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You're a hacker when a hacker calls you a hacker. All that "being able to self-identify" is narcissism.

I was about to write 3 paragraphs, but you summed up my thoughts in a concise way :-)

I would say that when the community calls you a hacker, then you are hacker. It's a title that others would want to give you and doesn't really mean anything other than the fact that you're generally good with computers.

Persuading this or any other title, although we do it all the time, it's stupid.

ps. The first guy that comes to mind, when I hear the word, is Linus Torvalds.

> You're a hacker when a hacker calls you a hacker. All that "being able to self-identify" is narcissism.

Hackers have called me a hacker, therefore I'm a hacker. I now declare that every human being is a hacker if they self-identify as one.

This has the problem of "where does the first hacker come from?" Then I realized the first hacker is almost certainly Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first computer program for Babbage's Analytical Engine.

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