: 32-bit Cafe survey
Below adapted from my response to xandra’s thread with some questions about shaping the future of the 32-bit Cafe.
Are you tired of hearing about AI? For some reason I never seem to tire of arguing about AI. I honestly think it’s just a super fascinating topic with so many different ethical, technological, and social dimensions to consider. As soon as I think I have heard it all, I discover a new argument (or a newly inane presentation of a familiar one) that I haven’t considered.
Perhaps it’s because the problem is big enough that you can easily project any belief framework onto it. I can see why that makes the discussing exhausting for some. I have a few posts about AI on my dumpster but I usually refrain from sharing those in the blog thread because I suspect people have heard enough.
Likes/dislikes about the forum: Fundamentally, it’s nice to have a like-minded community that is committed to civility and helping each other out. But “like-minded” is a blessing and a curse. This forum tends to gravitate around certain dogmas like that static sites are “better” (it depends on your use case) or that you can infer someone’s politics from their platform (true in some cases?), but of course there are minority voices too. I just worry that, to a newcomer, it might feel tribal or gatekeepy.
On a related note, I find the indieweb aesthetic to be a bit cliche sometimes. I would love to see more personal sites that try to be beautiful in a way that’s original or modern rather than statement/throwback pieces (although I recognize the beauty in those too). I guess I shouldn’t complain since it says “32-bit” in the name, after all—but to me 32-bit means more to the early internet ideals of DIY and personal expression than a specific aesthetic or toolchain.
Regarding the forum’s 18+ rule: I like this rule mainly because it absolves me of the sense that I am a creep. But the truth is that I spent a lot of my early teen years lingering in internet spaces with people older and wiser than me and learned a lot from the experience. I am not so confident in others’ implication in the thread that an age cutoff promotes a “mature” or civil tone of discussion—it can just as easily be taken as a license to fly off the handle. But yes, this forum feels safe and welcoming in a way that others don’t, and I hope it can remain that way without having to acquire too many rules or a super heavyhanded moderation style.
: “People skills” aren't (?) optional
My colleague slash friend and I were chatting about her attempts to find a new project in our company and all the difficult/discouraging/disinterested people she has run into while trying to network with different teams. A recurring theme she has noticed, she says, is that people often clock her as someone who has would bring “people skills” to whatever team she joins—the somewhat backhanded implication being that people skills are one of many skillsets you could have instead of, like, technical skills or something.
I, too, have noticed a tendency—especially among people with technical jobs—to distance themselves from the notion of people skills. I find this tendency to be offputting when it comes from a place of arrogance. You know, the attitude that “my work is good, it speaks for itself, it’s not my job to ‘market’ it using flattery and emotional appeals.” This kind of language uses an air of sophisticated purism—I’m all about the code, no bullshit—to mask what is in fact laziness (I only want to do the fun part) contempt for one’s teammates (why won’t someone do the boring part for me?).
A team dynamic in which everyone only does their one “official” job 100% of the time is a sucky team dynamic—there is no human flexibility or burden sharing. You are not required to love your job more than your family or free time, but we live in a society and I think you have some obligation not to impose your misery on your colleagues. As my friend put it, “Being nice is not optional.”
And yet … I also find myself agreeing with those who look at all the politesse and politicking common in the corporate environment and find it quite tedious and unproductive. I spend about 95% of every workday moderating my speech, trying to make sure nothing I say could be perceived as “calling out” leadership on a bad decision or rocking the boat. But the truth is that this strategy often backfires: The more I perform “nice convexer” and try to be agreeable, the more people start to question my judgment on things that I am objectively the most nowledgeable about it. So, sometimes I have to perform “evil gremlin” instead, a sort of caricature of the stereotypical, socially inept nerd whose very lack of grace and tact testifies to the fact that he’s right and he knows it. Feelings may be hurt, but the project has to keep moving forward, or else the misery level will only increase; we can all see this.
So, hence the question mark in the title. If “people skills” means “being nice” then obviously, people skills aren’t optional, but if “people skills” means “being unconditionally nice” then the bare facts are that lots of people who really excel at their jobs do so by, on occasion, being an asshole. Indeed, if we zoom up to the executive level, it’s known that in the major leagues, you find a disproportionate number of people with narcissism and sociopathy. I would hate working for or with someone like that, but it is hard to look at someone bringing in boatloads of for the company and demand that they work on “people skills.”
