• 0 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 4th, 2023

help-circle


  • I can’t help but project an old version of myself on you. I can’t imagine defending 4chan unless I was actively using it a lot… It did used to be basically my only internet community, so I understand being particularly fond of the cesspool.

    However, I don’t actually understand your reactions here. Why are you defending it when it seems like 4chan itself wouldn’t even go this far except maaaybe as a limp wristed attempt at an excuse when something truly horrific happens because of them? I genuinely don’t think I understand

    Like, to currently vilify it is easy, just take a screenshot of pol. I remember looking pre2016 and seeing HYPERPARTISANSHIP all caps everywhere. It’s an anonymous forum with people discussing plans to make life shittier for various groups, essentially at all times… And before pol it was b (my era was back when pol was a boring place, I don’t know the current state of any board, but I know some of the history and what motivates some normies of my niche who fuck with it)

    I just don’t understand the downplaying of it, normal people participate in shit ways on 4chan specifically because of the anonymity. The anonymity is why it’s such a cesspool in the first place. It’s toxic keyboard warrior syndrome to the extreme.


  • This ignores that 4chan is widely known as the cesspool of the internet and attracts those types. It’s like going on Hexbear and being surprised at the communists. People gather where their banners are. Shit attracts shit. This reduction is apt.

    Sure it kind of does some good ish things sometimes, but more often than not, it’s just an internet mob internet mobbing. That’s essentially all it is: chaos waves constantly crashing back in on itself. Any good that comes from it is incidental at best.

    Also, defending 4chan on the wider Internet is a little odd, 4chan itself revels in its shit reputation…



  • Ah yes, me, the demigod who can act up on all my worries. Tell me again my plan to get trump to fuck off the 2024 election?

    Not to be too sarcastic at you, it’s a good sentiment that I do sort of agree with, but it places too much “you can do anything” blame on the observer who literally is already worried. Aka, this runs a major risk of demotivating people straight into doomerism when they’re faced with worries there’s really nothing that they individually can do about.

    Unless I’m wrong and there is some legitimate answer to that sarcastic opening question that I, individually, can do about it, in which case, I’m all ears lol



  • That’s fair. Part of my job is converting non-technical users into technical users by teaching them things like problem solving approaches that are supposed to help them teach themselves how to learn whatever they need to actually do their job. I don’t teach them what to do, I teach them how to learn what to do.

    I agree that you gotta meet people where they’re at, but I try to teach them how to poke around any code repo site, like GitHub or gitlab, so they can use it. Usually I point them to the docs and start by pointing out my favorite parts so that they have somewhere to kind of start by themselves, but it is a skill set that can be practice, or at least I am convinced it is.

    I’m not very good at this part of my job, but also, no one is, so it’s not a bad thing, I just want to do better. I guess I never thought of it from a truly non-technical and not wanting to be technical perspective before. This could be solved by a secondary interface designed specifically for this kind of user. It would not allow code download or interaction, but it would allow for issue logging. I might put this idea in my ever growing project list because it sounds like it would be a useful product…


  • I’m interested in where the limits to expectations lie here. I’m not trying to be a jerk when I say this next part but I do worry I may come off that way but I’m trying to figure out the boundaries of what a “reasonable” expectation is so I can make tasks like this easier for my own team (completely unrelated to this project but it’s essentially the same problem).

    Is it not reasonable to expect people to type into a search engine something like “GitHub help” and then poke around in the links that come up?

    … Well I’ll be damned, I tried my own method before commenting, and the first link that comes up is a red herring, how obnoxious. I was hoping it’d be a link to the docs, not GitHub support. I guess I just answered my own question: no that is not reasonable.

    As a technical user, I am still at a loss for how to help a non-technical user in an algorithmic way that will work for most non-technical users x.x guess I’ll be thinking about this problem some more lol

    (I guess I’m rambling but I’m gonna post this anyways in case anyone wants to chatter about it with me)


  • That’s fair. In that case, with that reasoning, it seems less like you’re being pessimistic and more like you’re trying to be realistic. I would caution though, reality isn’t ALL negative, though the neutrality and negativity inside of it can always be improved. Heck, even most positives in reality can often be improved.

    Personally, I think the Olympics game tends to start when focus becomes too great on one specific aspect, which leads to what is essentially a one upmanship of situational comparison, but that’s all I really wanted to poke at.

    Thanks for the even response! Sometimes me phrasing stuff like that starts fights even though I only want to poke a little bit. In any case, I hope your day goes well!


  • There’s an old proverb I like about this: a person is smart but people are dumb.

    People en masse tend to be dumber than they are apart. I think you’re comparing yourself to the faceless masses. It’s much more humbling to try comparing yourself to someone you respect (but don’t do it as a “I’m not as good as them” thing, only do it as a “goals to maybe achieve one day” thing to avoid accidentally trashing your self esteem)

    Side note: old proverb here means I think my dad said it once but I have no idea where it actually came from






  • I had a friend who irritated this part of the internet with fanfiction and got death threats because of it! It’s really stupid lol they’re called “antis” because they’re anti everything.

    They’re so insane that they have called characters who knew other characters (all fictional characters, treated as seriously as though this was real life, mind you) when they were underage but ended up dating when both characters were canonically both above 18, they call the older character in that scenario a groomer. With their full chest. When no grooming activity has taken place. It’s very black and white. Also very “you should have known you would have offended me with that idea”-y which is very not good for creative work areas.

    This is the side of the internet that infantilizes full grown adults, thus making a 20 to 23 year old age gap “problematic” (in heavy sarcasm quotes because I pretty vehemently believe there is nothing wrong with 2 consenting adults being in a relationship together. Problematic is a useful word still, but this just is not what problematic looks like)




    1. you don’t have to understand it, you just shouldn’t be a legislative genocidal asshole about it (not that that’s what you’re doing, but that’s what republicans seem to do to anything they think isn’t their slim sliver of a definition of “normal”)

    2. if you’re talking about furries, to my layman’s understanding of the subculture, that’s not how the vast majority of furries relate to themselves. From what I’ve seen, it’s not that they are the animal itself, they are the aspects of the animal, and those things are just little icons that they’re like boosting because they resonate with it. That said, there are at least a few people who DO feel that way, but I’m pretty sure they have a special category name (ferals? I think that’s what they’re called but I could be wrong, this is some deep lore I picked up years ago). If they do have that special name and I’m not just making that part up, then that implies that most furries do not feel that way about themselves.

    But, acknowledging the existence of people like that at all does validate your question in my mind. I don’t really understand that extreme either. My only point is that most furries are what you would likely consider “normal”, they just have a particular hobby. It’s no more nefarious or odd than being into gender bending cosplay. You’re just taking something (yourself rather than an anime/video game character) and twisting it into something artistically different (a fursona instead of a cosplay outfit).

    …no I did not intend to write that much defending furries but here we are lmao