Is UNIX dead? The authors comment

February 5, 2019 3:18 PM

The UNIX is dead post on Metafilter had two links, a talk by Benno Rice on "The Tragedy of systemd" and a meditation on "contempt culture" by Aurynn Shaw. Both of them showed up in the comments (2, 1). It's a good thread.

(Since I'm here anyway, you know what would make a nice pony? The ability to flag a post with "Named person sighting", or "MeFi's own", or something like that.)

posted by RedOrGreen to MetaFilter-Related at 3:18 PM (5 comments total)

Thanks for the pointer back to the post - I saw it early on, very much enjoyed Benno’s talk and Aurynn’s thoughtful post, but only saw the first couple of comments. Some further good discussion there, and a useful place to point the next person who complains about systemd to me.
posted by dttocs at 8:34 PM on February 5, 2019

Neat!
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:54 PM on February 5, 2019

I wish they had engaged with the commenters a little more. Aurynn made two comments and Benno (jeamland ) offered to entertain questions, but the conversation flared and died before there was much back-and-forth. Still, nice to see them there!

Which makes me wonder: should we be making an effort to reach out to people whose stuff we link to on MetaFilter, in case they want to reply? I don't often see the subjects of FPPs show up, but when they do it's usually a pretty good reception.

(I am also trying to pin down a feeling I have that the notion of "contempt culture" has something to do with emotional labor: they're both related to the internal-prejudices-then-external-conversations where someone denigrates or ignores a thing they don't value, and which declines or disappears with emotional/professional maturity. Still trying to suss it out though.)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:32 AM on February 6, 2019

Which makes me wonder: should we be making an effort to reach out to people whose stuff we link to on MetaFilter, in case they want to reply? I don't often see the subjects of FPPs show up, but when they do it's usually a pretty good reception.

I reached out over instagram to the couple hiking the AT with their kid from this FPP. Their response was basically, "Why should we pay $5 to have people tell us we're shitty parents? We can get plenty of that for free elsewhere?"

I don't think it falls neatly into contempt culture idea, but metafilter can sometimes default to You're Doing It Wrong instead of meeting people where they're at.
posted by peeedro at 11:44 AM on February 6, 2019 [8 favorites]

Which makes me wonder: should we be making an effort to reach out to people whose stuff we link to on MetaFilter, in case they want to reply? I don't often see the subjects of FPPs show up, but when they do it's usually a pretty good reception.

Hey That's Me! is the UnOfMeFiWiki logging of such appearances, and clearly in need of updating (latest update from 2017! And no one in 2016?), logs these appearances, and sometimes you can find the invites mentioned in the relevant MeTas. Sometimes they mention how they found the thread (often from inbound link logs).

I've invited a few folks, and some have been surprise appearances in threads I've made. They don't generally do more on the site than reply in the one thread, sometimes one comment, sometimes sticking around to keep replying. Poking through a few of those folks, it looks like continued participation is very rare, but it's probably not a terrible thing to do outreach to "content creators" ;).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:23 AM on February 7, 2019