crashcode to make it so their mod wouldn't run with someone else's (mod in question was New Galactic Order which was vaguely Imperial-Germany/Nazi themed). Those on the /vst/ general bitch about the people on the discord and the forums bitching too much, about overpowered factions in a singleplayer game.

The lower the stakes, the greater the rage.

Indeed. No skin in the game effectively translates into no reason moderate one's behavior. Nobody actually expects to actually get punched in the nose or shot over something so trivial and thus they feel comfortable and safe letting their id take the wheel. Of course the cruel irony is that it is exactly this attitude that leads to people being assaulted or killed over "trivialities" in the first-place.

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