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Comment by Certhas | Hacker News Reader

Also, to put the double standard here into context, HN comment threads always had plenty of people defending Linus Torvalds tone.

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And plenty of people attacking him. Every Linus thread has a massive debate about him being an asshole. Just like in this thread there are plenty on each side. Where’s the double standard?

A quick look through a few of the last Linus threads and there is a lot more "taking his word as gospel" over calling him an asshole:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739076

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176032

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22005181

I was thinking threads from before his big "shit, i'm an asshole, sorry. gonna take time off" phase. Maybe I have a selective memory, but I'm remembering threads from those couple years before and after Susan Fowler and Uber's culture implosion. It felt like there was a shift in how the whole industry felt about brilliant assholes around then (thank god).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18000698

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083859

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16508921

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8415603

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2372096

I think the threads in articles specifically about Linus are better comparisons to this, rather than articles about computing that involve him. But, hey, folk like Torvalds and Gebru both really rub me the wrong way, so it's reasonable that I might be selectively remembering threads where HN said I'm right and that he's an asshole (and I did a lazy googling of "linus torvalds asshole site:news.ycombinator.com" which is biased too), so who knows.

Communities are not monoliths. Otherwise, it would be incredibly easy to charge any sufficiently large community of blatant hypocrisy.

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