I've sort of thought that this was a fairly consistent phenomenon since the origin of the internet, and that as more and more people come online they've been exposed to it and don't think it's reasonable. And to some extent they're right - it's not reasonable. Unfortunately being a public figure, especially by critiquing that phenomena, is going to attract more of that abuse.
It pains me to see people call that sort of thing an issue with the "tech industry", though. Not that the tech industry is perfect, but that grouping in the internet trolls with people who care and want to fix the things that do need fixing is really counter-productive when you're trying to win a war of hearts and minds.
It's not so much grouping internet trolls with the tech industry, but that the tech industry is having a problem with its troll population.
This might be purely because we're the first out of the trenches... we got the first trolls because we were the first to adopt online communication, and we have the first gamergate because we're still ahead of other industries/communities.
I think we need to associate this sort of thing with the tech industry, because only then will we be able to fix it. Shrugging it off as "universal behaviour" will just mean no-one tries to do anything about it. In order to "un-fuck" this industry, we do need to accept that we do this. You (as an individual) may not and I may not, but we as an industry troll our women and minorities. And until we as an industry accept that we do this (and that it's a bad thing that we need to stop doing) it'll never stop.
Is one person enough to blame the entire industry? Or two? Perhaps 10% of the industry is trolling women and minorities. Is there any evidence of that level of participation?
>In order to "un-fuck" this industry, we do need to accept that we do this.
This sort of ultimatum is exactly the thing that promotes hostility against confronting these issues. If somebody wants to help, why do they also have to take blame? It actively turns people away who refuse to take that blame. It makes no sense.
OK, fair point. So you don't like taking blame for other people's bad actions, even if those others are part of your community. I get that. We're also having that discussion around Islam too.
But to my mind, this is what makes a community a community. If good things happen we all share credit, so when bad things happen we all share blame. We, collectively, respond to events together. And we police ourselves, which is a form of taking responsibility as a community for the actions of a minority of our members.
So yes, if one of us behaves like an asshole then we as a community take responsibility for that, deal with the asshole, and apologise to the victim.
However, if one of us behaves like an asshole, and we as a community shrug our shoulders and say "not our problem, some people are just assholes" then other communities do have a right to say that we condone it, that we are at fault, that we as a community are behaving badly.
That's how I see it anyway, and why I think we need to accept responsibility.
Your post has inadvertently cemented how little sense of community I get from being a "tech" person. Tech doesn't feel like a town hall meeting in a new home I just haven't integrated with yet, it feels like commuting into NYC for work and looking around on a subway car.
I don't know what shared credit or shame I take part in sharing that is specific enough to identify with. Do we really respond to events together? A decade ago I may have said yes, but now all the opinions I see getting play are bog standard points plucked from the American political spectrum. Nothing wrong with that pre se, it just indicates to me whatever tech was, it's too large and/or too assimilated to have unique perspectives anymore.
The "voices" of tech are more and more often tech-adjacent rabble rousers or wanna-be standard-bearers. I don't identify with them any more than I do the corporate speech of big brands trying to play up the fact their core product is software in an attempt to use the cachet of tech and make their corporatism more palatable.
Over a decade ago I did have a sense of community in tech, but even then it was a community defined by unreasonable passion in a corner of a subfeild. Now that the headcount has exploded across the board, I'm supposed to own a non-programmer troll on twitter, or micro-aggressions at an office more degrees of separation away from myself than Kevin Bacon?
The only time I felt any sense of community in the last few years, is when someone is telling me I belong to one and online harassment is my responsibility.
Well the way this is playing out for the Muslims isn't great for them.
If the same follows for us, then any self-identified member of the tech community will automatically be suspected of being an asshole by everyone else.
I have no idea whether your plan to not identify with the tech community will work. Maybe you're right and it's grown too much to be seen as a single community. Be interesting to find out.
But isn't Islam an counterpoint to your argument to hold the whole community responsible? Or are you just making the detached observation that because it happened to them, it can happen to us?
It's already happened to us, and it's not sexism (not that it would excuse anything, but as far as sexist industries go in society, I think we're low enough on the list to escape external criticism). It's the shocking elitism and douchbaggary that has come to define "tech." If you're in NorCal, you probably see it daily. Or if you really want some outsider perspective listen to John Oliver's comedy routine at The Crunchies, it's pretty cutting.
And the best part, both with the sexism and the way tech startups business models piss people off: the largest concentration of it comes from the "tech" people who are really the tech-adjacent business folk that came to tech just looking to make some cash.
yeah, just trying to spot parallels with other communities that have "problematic" minorities.
I see the elitism and douchebaggery as part of the same problem, it looks like a lack of empathy for others, though I don't know whether that's a cause or symptom.
The sociopathic non-tech founders would get nowhere and be capable of nothing if we didn't actively support them by building their stuff. We need to teach more techies to say "no" to assholes ;)
> So yes, if one of us behaves like an asshole then we as a community take responsibility for that, deal with the asshole, and apologize to the victim.
This is where I see the problem... We aren't a town, or a single company, or a government. There's no Computer Science union. So how do you propose we 'deal with' these assholes?
The tech 'community' really doesn't have a lot of power over its members. There isn't any singular accreditation association, there isn't a bar exam to get in. You don't need a membership in the ACM or IEEE to get or hold a job. Sometimes, you don't even need a college degree to get a job in the industry. The only thing unifying the tech community is an interest in technology.
Conceivably we could coordinate and ostracize / not hire problematic members.... but that's not a road we should go down (who determines when someone is being problematic?), and even if it was there would still be companies hiring outside of the loop.
And even then... most of this kind of harassment happens from anonymous accounts. If you know who they are, maybe you notify their employer about their behavior. Maybe, call the cops. But how do you 'deal with' an asshole like this if you don't even know who they are?
I'm not blaming the victim here - harassment is a major problem that needs to be addressed. But this is the internet - harassment is easy, regardless of whether you're next door or on another continent. The best defense is privacy.
I run a small blog, just posting some of the projects I work on. I had an issue with some obnoxious comments - nothing like this, but annoying nonetheless. So I dealt with it in the simplest way - my blog doesn't have comments enabled anymore. It doesn't list my email, my home address, or my phone number. There is a simple version of my resume on the blog, but the only way to contact me from my website is via LinkedIn.
I agree that we share responsibility for the actions of members of our community. I disagree that the tech industry is one large community.
yeah, I agree with that, though obviously the problem is less with how we see ourselves and more with how others see us: If you turn up to a BBQ, identify yourself as a coder/founder and immediately people assume you're a sociopathic/sexist asshole then you have a problem. Telling people you're not part of that community isn't going to help.
It pains me to see people call that sort of thing an issue with the "tech industry", though. Not that the tech industry is perfect, but that grouping in the internet trolls with people who care and want to fix the things that do need fixing is really counter-productive when you're trying to win a war of hearts and minds.