I think at this point we can conclude that humor of any form no matter how tame it is, is not accepted on the internet. At least not under your real name.

It just takes one person to write a rant and then its all over. Thousands of examples but a similar one was VSCode having to remove the santa hat from an icon on Christmas because someone claimed it was extremely offensive. I know I'm starting to sound like an American conspiracy theorist about the war on christmas, but the reality is that you just can't show any kind of personality, humor, or fun on the internet without putting yourself at risk.

Why not simply allow that person to be offended? Why care? Is it necessary to capitulate to every complainer that shows up and claims your culture is offending them? Just let them complain about the santa hat. Hopefully as far away as possible.

Because one SJW attacts ten more, and those attract a hundred more, then the media joins in, and then people start sending you and your colleagues threatening messages, doxxing you, and otherwise messing with your work and your community. And then instead of writing free software to do good for the world, you spend your time defending yourself from the trash of the world.

So the pragmatic strategy is to surrender early, when the cost of surrender is still small (just your own shame of yielding to evil people).

This is why we need to reject extremism in all its forms on both the left and the right.

We need to end cancel culture, not capitulate.

Or you could just never defend yourself. The people who don't like it will stop using your software. If the criticism was actually reasonable, and you chose to ignore it, maybe that'll backfire on you. If it was unreasonable, it'll blow over; you're not engaging with it, so there's no story.

That works if you're a CEO of a company and don't have shareholders to respond to, or your shareholders also think alike.

If you're a lowly employee with a family, doing some open source or blogging or whatnot on the side, and that side activity attracts the wrath of professional victims? You're suddenly in risk of significantly derailing your life (and that of your family!), possibly damaging it permanently. So you capitulate, just to survive.

This is why you be pseudonymous. If you're a bigot, it doesn't really help you (people will still stop using your stuff, and your pseudonym will gain a bad reputation), but it protects you from short-term reputation hits due to misunderstandings (like this one).

Sure, if you ignore them, and if you're not a big juicy target, the twisted zealots will eventually leave you alone. But who knows how much rot and corruption they will spread before they lose interest? And even if you can handle getting hate mail, or having your name plastered all around the internet with a cross-hair on it, what if it happens to your family, your collaborators, your employees, your employer, your customers?

You're acting like they're evil. They're not hunting for “big juicy targets”; they're trying to solve societal problems, and are working off the model that there are a lot of charismatic abusers out there, so people defending their actions should be treated with incredible suspicion. (In general, that's a bad attitude to have… but the harm of believing an abuser can be pretty high, so I'm not even saying they're wrong to take that stance by default, given how often they need it.)

If you're not charismatic – you don't try to defend yourself – they'll run through their investigation and find something or find nothing, and then give a fairly fair verdict (or as fair as anything on Twitter ever is).

In this case, the author could've engaged, probably, and said something like:

> This was actually meant to be sarcastic; you're meant to notice how unreasonable it is, and disagree with the narrator, but the narrator doesn't represent my views, which are [XYZ]. Your advice would be good, if I actually agreed with what I'd written, but the point is that it's outlandish and bad, because I'm calling out attitudes in the game industry.

> The feature I'm documenting there is usually used for bad. Your suggestions would be good ones, if I actually believed in that bad, but I don't. Do you have any ideas for how to make it more obviously sarcastic?

I think the author probably missed the boat on this, though; the Twitter mob grows quickly.

Lets remind ourselves that the original post in question is simply calling out in app purchases as evil corporate tools for extracting money.

The person who tried to warp this in to a social issue because they didn't like that they were being called out for using IAPs (being an abuser themselves really), is evil. This person is a harm to society.

Unless we're looking at different tweets, the person to tried to warp it into a social issue completely missed the sarcasm.

If they had the intention you think they had? Evil. But I didn't get that from reading the archive.is link upthread.

And then the word gets back to your employer, or your potential future employers. Suddenly you find yourself on thin ice for an indeterminate period of time.

No, thanks. I'd just rather my online persona is squeaky-clean under my real name, and anything controversial (oh, I don't know, like holding even one opinion that's got a potential to become controversial a year or two down the line) is under a pseudonym.

This. Just uninstall Twitter and let them rant and rave to their heart's content.

It really doesn't matter if you don't listen to it.

Unfortunately a lot of people do, and some people that matter do. I hope this will change.

Hope your employer has a strong free-speech culture (how does that even work in the post-Trump era where the term "free speech" is becoming squicky to associate with, I wonder?) or you're self-employed with clients that don't mind SJW outrage.

yeah, exactly. There are "people who matter" who pay attention to Twitter, and their opinion may be influenced by dogpiles.

But if you don't have that, then (I have found) it's easy to ignore.

