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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I get why people are interested in this, but the whole thing seems kind of gross to me. The guy wrote some good stuff, then decided he was happier being less Online. That doesn't seem newsworthy (it seems rather healthy, in fact), especially when the reporting seems so clearly to invade his privacy.

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It didn't really make it into the article, but at the end of our interview, the author asked me about trying to contact _why, and I told her that she shouldn't, I thought it was wrong, and refused to help.

I have lots of complicated feelings on the topic of _why, but this is one that I've always felt very clearly and strongly about: he wanted to go. Leave him alone.

I wouldn't really like to bother _why, but I'd certainly like to send them a thank-you card, or maybe donate to a charity of their choice.

_why was a big inspiration to me as a fledgling programmer, and I would love to be able to do something make their life just a little better, even if I don't get to know anything about the result.

(I also feel this same way about Bill Watterson.)

The one thing I certainly already try to do, is to follow in _why's footsteps of injecting as much joy and whimsy into programming—and programming education—as I can. I hope that's enough.

If they want to be left alone, the kindest thing you can do is to leave them alone. Maybe consider being an example to others in the spirit they were an example to you.

Invading privacy is bad, but there's a big difference between "less", and being done publishing anything, versus deleting everything and completely disappearing.

Why? Because we say so? It was his content to delete.

> Why? Because we say so?

Because people were using it, and depending on it.

> It was his content to delete.

A major contributor in a large, active programming community just up and deleted all of his stuff, and you expect people to be just "huh, well, whatever, everything's probably fine."?

Yep. Consider your response in interaction with future major contributors to large, active programming communities. Because people can, and sometimes will, take their marbles and go home if you piss them off enough.

Yeah, exactly. If leftpad and bukkit taught us anything, it’s that contributor licensing agreements are really necessary. Otherwise you’re building your entire edifice on sand.

It would be different even if we didn't "say so".

I don't understand what you're asking, exactly. I didn't say he wasn't allowed, but you're going to get a lot of attention for purging popular things, attention that you don't get if you simply cut back to being "less Online" and shift from huge amounts of time to fifteen minutes a week making an occasional comment and replying to the occasional direct message.

It was his content. But it was also an inconsiderate move.

Lots of people decide to abandon their open-source projects and their personas. They will also arrange a transition if these happen to be popular projects other people depend on.

But hey, there's no mystique in an orderly shutdown. You don't make the news if you do that. Do we know if this was his intention? We don't.

But people usually leave farewell notes. Or a will.

This presupposes that content and ideas are "property". I more subscribe to the idea that once you put content out into the world, it is no longer yours.

(That said, all this chasing and doxing of this poor guy really is disgusting. If nothing else he absolutely has the right to leave and stop actively hosting things he doesn't want to host anymore.)

I don't think anyone is complaining about efforts to rescue and resuscitate the code.

> but there's a big difference between "less", and being done publishing anything, versus deleting everything and completely disappearing.

Isn't the difference at least in part the forcefulness of the desire to be left alone? I.e., since he deleted everything, he really wants to be left alone, as opposed to having a "meh" attitude towards notoriety. And wouldn't that therefore make the violation of his privacy more harmful as a result?

At the very least it is exactly the sort of discussion they wanted to happen in making such a forceful statement. If psuedonymous privacy could even still exist on the internet seemed a question they wanted people to ask.

Lots of people fade away, stop posting new stuff, stop answering emails. The internet moves on. If he wanted that, there was an easy path to follow. Instead, he staged an event that was singular, dramatic, that built up his legend and mystique even more. It's like he didn't want to be forgotten and was willing to snatch back everything he offered the world in order to accomplish that.

This is special pleading, and circular, too, in the sense that it says that the irrational response of his fans justifies their irrational response. Either way: leave the guy alone.

If leaving the guy alone means stopping wondering why he did what he did, I don't think you can expect that of people. If it means don't harass him, what am I saying that makes you think I need to be told?

I think it's quite rational to believe that someone making a flamboyant exit does so because they want people to notice and talk about it. That's just basic human behavior. You're asking people to believe that someone who successfully connected with a large audience for years, artistically, pedagogically, and as a persona, suddenly forgot the basics of human interaction in his grand finale and accidentally focused an entire community's attention on his absence. Maybe you're right, but on the face of it, can you see why people might find that unlikely?

It's fine to wonder, as long as you're not attempting to dox him.

> completely disappearing

He did not completely disappear. He removed some stuff that was online and stopped publishing. He is - one assumes - still a human being with a job, friends, family, and so on.

The story seems to be that deleting and disappearing was his response to his real-life identity being busted or soon-to-be, not something he just up and did one day.

Many people enjoyed his works (his gui gem, his executable poetry, his drawings) and felt a loss when he disappeared.

And some months after he disappeared, he teased everyone with his printer outputs. So it wasn't just some uneventful disappearance of someone unimportant.

Who cares if they felt a loss? That doesn't give them the right to invade anyone's privacy. People have a right to stop being Online.

Yes people shouldn't invade things. I was hoping to make an emotional connection. But this is highly illogical. Silly me.

I think the moral of this story is that people should be careful about their impulses to create emotional connections with strangers, which are not always welcome.

It's interesting how parasocial interactions form, often without us consciously doing so or meaning to. The drive to form these associations seem to be wired more deeply than the side of our brain that listens to reason.

There's a decent article called "Parasocial Interaction in the Digital Age"[0] that describes this phenomenon occuring through YouTube, and I would not be the least bit surprised to find that it's applicable to the situation of _why discussed here.

[0] [PDF] https://thejsms.org/tsmri/index.php/TSMRI/article/download/3...

It is, but people that had long-lasting direct social interaction with him were cut off too.

This type of problematic parasocial relationship is amplified by the internet, because the internet changed the mechanics of fame. In the past, becoming famous required infrastructure. Media access was scarce; you had to actively work with various gatekeepers if you wanted the opportunity to become famous. This often required putting on the mask the audience wanted to see. Removing the mask and retreating back to your "normal life" was easy: without regular upkeep, access to the media infrastructure moved to someone else.

On the internet, anybody can become famous at any time, because the internet is media access. People now become famous without the mask that differentiated their famous persona from their normal life. Giving up fame now requires giving up the part of your normal life that made you famous.

For a much better explanation, see this[1] short video essay.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w

Yeah, humans making inefficient decisions. Preposterous.

This sounds like the "community" felt entitled (which they are not)

I think I partially agree, however, I can understand why the community itself would be worried. A big figure and a major contributor suddenly disappearing with no trace would probably worry me too.

It was certainly interesting, and i think it maybe would have been fair game to report on his online persona and dissapearence, but the last bit of the article where they find his patent application and thus his employer, and then call his employer.... eww. Just no.

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