I should have blogged about this the first time I read faint whispers about what happened to Kathy Sierra, and now it's basically everywhere, but
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or linux..or windows bashing..or being female and being a coder at the same time....apparently they're supposed to be sorta mutually exclusive, or at least those annoying guys seem to get all pissy when you know how to code and they dont.
There have been many articles over the years about how people let their aggressive or anti-social or racist or sexist tendencies go wild when they feel anonymous on the Internet. (Even though the vast majority of them are not anonymous . . . ) I call them termites, or twits (old BBS term.) They pretend they are invisible in the walls and attempt to eat everything in sight while returning nothing but crap in return.
I'm not shilling for changing the Internet to make it more transparent, but I do think we need a better code of acceptable behavior. Any society that wishes to succeed and thrive - especially one with the proclaimed ideals of the web (open source, easily shared knowledge, etc) - needs to find feedback methods to encourage positive change or growth and discourage "termites."
i doubt anything of that sort will happen, as it's something that's been happening for ages.
the internet lets you be anonymous to an extent, but most of the time not much. like the disturbing guy on irc who mentioned hitting a girl with a brick...I know where he lives, I know how many kids he has, how old they are...
no code can ever be thoroughly enforced, and that's part of the shame. short of verifiable death threats and the like...and even then, law enforcement would be next to worthless. they know nobody can really do anything effective, so it goes on.
Using a mac wouldn't help either. "oh haha lulz u don't even know how to use a 2 button mouse!!one" :-\
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it's pathetic.
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/me nods . . .
There have been many articles over the years about how people let their aggressive or anti-social or racist or sexist tendencies go wild when they feel anonymous on the Internet. (Even though the vast majority of them are not anonymous . . . ) I call them termites, or twits (old BBS term.) They pretend they are invisible in the walls and attempt to eat everything in sight while returning nothing but crap in return.
I'm not shilling for changing the Internet to make it more transparent, but I do think we need a better code of acceptable behavior. Any society that wishes to succeed and thrive - especially one with the proclaimed ideals of the web (open source, easily shared knowledge, etc) - needs to find feedback methods to encourage positive change or growth and discourage "termites."
Reply
the internet lets you be anonymous to an extent, but most of the time not much. like the disturbing guy on irc who mentioned hitting a girl with a brick...I know where he lives, I know how many kids he has, how old they are...
no code can ever be thoroughly enforced, and that's part of the shame. short of verifiable death threats and the like...and even then, law enforcement would be next to worthless. they know nobody can really do anything effective, so it goes on.
Reply
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