Because that's not how it works anymore, they will make it their primary purpose in life to cancel you to hell and back.

I watched a YouTube video by somebody who was the target of these attacks and he admitted that he started waking up feeling so numb from stress that he couldn’t move and once soiled his bed because he couldn’t get up. The level of stress and how his business relationships and family members were targeted was unbelievable. You can’t just ignore how offended they get

>Why not simply allow that person to be offended? Why care?

From a business standpoint: They've shown they're willing to make a scene, while simultaneously making it just controversial enough that you can justify pulling it down (and therefore averting the issue) without major loss of face.

In other words, nobody's primary business is controversial documentation.

Because the world today is not the world of yesterday. A capitalist oligarchy runs the world and forces us to consume in order to keep the gears of this rotten society on track.

Not a full hit of on-topic, but I appreciate that you quote from the satirical piece in question (and I imagine you got down-voted by people who didn't read the OP, or who had this fly over their head).

Putting the content of the joke aside, humor itself seems to get some kind of strange negative reaction from a subset of people. Even this forum seems to have "sarcasm police" who will attack any joke that isn't properly tagged and licensed. Makes me wonder which comes first, anger at the humor or the subject.

> the reality is that you just can't show any kind of personality, humor, or fun on the internet without putting yourself at risk

Sprinkle the code and documentation with random references to your favourite animal. That surely can't offend anyone, right?

Unless it’s frogs... I think. I genuinely have started to lose track of which offensive memes are sufficiently unique that they still hold power when referring to them by minimalistic descriptions.

Perusing what's presently successful in online comics, I note how CAREFUL they are.

Survivor bias, no doubt.

Ah, "careful". Treading lightly and quietly seems like an environment in which creativity and humor can really thrive!

The most innocent humour I can think of is a goofy self deprecating slip up or remark. I could see those going out of style because they could be seen as portraying somebody or some group the wrong way, of harming people who suffered bad negative effects from such a slip up like a concussion, or even of fundamentally making fun of disabilities (or any group that “acts funny”).

I guess puns might be immune. We still have puns. Unless some alt right jerk uses them as a way to make fun of Japanese people (there is a stereotype from a while back), then we lose puns too

> I guess puns might be immune. We still have puns.

Except when someone deems the subject too serious (“how dare you make jokes about that”). So no, we don’t still have puns.

What I’d like to know is why the American culture in particular seems so hostile to any form of humour. This isn’t something I have seen in other Western European countries to this extent (though it is spreading in thanks to the Internet).

I like making jokes at myself, but people have complained how even that might scare new joiners (eg. they don't know that when you say "what fool did this code change" that it was you, so they might be scared that this is how we generally talk about others' changes).

Some of those are somewhat valid points, but the trick is to find people who don't mind the humour, and then spend the most time with them :)

I personally cannot care less about these woke mooks. They can flame all day and I can ignore them all day.

I'd like just to point out that I find your comment absurd to the point of being really funny.

Since humor is now banned on the internet, would you mind deleting your comment as good praxis?

:)

> but the reality is that you just can't show any kind of personality, humor, or fun on the internet without putting yourself at risk.

Completely untrue. Lefty "SJW" Twitter is full of humour and personality. Shitposting takes precedence over serious discussion, massively, to the point where more centrist or right-wing twitter circles seem completely dry in comparison. If your humour and personality aren't accepted, that's on you.

Ugh. I wonder if Twitter was started from scratch today, they'd be thinking "We need a platform for all the scolds and sanctimonious people out there who have nothing better to do but correct people's thoughts.". Probably, because there's a lot of them out there.

oppression is real and social justice advocation is so important. that's why it's that much more infuriating when I see people like this who only are interested in social justice when it serves their own personal interests and/or vanity. they do so much harm to the image of the struggle for justice

It would be helpful if people within those movements would actually push back on these kinds of overblown displays of victimhood. It would lend the movement more credibility when it tackles real issues.

Unfortunately, it seems to me the structure of the movement itself makes many people too timid to actually push back against toxic behavior like this.

FWIW I believe this comment is talking about the busybodies on Twitter, not the comment it is in reply to. I don't think the downvotes are warranted.

I was wondering about that. yes, by "this" I meant the tweet, not the person Im replying to

May you please upload a screenshot of the tweet? I can’t see the tweet as I don’t have an account. It appears as though the user has blocked all non-Twitter users from viewing their posts.

Edit - I found an archive of the tweet https://archive.md/VpYl2

It’s impressive how similar these “let’s unpack this sweeite” people write on Twitter. Such an abhorrent monoculture of PMC who unsuccessfully try to fill their empty lives with meaning by doing weird social crusades.

"woops, you punched down!"

> In a context where mobile players got trashed all the bloody time for being ..., or worst of all, women?

