starless @starless@pixie.town

@jrwr aaaa! You made hat-chan, right? Nice to find you online! Excited to see hat bridge!

@vortex_egg I think a lot of this weirdness is predominantly online, though?

Like, there's a looooong history of appropriation and occult stuff. You cannot learn in this space without reconciling that at least a little bit. There's been some really great content at local pagan events coming from speakers from various cultural backgrounds and helping to mend fences.

I think some of the heart of the issue is that online communities feel cohesive, but there's no real way to get a good feel for how respected someone is, only how many 'follows' they have, which is usually more related to activity than anything else. You get a bunch of relative newbies in the same place and a strange 'averaging out' happens. If a relative expert moves in, no one can tell, basically?

It feels like statements like 'its unethical to learn magic from a poc if you're white' come from a place of wanting to respect sacred secrets, but it's just wildly misguided. It's a 'compromise' kind of idea that let racists and well-intentioned liberals co-exist and I find that super troubling.

Thankfully, I haven't seen anything like that in our local community, but stuff like this just underscores the importance of *having* a local pagan community.

@heartles@egirls.gay I uh.. That's about 2,500 lines, right?

That's big and concerning, especially without more context... But C++ can also be kinda chonky. I still have nightmares about the repo full of 500kb files I used to work on. Everyone acted like it was totally normal?? There was no documentation standard and it was just really unpleasant.

Maybe the language or the culture around this language just kind of encourages this sort of behavior? Like 'if it doesn't impact the runtime, it's completely without value'? I don't know. That sounds awful, though, and I hope you don't get handed a file like that.

@crazypedia I'm glad this is a useful strategy for you. I think this is how people are supposed to banish imposter syndrome. The connection between others noting good work and imposter syndrome shutting up cannot be more direct, in my mind.

It is also absolutely absurd how synonymous being a woman in tech and dealing with imposter syndrome is. I see it at almost every gender minority event I attend, and I assume it's the same way for other folks with minority experiences, too.

So uh, congratulations to you. Next step, go tell other people they're right, too. Especially if they're a little different from you. :)