Many HN posters have been pointing this out, yes. It’s getting a bit tiring, but I will once again repeat my multi-decade observational summary:
This aesthetic is the norm for the tiny (but rapidly growing) sliver of humanity who, like the author, favors their constructed Internet identities instead of the less-mutable shared reality that we all inhabit together.
Such persons tend to be impressively talented with respect to the tiniest minutiae of information systems, somewhat emotionally volatile, obnoxiously socialist in political alignment, and somewhere on the autism spectrum.
(Source: am a trans woman who is perfectly content with her identity and form here in our shared reality as a human male. There are more of us than you might think, because it really isn’t a difficult thing to reconcile.)
So you don't think it looks desparate, but you assume it looks desparate to other people?
Indeed, that's not elitism. Maybe just a projection of what you fear people would think about you if you posted it? By the same logic, does someone opening a Tinder account look desparate to potential partners?
I don't even reveal my real species on the Internet.
Apparently, the anecdata from the article backs this decision up, with compound interest.
If you can't be the perfect parody toy (for a girl or a boy), like me, be a moderately attractive white dude. And actually, we should probably all be pretending to be the same clip-art business guy that is pointing at the computer screen in all the stock photos. We're all him now.
I tried to write that post about contemporary standards with wide enough room to avoid singling out one archetype and proceeding to disparage them by contemporary standards.
But you found it; as it turns out everyone on the spectrum from "unconventional appearance all the way to downright unpleasant to work with" is a cartoon-cutout "lone wolf". Ya got me.
I like to disguise my brilliance in a patina of filth so I can confuse literalists while evoking deeper thoughts in lateral thinkers.
Obviously I threw you off the scent by triggering your sensibilities.
But I'll have you know I've worked with PM's who had very distinct physical traits that attempted to buck the conventions. One woman worked exclusively in athleisure and halter tops, even in winter. Another guy had piercings all over his face and ears. This other nitwit wore the same exact orange hoodie abomination every single day for four months. My favorite is the guy who wore tiny golf shirts so I could see his underwear on top of his jeans. This is a grown man, with a beard! He should have gone into military service to learn something about personal grooming and had no place in the organization no matter how brilliant. His very presence was a sector stating "abandon hope all ye who enter here" as in you have zero chance of seeing a real client now get back to your coerced agile workflow.
These signals are impossible to ignore and reek of bougie decadence and cause people like me who want to invest their whole lives to something more than an unfair exchange of time for money to die a little inside and seek the comfort of strangers to air our grievances only to get downvoted, therefore reinforcing the trauma.
Plus I like to disguise my modesty in an utter lack of respect because this industry is a cockroach infested nest of groupthink if you ask me with everyone copying everyone's signals until only clones remain. Then we argue about diversity and scratch our heads as to why none of the girls want to play with us.
The reference to man boobs is in relation to grown men signalling like middleschoolers wearing printed T's from guardians of the galaxy and star trek while they get progressively more corpulent on a diet of chicken wings and lunch specials and pints of shock top. Oh and pizza. Always the dry pizza left over from those two pizza meetings.
Those people were harmlessly bullshitting (or maybe demonstrating the concept of revealed preferences), but you're still doing it when you take them too seriously and proclaim it's a society wide trend.
"especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups."
I can see how you can tell someone is a newer coder on the internet by their questions. But how can anyone possibly tell if someone is in a "marginalized" group unless they go about broadcasting seemingly because you want to claim some greater virtue.
The internet was created by misfits (today called "marginalized" I guess) where everyone was accepted based on their ideas and no one knew if you were a man, woman, dog, or dolphin? It seems that it became popular and the real world just brought it's problems with it.
As a result, throughout my childhood—and most of my adulthood—we mostly contended with a slim parade of different, sometimes contradictory, caricatures: lotus blossoms and dragon ladies, math nerds and martial artists, refugees and gang-bangers. Ad nauseum.
The amount of presumption that I have to deal with from strangers on a regular basis is still disturbing. Such interactions only comprise a small fraction of the total, but a modern urban setting is sufficiently populated to generate a regular supply. No, I look nothing like Jackie Chan. Please don't treat me like someone wearing a costume at Disney World. I'm not a cartoon and I'm not your instant Asian friend. Yes, I was born here. English is my first language. I know next to nothing about martial arts. I'm not bad but still not that good at math. No, I don't think I'm better than you, I don't need to be shown up, you're not making the world a more beautiful and better place by doing that. (Still, all of those are better than the instant Asian=target of abuse idiots or the weird psycho-sexual vibes from certain kinds of middle-aged white guys.)
I observe the little dance that people go through when they get to know each other. I notice the little verbal and non-verbal signals being passed and being noticed. I'd really like to notice more of those transactions and stop wondering about their relative lack coincident with these big globs of presumption coming out of nowhere.
"Basically, the community is trying to reject you—a person who has explicitly stated that they are not of the third type—like a foreign body."
You're being a hypocrite by doing that, if you're in third type, where you're interested in everything, you should be intereseted in a multiplicity of viewpoints as well.
I think you're being unfairly downvoted, mostly because I don't think childish quite conveys the thought. There does seem to be some personality type that likes a lot of flair in their life -- jewelry, stickers, tattoos, busy t-shirts -- and it's always felt a little odd to me, too.
At risk of being reductionist, it is kind of hard to understand why anyone would feel compelled to signal their likes and group-identities to strangers in such an overt way. But I'm probably revealing more about my own personality by saying that than I am theirs.
I'm reporting what I see. That's all.
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