Is that even a thing? Never ever have I heard "mobile players = women" even on the worst dumps of the internet, like 9gag. But then again, I'm not on Twitter.

I've not seen a direct connection between the two (at least in terms of denigrating). It's true that there is gatekeeping of 'gaming' that tends to look down on mobile gamers (in the sense that mobile games aren't 'real games' by some arbitrary and stupid metric), and the same is also true of women gamers (though more in the sense that there's many accusations of women gamers faking interest in gaming for attention or are somehow less invested in it than 'real gamers', again by some arbitrary metric). It's also true that women make up a much larger proportion of mobile gamers than gamers on other platforms. I'm sure there are some who will (through the lenses of the other biases I've mentioned) view this as evidence that women are 'fake gamers'. I'm not too familiar with whether this is actually a common trope or not, though (I'm not in a position to receive this flack nor do I hang out in places likely to give it out).

(Either way I think the argument that this means the article is intrinsicly sexist is definitely reaching. It seems the accusation of gatekeeping is more valid, though I think this requires a pretty uncharitable interpretation of something which is clearly aiming elsewhere)

Whether it's a thing or not, I don't think it's fair to put all that on the author of the comment.

The author was making some pretty clear points about how capitalism produces meaningless addictive games. Accusing author of sexism seems like a non-sequitur to me, especially as the whole comment is completely free of any gendered pronouns, e.g. "These individuals".

> satire

Didn't read it that way. The text seems factually true to me.

Whether it is an offended party or a result of the constant conditioning in some community that this kind of satire is offensive,

The fact that the PR author does not even care that a piece of documentation is lost and there is no attempt to at least rewrite it is disappointing.

Someone please think of the old developers

I’m imagining a world where writing the word “they” is banned.

As in: if you don’t have something “we” to say, don’t say anything at all.

I've learned to just avoid people that get caught up on such petty semantics.

Language is a way of conveying meaning.

Hyper focusing on the words being used, diminishes time spent on the transaction of mind.

> Hyper focusing on the words being used, diminishes time spent on the transaction of mind.

On the other hand, this is the whole point of writing poetry. You focus on the particular shape of words and try to fit them to an arbitrary, meaningless, pattern.

This is key for adults. This is one reason that I generally avoid people that are put off by bad words even positive intent.

Life is... when you really think about it... absurd.

I think the GP was focusing on people rising to fight when "others" are offended (as opposed to "I/we are offended by this"), but it may just be my pet peeve ;)

> the well-pointed satire actually offended some people who have made their career doing what the satire criticizes.

This person is referring to the #gamergate controversy from like 6-7 years ago, I understand that much.

But how does a progressive, left-leaning person go from that to being offended by a satire about capitalism? I have no clue. It's like becoming a caricature of yourself.

They don't. They didn't like being the butt of the joke and so they spun up some bullshit in the voice they felt had the best chance of working.

You can tell because leftists aren't offended by vanilla leftism.

it literally made me enraged to see someone twist feminist ideas to make an asinine point defending the status quo. I'm not sure what the answer to your question is, but I think it's something like - the person may only be left-leaning insofar as it affects their own rights, being a person from marginalized groups, but is not left-leaning to the point of opposing other forms of exploitation even when they are part of their own paycheck

Maybe they shouldn’t. This is such an annoying comment. GP wasn’t uncalm. By saying such a flippant statement, it seems to me that you’re denegrating GP and saying that his ideas aren’t worth talking about.

As if being calm is some ideal to always maintain anyway.

This is a pretty patronizing comment.

Yeah you're right I'm sorry it was flippant and inappropriate.

Slighlty OT for this forum, but the "left" isn't monolithic either. Especially on twitter, there's a lot of left-leaning people who despise the "dirtbag left" that user refers to.

It's been a while since their ideology has become a collection of mutually incompatible senseless ideas. As you say, a caricature.

You write “their” as if one specific ideology was a problem. Watch “conservatives” tie themselves into knots to support a most certainly un-conservative demagogue. It’s just as bad as “leftists” who have forgotten about freedom. Radicalisation is a problem, and it is generalised.

Think of the manipulative, exploitive Skinner box designers!

Thanks for explaining I read the commit 3 times trying to find out what could be offending.

For what it's worth, I read it months ago. I was not offended by it, but was in agreement with others that its removal would be better because it frankly was not funny at all.

It was an accurate observation, but despite best intentions, it sounded like a teenager on a rant. Not exactly a good look.

Just my two cents - seems that some agree and some don't.

So the "teenager on a rant" is right yet must still be dismissed? Why?

What's not funny about a teenager on a rant?

> it sounded like a teenager on a rant

It is quite typical to dismiss anti-capitalist critique as being youthful and immature