But a guy who has actually lost people's money, put them at risk of reprisal from drug dealers, helped people (potentially young people) commit major crimes, enabled future addicts, and potentially is lying about the security flaw to steal all this money while spouting hypocritical contradictory statements...is a fucking hero.
Bravo! You win the ultimate hypocrite award of the century!
Zed, I want to make myself clear, here: I have absolutely nothing to say whatsoever about whatever substantive claims you might be making. I'm just telling you to stop being a asshole about it.
But fuck it, I told you pretty much the exact same thing[1] almost 3 years ago, and you haven't changed since then. It's not your message that turns people off, it's your delivery. I still suspect it's a calculated ploy for pageviews and name recognition.
For what it's worth, this is Responding to Tone, or DH2[#]
FTA: So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct? Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect somewhere, say where.
> I'm just calling him out for being a jackass.
This is actually DH0, Name Calling.
I'm criticizing the behaviour, not the person. If you can't call out poor behaviour, you can't expect civil communication.
What you're doing is kidding yourself. You already know that zed shaw, being zed shaw, could care less about what the fun police has to say about the way he expresses himself.
> If you can't call out poor behaviour, you can't expect civil communication.
This news forum provides a mechanism that allows users to collectively rank posts by voting on them. Zed's comment on this article happens to be the top ranked one. Respectfully, I would submit that the majority of people who have seen it value the information content of his post more than they are offended by the way that he delivered it.
Could he have expressed himself in a more PG13 fashion? Sure he could have. Could he have made his point more politely? I don't think anyone would argue against that. But that's not Zed.
Frankly, I think it's a bit presumptuous of you to appoint yourself the civility police and harass people for the way they say things without actually engaging with what they are trying to say. Luckily for us, Zed doesn't actually care what you think. But I don't believe that it is either constructive or in the spirit of this venue to encourage an environment that attacks people for how they say things, rather than what they say. I think that the losses from such an overly sensitive environment, given the diverse range of cultures and personalities this board attracts, would far outweigh the gains.
>I think it's a bit presumptuous of you to appoint yourself the civility police
I've done no such thing. By claiming I'm not allowed to criticize someone's behaviour, you're doing the exact same thing you're condemning me for.
>and harass people for the way they say things
Telling someone to stop being an asshole when they're being an asshole isn't harassment by any reasonable definition of the word.
>without actually engaging with what they are trying to say.
I don't care what he's trying to say, and I'm explicitly not engaging in that facet of the discussion. If somebody was standing on the street corner grabbing passerby and shaking them while shouting, "don't take on more debt than you can pay!", I'd tell them to stop being an asshole, too.
> I don't believe that it is either constructive or in the spirit of this venue to encourage an environment that attacks people for how they say things, rather than what they say.
You're quite simply wrong. Look at any of the low-value, one-line comments that get downvoted to oblivion for saying something along the lines of, "this sucks". You can say, "this sucks" in a way that adds value, and you can say it in a way that detracts value. Saying, "this sucks because of xyz" is simply more valuable than saying "this sucks because of xyz and you're all a bunch of morons for disagreeing".
What I am criticizing you for is failing to understand that, at least in this specific case, your sensitivities do not in fact align with those of the community. And also for name calling someone who has contributed more to the hacker community in this past year than you have in your life.
Zed Shaw's comment is at the top of this thread. That is data, that you cannot continue to ignore while still claiming to speak for the community. Hacker News has a very effective system for burying comments that the community deems offensive and inappropriate. If the community was truly offended, then this post would be buried, or dead, not at the top.
> Telling someone to stop being an asshole when they're being an asshole isn't harassment by any reasonable definition of the word.
You mentioned upthread that this is not the first time you have had this discussion with Zed. And you continue to emphasize that you are not interested in what he says, but just criticizing him for how he says it. How many times do you have to repeat the same conversation for it to constitute harassment? How many self-righteously morally outraged people like you do you following him around and littering his threads with meaningless ad hominem criticism think it will take before he decides it's not worth it and just leaves? Do you really think Hacker News would be a better place without Zed Shaw?
> If somebody was standing on the street corner grabbing passerby and shaking them while shouting, "don't take on more debt than you can pay!", I'd tell them to stop being an asshole, too.
What I'm trying to explain to you is that, in this case, you're the person on the street corner, Zed is the passerby, and I still think it would be rude to call you an asshole, though I will continue to point out that if your attempts are genuinely in an effort to better our community, it would be worth carefully considering whether they are in fact in the community's best interest.
My tone is simply a reaction to the tone of arrogance and superiority most objectivists and commenters take. If you don't want to be ridiculed, then don't write like a arrogant douchebag with zero self-awareness. Those kinds of people are due a large dose of insulting and "tone".
> You can make the same argument without being an ass about it.
Your reply:
> It's funny how me pointing out the stupidity and bullshit of a group of criminals makes me an asshole...
You completely missed their point, how you can't see that is beyond me.
Try defending against the accusation itself instead of taking the stance that the accusation is always automatically invalid.
I was attempting to show that his response was a strawman.
After further reading I'm guessing his entire online personality is an act though so the topic seems to be worthless discussing.
No, being an asshole while calling something bullshit is being an asshole. A ^ B |- A. You can say something's bullshit without ridiculing people. Zed's problem isn't that he says unpopular things, it's that he seems to try to be as rude as possible in saying them.
Saying something's bullshit isn't necessarily rude. Saying something's bullshit and anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot|hypocrite|moron|asshole is.
The truth of that statement still depends on what the issue is. There are some beliefs you really do have to be stupid or disingenuous to espouse.
BTW - Love your L?THW books. Thanks