
No more rock stars: how to stop abuse in tech communities - exolymph
https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/21/no-more-rock-stars/
======
matthewmacleod
There should be no abuse - sexual or otherwise - in tech communities. Please
call it out whenever you see it, in a polite but firm manner, and don't be
afraid or intimidated by it. The vast majority of people will support you, and
it's important to do so not only for your own protection but for others that
might not be so willing or able to do the same.

That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to
me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why.

~~~
adiabatty
There's a weak undercurrent of condescension in the post (I've seen worse from
Model View Culture); you may be picking up on that.

I'm more interested in the un(der)examined assertion that, when it comes to
accusations of sexual misconduct, the accused should have a presumption of
_guilt_. Have there been any published arguments in favor of this?

~~~
spriggan3
> the accused should have a presumption of guilt

That may be how social media work, that's absolutely not how justice should
work. Anybody can be accused of sexual misconduct on social media. It's not
justice when one can't defend himself.

~~~
vkou
It's not justice when we put the victim on trial (As we do in most rape
cases), but we do it anyway.

~~~
guitarbill
This is flat out wrong. In the US/EU, you can't be put on trial for being a
rape victim. What offence would that be? Complete hyperbole.

~~~
vkou
Read any rape trial transcript, or even an account of someone who took their
assault to trial. Read the questions asked the victim. They are invasive and
degrading, and they are intended to paint them as scandalous, lying, drunk,
promiscuous skank. Your personal and public credibility will be put under
intense scrutiny.

The accused then takes the stand, and insists that yes, you clearly consented
to being assaulted at 2 am behind a dumpster, when you were too drunk to
speak.

And if, heaven forbid, the case falls apart, you'll likely be sued right back
for slander, damaging your attacker's public image, loss of income, etc.

That's the defense's job in an adversarial legal system. That doesn't make in
any better for victims.

------
jondubois
I'm really glad that someone is raising this issue. This 'rock star worship'
culture is rampant in Open Source communities. What's worse is that many of
these 'rock stars' don't do anything except blog and give talks at conferences
- Their main goal is self-promotion. They don't give a shit about the actual
project or the community.

You rarely hear about open source developers who focus on one project and
produce amazing work over many years - These developers are too busy actually
writing code and promoting the project to care about promoting themselves -
Because they understand that their project is more important. A good open
source developer sees themselves as a servant to the project, not the master.

I think a big problem in the tech industry in general is that there is too
much focus on people - I'm sick of hearing investors say "We invest in people,
not products" \- I think this sends the wrong message and attracts the wrong
people.

The product should always be more important than the people who built it -
People who agree with this statement are the ones we should invest in because
they're the ones who will actually create value for society (as opposed to
merely capturing value which others have created).

~~~
exstudent2
That's a separate issue from saying that rockstar syndrome leads to sexual
abuse though. It's not really fair to use a boogieman like that to make the
case against rockstar worship. If it's a bad idea, it can be argued against
without the rhetorical leap made here.

~~~
tptacek
_One_ problem with rockstarism is that it can create safe havens for abusers.
But there are all sorts of other concerns. I'm surprised to see people
defending it here; HN has always struck me as a community that is pretty
cynical about rock stars.

~~~
NetTechM
Cynical yes, but some people do really good work and just end up in the
position because of it.

Too much painting with a broad brush and trying to redefine a word normally
reserved for an Ace team member.

~~~
tptacek
I think that's a feigned concern, and that HN's cynicism about the term "rock
star" far predates this post.

------
tptacek
Even if it hadn't resulted in a rash of sexual assaults in the
security/privacy community, much of the advice in this post about avoiding
rock star dynamics would be well taken. Rockstarism is a scourge in software
security. It's probably bad everywhere it crops up, including the music
industry.

