Honestly, knowing what I know about marcan, the decision was probably the result of an overwhelming/strong emotional reaction.
Not to just shit all over him or anything, but it really sucks to see someone who is genuinely top-ten-on-earth when it comes to "real hacking" struggle so much with socialisation and mental health.
It is weird to blame the victim for reacting to being harassed by a mob. That is a normal thing to have a reaction to. Perhaps rather than blaming people's social skills and mental health, we should instead blame the culture that normalises harassing people on the internet, even to the point of suicide (as happened in byuu's case). You are basically advocating that it is better for individuals to change to accept a shitty society as a given rather than advocating for society to change to be less shitty.
I'm genuinely unfamiliar of the harassment campaign that HN launched against him.
(I am familiar with some comments debating the validity of Byuu/Near's gender identity, and marcan's extremely strong reaction to that, but no actual harassment campaigns)
This is not a dichotomy. It's not healthy to take random online comments to heart so much. It's also bad to make such ridiculous comments. Both can be true at the same time.
This diminishes what "random online comments" are. They aren't just text on a screen. They represent words that another human being has said about you. Often, words that will convince other human beings, who may take different actions or view you differently because of what they've been told, which will in turn spread virally and alter how thousands and thousands of humans see you and act towards you.
Humans are a social species. It is easy to say "just don't be social bro". When you are actually the victim of this behaviour, it is much less easy to shrug off. Having a bunch of people hate you and say horrible things about you hurts. That's not abnormal. That is perfectly normal. Is it good for your health? No, in the same way that somebody smoking next to me is not good for my health, but it's not my fault the person next to me is smoking. The blame rests with them. To some extent, yes, stepping away from the smoker is a short-term fix, although often an unpleasant one that impacts your quality of life in other ways (what if the restaraunt you like is full of smokers, what if the airport is full of smokers, etc). In the same way society eventually changed to discourage smoking around other people, we really, really need to change the culture around the internet, to recognise that the internet is actually a social environment, that there are real people on both sides of the screen. "Go touch grass" implies that the internet is not the real world, but it very much is, with real consequences, even if you can't see the other person.
I agree it would be much better if online culture improved, and I don’t think anyone would argue against that. The difficulty is that change at that scale tends to be slow and unpredictable, on the order of decades, so you can't rely on it in the short term.
Because of that I think there’s value in focusing on what individuals can control, like setting boundaries, disengaging when things get overwhelming, or stepping away from spaces that become unhealthy.
That doesn’t mean the behavior is acceptable, or that people should just tolerate it. It’s more about acknowledging that, while broader change is important, taking steps to protect yourself is the only immediate and reliable option.
> The belief that this will happen is also a malicious fairy tale to tell to people.
Cultural change is possible. It is not something that will happen, no. But it is something that can happen, if enough people choose to make it happen. Making it happen starts by pointing this out and not blaming the people on the wrong end of this behaviour.
This kind of thinking reminds me of my truly most loathed thought-terminating cliche of all time, "life's not fair", as a justification for supporting some horribly unfair status quo. True, life isn't fair, but humanity has collectively spent an unbelievable amount of effort doing all kinds of things to make it slightly more fair, one step at a time. We can make it more fair. That's what we do as humans. We bend the world to our collective will.
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seems the comment I was responding to was completely rewritten while I was writing this. oh well.
This marcan person had problem with Go, he had problem with Apple fans, he had problems with linux committers, so much he left internet or something. To say everyone but marcan was wrong is just a kind of fanboyism and it hardly helps marcan.
This person liked to dish out as much as next person but display extreme reaction when served.
No it actually wouldn't. As in 15+ years of Hacker News I have not seen the same so clearly it can be so horrible that it regularly leads to such strong reaction, suggesting that for most people this isn't nearly so impactful. And very few things described could actually be called harassment, mostly it was light criticism or maybe a bit trolling.
The guy appears to have a fragile ego. Any criticism and he goes nuclear, as if he was never told "no" as a child. Sure you can have opinions about the best way to moderate comments, but I can't imagine thinking I was special enough to publicly demand how Hacker News should be run. I've worked with people like this, not fun!
Marcan was clearly mentally unwell. He delusionally thought there was some harassment mob after him. After the fallout with Linux kernel devs, the lolipedo accusations, and him being outed as the vtuber Asahi Lina, he arguably did the correct thing: deleted every social media account and abandoned Asahi Linux. I hope he stepped away from screens and spent some time outdoors.
Not to just shit all over him or anything, but it really sucks to see someone who is genuinely top-ten-on-earth when it comes to "real hacking" struggle so much with socialisation and mental health.