There is a type of white guy who has genuinely convinced themselves that the way they engage is not shitty. Like they come at you sideways, but when you respond negatively they are legit confused about the clapback. No sense of self awareness about how they communicate.
I mean we all can stand a little more self reflection. I'm not judging people for being early in their journey of gaining self-awareness. My issue is when they hit you with "calm discussion" or "let's keep it civil" when they came looking for me on some bullshit from the jump.
It illustrated so directly how they live in a world that is supposed to bend around them. They don't have to take responsibility for how they behave. We are supposed to just absorb it and make it okay by choosing not to get upset. It's trash.
I'm tired of it. It's the quickest way to get on my bad side. If your hobby is roaming the internet giving people your unsolicited opinion about their behavior, you're not about "calm discussion". Just own the fact that you're choosing to be obnoxious.
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I'm getting serious about finding a new home online. Nothing else has been particularly appealing to me so far.
I can post my own bullshit anywhere. And I'm not all that concerned with who shows up to follow it. I do want more community though. I wanna be where people are. People express themselves on Twitter in a specific way that I've found gives me energy and inspiration.
I have a lot of feelings about being labeled gifted as a child. My story feels a little different though. I never wanted gold stars, and I still don’t care about “accomplishments” the way other people do. This came up recently in a way that I’m still processing.
I often tell people that I identify with Gen-X more than millennial. (Even though people insist on putting me the latter category based on my birth date). For me it’s the messages I internalized growing up. Gen-Xers were “slackers”. Not living up to their potential. That’s me.
Then @operaqueenie hit me with a bomb not too long ago. I used to try to identify as a “loner”. A person who was reluctant to lead but also resistant to being a follower. But loner didn’t feel right either. Instead my wife says that I insist on personal agency above all else.
I keep hearing people say this. And I believe it. But maybe I just don't use Google the way other people do. It seems fine to me. What kind of searches are bad?
I also wonder if some people are having very different experiences depending on their personal algorithm. Google has been learning about how I search, and what I'm looking for, for a long time now. Maybe it's just dialed in for me?
It never felt like magic to me. Nor do I want it to be. I still look at the results and use my judgment to decide if they're any good. That's not meant to sound judgmental. But expecting tech to feel like magic can only lead to disappointment.
I'm glad to see you're engaging with the material. Even if it hasn't quite hit home yet. We don't have a lot of practice with actually examining Whiteness. It can feel uncomfortable at first. I'm happy to answer any questions you have as long as they're honest and not asinine.
The infographic in the OP requires context. We shouldn't get stuck in simplistic ways of looking at this. The idea isn't "only white people have these traits". The idea is "Whiteness uses these traits to create a culture around their own superiority".
I used to work in the same office with this white woman who is thinking "I wish we could go back to vigilante groups that could just go around hanging people."
If you can't be bothered to read the screenshots, this is the highlight: She's scared. As a white woman, she's scared all the time. And instead of examining where that comes from, she wants there to be institutions dedicated to roaming around doing violence on her behalf.
We didn't work closely together. I can't say anything about what kind of person she was. I try to stay out of white women's way at work. Just as a rule for survival. I have so many stories of how I've broken that rule and regretted it.
Small personal life update. Since being laid off, I've been dusting off technical skills and spending more time typing. It has been a journey of finding out how long I can be at the computer each day.
I was having a hard time as a remote-only manager. The sheer amount of hours staring at zoom screen was too much for me. But I used to be able to of uninterrupted time coding. I enjoyed it a lot too.
I've realized a few things during this journey though. I wouldn't actually spend all my time with hands on keyboard. Coding for me included all of activities around thinking, planning, and researching as well as actually producing the code.