For someone not up-to-date with the Perl community, could you elaborate why Matt was considered a deeply polarizing figure, please?
I did not know him at all, have no opinion on him, and sincerely wish the best for those he left behind.
Rarely, in fact.
I'm sure Matt would have been happy to admit that he was that person. I'm sure he would have said that he had spoken his mind unvarnished, and maybe even that he thought he was right.
So what?
People say that a community will fall to the level of the most toxic person it will tolerate. For the Perl community, that was Matt.
Don’t always believe the stereotypes.
Matt would have liked this discussion. And given that his and my mutual friend has some actual legitimate serious expertise on obscenity in the English language even more so.
As an Australian, how many times have you been called the word? In how many types of context?
It can be extremely offensive, used a certain way, yes. And it can be absolutely breezy, used another way. And context usually makes it absolutely clear, as in, there's almost never any ambiguity. Right?
I know you wouldn't use it straight away in the British isles without first establishing context and familiarity, sure. But the comment I responded to said they'd only been called that once. This is culturally a world apart from countries in which the word can and regularly is used in a friendly, playful, lighthearted way.
In Australia it's even more common, and less familiarity is required before employing it. Still, of course, one has to be careful in some contexts. This isn't relevant to the point I'm making.
My point was simply that the word is much more common in places like the UK and Australia, to the point where being called that once ever is very far away from my experience, enough to be quite noteworthy. A point which your comment literally confirms.
And, as everyone is rushing to point out, yes, it can be used offensively, if used a certain way. What is this apparent difficulty accepting that words have multiple uses, even sometimes the opposite thing. English is a very contextual language, tone and intonation and familiarity and etc matter hugely.
For example, your last point - calling a woman a cunt can of course be sexist, but what if you and the woman for whatever reason both decide that you like calling each other a cunt? If you think that doesn't happen in the world, in respectful and mutually caring relationships and friendships, you are mistaken. Some people simply enjoy breaking taboos, it can be healthy and playful.
Point is even with context you’re still wrong.
But anyway, that hardly matters - yes, I am indeed dead wrong in the made up argument you're having about the thing no-one said.
No reason why someone might think your comment was connected to OP’s comment. Nope none at all. Nicely done.
I'd like to take responsibility for your incorrect reading of my comments, but it would unfortunately make no sense.
I implore you to take a break from the insinuations and instead quote directly any part of any of my comments that shows me saying what you believed me to be saying. You won't be able to, because it simply didn't happen.
The word cunt has radically different patterns of use in the USA vs in UK/AUS/IE/NZ. More cultural knowledge is useful and good. It's perfectly plausible that OP was unaware of that fact, and I therefore thought it could be useful knowledge, for OP and anyone else, regardless of the original anecdote, but possibly related to the original anecdote. That's for OP to decide, I don't know the details.
Is that clearer now for you?
I never said you didn't. I said that you were misreading me. We could speculate as to what could have caused such a poor reading of such a simple point, but there are so many juicy possibilities, it's hard to pick.
> you immediately start to lash out
This is upside down - you immediately got snotty when I explained that the point you first made was in no way relevant to what I was saying.
I, on the other hand, accorded you far more patience than your low-effort misreading warranted. I attempted repeatedly to explain where you were confused, only indulging fully in riling you up (with great success, apparently) at the very end there.
And to be frank I didn't feel like I was "lashing out", as I didn't feel sincerely emotionally involved to begin with. Your original argument was laughable, and the way you immediately switched to sniping then came as no surprise.
What has happened is you jumped in with some irrelevant anecdotes, and then refused to back down when it was pointed out, and instead chose to invent a fantasy scenario where I'm making a point that I at no stage make. I've asked you to quote the moment where I say anything more than what I've now repeatedly explained to you - and you won't do it.
So no, as much as it would please you to imagine it to be true, this:
> it was pointed out how stupid what you wrote was
Has not occurred, except in the fantasy argument in your head. I don't mean that something has been pointed out and I disagree, I mean that precisely nothing has been pointed out, you've made no response, instead maintaining I'm making a point I never did.
Outside of your fantasy, then, on the off-chance that you want to step back into reality, I've made the following point, which I invite you to actually respond to instead of getting so terribly worked up: The word "cunt" is used very differently in the US than in various other parts of the Anglosphere, including but not limited to Ireland, England, Scotland, and Australia.
None of that means Matt Trout was using the word in a friendly fashion, and none of that means that the OP in this case wasn't being poorly treated by Mr. Trout.
It doesn't mean that there can't be nuance and variation in those regions of the Anglosphere I mentioned, either. For example, if you personally don't use it much, that would be - for the purposes of this point - of no relevance. Your previous monarch Queen Elizabeth probably didn't use it much either, and that, also, is of no relevance.
> No wonder you’re on a throwaway account tbh.
The real wonder is how someone on a non-throwaway account can utter such inanities and remain so unabashedly foolhardy about it.
> act like a gigantic cunt
You must have really had a hard time in the O-levels to have taken my comment so badly, lashing out with profanities and everything. My oh my. Where's that British decency and propriety the world knows so well?
And what would Matt Trout say, I wonder!
I spent over a decade in #perl on freenode/libera and saw so many abusive events that I eventually got tired of hanging out there, mostly due to him but in part also due to a handful of others displaying similar behavior. All the same I was always grateful for how tirelessly he spent so much of his personal time providing help, and I'm sad to learn of his passing.
I didn't much enjoy it when I was at the other end of it though, and sometimes he went too far. "Try to understand why the person doesn't understand" wasn't something he did enough -- sometimes the person doesn't know the right questions to ask, they just know that their thing doesn't work.
As a helper, it's hard to find the right balance, and I think the most important thing is that if you're getting emotional about it, step away and let someone else take the question. (I at least have been getting better at this over time.)
That makes sense if they're just visiting the channel sometimes. But I'm guessing they saw themselves as somewhat responsible for the community and quality of discussion in the channel, and then just walking away isn't really a solution.