/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~\

Title: Poisoning the Well (Re:tomasino)
Date: 2019-12-16

|~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~|

tomasino recently wrote a phlog post
titled "poisoning the well"[0], in
regards to people will boycott or
attack a work or company over a single
person or small group.

In my view, it's one of the most horrid
things I see today on social media. The
idea of one person "ruining" an entire
work for something they do ---often
completely unrelated to said work 
itself---is like saying that one person
on a distro's maintainer team can ruin
the entire distro. Yeah, someone high
up can be a right sunnva****, but what
about the rest of the people behind it?

In regards to tt-rss, it's GPL code.
Yes, the guy behind it seems to be
a nazi of some regards (the tt-rss
communty "bad topics" forum /is/ called
"gas chamber"), but the community can
easily make a fork of it and call it
something else, adding requested
features and porting patches from the
"original" stream as needed. Throw it
up on Gitlab or Github or something,
and you're away from the bad guy.

(Aside: If you do this, I recommend the
name "ity-bitty-rss", but that's me. If
I had the skill to do so, I'd do it
myself, but I don't.)

With Chik-fil-a, let me mention this:
There are franchise locations which
employ LGBTQA+ to spite corporate, and
some whom have supported LGBTQA+ causes
in some form, despite the views of the
higher management. This mentality of
"poisoning the well" caused one of my
spouses to boycott CFA out of peer
pressure. Yes, he's an adult, but even
adults can be pressuered by others,
especially in the age of social media
and callout/cancel culture.

But overall, I want to say this:
Act according to your beliefs, but also
be aware of the consequences of those
actions. You may end up doing more harm
than good. Especially when taking those
actions on social media. You can, in
one single tweet/toot/txt, ruin the
days of countless people who aren't
even your target. Do you really want to
hurt people who've done nothing wrong?

We live in a time of weaponized words
and ideals. Stay safe out there.

\~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~/

[0]: gopher://gopher.black/1/phlog/20191216-poisoning-the-well