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by rorymarinich 6254 days ago
It's not worth it to get into a pissfest. I don't care enough. One comment:

If you don't like being generic, then why the hell were you nothing but a bag of gross generalizations in your stupid little essay?

It's not an essay. It's a blog post. I write fast and I write long and I publish everything that I write because I adhere to the belief that perhaps something I write will help somebody with something. I treat my blog like a blog. It's not a professional platform. The stuff I do in my life I keep entirely separate from all the things I write. If I ever got to the point where my sole source of fame was a web site with my name on it, I'd consider myself to have done a piss-poor job with my life. Same if the only thing I had going for my name was an ill-conceived rant clustered around by people who prefer rage to straight thinking.

As it is, I've gotten responses from people to this that've thanked me for writing it. That means that for 20 minutes' work it was time well-spent. My frustration doesn't come from disagreement. It comes from the fact that my post, which is about as good as 20 minutes' worth of quick typing can get you, got put on Hacker News, which is a place where intelligent people discuss meaningful things, when this is a piece that deals in overgeneralities.

When I wrote this piece, my thought wasn't "How can I capture the high school experience?" It was "What is it about this type of programmer that really annoys me?" I hit on my conclusion, which I still stand by, and wrote all the thoughts I've got on the subject matter, typed it quickly, and put it online. I thought it would get a handful of responses. Nothing big, because it's not big or at all important. I wrote two or three things yesterday that I think are better than this particular piece.

But you just ignored the post I just made to focus on my original post, which I've already apologized for. It's obvious that of the two people I said you might be, you're the latter. You're ranting at a mindset that I don't actually have just so that you can be Fucking Awesome Zed now that your blog's been toned down. If you really want to get pissed off at me for things I don't believe, you have every right. But I'm through with this. I expected better from you.

1 comments

Well then, if you didn't believe these things, then why did you write them?

What amazes me about you is that, despite all this ranting against nerds you feel slighted you, you are actually behaving exactly the way you claim they do.

Let's pull from your twitter:

"It took all of a few hours for me to fall out of love with Hacker News. Nerds suck."

Alright, so you wrote an inflammatory piece, people on HN fairly directly, clearly, and politely (given the topic) responded, and you react by playing the victim.

I mean, do you even read what you write Rory? You basically just did exactly what you were claiming nerds do. You acted in a fowl mean spirited way, and then proceeded to get your ass kicked, and then claimed it was all the nerds fault for attacking you.

Not at all! My ideas are entirely open for discourse. I don't think for an instant that what I wrote was immaculate and untouchable.

The reason I'm pissed off about this whole thing is that it's a bad essay. It's not worthy of pulling up and discussing. And this is a crowd that's never going to agree with the things I've said, and yet because it's Hacker News I find the need to argue anyway, knowing it's going nowhere, and so it's a huge time sink over a piece that doesn't deserve this attention.

The people politely responded? I wouldn't have gotten involved at all if that was the case. The reason I got an account was because I was being called things like a "sad, angry little man," and maybe I'm thin-skinned but stuff like that really pisses me off.

I know this is a defensive thing to say, but my Twitter post was half in jest. If I was pissed off at Hacker News, I wouldn't be here. Does that make me as bad as the people I was blaming? Probably. This isn't a personality quirk that I'm entirely at peace with; it's certainly still a part of me. I don't think I'm perfect and I'd never pretend to me. The fact that I write so much about these things is because they're parts of me I still don't like. I think I've been saying that from the start.

So if you want to fly off-the-handle at me for getting annoyed because a community I really like had a huge uproad over a piece of mine I really didn't care for, feel free. I probably deserve it; I act immature at times; I say things without thinking. You're older than I am and more well-known than I am and so by all means you're probably in the right. I'd just hope you would find better things to do with your time than squabble over a 3 AM ramble by a college freshman.

Now I noprocrast this account away, because I'm finished.