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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Is there a word, possibly related to "humblebrag", for this habit of putting down and insulting popular tools?

Don't use Bootstrap, don't use jQuery, etc.

I mean the basic concept of the article is the assumption that you, the average reader, were going to use it in the first place, which means it's probably wildly successful.

And the comments fall into the same kind of area, "Sure, if you're some kind of big baby amateur idiot who doesn't know what they're doing, then go ahead and use one of the most popular tools in this space."

https://xkcd.com/378/

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I find the idea you bring up quite interesting. A key difference between that and the text editor argument in the (awesome) XKCD you linked is that, at least in the XKCD comic, they are arguing in favor of an alternative. The linked article just says, "don't use this" and mentions a few alternatives without saying much about why they'd be a better option. I find it more constructive to read about why something is a good option, not why something else is a bad option.

"Hipsterism", perhaps? Of course classic English words like "snobbery" or "contrarianism" probably also apply.

It's tech hipsterism. Plus, it's a quick-and-easy way to create a hierarchy in an industry where somebody who's been working for a decade has the same job title, dresses the same, and looks basically the same as somebody who's in their second year. "Oh, you still use jQuery? Yeah, I pretty much just write pure JS." It's ridiculous tech dick measuring (which is to say it's par for the course when you get three nerds together in a room).

It's the exact same impulse that says you're not a real dev if you use language X or framework Y.

Kurt Cobain illustrated the concept well in his song "Very Ape":

If you ever need anything please don't/ Hesitate to ask someone else first/ I'm too busy acting like I'm not naive/ I've seen it all, I was here first [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPiz6yp6_74

There's also a trend of making the article name combative. "The Things You Don't Know About X Could Fill a Book," "You Aren't Using Y Right and Probably Never Will," "The 13 Parts of Z You've Never Even Heard Of," etc. Even if they contain decent information, I'm not likely to read it.

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