"I don't trust anyone who doesn't drink" is a politically incorrect but still pretty common sentiment.
Edit: I think I'm getting some "shoot the messenger" downvotes. Whether or not you agree with the statement, I maintain that a lot of people feel this way.
> I go to IT/comp-sci conferences and often meet people who don't drink, ever. These people won't have a single glass of wine or beer. I had to ask myself why. If someone told me they used to be an alcoholic and completely quit alcohol, I'd have nothing but respect, but this is not what these people are about.
> They'll claim they don't like the effects of alcohol, but the truth is they think drinking is unprofessional. They're afraid of losing control, of looking foolish. To me, this symbolizes conservatism. These are people who are not adventurous. They won't try some unknown dish on the restaurant menu, they won't want to go to a restaurant from a culture they're unfamiliar with. They might think shellfish are disgusting and weird. They'll want to go to some chain restaurant and have a steak with fries.
> I don't like these people. Why? Because they're unadventurous people, who have most likely never tried pot even once in their life. They don't like new ideas. They're afraid that one drink will make their life deviate ever so slightly from the usual boring predictability they crave. If you present them with some new idea, they'll give you nothing but doubt, a long list of reasons why your idea is risky and might not work, and thus isn't worth trying. You shouldn't be developing your own programming language, Java does everything you need, it's Turing Complete. Fuck these people.
I'm not a steak-and-fries person at all (or even a sandwich-and-salad or rice-and-veggie person, which I've internalized as my own safe defaults); I go out and have unfamiliar dishes quite often. If I want to do something amazing and interesting I visit a new country or go on a 20km walk. And I've invented two programming languages as well :) However, I avoid alcohol specifically because it's just not something that I see myself needing in my life, and with the secondary goal of legitimizing nonconformism and pursuit of one's own values in general. I actually see drinking as a more "boring" choice than not drinking.
I appreciate that you reposted the deleted comment to quell my curiosity and that you were considerate enough to not include the original authors username.
One of the big reasons I was curious about the content of the comment is that I have been thinking about comment karma and the utility of deleting comments lately. Comments like this make a strong case against being able to delete comments. In order for karma to be most effective it seems that it must not only quantify a user's positive contributions but also the user's negative contributions. If a user knows they can make potentially dumb/offensive comments and delete them before taking a karma hit they do not need to filter their thoughts before hitting submit. In my opinion clicking submit is an implicit statement that I stand by my comment and that it was submitted in good faith and is a sincere expression of my opinion.
I am not entirely sure what the purpose of delete is. If someone asks "what is the X of y?" and my response is factually incorrect the comment/answer will be downvoted. People that see my downvoted answer will know that it has been judged "unacceptable" by the HN community; so I do not think there is a reason to worry about spreading false information. If the question is not about a factual matter and my opinion is judged unacceptable by the HN community so be it. I made my comment with the best of intentions and should stand by what I said in the comment.
One reason I find the delete, or edit useful is, sometimes I'll type up a comment come back a while later, read it, hit post without really thinking, and then go back and see the context, and realize I'm an idiot[0] and quickly edit or delete the comment before anyone else finds out.
It seems like you are saying that the utility of the delete function is that it allows a user (you, me and everyone else) to submit comments without thinking about the content and quality of the comment. What is wrong with increasing the incentive to do a "am I being a moron check" before hitting submit?
I don't drink. Why? If I drink I have terrible hangovers and can't function the next day. I go to the gym 3 times a week and on weekends I do rock climbing. I'm trying to get a job as a fulltime developer and that requires me to try get as much programming as I can in a single day. If I go out to drink and get myself wasted then I'm wasting my precious time. I got drunk a lot of time already and seriously can't imagine why would I want to do that instead of working on myself in my free time.
