Nuts to this.

Today a friend pinged me on a chat channel and asked if I had heard about a mutual friend of ours. The way their message was phrased I assumed something bad had happened and replied in kind. “No, I haven’t. Is he okay?” In response, he told me about an Internet social-post fight and provided links to the action.

“He said this”, hyperlink—“They replied”, hyperlink—and so on. Still not understanding who got offended by what, I clicked through, read a few lines of a message or two, and stopped. Somebody posted a thing, someone wrote a tone-deaf reply, and thousands of people were offended or angered and made it known in the comments. One aggravated man in particular sent out an entire email newsletter calling out the offender to shame them as publicly as you can with a subscriber-only publication anyway.

Uninterested in following the thread any further, I wrote back to my friend in the chat channel, “Ah, this reminds me of the Twitter fights ten years ago between UX people. Nothing has changed.” Except this all took place on LinkedIn which, let's be honest, has turned into its own toxic pit.

“This feels different. To me at least,” they replied.

“It only feels different because more race, gender, etc. have been brought into these fights,” I said, “I look at the players and they’ve been doing this for years.” Except that as the year has gone on, everyone is wearing everything on their sleeve which makes it so incredibly easy to offend or be offended. Intentionally or not.

I breathed a heavy sigh and pushed away from the computer, tired and suddenly feeling worn out. I don’t need this shit and I certainly don’t want it. For all the talk in the tech industry about developing and practicing empathy for others, I don’t see much evidence of it in practice at large.

Years ago a well-known designer and community expert left the industry to pursue farming. Though I’m sure they still did some tech work they redirected their focus and life intent on plants and animals. At the time it seemed like a curious life decision. Now, I’m starting to think they were so far ahead of all of us. A month ago I came across a hazelnut farm in Oregon—a turnkey operation! If I have to be around nuts in this world, it may as well be the kind I like.