The golden era. When the only identity that mattered was your username and behavior.
The Hacker Manifesto said it nicely:
"This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike."
EDIT: well fuck me for sharing, right? 2021 Hacker News karma scores are fucking cold.
* - that is to say, each individual instance (drip) wouldn't cause pain, but when you face it almost constantly, and you're already hyperaware of it, it can cause a lot of anguish.
I left the community because it just upset me to have to do that. a/s/l always broke my heart and it still does.
I would find it deeply wrong if HN were to ask for the gender of their users, let alone their sexual preferences, but I would expect the same of a dating site.
But I don't disagree with you in general. I also miss the intimacy a nick could afford you. Somehow you could talk about deeper things when nobody knew your name.
I wonder what other words can be used as a pronoun?
Basically anything you can use in place of a name, so long as the grammatical usage is namelike.
"That guy doesn't have a clue." -- guy is a noun
"Guy doesn't have a clue." -- guy is a pronoun (you can tell because "he" also works grammatically)
However, I think these would need to be in the initial position(s) when slash-delimiting one's pronouns, because the final position is for a possessive form. That is, they're analogous to "he" but not analogous to "his" (and using them like "him" would be a stretch, as far as I can figure...), which might be what got GP in hot water.
You don't think that's merely people being lazy and leaving off a word that can be inferred ('That')? This is something I often do in casual conversation, particularly vocal conversations:
"I am wondering what you mean" - 'I' is a pronoun
"Wondering what you mean" - 'Wondering' is now the pronoun??? Clearly not. It's just a way that people are lazy and sloppy with grammar when correct grammar isn't important.
But to answer your "wondering" question: nope, because "he/him/his," nor their analogues (person, number, gender, etc.), don't work there.
Believe it or not but cis white western men were and still are subject to all manners of harassment and offensive jokes. As a cis white western man myself I personally have experienced harassment online.
"If you did not pass as a cit het white man you would likely be harassed for it on the early internet."
is not the same thing as
"If you were harassed on the early internet then you must not have passed as a cis het white man."
During a safety meeting at a lumber yard you wouldn't respond to "workers who use the malfunctioning machine in building A have been getting injured" by saying, "well I didn't use that machine and I also got injured."
The way you worded it sounded like you were as explicit as you can be without explicitly saying that men are not harassed. You said you either adopt the persona of a man OR you are harassed. You also said you gave up and learned to talk like a man (to stop certain harassment). Both of these implies that you are not harassed if you act like a man.
>During a safety meeting at a lumber yard you wouldn't respond to "workers who use the malfunctioning machine in building A have been getting injured" by saying, "well I didn't use that machine and I also got injured."
There is a difference in your original post and your analogy due to the use of the word 'or' in the original post. If you go to a restaurant and they ask if you want salad or soup as a side dish they are not implying you get both, but one or the other.
It is too bad in English we do not have xor to prevent such confusions.
People are too forthcoming on the internet today, with some divulging almost their entire being to the megacorp spy machines. It's easy for stalkers, let alone adtech and three letter agencies, to find and track people.
I prefer today's tech, but yesterday's freedom, mindset, and lack of tracking.