~~~
Aelinsaar
It certainly did nothing good for the video-game industry. _cough_ Daikatana
_cough_

I think you're right, and the "rock star" pattern looks similar wherever it
crops up, with similar fallout. It's only the tolerance for it which varies.

~~~
minimaxir
John Romero was a rockstar, but his attitude only affected Ion
Storm/Daikatana, not other people. And that was more than a decade ago.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Ion Storm had more than one employee.

------
chroma
With the exception of the "assume guilt" recommendation (which seems ripe for
abuse), I think these guidelines are mostly fine. But calling abusive people
"rock stars" seems unnecessarily controversial. Better to use the accurate and
unambiguous "abuser". That describes Jacob Applebaum far more clearly than
"rock star".

Also, I think a term like "rock star" (in the benevolent sense) is a useful
one. There are people who are _really_ talented (and know it), who love the
limelight, who sometimes say controversial things, and who have contributed
more to our industry than any of us could hope to. I'm talking about people
like Daniel J. Bernstein, David Heinemeier Hansson, Theo de Raadt, and (of
course) Linus Torvalds. If we're going to give "rock star" purely negative
connotations, I'm not sure what what to call these people. "Badass" would
work, except some social circles frown upon profanity.

~~~
tptacek
Rock star abusers are a subset of abusers, so your proposed change doesn't
work.

Try to give the piece the most charitable possible interpretation. Leigh
Honeywell knows more about Daniel J. Bernstein and Theo de Raadt than most
people on HN. There's an interpretation of this post that suggests she's
claiming that DJB and Theo are abusers, but common sense --- we don't even
need charity! --- tells us that's probably not what she's saying.

~~~
chroma
If you want to just focus on what you call "abusive rock stars", then I think
the most accurate term is "abusive charlatan". That covers the lack of skill
as well as the fame-seeking.

In terms of reading charitably, I'm sorry to say that you're the one who needs
to do more of it. I never implied that the author might be accusing those
people of abusive behavior. In fact, that idea didn't even occur to me until
you mentioned it. I was just giving examples of good "rock stars" in our
field.

My issue is this: There are plenty of existing terms that accurately describe
what the author is talking about. If she manages to redefine "rock star" to be
purely negative, it robs us of a useful word. And because of that, a lot of
people are going to be against her definitional change. (As evidence, just
look at this HN thread.) She could gain more support by avoiding this
definitional fight.

~~~
kyledrake
I'm with you on this one. I don't like abusers and assholes, but I like the
title, and intend to continue to use it in a positive light, sparingly, and
with good purpose. In my interpretation of the title, some rock stars are
jerks, others are actually pretty good people.

When I used to work in politics, after he did a great speech at the DNC
convention, I called Obama a "rock star" that was going to go on to big
things. That was long before he announced his run for presidency. Mind you, I
didn't even vote for him and I said that (I proudly throw my presidential vote
away for the Libertarian candidate every year).

That title works best, naturally, when it isn't diluted down in crappy job
postings.

I'm all for tossing out abusers here, don't get me wrong. But honestly, as
perhaps the only person here that has ever actually contracted a form of
Cholera (long story), I still wouldn't want to live in a world that's only
plumbers, and I don't think you would either.

~~~
tptacek
I'm harping on this, I know, but I really don't think the goal of this post is
to get people to stop using the term "rock star", and the fact that people
keep suggesting _that 's_ the controversy makes me worry people haven't really
read the piece very carefully.

~~~
kyledrake
Subtly equating abusive behavior with people that are energetic and ambitious
is clearly baked into the nature of this conversation and that particular
facet is quite controversial to me, and to a lot of people here that are
likely as concerned about abusive behavior as I am.

We don't need to institutionally get rid of "rock stars". Their ambition for
attention and fame is a recipe for a lot of great things. What I think we
really need here is to get better at not enabling them to be abusive, and for
calling them out when they are.

I also do think we need to get better at choosing who our rock stars are, an
opinion I got a long time ago from watching Limp Bizkit win a music award.

------
protomyth
It seems like they are redefining rock star in the "A rock star likes to be
the center of attention." paragraph. I am getting a little sick of the
trend[1] of redefining a word to mean something else. Given this, a genuine
complement of calling someone a "rock star" should probably be met with a
hostility.

The line "A rock star appears in dozens of magazine profiles – and never, ever
tells the journalist to talk to the people actually doing the practical
everyday work." is particularly galling. If you are not doing the work, how
the heck would you legitimately be called a rock star?

