Comment by some_account
8 years ago
No it's not awful. People will doubt him sometime, and it's better to learn how to deal with that and gain a life skill rather than expecting every person to be sweet and supporting.
There are some kids who just goes on game chats to mess with others, play loud music, bully them, grief them etc. They are usually around 12 years old to 16 years old. I'm sure these things are not new to this kid.
Welcome to the planet.
When I was 12 or so I had an interest in being an artist. I was also playing a game that happened to be looking for art work. Specifically, they wanted some models for new monsters in the game.
I put together my best attempt and submitted it. The work was subsequently torn to shreds by the people on the board, and rightly so: The "monster" looked like a walking boob, and everyone said that the special attack could be to squirt milk.
I wish I'd been old enough to laugh it off, since it's quite hilarious, but in reality I just stopped trying to be a 3D artist. Stuff like this can have a big impact at a young age.
People can, and do, make that same harden-the-fuck-up argument to support any kind of violence. And it makes sense, since perpetrators were always first victims. But on HN, in our internetty and admittedly trivial way, we want to break that cycle. So no, you can't rough up a 12-year-old here—or do anything with a high probability of amounting to that.
Yes, bullying exists. But we should discourage it wherever we can.
Those "no pain no gain" guys with a negative attitude are simply toxic. I was never doubted even when I started to freelance when I was 16y/o.
I simply wrote the code. There's not much room to bullshit your way through it.
I think it's mostly jealous people who see some clean code from a 12y/o (I like the functional programming patterns) and think about their own mediocrity. There's nothing to gain when dealing with those people except cynism. It's almost always better to have an empowering environment. We're not playing Darwin games here and feeling threatened by a 12y/o shows a lack of decency and commitment IMO.
who hurt you dude?
TL;DR - It is okay to be an asshole because the world is full of assholes... ?