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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

Someone wrongly accused a well known React dev of being a white supremacist for things that didn't happen.

Now people are, rightfully, angered about the false accusations, but the accusers use this to say "see, we said you are toxic!"

Guess we gonna have fallout from this bullshit a long time...

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I don't understand anything at all. It seems some dev used an OK HAND emoji in some slides during some talk, and it was misinterpreted as the White Supremacist symbol or whatever.

Someone felt attacked personally, criticized it on Twitter and now everything is going downhill...

This is the first time I've heard about this emoji being in some way connected to white suppremacy... is this a thing?

Edit: relevant wikipedia article [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#As_a_white_power_sy...

It seems online culture is so plastic that we can quickly see a move from irony/trolling to sincere usage. How is a person not at the fronts of where hateful groups and their opponents meet supposed to navigate a battlefield of memes and conventions that see distinct transitions in cultural symbols (like a phase change almost) from benign to harmful within weeks?

Yes, and he didn't know either and stopped using it after told so.

The problem here was that someone said he did it again, which he didn't.

Quite some years ago I think that symbol was used among youngsters so that if you looked at the hand making the OK symbol people would make laugh of you. Not because of some white supremacism ideology, but because of young people's stupid jokes. Politics were not involved as far as I know.

Basically, a symbol for you to look at and the other person saying "Hah, you're an idiot!".

Yes it's some plausible deniability crap of the racists.

Probably referring to this crap:

https://twitter.com/tatianatmac/status/1164912554876891137

part of this breakdown: https://dev.to/aryanjnyc/ken-wheeler-and-dan-abramov-deactiv...

I think people with such obsessions, bringing their baggage of politics everywhere should be thrown out of tech communities discussing tech. They can form whatever meta-community they like for that.

I have seen absolutely zero ..."white supremacism" in React community leaders, and the whole idea is too bizarro to begin with.

If someone is both a white supremacist and a React developer (which I find implausible, but ok) that's bad, but it's not like it's any sizable part of React devs, or characterizes the tone of the community, or affects anything or whatever...

Yeah it’s just a ridiculous situation. I had to unfollow all React related things on Twitter the moment I saw people lambasting Dan Abramov as “selfish” for disabling his Twitter for the sake of his sanity. It’s one thing to promote diversity, it’s another to create massive problems for the innocent over nothing.. especially the innocent that have been nothing _but_ genuinely supportive of your cause.

It seems that the cancel-cult left has really taken hold, at least in the loud places on social media.

It seems like the well known React developer has a somewhat more ... illustrous ... history of questionable behavior, so while he may not be an actually white supremacist, he does seem to fit a certain toxic mold.

On the other hand, the mentioned female developer has probably had quite a lot of such experiences with direct and indirect racism, perceived or actual, but either she kept quiet or it didn't blow up that much.

Are you referring to the behaviour described here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g4oh2GGZOsucZfT1YJ5wjDUS... (for instance using the words "guys", "stupid" and "crazy") or something else?

What's the source of that document?

I found a page[0] with more info and link references to multiple sources that seems to explain everything in detail.

[0]: https://dev.to/aryanjnyc/ken-wheeler-and-dan-abramov-deactiv...

The last Tweet in the article you link

Interesting that the Vue devs are the source of this.

The word “guys” means something bad in the U.S.?

Sorry, English is not my native language, and I’m genuinely interested because I’ve been using this word quite often and didn’t know it’s offensive.

Depends on context. If you are a female developer and get constantly referred to as "guy" or to be part of "guys", it's at best annoying.

Just as "guys" don't like to get called "girls".

I see! I didn’t know this was the case in the US. I’ve checked my English dictionary and it says:

>guys: Informal Persons of either sex.

I guess it’s one of those differences between British and American English. Good to know, because it seems like one could easily get in trouble for using it incorrectly (in the British sense) in the US!

Thanks!

Yes, this is country specific, and girls who take offense are primarily in the USA or have learned American English.

The problem doesn't seem to be that it is male in some places and neutral in others, but that it's considered neutral even tho' it's clearly male.

Guy is only clearly male in American English. Guy Fawkes was male of course, but the term “some anonymous guy” does not refer to anyone in particular. The word has clearly evolved differently in the states than it did in the UK which originated it.

That's a big "only" when we are talking about American developers at an American Conference.

I got into trouble with this word and American people enough that I just never use it and say 'folks' instead..

It doesn't really matter what it "clearly" is. Equally clearly there are women who feel offended by it.

Also please be aware that many comments here are complaining about complaints of a minority (among developers) they don't belong to.

It's really not a big surprise that white male developers don't quite get why black female developers feel offended. Maybe something to think about...

And even if you don't agree that something is offense-worthy, please just acknowledge that some people genuinely do feel that way and that most of them are actually silent on the issue, exactly because of the reactions on display here.

It's mostly people who look for reasons to be offended to validate themselves...

>The word “guys” means something bad in the U.S.?

Only among people who think just because everybody should change how they talk to accommodate their (frequently updated) ideologies...

>so while he may not be an actually white supremacist, he does seem to fit a certain toxic mold.

E.g. person who doesn't agree with my favorite ideology on all its points?

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