New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
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@iris_meredith@mastodon.social I don't know that I exactly enjoyed reading this. I most certainly felt it though. I'm lucky enough to feel generally ok in my body, but working in tech certainly creates a feeling that's reminiscent of what you describe.
I spent a good chubk of my adult life in the "disregard for the body" camp, though I did at least bathe regularly. But the concept of purely identifying yourself with your work is frighteningly familliar to me. 10-12 hour workdays where you do what you do without thinking too much about the consequences of it for society or yourself hits a little bittoo hard.
Breaking away from that is difficult. Most tech (especially the one that allows you to earn a living) exists within a hypercapitalistic environment. It felt hypercapitalistic 10 years ago, but damn qe've gone so much further since then.
To top that off you have multiple literal fascist takeovers around the world, which you need to basically ignore. That is for those of us lucky enough to not need to actively colavorate with and aid said takeovers as part of our job. I can't imagine (and hope I never have to) what it's like to have to choose between being employed and not working for neonazi cooks.@iris_meredith@mastodon.social to be honest, I'm alao not sure how good we techies generally are, to the extent that "techies" can even mean anything beyond "knows how to make compiter go beep-boop".
People in the replies already mentioned this sort of " reactive masculinity" that came from the nerds and geeks ending up on top after it turned out computers can make you money and you can use them.to control people.
When you're ostracized for something you are you could take that trait and turn it into a badge of honor. In theory that's maybe even a healthy way to respond to bullies. But also, if you end up becoming powerful (even mildly, by virtue of something stupid like being part of a made up mew "techie cast") and keep latching on to that trait as ypur singular badge of honor, you become what you described. The "person that's in tech". Not even a " person who codes", or "person who makes hardware", " person who likes math" or whatever. Just a "person in tech". -
@iris_meredith@mastodon.social to be honest, I'm alao not sure how good we techies generally are, to the extent that "techies" can even mean anything beyond "knows how to make compiter go beep-boop".
People in the replies already mentioned this sort of " reactive masculinity" that came from the nerds and geeks ending up on top after it turned out computers can make you money and you can use them.to control people.
When you're ostracized for something you are you could take that trait and turn it into a badge of honor. In theory that's maybe even a healthy way to respond to bullies. But also, if you end up becoming powerful (even mildly, by virtue of something stupid like being part of a made up mew "techie cast") and keep latching on to that trait as ypur singular badge of honor, you become what you described. The "person that's in tech". Not even a " person who codes", or "person who makes hardware", " person who likes math" or whatever. Just a "person in tech".@iris_meredith@mastodon.social maybe (and I apologize for now just going into a reply guy kind of train of thought mode here) that's the crux of it. Tech (capital T) isn't about the tech anymore. It got massively funded, it prooved it's a great tool to exert power and maintain control. That dragged in a bunch of people that only care about the power and control, certainly a lot of ego-driven people. The people who (at least used to) care about the tech (not Tech) are still mostly around. But they (we?) always desperately wanted to be accepted because they (we?) were weird geeks with little to no social circle. So what you described takes place, regardless of ypur motivation you "shut up and code" (sometimes you don't even code as much, depending on where within the wormforce ypu might have ended up), because ypu might have gone in it for the tech, but now that you're part of Tech, everyone says that's a bog deal. You're in a great position for yourself and you need to push through and keep it, regardless of what your motivation might have been initially.
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith Wow, this one makes me so glad that I wound up dipping out of programming into being an academic sysadmin, and on top of that I always had outside interests, even if a bunch of them were stereotypical nerd ones. The "sucked into programming work" could have been an alternate me where I wound up being pressured to work long hours and those outside things dropped away.
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith heh just today I posted re: "vulnerable among educated and professional people to being taken in by propaganda" (but without making the distinction between software and other engineering)
Val Packett 🧉 (@valpackett@treehouse.systems)
Every time a respected engineer falls into full on A1 boosterism I'm reminded of that time a philosophy professor in university spoke about how cult recruiters go to technical schools and not humanities ones because the technical students are the ones much more likely to rationalize the cult stuff pushed onto them and accept it…
Treehouse Mastodon (social.treehouse.systems)
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith
This is utterly fascinating. -
R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith I think you're onto something here, but I disagree with a basic premise: there's nothing wrong with simply not liking or enjoying food, or sex, or whichever other bodily experiences you pick. (but then I don't consider myself human and take pride in it, so make of that what you will...)
edit: I wrote an extended reply here.