I mentioned it because I think there a lot of people who might agree with the statement but are self-aware enough to realize they shouldn't say it out loud.
it wasn't aimed at you but it's nearly always directly transcribable that way. i have a grudge against the term 'pc' -- i understand that it typically refers to an archetype of a ~hyper-offensible liberal that lives in seattle~ or something but it's nearly always invoked against people who have genuine reason to have grievances with the language and implications used. i won't go into detail because it frankly doesn't matter, but that is the case here with me.
I do not agree with the statement and I am curious what your point was when you added "I maintain a lot of people feel this way"? Racism is politically incorrect and also a common sentiment.
Would you downvote someone who said "racism is a common sentiment"? If you said that and were subsequently downvoted, would you still maintain that a lot of people feel that way? That's what I mean.
"I don't trust anyone who doesn't drink" is a politically incorrect but still a pretty common sentiment.
It is. It's one of those archaic masculinity expectations that hangs around. "Real men" are supposed to eat red meat, be promiscuous (until 30 or so), and be experienced with liquor. Men who don't enjoy getting hammered are seem as "off", unhealthy, or aloof.
We might hate that it is this way, but mainstream business culture (which has successfully colonized the Valley, making that ecosystem a Disneyfied farce of entrepreneurship having little to do wtih true technology) is still heavily invested in gender roles and "real men" nonsense. Being a nondrinker is a pretty serious professional handicap because, ultimately, people give professional favor (promotions, good projects) based on personal affinities that can be hacked with chemistry (specifically, ethanol) but rarely (certainly not reliably) with hard work.
This is really interesting to me, the idea that the valley is infested with typical alpha male pursuits. The popular concept is a skinny jean wearing hipster tapping away at a coffee shop. They may get hammered on craft beer but I have never heard that associated with proving masculinity.
Maybe that was true in some distant past, but in my time in the startup world (about 16 years) it's never really been true. It's actually the thing I think Mike Judge has really nailed in "Silicone Valley" on HBO. He tells the story from the perspective of a bunch of nerds being thrust into the broader culture of the Valley. The culture of "drink ups" and beer on tap in the office.
The reality of the Valley has much more in common with my fraternity house in college than anything else really. That's not to say that the hardworking hacker doesn't exist. They absolutely do! They are the ones everyone else in the Valley is taking advantage of.
This is the second time I've heard someone use the noun-phrase "drink up" on Hacker News, and it puzzles me; it's not something anyone says up here in the PNW. What does it mean? Clearly there is drinking involved, but what is the context?
I've noticed that some 'nerds' can actually overdo alpha male things when opportunity arises. Perhaps this is analogous to a closeted gay person trying really hard to come across as straight (I know a few personally, and sometimes it pains me to watch this behavior), or the pick-up artist 'community'. I've been like that myself when I was younger.
(I'm not saying it's a bad thing; just something I've noticed)
It's not the watching of sports that's manly; it's expressing the sentiment that you think the professionals can do better and if you're actually mature enough not to do that, being able to provide some kind of sophisticated analysis of the action.
Note that in every case, it's actually a subtle matter of one-upsmanship. Eating redder or more meat. Sleeping with more or better-looking women. Drinking harder or larger quantities of liquor.
Writing more lines of code in a more obscure language.
I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas, but I'd venture to guess that you don't actually believe in the things you're attributing to other people.
You could find plenty of guys willing to defend sports on their own terms. I don't think, if you let them talk for a day, they'd come out with anything like what you're putting in their mouths. I do think the things they'd tell you about sports are plausible enough as the "real reasons" they're fans. In my (admittedly not deep) experience, analysis of the action is a big thing. Criticizing the performance might rise to the level of a minor phenomenon. People are perfectly happy enthusing over great things that their heroes have done.
Just because people use sports as a vector for expressing manliness doesn't mean they don't enjoy it. Drinking beer because it helps you fit in doesn't mean you don't enjoy drinking beer. You can always have more than one reason to do something.
