I'm not even a chud but man the nixos discourse has done my head in. you could literally hate my race, my beliefs, and all of what i stand for, but as long as you neutrally accept/submit PRs i do not care! if my entire job is to push a technology forward, then i (in a professional capacity) should welcome anyone who wants to contribute, financially or with code, with open arms. i know that things are inherently political, and that one might decide to use their agency in a situation to stop a viewpoint they don't like from advancing, and they have every right to, but at least in the cases of nix e.g. no money from the military industrial complex, always looking at a big player's politics, countless threads of political discourse, i think it does more harm than good. *your entire job is to write code.* imagine if linus did a background check of the views that everyone who submitted a patch held? imagine if this was the standard approach to foundational technologies? it's also just a massive drain in energy and time: you are worsening the project by incentivizing people to fork you purely for structural reasons, you are wasting time you could spend doing things you enjoy but are instead wasting it on something which does not help change your mood for the better. also, being frank, the only way you can change someone's politics, if you're still held up by that, is by interacting as much as you can with them in a neutral setting. the less tribalism there is, the more chances there are for honest and nuanced discussion over time, and the better things tend to turn out.

I haven't ever hated much in my life but I've got to give it to LessWrong and the broader rationalist community on here. One of the most arrogant and insufferable subcultures I've found so far.

Something I've been interested in, ever since being part of various internet communities across lots of topics - gaming, movies, and languages to name the most prominent ones - is how people consolidate their behavior online with their behavior in real life. Personally, I make sure they're both the same. Though to talk specifically about my account here: of course, there's things I post about here which I can't post on my main, usually because I don't want to mess up future relationships by saying something blunt about a company or a person, or because I want to post about my private aspects of my life here without the social stigma I might have on my main (yay anonymity!) But what's perplexing is the people who keep them entirely separate and let their online self heavily diverge from their real self, I've seen it happen before and it's very unsettling IMO. It's like they're playing a character, and the longer you see them like this the more unhinged their viewpoints and interactions become. I don't even think this is particularly rare. You see someone, who is normal enough, undergo a shift over a year or more, as they get deeper into a community or subculture, or just get too attached to the idea of posting anonymously and forget that there's real human connections which can be formed through all of this. Some common patterns I've seen are: 1. Frequently lying about their life and fabricating details to seem more interesting. 2. Becoming more comfortable in being bigoted. This is especially bad if the community subculture is one which doesn't punish this, or even encourages it under the guise of "edgy" jokes, which always gets out of hand and goes from jokes to statements said with intent/belief. Bonus points if this change happens to someone who is a minority themselves! 3. Viewing interactions as temporary or fickle, and taking an antisocial approach to them e.g. being quick to cut contact, acting erratically, badmouthing and gossiping, etc. 4. Becoming obsessed with their online persona over doing things in real life. What's especially irritating is how sometimes the only good communities for a particular interest are ones which naturally end up leading to these things. A community with useful resources for something which is relevant to you, which isn't well moderated. The reason that I say this is bad as well, even if you don't fall into those patterns and stay true to yourself, is that it is over time massively draining to interact with people who follow those exact patterns. This isn't even to say that one shouldn't engage with viewpoints they disagree with, I have talked about that before in another post which I've linked at the bottom, but the key distinction is here about whether someone is coming into the discussion with a genuine approach or just trying to ragebait you and be edgy (most likely the latter two!) The whole thing that prompted this post was twofold. One was realizing how a lot of the accounts here, who are followed by niche influencers on this side of tech on this platform, somewhat fall into this archetype. Where it feels like I'm not talking to a human, and just seeing a caricature instead. The second is a follow-up from the first where someone will embody most, if not all, of the patterns and trivialize topics which could have a nuanced discussion behind them e.g. immigration, rights, culture, etc.