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@iris_meredith I think you're onto something here, but I disagree with a basic premise: there's nothing wrong with simply not liking or enjoying food, or sex, or whichever other bodily experiences you pick. (but then I don't consider myself human and take pride in it, so make of that what you will...)
edit: I wrote an extended reply here.
@whitequark I've given a bit of a longer response myself: in short, I think you're entirely correct on that point and for the fedi audience, it's a somewhat sloppy way of writing. The issue is that writing "disordered relationship with desire" in the abstract lands well with the Bluesky philosophy crowd, but most people find it a bit incomprehensible.
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@whitequark I've given a bit of a longer response myself: in short, I think you're entirely correct on that point and for the fedi audience, it's a somewhat sloppy way of writing. The issue is that writing "disordered relationship with desire" in the abstract lands well with the Bluesky philosophy crowd, but most people find it a bit incomprehensible.
@iris_meredith yeah, that makes perfect sense.
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Tangentially, thinking there might be some intersection here with Cyberlyra's discussion of the notion, absent in Usian language, of a "keener":
Cyberlyra (@cyberlyra@hachyderm.io)
I have lived in the US for 23 years. This week I used the word "keener" at a meeting and someone interrupted me to ask what that was. I explained it's a Canadian word for someone who's just earnestly enthusiastic, an eager beaver, selflessly just excited about learning stuff and participating. I alwasy thought it was just something we have a cooler word for that they don't -- like toque for beanie, or parkade for 'multi-story parking garage', or garburator for in-sink disposal unit (I mean, come on). But this week I realized--there is no equivalent in the US, for keeners. It's like that thought-language concept about linguistic relativity (no word for orange= can't see orange) except the other way around (no word for it because it is impossible). There is no word for keener in America because you can't be a keener in America. Love learning? You have to display it so you get the top grades and go to Yale and make lots of money as a lawyer. Work hard? Not because you love it but because you don't know any other way to be. Expert about something? You gotta hustle and monetize with YouTube videos else you're not an expert and also you can't afford to send your kids to college. Love music, or dancing? you have to do it eight times a week for a trillion dollars or you can't do it at all. Having elementary school aged children in the US has been eye-opening. It is Lord of the Flies in the classroom and on the playground. Children learn it's a hierarchy, and it's better to be on top, whatever that takes. Seven year olds on investment apps. Constant culture cramming. Playground games where they literally hit each other with sticks. Grabbing others' toys while some teacher you don't pay attention to says something useless about 'sharing' and you eventually turn that into 'an economy.' (1/2)
Hachyderm.io (hachyderm.io)
To wit, doing something for the joy of it, with no other motive, does not compute. Dysphoria as being what cannot be named, let alone bodily embraced.
I was thinking about this post while reading as well. I feel like both situations are rooted in the death spiral of capitalism. in the u.s. we are taught the only thing that matters is making as much money as possible. we're being raised, and raising, people to only care about their financial status. this does not leave room for self improvement and/or self discovery. disassociation is the inevitable coping mechanism and that is the path to madness and cruelty.
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith As a former infrastructure engineer who worked in varying degrees of proximity to software developers, this rings painfully true.
Having done that while unaware that I was trans makes it all the more relatable (and painful).
That crack about MongoDB being webscale, though...
The mentality is far from new, though. From Neuromancer (1984): "the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh." It seems unlikely that Gibson made that up out of whole cloth, however ignorant he personally was with regard to computers.
Seeing what's now coming to fruition after several decades, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that deliberately inducing this kind of dysphoria has been an intentional strategy. It would fit as a way of disrupting tendencies to organise and demand more control, and it only needs to be demonstrated by a few high-profile examples in order to be adopted by the rest of the management herd.
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith this is a pleasant and relatable post, thanks for writing it!
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New post, and this one's definitely one of my weirder ones: it's about how most of the tech industry shows symptoms of something that looks like gender dysphoria.
Carbon Dysphoria | deadSimpleTech
And now the punchline: this depersonalisation, the weird relationship to their bodily existence, inability to enjoy things and an internal void that people constantly try and fill with what they're told they should want... all of these things are very similar to the experience of gender dysphoria.
deadSimpleTech (deadsimpletech.com)
@iris_meredith
I agree that IT industry demands we make things that suck, I feel the pain.However
You say that "Precision, diligence, carefully working through a dull task and making sure that things are going to work in all cases" are feminine skills.
But aren't those same skills needed in engineering disciplines?
Ok, maybe real engneering disciplines don't have this pressure for masculinity. But then shouldn't that lead to more women becoming aerospace, civil, structural, etc. engineers? -
R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
