Comment by newsbinator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by newsbinator | Hacker News Reader

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I have no idea what the skin color or gender or sexual preferences of other users on HN are and you don't know mine. That's how I prefer it.

The other day I unsubscribed from a popular Javascript mailing list, after the writer switched from writing about Javascript to writing about how white people and black people should interact.

Or rather I didn't unsubscribe right away: I emailed the writer politely and mentioned how I prefer posts to be about the thing that unites us: Javascript.

Their response: "my platform, my voice", "all tech is political", "this mailing list isn't for you", and later on Twitter: people who unsubscribed are racist and should "eat shit".

I don't believe I'm racist. It's just that I signed up for Javascript tips and the writer switched to politics (in this case, the politics of a country and culture I don't live in).

I'm no more interested in their political views than they are in mine. On the internet, nobody needs to know I'm a dog.

In such a polarized emotionally charged environment, some people are unable to emotionally segregate world news from their personal and professional lives.

These people have become paralyzed and unable to function normally. They allow world events to bleed into every conversation, and feel obligated to support their side and ostracizing anyone that disagrees - further isolating them in their bubble.

I think that social media has increased society's emotional surface area to world events. We no longer isolate 30-60 minutes per day to watch balanced reports on the 6 o'clock news - now it's all the time, hyperbolic, and often deceptive.

Our emotions are being weaponized - and November is going to be a real wake-up call where we will see the magnitude of disruptive power that these polarized social media messages can wield.

Quite right! In this case, the mailing list writer has built a dichotomy into all their communications: either you say black lives matter or you say "all lives matter" and therefore you are his enemy.

Whereas the third option, "I'm just here for Javascript tips", wasn't even under consideration.

So unless you engage with and echo their politics, you fall into the enemy camp by default.

What a world it has come to where you are the enemy if you say all lives matters.

That's not what I meant. I'm saying the absence of any political statement at all makes one the enemy to the writer of this javascript mailing list.

If the statement is to be taken at face value, then yes I would agree. But it it shouldn’t be, it’s used a way of denigrating and minimising the concerns of BLM as well as painting the movement as supposed black supremacists when they naturally take offence at the subtext behind the statement.

You are in complete control of how you choose to interpret a statement..and choose you will.

While I disagree with the BLM movement, I think that All Lives Matter was an obvious attempt to rile up people and create unneeded conflict. I don't know what you are referring to when it comes to subtext, as it seems that the ALM movement really started to counter the idea that only black people get killed by police or are victims of hate crimes.

"I have no idea what the skin color or gender or sexual preferences of other users on HN are and you don't know mine. That's how I prefer it."

This aspect of HN is specifically WHY I feel welcome here and WHY the content + conversation is consistently of higher quality relative to other forums...It's actually one of the few places left online where this feature remains.

Andreas Antonopoulos does this on twitter all the time, drives me crazy - https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/1268576565912363008

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