I think the love of tearing down people is echoed in the love of taking words
that meant exceptional and making them mean destructive things. Hero and hero
words die far too often.

1) its been going on a long time and sometimes I think its an insider trick to
know who to award grants to (e.g. "empowerment" was my personal favorite).

~~~
Animats
_" A rock star likes to be the center of attention."_

That describes many CEOs and founders. The VC system today values the glib
attention-seeker. So does Kickstarter, where the video of the presenter is
often more important than the product. Society as a whole today rewards the
attention-seeker. There was a time when self-promotion was considered an
embarrassing lower-class trait, associated with door to door salesmen and
such. Today, we have Donald Trump.

"Attention seeking" and "asshole" are independent. Making your organization
asshole-resistant can be worthwhile. Read "Assholes, A Theory", by Aaron
James. There are people who want attention but aren't assholes; many actors
are like that. There are assholes who don't want attention, just power -
they're found in dysfunctional organizations.

~~~
protomyth
Ok and I partially agree, but I'm not arguing that point. I'm trying to figure
out why someone is taking a commonly used term for someone with a high
achievement level and turn it into crud. Why couldn't they have said
"attention seeker" or "asshole"? Why does "rock star" need to be redefined as
an insult?

Whatever I think about attention seekers[1], I am much more offended by this
constant need we seem to have to tear down people who were heroes and with
them the words we use to describe our heroes. This churn is bad for us. [edit:
obviously anyone who actual did what was said needs to be more than torn down,
but that doesn't mean the words need to be burnt]

1) and oh, boy howdy to I have some strong opinions on them including a rant
that involves being lied to and almost getting killed by cattle.

------
jimrandomh
To keep out bad actors, it's very important to have an accurate model of what
those bad actors are like and how to recognize them. The correct word for this
is not "rock star", it's "psychopath". Equating the term "rock star" with bad
actors is not going to accurately guide people's attention where it needs to
go; instead, it'll lead to attacks on honest people who happen to have
accumulated prestige. Those are the very people who have the ability to spot
and push out the psychopaths. But if they're forced into conflict with
feminists, they won't be doing that.

~~~
dragonwriter
"Rock star" isn't a description of what a bad actor looks like, but it is a
description of treatment of people who have high performance on one axis which
empowers those that happen to be bad actors in manners unrelated to that axis
and disempowers their victims.

Keeping out bad actors is desirable, but never going to be 100%. Avoiding
creating the power dynamic which enables abusers to flourish is also
important.

------
shrewduser
That is an extremely long bow to draw...

the author seems to have picked up on a case of a narcissistic possibly
deviant and then tarnished all people who excel / lead with the same brush.

this reeks of tall poppy syndrome, i can't even believe what i'm reading.

------
Animats
Reworking entire organizations to deal with one jerk is overkill. Applebaum
has a Wikipedia entry, which is worth reading.[1] He's been kicked out of the
Tor Project, the Cult of the Dead Cow (an old and respected hacking group),
and Noisebridge. They all seem to have dealt with the problem. But he does
have his supporters.[2] Reading all this, it looks like a routine jerk
problem. None of this has led to criminal charges. I dunno.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum)
[2]
[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2858953/Statement...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2858953/Statement-
Appelbaum-11-06.pdf)

~~~
tptacek
"None of this has led to criminal charges. I dunno."

Can you just come right out and say whatever it is you're implying with those
last two sentences? Thanks!

~~~
MagnumOpus
He implies the obvious: the evidence is hearsay that hasn't stood up in court
(and apparently nobody is even trying) - though it seems to suffice to ruin
the guy's life.

~~~
tptacek
Maybe we should let him answer for himself? Thanks.

