Good morning World, what offends you today?

Ah the internet… is it just me or a things getting angrier lately?

Sometimes I can see how the internet makes people angry. E.G. there is a bit of a Uncle Bob vs Sarah Mei thing happening on twitter over how the word craftsman isn’t inclusive. I think it’s a reasonable point to raise, I’ve intentionally tried to stop using the word “guys” in my vocabulary here is an example tweet that demonstrates why I might try to avoid using those words;

A fond memory from my university days: I was seeking to understand why we can't use "mankind" or "men" for all cases. A wise woman asked me to name 10 famous men. I named 10 famous males, and no females. Her point exactly. That's the problem with using craftsmen for all cases.

So I’ve come to realize words like guys and men aren’t really all that gender neutral/inclusive after all. I personally didn’t think about the word craftsman being noninclusive before this point. I do talk about the craft of testing and will continue to talk about it. But I’ll make sure to try to catch myself if I’m about to use the word craftsman. Huzzah, the power of language; it changes and adopts to new cultural expectations. Original tweet for reference;

Uncle bob says; "Rude. Craftsman is a gender neutral term"

My takeaway here; it’s hard to be polite on twitter. Both sides are being rude (but their online personas are built around this, I imagine these people are too busy to give a shit over how the world interprets their tweets and rudeness/bluntness can help drive conversation, it motivated this blog after all and many people are now re-assessing the word craftsman). But I’d have to side with Sarah on this one and I think Uncle Bob was just a little ruder than Sarah here. Do you disagree with me on this one?

Other things I see are just riding the “anger” train to get people riled up. People on both sides of the equation are guilty of over reacting though. Then there’s this teenager who found a Chinese dress in a thrift store and wore it to prom;

How did this become news? I was given a Japanese Yukata from a mayor of a Japanese town, do I have to be concerned when I wear that now? I think that aj+ piece is just asking for that knee jerk emotional reaction, I’m actually a little disappointed in aj+ about this. It reminds me of an article I saw come up in my facebook feed from a pop culture media outlet about wonder woman’s hairless armpits; about how angry feminists were critiquing the trailer and asking, how does wonder woman shave? This was clearly click baity because 1 “okay the Wonder Woman movie looks rad but why does Diana have clean shaven armpits” is hardly angry (or did I miss something?) and the article was clearly shared on facebook for the knee jerk facebook reaction, “dam special snowflake feminazi’s ruining a good movie like wonder woman”. I stopped following the pop culture media outlet because of it. Does anyone remember how angry Australia got over Yassmin’s, “Lest. We. Forget. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine…)” tweet? I definitely wasn’t proud to call myself Australian after the hate she received after that.

However anger is pretty effective at engaging people, it’s a common marketing tactic now (get people angry and talking about it). BUT I think it causes people to get into a “defensive” thinking mode and it can be really hard to reason through that knee jerk emotional reaction.

Now I’m not a christian but when I feel that anger bubble up and inspire me to get all keyboard warrior I take a moment to reflect and think, “how would Jesus react with love and compassion in this situation?”. Jesus is my role model in these kind of situations. How do you catch yourself before you respond in anger? Or maybe I should harness my anger to drive discussion? Like James Bach does in this blog about Machine Learning tools in software testing are bullshit. It definitely has a lot of people talking about it.

Is it just me or are there more angry people out there?

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1 Comment

  1. Sam,

    I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and your post prompted this reply.

    I think at least part of the problem is that the internet has made it much easier for people to communicate with other people across the world – that they know little or nothing about. People discuss and debate across continents and cultures without knowing each other’s backgrounds, experiences, ideologies, etc. – all of which influence the things that each think and feel. And without knowing those things, any opinions and responses are likely to be shallow and unfounded. That, along with a propensity to generalize, helps result in knee-jerk reactions, entrenching…and what we see on social media.

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