Ultimately, IMO, the fact that you have to make peace with is that you coworkers are not your family, friends, or wedding party; you might have a few coworkers here and there whom you get along with like that, but if your approach to the workplace environment is “How can I make these people like me?” then you have gone too far. The correct strategy is a bit closer to “How can I make my boss happy without actively destroying my soul in the process?” Or, if you really just want to get promoted, forget the “without …” part.
: Don't overplay it
Because of our fucked up little world, it is very important to refer to Twitter/X by the correct name, where “the correct name” means “the name that aligns with the political beliefs you are trying to signal.” I would be more upset about this if not for the fact that speech was already full of a zillion tiny political signals, such as “youths” and “spendy,” that you have to manage if you want to reassure the listener that you are on the same team.
Still, I find it kind of gauche when people overplay the “I’m still calling it Twitter” thing. I still see a lot of posts that say “So-and-so posted a statement on Twitter—hey fUCK yOU Elon, I’ll call it Twitter if I want to—” which kind of undermine themselves by still fixating on the matter after all these years. The “fuck you” would be subtler, and therefore more effective, if you just called it Twitter in passing without making a big show of it.
After all, a big controversy is exactly what Elon wants—Streisand effect; this is discourse basics. There is a video somewhere of an interview with Elon where even he slips up and refers a few times to “tweets” instead of “posts.” He doesn’t actually prefer the name X, he just wanted to change the name as a weird dominance fetish thing—because let’s be honest, it is kind of funny that major newspapers still have to write “X (formerly known as Twitter).” Meta and Alphabet graduated from the parentheses treatment far more quickly after their respective rebrands, partly because the rebrands (while still bad) were not quite as bad as Twitter→X (like, the letter…?), but also because Elon Musk is a troll and journalists cannot resist feeding him.
: Blocked???
I recently tried to visit my site convexer.name from a public library and got an HTTPS security error; reconnecting with HTTP, I was notified that my site is blocked per the city IT policy! I guess they have flagged it as adult content or whatever? Cuz, you know, it acknowledges the existence of sex? It’s still accessible from the Neocities mirror (over HTTPS) but that’s just because I go through the trouble of double hosting it.
This has me thinking about just how fragile all this indie web stuff is. The library wouldn’t dream of banning, you know, Twitter—a site that “acknowledges the existence of” far more than sex—but for tiny indie websites like convexer’s dumpster, I guess it makes sense for the admin to err on the side of blocking. The block is probably not personal, more likely a combination of keyword matching and weird TLD and hosted by Hetzner.
What is a common man to do in this situation? The “site blocked” page gives a
contact email, so if I could get a list of similarly blocked websites (e.g. a
bunch of *.names?) that are blocked by the library’s policy then that might be
enough to convince them, but then that’s just one library system in one city…
I am fully aware that my site is just a dumpster and isn’t going to save the world or anything, BUT, there are lots of pages on the indie web that deal with Real Shit™ such as community organizing and childhood trauma. Lots of folks use library wifi to escape the surveillance of their abusive family or because it’s simply their only reliable internet connection. Something is not right with the indie web if it is only accessible to people who can maintain their own broadband network.
Above was originally posted on
32-bit Cafe Discourse.
I think the issue might just be that my domain registration is still young,
because I was able to access other .name sites.
: Gotta have the last word
I have a coworker with whom every conversation is like this:
- Coworker: “I think X”
- Me: “I agree with X, but Y”
- Coworker: “I agree with Y, but X”
You see how the last comment adds nothing to the conversation other than chatter? It’s a classic dominance play—the point of restating the point isn’t the point itself, so much as the assertion that the point should go unchallenged. This kind of back and forth often goes on for hours in chat, with a new message every 5 or 10 minutes, endlessly circling the wagons on a decision that we won’t be able to act on immediately anyway, and then when decision time actually comes around, we have to revisit all the same tedious arguments just to get started.
- Me: “I agree with ‘Y, but X,’ but Y.”
I complain about my job all the time, but the truth is there’s a lot to be grateful for, first and foremost that I have a job, and moreover it’s in the field that I studied, and I get to use my special knowledge for good at least sometimes. I was chatting with a mentee who reached out over LinkedIn yesterday and she told me that my career was her “life dream,” which was a crazy slap of perspective. I used to be her age and think I would never land a “real” job or be able to afford the things I can now afford, but how quickly we learn to take things for granted!