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Comment by wbl | Hacker News Reader

Saying "I don't think we should make fun of our customers" isn't a flame war. 1/3 of employees don't leave because a few unreasonable people are told to tone it down.

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DHH says the trouble didn’t come from objecting to the list. In fact, he’s disavowed it repeatedly. He said the trouble was that the employee said that the list was not merely unprofessional but was one step on a ladder of racial oppression that leads to genocide.

It’s one thing to say someone is acting unprofessionally. It’s another thing altogether to accuse them of being on a path to genocide. If I did that to someone when it was so clearly uncalled for, I would be an asshole and my relationship with that person would be strained from that point forward.

If you don’t like that strain in your workplace, you try to draw a line on speech. It’s not something I’d want from the government, but it seems appropriate for a workplace.

And yet, it's possible to have a direct conversation with someone where you say, I appreciate where you're coming from on this and I hear what you're saying, but in this place and time you escalated this conversation in an unproductive way and I'd like to talk to you about bringing more light than heat to what is a difficult conversation.

Going from "someone posted an ADL infographic about the pyramid of hate" to "we're cancelling all external benefits, DEI discussion group is cancelled, and nobody can talk about politics anymore in our office ever" is an insane overreaction.

But isn’t this also DHH making a strawman of a strawman?

I’m led to understand the graphic in question was about how long-term tolerance of micro aggression can lead macro-aggressions over time, the ultimate form of which being genocide.

To share such a graphic isn’t to make a point that “your actions lead to genocide”, it’s to highlight the important of being diligent about not allowing micro aggressions to become commonplace and accepted within a culture. Because the long term society-wide effects of that can be genuinely terrible.

Exactly this. Graphics like this serve to educated about how an environment tolerant of small things can eventually become tolerant of bigger things, and then much bigger things, and that's why it's important to pay attention to the small things.

The employee wasn't accusing anyone of supporting genocide, even though DHH clearly took it personally.

Ok, but how is that relevant to making Basecamp better?

If he's disavowed and apologized for the list then this genocide point is just a big waste of time and a distraction. I can't see how it would achieve anything productive.

I'm not surprised you don't see the point. But then you probably aren't the subject of racist microaggressions in the workplace.

I do see the point, it's an argument that there exists a plausible slippery slope from (allegedly) quasi-racist jokes to genocide.

I just think it's sanctimonious, a total waste of time and a distraction to throw such incendiary and flamebait things out into the workplace's communication channels, especially if it's been apologized for already.

> an environment tolerant of small things can eventually become tolerant of bigger things, and then much bigger things, and that's why it's important to pay attention to the small things.

Huh, sounds like the "broken windows" theory of policing. Did not expect that.

The list was clearly unprofessional and made some people uncomfortable, that is enough for it to be gone. It would be worthwhile to discuss explicitly what was wrong with the list, opening people's eyes to perspectives they hadn't considered and to take a little time to foster shared ideals for the workplace culture. Even alluding to genocide is wildly over the top and I can understand if it offended some people, regardless of whether they had anything to do with the list.

Yeah seriously. I’m the first to complain about wokeism (e.g. I disagree with a lot of claims of cultural appropriation), but there wasn’t anything unreasonable about the graphic there and dhh is really strawmanning it.

Except it's a fairy tale from the minds of social scientists with lots of research funding and zero experience of real world genocide. The simplest response to the diagram would be a free copy of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago for all employees.

This. Get these people out of your workplace and away from any position of power before they burn it to the ground

It sounds as though the commity was trying to push a critical theory agenda, and the founders came down on it.

I agree.

On the other hand, it does sound as though basecamp is actually just a lifestyle company for the benefit of the founders, and once everyone realized that is the true 'mission', many left.

He disavowed it repeatedly, once he was criticized about it. He and Jason Fried were aware of it for years and had no issue with it until the dirty laundry started to smell.

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