Comment by Inconel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Inconel | Hacker News Reader

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Serious question, while I know the term "virtue signaling" is somewhat contentious, I've never heard any critiques of it in terms of racist code talk so I'm unsure what you're getting at.

I'm not up to date on the whole Pewdiepie thing, aside from the general impression I get of him being an ass and now rightfully suffering the consequences of his actions, and if paying non-English speakers to hold up Nazi propaganda is indeed viewed as satire by the broader Youtube community, than I would agree that is unfortunate, and pretty unfunny to boot.

Regarding reddit gold, I've had a reddit account for a few years now but the only subs I subscribe to are r/welding, r/cableporn, and r/machinists. I have earned exactly zero reddit gold so far, perhaps I'm not as witty as I think?

My apologies to you if my previous comment was unfunny or out of bounds. It was an attempt on my part to lightheartedly poke fun of HN users who tend to take things overly seriously. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have commented at all.

Now that the cats out of the bag though, as a biracial non-white immigrant to the US who grew up well below the poverty line, I find it somewhat funny to be accused of being a closet racist by a poster, whom from what I can gather, seems to be a rather rich privileged white dude living in SV. It's almost like the satire writes itself. I'd probably level the term "virtue signaling" against what's going on here, but, I don't again want to be accused of being a racist by some random white dude.

My initial reaction to this was "Pewdiepie is involved in some kind of racism thing? Hadn't heard of that." So I switch over to the YouTube app in my TV and search his name. The first result is "Is Pewdiepie a racist?" with him photoshopped to look like Hitler or something. Well, it's confirmed now.

I wish South Park had done more research on him two seasons ago before making him their season finale and spending the last two seasons on an anti-Trump campaign. How can they BOTH be Hitler?

This -ism shit is how people try to take you down. Uber was fawned over by HN for taking down the lame taxi organizations. Remember? Taxis are bad they have medallions and control the market. Uber the underdog fighting the man. Want to take Uber out? Give them an -ism. CEO talks to Donald Trump? Ew bad he has isms. Someone said sexism? Every single post about Uber 5 times a day is anti-Uber now.

Edit: https://youtu.be/JLNSiFrS3n4

This lampoons all of this better than I can and it's the actual video I reference at the beginning of my comment.

Pewdiepie paid two people who can't speak english to hold up signs saying, "Kill all jews" and dance around. When confronted with this, he decided to call this satire and his art. Then Disney cut him off, and suddenly he was quite contrite, but it was too late. I'm sure he'll have to live with the millions he didn't spend on fancy cars as a buffer while he finds new revenue streams.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back really. It's just accepted that you can make fun of trans people or affect crazy accents or the like on youtube.

> This -ism shit is how people try to take you down. Uber was fawned over by HN for taking down the lame taxi organizations. Remember? Taxis are bad they have medallions and control the market. Uber the underdog fighting the man. Want to take Uber out? Give them an -ism. CEO talks to Donald Trump? Ew bad he has isms. Someone said sexism? Every single post about Uber 5 times a day is anti-Uber now.

Beeeecause not only are their business practices pretty shady in terms of how they treat the drivers, but also their work environment sounds like a misogynistic dystopia mixed with a high school popularity contest for who can be the broest bro?

I had a friend who went to Uber. She quit and told me a pretty similar story, and that was as year ago. This was a story waiting for a woman sufficiently brave to break it. As for the other stuff, Lyft is backed by Thiel and somehow they're managing to shut the hell up and move people around, so evidently there is a way to chart a course here.

Pewdiepie couldn't make up his mind really, in his arguments. Was this art, and thus kind of a political? Or was it just his trying to make fun for the lulz on teh intarwebz?

(IMHO: He's just fooling around in front of a cam, but whoopsi, he has the largest following on youtube so he is accidentally a political figure too.)

> Now that the cats out of the bag though, as a biracial non-white immigrant to the US who grew up well below the poverty line, I find it somewhat funny to be accused of being a closet racist by a poster, whom from what I can gather, seems to be a rather rich privileged white dude living in SV.

If you know enough to know where I am then you know enough to know that misgendering me is a way to pick a much bigger fight. Coincidentally in your protestations of innocence to the massive cultural warfare taking place around you (despite coincidentally adopting its tone & rhetoric) you just so happen to leave that in. How unfortunate that I only put it in 2/3 of my online bios. I have corrected this oversight.

So maybe it's all a nice big misunderstanding or maybe one of us is a troll. It'll be better either way if we stop talking.

Regarding misgendering you, that was truly not my intention. I spoke too hastily and while I took a cursory look at the links in your profile, and have seen your handle around HN, and for the record I generally find myself in agreement with you on many issues but this shouldn't matter one way or the other, I had no knowledge of this part of your life.

Just to be absolutely clear here, it was not my intention to misgender you or to otherwise use that as ammunition in our disagreement here. I find such tactics to be incredibly dehumanizing and despite our disagreement here you certainly don't deserve such an attack. Regardless of my ignorance of your situation, and ignorance is no excuse here, I apologize for my prior comment.

You're not on trial for referring to someone as a dude. It's an old as dirt tactic to put you on the defensive.

Really? I tweeted about a week ago about the change publicly, and I've been getting a lot of anonymous shit for it. I've been out about being fluid for awhile now, but I was waiting on the pronoun shift in a larger public sense for when I wasn't managing a large organization. I knew they'd stress more about getting it wrong than I would about them getting it right.

I forgot to update my G+ profile (that's where YT gets its data, and I really don't pay much attention to that). So Mr. No_just_no has a fair point, but I'm not relishing opening up the door to further bullshit there.

That said, the "they" is a compromise pronoun for me because I know that something more descriptive will just meet with _even more pushback_.

Nobody here cares except the people who you demand care. So you changed your sex. Okay. It's not the actual topic and no one here really gives a shit.

You've posted about it more than I have, now.

I appreciate that, thank you.

I am sorry that I jumped to conclusions. By coincidence it so happens you used a pair of keyprhases that are part of a very large social debate. Please be aware that saying, "Virtue Signaling" to someone who does a lot of conversations about these issues, you will probably see them steel for hostility.

But I maintain my position: I dislike this site. I dislike making fun of obvious novices. And I freely admit in my past I am guilty of this very behavior, as so many of us have been. My opposition is in part because I want to see fewer people do the same bad things I did when I was young. It makes the environment hostile. It makes the cost of failure socially high, and it makes it seem like failure and incremental refinement is not actually the standard for tech and startups, and I think neither is true.

I am also sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I hope we can speak again on better terms.

I appreciate your response as well. I don't participate much in social media aside from HN, and while the term "virtue signaling" has a very specific meaning and use case for me, I'm probably ignorant on how its used in the broader culture wars. I can imagine that it can be wielded as a dismissal of any concerns people may have. Again, looking back at my "joke", I can understand why you took offense seeing as this is an issue you care deeply about that probably gets dismissed as virtue signaling.

I still maintain the site in question is quite funny, at least to me, and I do this as someone who's life can probably most accurately be described as a series of really bad circumstances and poor decisions that have led to some pretty spectacular and sometimes shameful failures. I don't generally like the concept of finding joy in putting down others but at the same time I can find some relief in a bit of self deprecation, which to me is what the site represents. And again, this comes from someone who would probably be considered an abject failure by the vast majority of the readership here. You seem to have a different view of the site, and while I disagree with it, I can certainly understand and respect why you feel that way.

My apologies as well for the earlier tone. I'm sure the next time we speak will indeed be on better terms.

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