Santa Hat on VScode Insiders | Hacker News Reader

Santa Hat on VScode Insiders

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46 points2fast4you40 comments

Previous discussion on HN about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21833377

There's also some amusing issues being reported in response: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3...

> Color themes are offensive to blind (and colorblind) users

> Snowflake doesn't represent people in the southern hemisphere

> Don't add "santa hat" as it's really a coca-cola's santa and I like pepsi more

Amusing, but I think inappropriate. The VSCode team shouldn’t have to deal with all of the fake issues raised in their repo

I agree that it's unfair for the VSCode team to have to deal with trolling for trolling's sake. But I imagine many of the fake issues are a form of protest, and a protest is designed to be inconvenient for the sake of raising awareness and making your point heard.

It's like a strike. Is a coal miner's strike "fair" to consumers who are dealt power outages or price hikes? No, but the whole point is to generate inconvenience.

I sympathize with the VSCode team the same way I sympathize with front-line customer support at an airline with striking baggage handlers. But that doesn't make the strike less meritable.

In this way I think the fake reports are like any other market action used to demonstrate dismay with a certain behavior, like strikes, protests or boycotts.

They delt with the Santa hat issue. Some of those issues have just enough merit.

Great example of letting some bullshit slide, other people are going to to want their share.

They set the precedent by dealing with one already. The saying “don’t feed the trolls” exists for a reason.

They had time to deal with the santa hat issue so clearly they have a lot of free time on their hands.

haha, the pinned issue is "why can't i file an issue right now"

Someone on reddit comments pointed out how ridiculous it was since the guy is named "Christian" and then this comment:

> He said in a deleted post he wasn't Jewish. He's German and was just being offended on their behalf.

I don't have words really

This is actually a behavioral pattern of the masses, and it's very frequent in comedy.

When somebody publicly pokes fun at a group, very often, advocates of the group (who do not belong to the group), will complain, even if nobody belonging to the group actually complained.

I remember a comedian telling how he made a joke about priests, and while a priest actually wrote it was fun, religious associations (not priests!!) went berserk.

Such cases are ego trips, however, I can see how it's difficult to handle them in a politically correct manner (I'd tell them to shut the mouth, but it's not possible in real world).

Christian is a normal and very common German first name. That alone doesn't tell you anything.

Santa hats are a very normal sight in December in the United States. That alone doesn't tell you anything.

Are you wearing one right now?

I am, actually. It’s cheap and itchy.

Nobody offended enough by a santa hat to open a bug report would use the name Christian on that bug report. Obvious troll.

Come on, this is equally ignorant on your part. First names are decided upon by the parents and that's it. In a lot of places, you're stuck with that for life. Inferring trolling from a user name that is a plausible real name is just ridiculous.

I am not defending the bug report itself.

They would've used a different name on their github....

The user is clearly trolling, firstly his name is Christian, he says a Santa hat is a "religious symbol" (???) and display of such religious symbols is almost as offensive as a [nazi] swastika, an offensive statement in itself!

Christian is just a common first name. Having a name that is mistaken to mean something in a different language alone does not constitute trolling. It's just random.

As for the rest, the net result is very much trolling even if it wasn't the original intent.

It's not "mistaken to mean something in a different language". The name literally originated as religious reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_(given_name)

You're just mistaking the word's origin for its meaning. That's just not how any of this works.

In both languages (English and German) the name has the same origin I believe, and the same current meaning of a name that doesn't imply the person is of the Christian religion. I think it's wrong to say that there's a language confusion of being too religious, since the name has the same religiosity in both languages.

Seems to me the same as was done by Christian: mistaking the Santa hat of 2019 with whatever happened before.

It doesn't constitute trolling by itself, but it does imply he's not Muslim or Jewish, which narrows down possible reasons why he might be offended by santa hats.

Not to suggest that most Muslims or Jews are offended by Santa hats.

don't underestimate the capacity of some people to be offended on behalf of others

I'm not offended by a Santa hat, I'm just fed up of everything trying to shoehorn Christmas into everything for what purpose exactly?

I'm from a tradionally Christian country, and I'm not in the slightest bit religious and for the last four years I've gone China in December so that I can avoid most of the festive period in peace.

I don't need every single product and service telling me that Christmas is coming, I'm aware of the fact. Stop using it to sell your products!

> for the last four years I've gone China in December so that I can avoid most of the festive period in peace.

This sounds like the premise of a christmas TV movie.

The title of this submission seems heavily editorialized.

A little bit, but my intention was brevity. I didn’t realize how small the character limit was

I find it amusing that someone would recognize the Santa hat as a religious symbol. All that I associate it with is the season of intrusive marketing. Never would I associate it with Christianity itself regardless of my thoughts about the religion.

Of course, thanks to the association with the ads for products I find the image kitsch and repulsive, so wouldn't mind if it disappeared from software as well.

Regarding the Jewish issue, I have no opinion.

I kind of agree with Christian that the Christmas thing has gone too far, not just the christmas thing really, but the feasting on whatever manages to pass itself for "religion" nowadays, including earth days, and some ideologies, and all. We can agree to disagree in what each of us celebrates and keep it there, it's ugly when they push these commercial festivals through software and design (halloween, christmas, new year's, gay prides, whatever). Religions are insular and thus fundamentally incompatible with the internet's lowest-common-denominator culture. The smaller that culture is , the better it is for everyone. Coming from a christian background, i agree that we need less blinking lights and more actual understanding between people.

I agree, the Santa doesn’t belong in VSCode, or any other tool, but not for the reasons outlined in this issue. I don’t want my editor changing its UI every year for the holidays

I find VLC having a hat raises a smile in me and makes my life a tiny weeny little bit better as if the tool was written by other humans. I can live without it but it's nice

The user was trolling... https://github.com/Christian-Schiffer/servicelayer.chat/wiki

That page wasn’t written by Christian, I was written by one of the users that’s been harassing them. https://github.com/Christian-Schiffer/servicelayer.chat/wiki...

Should've just called it a Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) hat. It's a Russian version of Santa Claus who is completely secular.

Ded Moroz wears blue hat though.

I dont get it, how Santa Hat can be offensive to anyone at all.

I think the most interesting part of this is we're a few billions on the net now, there's a lot of things we can't and won't get until it blows in our face.

It only needs to be stated that it could be. If someone says something could cause offense, that's enough for others. It only needs 2 people.

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