this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
258 points (92.2% liked)
Linux
8120 readers
678 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system
Also check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm just confused. Like, how would someone even connect Linux software to those topics?
I totally believe you that they do, and I'm not actually interested in hearing messed up shit, I'm just...
If you asked me which topics were unlikely to have bizarre vile messaging I would have listed window managers and init systems pretty high in the list.
You need to think of the kind of people that are interested in nerdy computing topics. Regular people that just want to make something nice to share with the world, sure, but also incels, toxic masculinity proponents, etc.
They're mostly able to hide, because like you point out, computer science and related topics are mostly apolitical; when you make scary changes, however, those same latter people can't help themselves but to blame the villainous "They."
Ugh. people can suck sometimes. I can comprehend the concept of bigotry and all that, but it just deeply does not make sense to me. And I think I'm ultimately okay with not being able to empathize with actual hatred.
It makes me sad that some of the "nerdy" people in these spaces would join with the very people that would gladly throw them under the bus or use them as minority fodder, but as I've seen with experts in science, high intelligence in one area doesn't mean you are capable of critical thinking.
ETA: to be clear, I'm not saying we should ignore scientists and experts, just that specialized expertise ≠ general expertise.
The two people I trust least on matters of science are some person who reckons it's common sense and someone with a doctorate in something vaguely similar.
The third and fourth are every engineer and every physician that isn't actually an expert on the thing, but that's because we think we know everything.
I am definitionally incel, wanna say that does not make me a nazi. In fact, I despise the entire tenets of nazism.
Incel means more than the state of not being in a relationship, these days. Some very sad and terrible people turned it into a subculture that revolves around imaginary grievances directed at women.
That's a pity, I guess some people direct their grudge to women instead of the faulty society which forced no-life lifestyle..
"How am I going to be racist today? OOH, the parallel command is pretty woke"
it's always been there. the most influential voices in the open source software world have always been overtly political. heck, the entire movement is inherently political. just read any of stallmans or raymond's rants from the 90s.
and while stallman is mostly just creepy because he's not house trained, raymond is genuinely disturbing.
Oh, I totally know there's been a lot of politics in the Foss community and that some of the people are nasty, I'm just flabbergasted that someone would try to connect such disparate things.
I can comprehend a Nazi Foss enthusiast having opinions on race and on window managers. It's when they start having racist opinions on window managers that it all flies out the window. It's like being opposed to copper plumbing because it's too Norwegian.
Just a case of seeing irrational people who act irrationally act irrationally in a new way and being shocked that the irrationality doesn't follow a pattern or stay in topic.