[hackerspaces] Let's end the unnecessary TROLL [was: let's end the unnecessary joining of the words "food" and "hacking"]

[Steven Sutton]

For me, the threads that I get the most value out of on this list are the
ones where we're comparing different things that have worked for us in our
spaces. It helps me get scope on what is possible and new stuff to try.

Also helpful (but for me much less so) are the threads where people are
discussing what they've tried that hasn't worked. Some people reason that
those failures mean the the effort being discussed is impossible or not
worth the effort. That's a sometimes annoying misunderstanding, but I just
roll past it. (In other words, you can prove something possible with a
single success, but it's tough to prove something impossible through
failure).

The threads that I almost never get anything out of and that always seem to
descend into madness are the discussions between people that feel that they
need to "defend" hacker culture. For some, it's just a way of rationalizing
trolling the people that they feel are misguided. Often it comes with the
right mixture of feels and self-righteousness that will keep a thread
looping for over a hundred messages with almost no valuable content.

Anywhoozle, I know firsthand how frustrating it is that "hacking" and
"making" are buzzwords right now and a lot of different people and
organizations are trying to legitimize their own efforts by adopting them,
or maybe just misunderstand the point, or maybe want to just take from an
active community without giving anything back.

That sucks, but it doesn't change the fact that you can't effectively
define yourself in the negative. If you want to create a model in someone
else's mind of what it is you're doing, you have to define what that model
is, not what it isn't. I don't believe that culture or communication work
that way. There may be some value in hashing that out, but that's not why
I'm on this list.

That's just... like... my opinion, man.

Steven Sutton
President, Freeside Atlanta
www.freesideatlanta.org
On Jan 29, 2014 7:40 AM, "Guyzmo" <guyzmo+hackerspaces at m0g.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 07:21:12PM -0800, Kevin Mitnick wrote:
> > In some places it's illegal to call yourself an engineer with certain
> exceptions.
>
> Can you name places where it is illegal to name yourself an engineer?
>
> > As a result, I reserve the right to not permit yourself to label
> yourself as a hacker.
>
> Oh? Who the hell are you to have the ability to forbid people to choose
> how the want to label themselves? Do you want us to call you fűhrer¹?
>
> > I can label you as someone who has an inability to contribute to a
> conversation
> > without any meaningful content.
>
>     You're pretty good at judging others, but for  the  whole discussion
> you never had  a  single  meaningful  argument  to  actually  make  it a
> constructive discussion.  All  you've  been  doing  is  finding counter-
> arguments and bashing what other people do. And there's a word for that:
> you're just a bloody troll!‥
>
> Or maybe you call that troll-hacking?
>
> > I am assuming you're responding to my remarks on this mailing list due
> to the malaise
> > you may experience questioning what you have chosen to label yourself?
>
> No, he's just feeding the troll without really being aware of it,
> because he got better stuff.
>
> BTW, can troll feeding be considered food-hacking as well?
>
> > Oh. The ego hacking that is being engaged in this thread.
>
> What an argument!
> I'm pretty sure that's all you wanted from your first post, and for sure,
> good game, kiddo!
>
> > By the way, is engineering "hacking" too? Can I be a geotechnical hacker?
> > A chemical hacker? A computer hac... oh wait.
>
>     Really?... And the worst thing is that I'm pretty  sure  some people
> on the mailing list thought about,  or  may  be  are  writing  a lengthy
> answer to that even bigger troll.
>
> > Kevin Mitnick
> > (May or may not be the Kevin you think I am)
>
>     which I hope you're not, because I still naively believe  that Kevin
> Mitnick has still better stuff to do than troll-hacking.
>
>     Anyway, I appreciate that mailing list because until  *now*  the SNR
> was pretty low, but this thread is changing it.  We're  in  2014  and it
> looks like we forgot almost all of the rules of usenet, like those ones:
>
>  - change the subject of the thread in case we're forking from the
>    original thread ;
>  - reply *after* citation, and remove unnecessary citation ;
>  - AND DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS!
>
> [¹]: Godwin point reached! Can we end the troll, now?
>
> My two cents,
>
> --
> Guyzmo,
> raised on usenet.
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> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
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>
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