A man might enjoy throwing around a football because of the visceral experience of a solid catch, the nostalgic recollection of doing it with his dad, the anticipation of doing it with his son in the future, the vicarious simulation of a quarterback he looks up to, the amorphous pleasure of exercising, and because he can throw it further than his buddy.
Actually, I agree with all of what you just listed. But no one watches sports because they can throw the television farther than their friends, no one watched chariot races then or watches NASCAR now because they drive better than their friends, and no one watched gladiators because they routinely trounced their friends in battles to the death. Sports aren't there to satisfy the urge to show that you're better within your group than the rest of the group. They're there to satisfy the urge to tribalism, to show that your group is better than other groups.
Not really. We're talking about two different motivations.
Yes. People from San Francisco want the 49ers to win, because they're representatives of a kind. But there's nothing particularly manhood-affirming in this experience. People don't want their team to win in order to feel more masculine; as you said, it's a tribalism thing. That's why sports-watching is accompanied by other activities, like exclusion, beer-drinking, steak-grilling, and so on.
The reason you watch sports to affirm your manhood is because you feel you know better. You could, in their shoes, stomp the other team into the ground. You could tell your team what to do and they'd do it and they'd win. This isn't tribalism; such people would happily switch sides in order to prove they could win from there, too.
Listen to the content of the conversation. A bunch of guys, sitting around, agreeing with each other on what they would have done instead. If their team loses, the tribally motivated will say, "Better luck next time." Those who are motivated by masculinity say, "Should have done it better." It's indistinct if their team wins; they have nothing to prove because they backed the right horse.
People usually don't watch sports to affirm their manhood. Activities for doing that tend to be active. But when they do, it's not about tribalism.
Nothing you've said relates to anything I've said, though. The complaint is over the judgment of sports-watching men that if you're not interested in sports (for the usual reasons), you're not a real man. That has nothing to do with whether, if you want to be reassured that you're macho enough, you go watch sports.
You're right that people give professional favor based on personal affinity, what I'm not sure you're right about is that it's so wrong to do so. If I don't like you, then it's likely that your direct reports will feel the same way, as will potential clients or partners, which is a risk to the business, so I'm not likely to choose you for a position that puts you in a position to interact with many people. Most high senior positions require a ton of soft skills, so you're probably going to hit a ceiling unless you prove that you have them. Making your manager and peers like and trust you is step 1; the best people go far beyond that very quickly.
Nobody ever promised that career progression would be based on coding chops, especially when each jump up the ladder means less time coding and more time people-hacking.
Likeability is neither transitive nor uniform across a population. It's quite common for someone to be well-liked by some people and disliked by others for quite arbitrary reasons; it's also common for two people that you both like to dislike each other. Actually, highly successful people seem more likely to show this polarization, where they are liked by some and hated by others, simply because they are less shy about putting their personal opinions out there and people will have a wide variety of reactions to those opinions.
> I'd have nothing but respect, but this is not what these people are about.
Presumably if they or their family members have struggled with alcoholism they wouldn't tell some stranger at a tech conference about it right after finishing talking about the latest trends in REST-ful API design.
Imagine the exchange.
* "-Yeah hateoas is totally not worth it, we tried it and it was just a pain to implement without seeing any benefits"
* "-Let me get buy you a beer"
* "-Nah, my father was an alcoholic who beat my mom and me growing up, he then left and killed himself. So yeah, I'll just pass".
* "-......<silence>....Yeah, cool, I'll just move over there to meet some friends. Nice talking to you."
Sometimes you won't know the true reason, you'll just hear a socially acceptable light cover. So don't always assume they are just prudish and conservative.
And well, actually there are a lot of people who just don't enjoy drinking. You know like there are some that don't enjoy pizza. They just don't. They like hamburgers better, always.
As someone who drinks but gets to meet a lot of 'straight edge' people since I get involved in the punk scene and have been for quite a while. You'll be surprised how interesting, adventurous and far from conservative some of these people who don't drink or do drugs are.
