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Comment by mpk | Hacker News Reader

Usually when people announce a product and give you little else but a future feature list, I'm sceptical.

Not with Zed, though.

This is the exact sentiment that makes me respect the guy. He's an asshole and loves to complain REALLY LOUD to eat up the attention.

But he's dead sincere when it comes to making things. He's like _why's evil twin.

Agreed, but for one thing. He IS NOT an asshole, not in real life. He's actually super-nice. Online he has the asshole persona, but that's it.

The Internet is real life.

I'm with petercooper. If you act differently online, you're still responsible. His recent attack on Giles Bowkett was an assholey thing to do even before considering whether either one of them had a point.

That said, I'm not too worried considering his history with the Ruby community. I'd still have a better opinion of him if he didn't antagonize them though.

I'm absolutely certain he's a great guy in person. Asshole doesn't preclude you from being nice, personable, and even entertaining. Instead I take it to mean that when the bad side does come out it's nasty.

Giles Bowkett has never shrunk from attacking others (like his blog post "Chad Fowler is a Vampire", which was a long personal attack against Chad Fowler that Bowkett seems to have since deleted) so it doesn't seem that asshole-y to treat Bowkett as he treats others. I once participated in a thread in which Bowkett swore at and belittled a number of participants who criticized a blog post of his (he subsequently deleted his postings so the recipients wouldn't be able to respond).

You get what you give. I tried for a long time being nice and gentle online and I've found that there's a class of hackers who act like bullies anyway. They'll slander you, try to ruin your job prospects, lie about your personal life, everything you can imagine. Seen it first hand done to myself and to others and it's stupid.

It's ridiculous, but it seems the best way to keep this in check is to be kind to the gentle people, and totally destroy the haters.

Also, it's pretty fun tearing into these guys because they're usually pretty bad at their rants. :-)

I find it bizarre that you can come onto a forum like HN and insult me, call me an asshole, and effectively slander me and that's quite alright. You're totally not an asshole at all.

But if I out-rant a dude who compares me to Lady Gaga and tries to kick me when I'm down for no other reason than to drive traffic to his poorly written blog and sell more videos, then I'm an asshole?

You have the same double standard all geeks have. You let the blow hards, pundits, and bullies get away with treating other people poorly, lie, and hype themselves endlessly, but when someone calls them on it you call them an asshole or worse.

You're right. It's easy to talk about people as though they're not people online, even when you're secretly trying to praise them. I'm usually finding myself agreeing with you when reading things like that and even loving the vitriol while wincing.

So I apologize for writing timidly previously. I apologize for standing behind your back and spreading my opinion in an unbalanced fashion. I made the classic mistake of forgetting I'm actually in public.

I'll say it to you directly. Zed, I'm glad you stand up for yourself, both against my clumsy commentary and all the other blowhards who strike at you. I'm even glad you do it so vocally because it is a damn good story: the wronged who doesn't go quietly into the night.

The only negative side is that your voice is corrosive and bitter and if it weren't I'd feel a lot more comfortable about agreeing with you. As it is I feel like I'm nodding along as the bully takes out that annoying kid who really just had it coming. It feels good, but society is built on not just sitting and watching that happen. Worse, I hate that I end up remembering that feeling whenever I read about any of the cool things you do.

So yeah, I still think you're an asshole. It's unfortunately not what's fair or what's owed but instead how it looks. I'm sure you're ready to tell me why I'm wrong, but don't worry because I've already got a truckload of cognitive dissonance going on. It doesn't help that I think Fret War and Shedding Bikes and Lamson and Mongrel are all great projects and am completely sure that you're a great friend to those who earn your respect.

I just see it as the image you've intentionally built for yourself. Starting with ZSFA and now eking into oppugn.us.

Zed's writing has generally struck me as being pure larrikinism (especially under the banner of ZSFA). Unfortunately I'm not sure that there is an analogue for larrikinsim in American culture and it's not a concept I can easily explain; there is a subtlety to it that makes it both difficult to convey and difficult to execute. If you Google it you might be able get an idea of what it's about and perhaps get a different perspective on Zed's writing.

I do sometimes just throw an idea out there to see if there's interest. No point wasting time these days if nobody gets it.

In this case, I felt like reprising Mongrel and finally that it would make sense, so I whipped up some code, got it working, and made a viable chat demo with it:

http://mongrel2.org/chat/

Based on that, seems folks get it and it'll work so I'll start hacking on it.

You can download the code by logging in and visiting the 'timeline' http://mongrel2.com/info/2d2129a2db

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