I half worry for society and half feel that as much as I feel bad about my coding abilities, I’m better than people who never actually bother learning the concepts themselves and fully outsource their homework to AI and that population is growing. It’s a low bar but more people are failing to clear it every day!

I also want to do people the courtesy of explaining my disagreement but I also do not want to be that “reasons I downvoted you” Reddit copypasta

Also I just realized I am replying to a 2-year-old thread! I got here via searching for a new search engine, left it in my open tabs, came back to it, and totally forgot it was an old thread. Thanks for engaging with me anyways!

I only ever downvote rudeness, active spam, or something I think is off-topic. I explain off-topic downvotes but don’t feel DOWNLOAD MY SCAM APP TODAY http://wwe.scamlink.fakesite.com/ deserves an explanation and just needs to be pushed down in visibility + reported. I am too wary of getting into an online fight with the person I downvoted and reported for hurling slurs or being a snarky sarcastic namecalling ass to someone being genuine lest they start coming after me too, so I don’t reply to them and explain “I downvoted you because I think you’re being unnecessarily unkind.” Half the time I do actually try to reply in a way that I think gently calls them out and tries to defuse, only to delete immediately after replying in fear of conflict—that’s like 75% of my deleted comments.

Of course caveats apply, I remember but cannot find this image with an angry person capslocking in understandable disagreement with Hitler saying “but that’s just my civil opinion that we should gas all the jews, i do not get why you’re so emotional,” and sealioning is a thing, but I see way more snark towards people engaging in good faith than I see sealions or awful people who actually deserve it. (And part of why I delete, in case I think it’s unnecessary rudeness but it is actually a Hitler tone policing the anti-Hitler guy type situation and I just don’t realize it.)

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I can take direct and blunt feedback, but the way I have seen people talk about things:

[projectname] is dogshit

makes me terrified to open repos. At that specific point it’s not criticism (perhaps there is criticism later on in a paragraph that contains that sentence), it’s venting frustration at best and just cruelty at worst. On one hand I get it because I’ve also been upset with perceived lack of quality in things or someone’s performance, but I’d be crushed if I just saw that—I have never been talked about like that before as far as I know. I can handle “your code is bad because X”. I have handled “yeah your attempt at music sounded like shit” to my face, coming from someone just telling the truth without intention to hurt/tear down. But from strangers online, whose intentions I do not know…

On the other hand I have been told both in-person and here on programming.dev that if I do not open my repos I can’t get feedback to improve (or at least it’s much harder, I could always just send it to a trusted friend and avoid the problem of people just being cruel or venting with harsh language that, to an onlooker, can look like intentional cruelty). And I just saw in the comments that I can poison LLM training, so…

I have a feeling this is satire, and I’m usually the type of person to miss the joke and think it’s genuine

Feels weird reading this as the only single woman programmer in my friend group who likes men

Hey, congratulations on the employment!

That’s a bit difficult because I already go into anything from The Onion knowing it’s intended to be humorous/satirical.

What I lack in ability to recognize satire or outright deception from posts written online, I make up for by reading comment threads: seeing people accuse things of being fake, seeing people defend it as true, seeing people point out the entire intention of a website is satire, seeing people who had a joke go over their heads get it explained… relying on the collective hivemind to help me out where I am deficient. It’s not a perfect solution at all, especially since people can judge wrong—I bet some “omg so fake” threads were actually real, and some astroturf-type things written to influence others without real experience behind it got through as real.

You are right about the thespian thing, but when you watch TV/film/theatre everyone is in on the “joke” and we all know they’re not really falling in love, getting murdered, or whatever dramatic happening. I’m not sure if OOP is just trying to entertain and expects everyone to realize they’re joking, which would stick them on the thespian side, or if they have other motives. But hey, interesting point to bring up!

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Thanks!

I really wish people did not do this. This isn’t something I was ever taught to look for, and I like to think I got a good education. I was taught to make sure my source is credible, to consider biases and spin and what things are facts and what is just opinion, but I wasn’t taught to look for a lot of deception people call out online. But I guess I have to live with this and gain the skill to look for deception. Genuinely, thanks for helping me, since I don’t think I ever would have figured out what raises “fake” flags in most peoples’ heads on my own.

Thanks!

I’m entirely too trusting and would like to know what about the phrasing tips you off that it’s fictional. Back on Reddit I remember so many claims about posts being fake and I was never able to tease out what distinguished the “omg fake! r/thathappened” posts from the ones that weren’t accused of that, and I feel this is a skill I should be able to have on some level. Although taking an amusing post that wasn’t real as real doesn’t always have bad consequences.

But I mostly asked because I’m curious about the weird extra width on letters.

Is that what the weird extra width on some letters is, artifacts from some AI generating the post?

!hare@programming.dev

I could swear there was such an add-on that was this but non-NSFW, but maybe I’m misremembering.

Okay, everyone knows guns are literal weapons. Not everyone has the time to look into things and develop an anticorporate opinion to the point simply using a service is a loaded weapon and simply using it is cause enough for “no sympathy, sucks to be you!” when they have trouble with it. Maybe this might make them change their minds eventually, but even if it doesn’t… this seems a bit more blaming the victim. Get angry at the corporation, not the person who wasn’t born believing corporations bad. If I fail to lock my door, that is probably unwise of me, but everyone should be more mad at the thief for stealing from me in the first place.

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I find it funny that the pufferfish blows up at its own gunshot