In fact some of these people would argue that is you the one that's boring, the one that needs of external ideas because you can not come up with them your own, or that you're not brave enough to go in adventures or doing what you call take a risk if it wasn't for the booze/drugs.
Here's some lyrics from "Straight Edge" by Minor Threat
*
I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Hang out with the living dead
Snort white shit up my nose
Pass out at the shows
I don't even think about speed
That's something I just don't need
Do you not see the issue with using a single data point about a person to judge them as closed-minded? Do you not see how that in itself is much more closed-minded?
I smoke pot every day. I've tried any natural hallucinogen I can find, multiple times. I'm a raging liberal. I'm a part-time cook that almost certainly could talk and cook circles around you when it comes to cuisine. I promise you I'm very adventurous.
But I often refuse alcohol during the week, and almost always in professional settings. Why?
1. Alcohol makes me excessively nauseous
2. Alcohol makes me excessively tired
3. Being nauseous and tired ruins my day
4. I don't like the implication that in order to be part of a professional setting I should be expected to drink alcohol
And that's it. None of the nonsense reasons you included above. Hopefully at your next conference you'll lose the entitled attitude, realize you know nothing about these people, and try to talk to them whether they drink or not. Or hopefully they'll just be able to avoid you and enjoy a conservation with someone who has a real understanding of people.
If someone told me they used to be an alcoholic and completely quit alcohol, I'd have nothing but respect, but this is not what these people are about.
What is the problem with people deciding not to drink for philosophical, religious, psychological or other reasons? While I embrace the philosophy "try anything once," I have a number of friends who don't drink for a variety of reasons and it doesn't impede my ability to enjoy their company or respect them as people. Their motivations are different from mine, and that's okay.
At this point it's like beating a dead horse, but it's so strange to trust people having an history of severe alcohol abuse in the past, but distrust people that would preemptively stop themself from drinking knowing they'd go the wrong way.
One of the best coders it's ever been my pleasure to work with is a strict teetotaler and is, in every respect, the opposite of your stupid stereotypes.
You accuse others of being "conservative" and then you proudly mistrust anyone who isn't just like you. Do you see the irony?
I'm a moderate drinker myself, BTW, before you start thinking you're being dogpiled by prohibitionists. I try to judge people on their ability and character, not irrelevant window-dressing.
Being conservative with alcohol doesn't reasonably imply being conservative with everything else in life. Plus, alcohol does have many realistic potential dangers - so being somewhat cautious is appropriate.
This is my case, and it's actually frustrating for me. I'm not interested enough to force myself to acclimate, the way most people would have done in college due to peer pressure. So I'm stuck with either being the entertaining freak when coworkers go out for a beer, or being anti-social.
The irony of being a freakish social outcast amidst a group of nerds is not lost on me.
I started on cocktails and eventually found craft beer I like. It takes time.
But, yeah, I've been the non drinker. People don't know what to do with you, and they get annoyed. They project things onto you (like judgment), and don't even try to understand your motivations. It sucks. Groupthink is powerful and pervasive, and nerds have no problem adopting it if it suits them.
Please don't. Comments like this have no place on HN, regardless of how idiotic someone else's may be.
We ban people for this kind of thing when they don't have a history as a positive contributor. Your history seems excellent, though, so hopefully the favored penalty here—extremely mild admonishment—will do the trick.
On another note, I'm happy to report that many users flagged this comment. That is a good use of comment flagging. (When you think a comment has no place on HN, you can flag it by clicking on "link" to go to the item page for that comment, and then "flag". We monitor those flags and take action based on them.)
I appreciate this and your response. I think I was having a bad day at the time. Regardless, I agree that my comment was unhelpful and didn't add to the discussion.
Edit: I think I'm getting some "shoot the messenger" downvotes. Whether or not you agree with the statement, I maintain that a lot of people feel this way.