Why Young Hackers Are Killing Themselves
log.nadim.cc
log.nadim.cc
There was the Age of Autism. My hand-wavey gloss is that we will see an Age of Williams, of people with Williams Syndrome who will "teach us how to be happy" or whatever intellectual debris gets tacked onto a population that carries the "happy gene."
Scientists, linguists, psychologists seem to be in a hurried hunt, under a hyperreductionist banner, to discover how to, it stands to reason, prevent "the hackers from killing themselves" (assuming there's a strong positive correlation between "hackers" and "autists") or to say the least, from engaging in what seems like reactionary violence against the world or themselves; that is, prevent such future tragedies by discovering the gene.
I'll tell you. 2011 I got absolutely fucking crushed, blasted. Arrested for personal weed; quitting the job out of guilt and fear of being fired; multiple dental extractions; first (at age 21!, mind you) ex-girlfriend brutally/ritualistically murdered shockingly while touring Germany (a sweet woman who, like in many Williams Syndrome descriptions, could be said to be "too naive" and "too open with strangers"); killer set to "insanity" plea after attempting suicide; mother desperately poor, frequently taking money from me without warning or call; alcoholic grandmother; emotionally gutwrenchingly dysfunctional family where accusations of kidnapping of biological sister still today go unchallenged (a sister I've "hung out" with less than 10 times); drug addict father who I've yet to talk to since roughly months ago (at age 27 now); mother riddled with disease and heavily dependent on steroids, while also hyperbaptist/religious; and on top of all of that, the only type of work that kept me afloat in Houston, Texas, of all places, were demeaning "oil and gas" industry Web jobs, where I was probably ranked less than a code monkey, though I still had to drill through FogBugz, etc.
Yet for some terrible reason, all I can think about is how I just nyan'd (http://nyan.cat) for 5+ minutes.
Even now I starve, as I await for a client to possibly say okay to a logo.
Maybe I'm not stressed out in the right kind of way. But my "happiness" is so unstoppable that what actually makes me angry or upset is the fact of being upset or angry at all. I can be frustrated, but I can really admit to only that. Even now, as I sit poor and crushed, with W3C's Specifications on the brain.
One joke. One. Absolutely one joke can take me from a SOPA-ranting lunatic or a painfully woeful and grieving romantic, to a kitty petting, child tickling maniac. And I've got most standup comics committed to my highly reliably aural-verbal memory.
What I really want is for my gittip-for-the-homeless idea to get off the ground; and that's more a matter of sharing the idea than building some app. Indeed, it might simply be 1. Buy a [edit: wifi] pi. 2. Give it to a homeless guy (or gal! but for rhyme) 3. with a login wall that takes you to their gittip where it 4. explains why they're a street violinist.
Unfortunately since talking is a stronger form of learning for me, I find myself spending less time being a good little coder and more time sharing ideas with people (including coders who take them and run, which is a good thing).
Our hotbed copyright system promotes theft and discourages sharing. If I can get more hope about that turning around, I could fast for another week on joy alone.