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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine him trying to explain his excitement about finding this to his wife, then her patting him on the head and her saying "that's nice honey". Underscoring the amount of effort involved in such a seemingly trivial things that nerds enjoy digging into.

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Hah! Last week I was doing some research on a typeface I had found. I was getting visibly excited while looking at my screen. My partner looks up and asks what's got me worked up. I spent about 30 seconds explaining what I found and why I was nerd happy. The response? Cool [https://bit.ly/2sHXrH8]. Goes back to the book.

I’m confused by this comment. Do you know this is specifically know that John Duncan has a wife and that this is how she’d react? Or does this mean something else?

It is a hypothetical that means there are very few people in the world that would share the unique obsessions of Saturn V model makers who care about every detail. So his hypothetical wife, who likely doesn't share the same obsessions, wants to be supportive but doesn't feel the same excitement that he does.

If this is correct, it doesn’t seem very healthy.

While quite possibly statistically likely, it doesn’t seem very healthy to make these assumptions for the purposes of a joke.

Might have been better to just say “a friend” rather than “wife” which makes a number of assumptions...

Meh?

Basically no one is as into the markings on the Saturn V first stage as this guy, so I don't see how assuming his wife (if he is married) wouldn't be super into it is offensive.

If you see a man on the Internet and think “this man must be married and his wife must not be interested in this because wives (women) are not interested in these things”... that’s pretty unhealthy. And making a joke about it, and it becoming a social norm is even more unhealthy.

SV/the tech world at large clearly has issues with stereotypes and being inclusive. Why not avoid doing that and just say “friend” rather than making a lame stereotyped “my wife” type joke...

The joke was about imagining such an individual in a hypothetical scenario after the fact. It does not rely on having any direct accuracy to the individual in the article to get the point across, it's merely a character at that point.

Also if I had said 'partner' or 'friend' instead of 'wife' the comment would probably have been less humorous, as it plays on a cliche situation. I'd rather not live in a world where I'd have to neuter such a statement in the name of absolute correctness over common sense.

The cliche draws upon a stereotype. It’s not a great stereotype to perpetuate in my opinion. Better to just not make the joke than to perpetuate a stereotype.

What stereotype? Sounds to me like you are the one making negative assumptions here.

That men in tech all have wives and that their wives are not interested in technical things that interest them.

How healthy, in your opinion, is diagnosing the mental health of strangers on the Internet based on a single comment they made?

My intended meaning is that it leads to a unhealthy community... not that anybody has specific mental health issues.

IMHO a healthy community is one where people can relax a little and post a mildly humorous comment, without it getting picked on and criticized in detail as though it was a serious social transgression and threat to the health of the community, leading to a wasteful thread arguing over a triviality.

I didn’t think I was “picking” on anybody or making an overtly offensive comment.

I’d honestly be interested in knowing why this joke is “ok” and why it wouldn’t be better not to make generic assumptions about someone’s sexuality, marital status, and the interests of their spouse...

Yea, possibly doesn’t seem like a big issue to you. But if you’re a member of a minority the message it sends is “we just assume people are heterosexual, married, and wives/women are not interested in this stuff as a default”...

If you really think this thread is wasteful arguing over a triviality then it’s probably better not to engage?

It wasn't making any assumptions, because it was a joke. It was clearly a fantasy, not to be taken seriously, and not representative of actual opinions or facts, but instead poking fun at and satirizing such stereotypes. That's why you're getting so many down votes. If someone satirizes a stereotype as being silly or ridiculous, it doesn't make sense to then accuse them of holding or promoting that stereotype.

I can’t see anything that suggests this was satire. The explanations given by the original commenter don’t suggest it was meant as satire. And I don’t see anyone else suggesting it as satire.

If it really was satire, then that’s interesting, and why I asked for the joke to be explained...

To be honest it seems more like it was meant as an honest joke... playing on the stereotype that wives often don’t understand things their husbands do... and that this is normal and this is how normal people are in this community.

I don't really think assuming that one person might be similar to 80% of the rest of the population for the purposes of a joke would lead to a unhealthy community.

However, your own comments are definitely making the community worse, by arguing on minor points of an unassuming joke. Especially as you eventually admit to assuming yourself that this might be a joke at the expense of women (I don't think anyone else had thought this).

This is the kind of comment that only adds tension within a community.

Where do you get 80% from?

From the stats I can find slightly more than 50% of the population is unmarried.

How is the joke not at the expense of women? The commenter even said it drew on the cliche of a wife not being interested in a husbands activity?

If it’s not at the expense of women, why not “friend” or “partner” (the commenter rejected both of those).

According to this: https://flowingdata.com/2017/11/01/who-is-married-by-now/ 80% of men are married by 43 and since the author was a kid in the 70s according to his website, he is most likely more than 43 anyway. The chances of him being married to a woman are closer to 90%.

The joke was at the expense of geeks in general, who often find themselves explaining something with excitement to their partner (in this case, most likely a wife - more importantly, this doesn't matter at all) only to receive a disappointingly laconic answer.

This is not a joke at the expense of women. Seems like you're looking for chances to jump to that conclusion. In my mind the joke is on the hypothetical husband who obsesses over minute details that almost no one else cares about.

When my friend got his first rollover event (after much tribulation) show a different image on a website in the 90s he was ecstatic. His wife said "so what? I see that all the time" _sigh_

I think the op's comment is the same kind of thing...

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