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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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
