Conversation
Lorenzo Stoakes
ljs
I know people enjoy saying 'geek' and 'nerd' and so on, but it really makes me cringe.
I am old enough to have grown up in a time when people threw that stuff at you to demean and debase you because you didn't conform to their idea of what a person should be, and they thought they were better than you.
You were treated as if you had a disease or something.
Doing the cute 'the nerd who X' 'oh he/she's such a nerd' stuff is just feeding into that, and you really don't have to scratch far to see that a great many people still feel 'better' than computer people.
I mean how many of us get contacted out of the blue by acquaintances to fix some horrifically trivial computer problem? And how often are those approaches respectful, or comparable to the way a person might speak to a lawyer friend for instance?
The more we empower that kind of stuff the more we act as if it's ok to demean the people who built the modern world.
And of course the SECOND people think they've found a technology that will 'replace' programmers/tech people it's remarkable just how quick they voice their absolute contempt for us.
I am old enough to have grown up in a time when people threw that stuff at you to demean and debase you because you didn't conform to their idea of what a person should be, and they thought they were better than you.
You were treated as if you had a disease or something.
Doing the cute 'the nerd who X' 'oh he/she's such a nerd' stuff is just feeding into that, and you really don't have to scratch far to see that a great many people still feel 'better' than computer people.
I mean how many of us get contacted out of the blue by acquaintances to fix some horrifically trivial computer problem? And how often are those approaches respectful, or comparable to the way a person might speak to a lawyer friend for instance?
The more we empower that kind of stuff the more we act as if it's ok to demean the people who built the modern world.
And of course the SECOND people think they've found a technology that will 'replace' programmers/tech people it's remarkable just how quick they voice their absolute contempt for us.
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Sven Peter
sven@treehouse.systems@ljs I have a good friend who’s a lawyer. We compared stories about IT support vs legal support requests for acquaintances and there wasn’t much of a difference except that she gets to claim it’s illegal for her to provide legal advice without taking them on as an official client.
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@sven yeah, they may be confronted with trivia to be fair, but I suspect there is a higher level of respect.
With the computer stuff there's always a vibe of 'I'm better than you and you should feel lucky that I am talking to you as a nerd' a vibe I have experienced more often than is pleasant...
And I doubt she's being confronted with the kind of 'I demand you do hours of free labour for me' thing you get with IT, probably more like a brief legal question...
So in general I suspect that while they might get asked a lot it probably won't be anywhere near as 'talking down' or entitled as you get as an IT person.
With the computer stuff there's always a vibe of 'I'm better than you and you should feel lucky that I am talking to you as a nerd' a vibe I have experienced more often than is pleasant...
And I doubt she's being confronted with the kind of 'I demand you do hours of free labour for me' thing you get with IT, probably more like a brief legal question...
So in general I suspect that while they might get asked a lot it probably won't be anywhere near as 'talking down' or entitled as you get as an IT person.
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Sven Peter
sven@treehouse.systems@ljs no, it’s far more than trivial questions. she’s regularly asked to write letters with her firm’s letterhead to „solve“ some dumb dispute and then people occasionally get angry when she tells them she can’t do that. That’s easily hours worth of free labor.
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HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM 🇺🇦
lkundrak@metalhead.club
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Lorenzo Stoakes
ljs
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Tomáš Janoušek
liskin@genserver.social
@ljs @sven oh bro it looks like you're "autistic enough" to have been bullied by the normies but not enough to throw a good tantrum that would earn you some respect ☹️
I haven't had people ask me for trivial computer help in decades, because I was such an insensitive piece of shit I made them cry every time they did. Now I only get approached after they've made an effort to solve it themselves.
Sometimes it's completely hilarious. Like my 85 years old grandma who came to me with no longer being able to find WhatsApp media files and she had the full path (/DCIM/WhatEver) at hand and the phone connected via USB/MTP and all she needed was the new path.
and yeah my wife still cries sometimes when told rtfm
I haven't had people ask me for trivial computer help in decades, because I was such an insensitive piece of shit I made them cry every time they did. Now I only get approached after they've made an effort to solve it themselves.
Sometimes it's completely hilarious. Like my 85 years old grandma who came to me with no longer being able to find WhatsApp media files and she had the full path (/DCIM/WhatEver) at hand and the phone connected via USB/MTP and all she needed was the new path.
and yeah my wife still cries sometimes when told rtfm
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Cat poni, Whorseman of Apocalypse
pony@blovice.bahnhof.cz
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Lorenzo Stoakes
ljs
@liskin @sven the tantrums don't earn you respect, just shuts people up, and I've generally gone off on people who ask me for free work in a disrespectful way 🤣
Family get a pass though. I still remember my dad asking about an issue with a wifi router and said something about the 'blue' cable not being plugged in thinking that'd mean something ;)
It doesn't happen as much now as it did in the past but does from time to time.
When people are respectful it's different and I react completely differently.
Family get a pass though. I still remember my dad asking about an issue with a wifi router and said something about the 'blue' cable not being plugged in thinking that'd mean something ;)
It doesn't happen as much now as it did in the past but does from time to time.
When people are respectful it's different and I react completely differently.
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Oleksandr Natalenko
oleksandr@natalenko.name@lkundrak @sven @ljs zubrowka is an extract of zubr [1], and Katowice is a non-sense except of their concert hall [2].
[1] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Żubr_europejski
[2] https://nospr.org.pl/en/o-nas
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Lorenzo Stoakes
ljs
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HAMMER SMASHED FILESYSTEM 🇺🇦
lkundrak@metalhead.club
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