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Comment by indrora | Hacker News Reader

Not OP, but the less I encounter of Lous "I should be allowed to beat my kids" Rossmann, the better I've become.

Rossmann is the RMS of the right to repair movement. A lot of ideas that align with the overall goal but a terrible figurehead because he has a fairly myopic view of right-to-repair scene at this point, coupled with some Yikes opinions outside of it. He has actively held back some RtR folks simply because of his crass comments about women & minorities, but also because he doesn't think the issue extends to some things (like dishwashers, which he's said a few times on stream are "simple shit nobody needs boardview for").

Similarly like RMS, he's made comments (like the one I alluded to before) where he has explained (while very drunk on a live stream) that he has some beliefs that don't... always align well with the status quo in terms of basic human decency.

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You’re the first comment I’ve seen that has the same view as me. I don’t know why so many people worship that guy. Same with RMS. Both of those dudes give me the creeps even though I often hold the same or similar views on their areas of specialization.

Someone, long ago, once told me: “There’s always going to be someone on your side that you wish was on the other side.”

I didn’t realize how true that would become until years later.

A) don’t worship him

B) just know about his right to repair work

C) don’t know anything negative about him, nor has anyone provided any evidence he is a bad person and just attacked his character.

Now you have to defend yourself, from a lower position.

See how those people work? now they are assigned themselves the moral high ground, and you have to justify yourself.

Dont do it. You did nothing wrong, those guys are bullys.

You know what gives me the "creeps"? People looking for character flaws and projecting them onto the entire person.

There is a guy on "my side" who acts as if people like me are extreme radicals from the "other side" and you sound like you want to ride this slope downhill as hard as possible. At some point you will only focus on the bad things these people have done, after all you're not watching his videos, just hearing it from biased third parties and you no longer care if it has any semblance of truth to it or not.

I do not worship this guy. I don't even watch his videos. I probably don't even remember what he looks like.

>don’t know why so many people worship that guy. Same with RMS. Both of those dudes give me the creeps

Maybe because we listen those guys for the useful information and we don't think with our reptile brain that "give us the creeps"

Dunno about that but I do know that RMS made a huge contribution to open source and Rossman seems to be doing the same for right to repair.

I’m happy that people are doing good work even if they have shitty opinions or are even shitty humans. I will appreciate what they have done for humanity.

This sounds like Dave Chappelle’s view about Cosby: “he rapes, but he saves”

Nobody is perfect.

If you want to live in a world built by perfect people, you won’t have a house or music or new or movies or companies.

I’m not defending shitty behaviour, I’m not throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Do you really think this is an honest characterization? If Louis Rossman commits a crime you can just send him to prison. The fact that he isn't in prison indicates that you are trying to push this in a specific direction by thinking of the worst possible crime and pretending the situations are remotely similar.

I think it’s very telling that people have not substantiated their claims.

Perhaps there are people/bots who are paid to assassinate his character because of his right to repair work?

You know that falsely accusing somebody of a crime is also a crime right?

On a side note, I've briefly searched for the "I should be allowed to beat my kids" thing and I can see zero evidence he ever said this or defended it.

It's a pretty big smear, so you should substantiate it.

> he has explained (while very drunk on a live stream) that he has some beliefs that don't... always align well with the status quo

This is exactly the kind of people that I want to listen on a live stream. And not boring moralizing status-quo defenders.

>He's made comments where he has explained (while very drunk on a live stream) that he has some beliefs that don't... always align well with the status quo in terms of basic human decency.

Others will definitely have views on topics which aren't always going to agree with your own.

The more you know somebody, the more likely you'll find a difference of opinions that annoys you somewhat. This is highly likely to happen with views on politics or religion.

The average person, however, can live with having differences just fine. Only those with severe mental issues such as narcissism will make it an actual problem, for themselves and others.

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