This sort of thing makes me nervous. When the owner of a forum finds the masses don't unflaggingly support his take on something, what's the reaction?
Elon has recently shown us what happens on Twitter when you don't tow the line. I don't know that Zuck is meddling behind the scenes, but it could just be that he doesn't telegraph it as boldly as Musk.
well, people who use it to self-identify often use it in terms of being aware, a positive attribution, and I assume people who use it to identify others use it in terms of being judgmental, a negative attribution. So yeah, it's a highly charged term.
I have never seen anyone in a social network self-identifying as "woke".
I have seen it countless times being thrown as a vague, shapeless accusatory things that can go from people being overboard in their language policing to opposing real, actual fascism.
Reliably yes, but not necessarily. Especially within the context of the parent question and the article. It was a self referential question about why the forum users would flag a blog post by the very forum’s founder. I suppose it answered itself and if anything my comment was redundant.
It's my impression that geeks are prigs at a higher rate than society as a whole, but their priggishness is generally directed in random directions which makes it harmless and even quaint or endearing.
Surely you've experienced the one person on the team who will lecture endlessly on why robertson screw drive are so much better than torx, yadda yadda... or something similar. it's not a question of having a point or not-- they might or might not-- it's the haughty air of superiority, the perspective that countering perspectives don't exist or at least couldn't have any merit, that their pet issue couldn't ever be too irrelevant to worry about.
"System of rules that you can use to bludgeon people with instead of considering and empathizing? Sign me up!"
Maybe before you didn't notice it because more of them agreed with you or because enough of their priggishness was uncorrelated. Like a ferromagnetic material, if the domains are pointed in random directions you get no net field.
It's probably even just an effect of online forums in general. If you are of the view that many ideas are valid and that your preferences aren't so important, you tend to not comment at all.
In any case, if you're bothered by the net-prig-field there is a remark in PG's essay which might provide some advice: The priggishness is amplified when membership can be self selected by ideology rather than geography. If you just mix a diverse collection of people together their prig field will tends to cancel out, views will be normalized, extreme positions suppressed. So seek out venues where the structure of participation doesn't lend itself to polarization, or at least polarization incompatible with yours.
Maybe. I think in this case (woke mind virus) most geeks are cowards at heart, or at best want to avoid conflict, and are easily bullied into something. They end up becoming true believers soon after they come to realize they’re with the popular group for a change.
From the article’s first couple sentences:
> The word "prig" isn't very common now, but if you look up the definition, it will sound familiar. Google's isn't bad:
A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.
Hopefully flagging is based on the content and not the writer.
This sort of thing makes me nervous. When the owner of a forum finds the masses don't unflaggingly support his take on something, what's the reaction?
Elon has recently shown us what happens on Twitter when you don't tow the line. I don't know that Zuck is meddling behind the scenes, but it could just be that he doesn't telegraph it as boldly as Musk.
Yes, why not? Why should he get a free pass for his bad takes?
> we're flagging pg now?
I assume it's because the term "woke" will almost always derail a thread.
well, people who use it to self-identify often use it in terms of being aware, a positive attribution, and I assume people who use it to identify others use it in terms of being judgmental, a negative attribution. So yeah, it's a highly charged term.
I have never seen anyone in a social network self-identifying as "woke".
I have seen it countless times being thrown as a vague, shapeless accusatory things that can go from people being overboard in their language policing to opposing real, actual fascism.
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[flagged]
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Reliably yes, but not necessarily. Especially within the context of the parent question and the article. It was a self referential question about why the forum users would flag a blog post by the very forum’s founder. I suppose it answered itself and if anything my comment was redundant.
It's my impression that geeks are prigs at a higher rate than society as a whole, but their priggishness is generally directed in random directions which makes it harmless and even quaint or endearing.
Surely you've experienced the one person on the team who will lecture endlessly on why robertson screw drive are so much better than torx, yadda yadda... or something similar. it's not a question of having a point or not-- they might or might not-- it's the haughty air of superiority, the perspective that countering perspectives don't exist or at least couldn't have any merit, that their pet issue couldn't ever be too irrelevant to worry about.
"System of rules that you can use to bludgeon people with instead of considering and empathizing? Sign me up!"
Maybe before you didn't notice it because more of them agreed with you or because enough of their priggishness was uncorrelated. Like a ferromagnetic material, if the domains are pointed in random directions you get no net field.
It's probably even just an effect of online forums in general. If you are of the view that many ideas are valid and that your preferences aren't so important, you tend to not comment at all.
In any case, if you're bothered by the net-prig-field there is a remark in PG's essay which might provide some advice: The priggishness is amplified when membership can be self selected by ideology rather than geography. If you just mix a diverse collection of people together their prig field will tends to cancel out, views will be normalized, extreme positions suppressed. So seek out venues where the structure of participation doesn't lend itself to polarization, or at least polarization incompatible with yours.
Maybe. I think in this case (woke mind virus) most geeks are cowards at heart, or at best want to avoid conflict, and are easily bullied into something. They end up becoming true believers soon after they come to realize they’re with the popular group for a change.
Forgive me — what’s a prig?
It is defined in the first two sentences of the article. I’ll duplicate those sentences here:
> The word "prig" isn't very common now, but if you look up the definition, it will sound familiar. Google's isn't bad:
>> A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.
1 reply →
From the article’s first couple sentences: > The word "prig" isn't very common now, but if you look up the definition, it will sound familiar. Google's isn't bad: A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.
1 reply →