Comment by loufe

1 day ago

For those who don't watch his YouTube channel or read his blog, Jeff is a fantastic spokesperson for for everything self hosting (enjoying the NTP binge of late!). I really hope this is a success as he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community and framework of understanding this stuff, not to mention his quality as an orator. It would be great to see a cultural push back against surveillance capitalism and centralization of compute and we need good voices and responsible advocates sharing their thoughts to those learning the ropes.

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loufe

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bramhaag  1 day ago

> he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community

The reactions about this when announced on Reddit seem to contradict that:

  > I'm a little disappointed that u/geerlingguy is the one running it, since he's posted some shitty beliefs about gay people that, to my knowledge, he has never retracted or disavowed. 

  > So he can tell all the women there they have no right to their own body? 

  > Hmmm I didn't know Jeff was anti-gay and anti-women's rights. 

  > Hi u/geerlingguy ! Are gay people allowed to attend your event?

etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1wq04et/im_startin...

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1wq2orh/jeff_ge...

  • loufe  1 day ago

    I wasn't aware he's publicly said anything like this, but I've always assumed he was quite religious so I'm not particularly surprised.

    To be fair, this is a pretty tame and measured expression of disapproval of the modern societal acceptance of homosexuality. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for, in modern societal discourse, for someone I disagree with in terms of how they go about expressing it: the links I read seem to imply he was honest, polite, and clear on his feelings, not inciting hate, violence, or spewing vitriol. Jeff's views are his own, and maybe the crux here is that I don't see politely disagreeing about the righteousness of living homosexually as remotely severe enough to warrant this much attention considering the quality of character of a lot of public figures visible to those of us outside the USA.

    I admit seeing a response like this irks me as I feel it needlessly detracts from the mission. That said, it's both A) fair and a good thing to judge and critique any public figure's character and I do think public figures and their views deserve scrutiny, and B) a means to continue to allow powerful people and groups to assassinate the character of and dilute the message of people who run contrary to their goals. I'm genuinely torn on how to feel about how to feel here. I worry we allow ideas to be discarded at the first sign of something we disapprove of in people who share them -which is wrong-, yet several of my best friends are queer and I also could not stand to see them trod upon. Those same queer friends all have views and personality flaws which would be judged just as harshly by others.

    Regardless, I don't like you using my excerpt that way. Not everyone's views of "community" mean the classic cancel culture era idiosyncratic definition whereby anyone in any role remotely resembling leadership must share the same specific set of homogeneous views on political and cultural issues to be given any member's "consent" to lead a group. I stand by what I said and still do believe Jeff is an excellent advocate for these ideas. There are obvious limits, to be clear, I would never go to Toastmasters if the local club head spoke about killing jews, but this isn't that and IMO there are so, so many more important battles to go fight out there than this.

    • bramhaag  1 day ago

      Everyone draws their own boundaries based on what is important to them. I do not think your example is unreasonable.

      But the homelabbing scene, and many parts of tech in general, are generally more inclusive than many other scenes, perhaps partly because we have a very diverse community in the first place. I think it is important context, and not just a needless detraction, for a physical gathering that the organizer does not share these views.

      Regardless, I do not think any interpretation of "positive community" can include the dejection of homosexuality.

      1 reply →

  • kortilla  1 day ago

    Many churches believe they have a “healthy and positive” community along with their constituents while espousing those same views.

    A community can simultaneously be healthy and positive while being politically disagreeable to others.

phoronixrly  20 hours ago

The guy has an obvious conflict of interest - running a youtube channel/taking sponsorships. I've never undestood why so many people take his word at face value. It's at best attempts to manufacture hype for views and at worst shilling for whoever gave him money to shill for them (i.e. qualcomm buying arduino is good actually)

  • geerlingguy  19 hours ago

    Just to be clear, I've never taken a dime from Qualcomm, Apple, Raspberry Pi, etc—when I do take a sponsorship from any company I'm clear about it.

    I always mark videos as sponsored if anything was provided (eg review samples) and not purchased. That never includes payments or editorial oversight, and equipment is either returned or shelved afterwards for future comparisons.

    The only thing I accept money for is clearly demarcated ad integrations, like for Micro Center or Surfshark. See https://github.com/geerlingguy/youtube#sponsorships for details.

    If I wanted to hype views I would not be sinking a few thousand hours into planning an event ;)