News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by egeozcan on Saturday April 23, 2022 @11:30AM (#31135096)
As a person who never lived in an English-speaking country, associating Karen (or any name really) with such a bad personality has always made my "be nice" alarm bells ring.

Truly sorry for the digression, just wanted to know what others think, and not blaming you or anything. Spoken languages are weird, even weirder than cryptocurrency contracts with accidental bad logic - the weird logic in spoken languages seems somehow desired.

Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by alpaca128 on Saturday April 23, 2022 @04:35PM (#31138249)
I don't live in an English country either and we have our own equivalent male and female names. This is basically a common stereotype being so universally seen as negative that it becomes an insult. Not great because some people actually have that name (and most of them don't deserve this association), but then again a person's annoying behaviour isn't the worst reason for negative labels.

Like always you can insult and hurt people with "clean" language and use vulgar words in non-offensive ways. But say what you want, I'll keep calling "smart" technology trash ;)

Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by antifa on Saturday April 23, 2022 @09:57PM (#31140579)
"Smart" these days often feels like it really means "smart enough to subvert the user's interests".
Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by DangitBobby on Saturday April 23, 2022 @12:18PM (#31135620)
You are right, of course. Imagine how shitty is must be to be named Karen and have millions of people one day start using your name as an insult. Just one of the hundreds of ways the internet mob steamrolls over people.
Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by ineedasername on Saturday April 23, 2022 @02:43PM (#31137091)
>hundreds of ways the internet mob steamrolls over people.

There's lots of names that have acquired negative stereotypes before. In my lifetime the name "Mike" at one point basically meant asshole (not so much anymore) and "Bob" basically meant boring, and "Patel" was a catchall negative for anyone from India.

There's even research on some of the nuances of the phenomenon. [1]

This isn't an aspect of internet mobs, it's an aspect of human nature, or at least society in general.

The Internet may shine a light on our flaws, and provide some new outlets for them, but it doesn't really create new ones, we brought them with us, like settlers from Europe going to the "New World" to escape the plague only to find they brought it with them.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1996.97...

Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by theshrike79 on Saturday April 23, 2022 @12:54PM (#31135956)
It wasn't fun being an Adolf in the beginning of the previous century =)

These things tend to happen.

Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by nlitened on Saturday April 23, 2022 @02:00PM (#31136603)
That had happened to Dicks before though.
Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by wpietri on Saturday April 23, 2022 @12:24PM (#31135672)
People are able to distinguish between "Karen" and "a Karen". It's no more of a problem than my dad had with people distinguishing between his name "Bill" and "a bill".
Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by Claude_Shannon on Saturday April 23, 2022 @01:29PM (#31136279)
Unrelated, but I live in Poland and there's similar thing related to names. Stereotypical Janusz and Grażyna are boomers, Karyna means a poor woman that's not exactly educated, and so on. It is not only American phenomenon.
Re:$34M permanently locked into AkuDreams contract forever d... by Jach on Saturday April 23, 2022 @12:20PM (#31135632)
It's just some lingo, dog. (Not actually calling you a dog.)