------
exstudent2
> One of the authors of this post believed every first-person allegation of
> abuse and assault by Jacob Appelbaum – including the anonymous ones –
> immediately. Why? Among many other signs, she saw him break different,
> smaller rules in a way that showed his complete and total disregard for
> other people’s time, work, and feelings – and everyone supported him doing
> so. For example, she once attended a series of five minute lightning talks
> at the Noisebridge hackerspace, where speakers sign up in advance. Jacob
> arrived unannounced and jumped in after the first couple of talks with a
> forty-five minute long boring rambling slideshow about a recent trip he
> took. The person running the talks – someone with considerable power and
> influence in the same community – rolled his eyes but let Jacob talk for
> nine times the length of other speakers. The message was clear: rules don’t
> apply to Jacob, and even powerful people were afraid to cross him.

This is a really dangerous line of thinking. Just because someone is a "jerk"
_does not_ mean that they're a criminal and the burden of proof for
accusations goes out the window. This whole post, and the site it links to
reeks of vigilantism. If he really did do the things he's accused of (I've
never heard of Jacob before so can't comment), he should be dealt with by the
proper authorities. It's not up to employers to act as judge, jury and
executioners.

I would also add that people who engage in these types of public witch hunts
and calls for codes of conduct, new rules... are very much showing signs of
the narcissism they claim to be against.

------
ktRolster
Some programmers are dramatically better than others......some of those top
programmers are jerks, some aren't (just like every segment of society).

I always called those top programmers rockstars, but apparently that's the
wrong term.....what should they be called then?

~~~
exstudent2
> I always called those top programmers rockstars

That was a well known usage for the term. This blog post is trying to redefine
"rockstar" but you/we don't have to go along with the language policing.

------
mnarayan01
In the list describing "a few signs that help you identify when you have a
rock star instead of a plumber", it seems like you could replace every
occurrence of "rock star" with "jerk".

~~~
tptacek
No, you can't, because most jerks do not have fandoms, and most jerks don't
generate fawning media coverage. The social power abusive rock stars
accumulate is what makes them so problematic.

------
auganov
It's decent advice for larger organizations. At startup-sized orgs you're
bound to have people with disproportionate amounts of power (and often it's a
good thing). I hate to be pessimistic but I think instilling a deep sense of
moral wrongness of certain actions and behaviors is what you have to do in
order to have real impact.

------
tekacs
I absolutely agree that 'rockstarism' is hugely problematic (I agree with
tptacek's sibling post on the topic).

That said, some of this post feels worryingly like it's pushing 'truth by
association' to me. I'd love to hear each of the recommendations herein
discussed on their own merit and with clear reasons given for each one.

That is, I wouldn't encourage anyone to conflate fighting narcissism and
arrogance with quashing openness, confidence and self-respect in a demographic
(engineers) which arguably already has trouble with those - irrespective of
the gender of the engineer.

------
yanilkr
Rock stars are good at what they do and most of the time earn that label.
Don't form a gang and hurt productivity of your team/company. If someone is
working hard to earn a rockstar label don't penalize them.

You will probably need rock stars and plumbers getting along well. If someone
is a bad employee rockstar or otherwise that needs to be dealt properly.

~~~
kasey_junk
I'd say my biggest complaint about the term "rock star" is that its
nonstandard. This article uses a definition, which describes a set of people I
know in tech communities. Your comment is probably referring to something
else.

Regardless, the article is spot on in describing what to do to produce healthy
environments, whereas most uses of the term rock star that I've found come
from unhealthy ones.

------
mcguire
" _Watch for smaller signs of boundary pushing and react strongly_ "

But we'd have to fire all the first-level problem report handlers of most of
the open source projects I've dealt with.

------
chris_7
This one:

    
    
        Avoid organizations becoming too central to people’s lives
    

Seems at odds with this one:

    
    
        Enforce strict policies around sexual or romantic relationships within power structures
    

Due to the use of the terms "organization" and "community" instead of
"company" or an equivalent, it's unclear if they are referring entirely to
employment (where such a prohibition would be pretty common and mundane), or
if they are also including open-source projects, where it would seem like a
huge intrusion. Submitting an issue or pull request shouldn't have any effect
on your ability to date someone.

~~~
yawaramin
I think it makes sense if you interpret it as having rules against seeing
someone if you're in a position of power over them. If you happen to be in
same organisation but have no power over them, there isn't a conflict.

~~~
chris_7
Right, and that makes sense for companies, but someone should be able to make
a PR against a Github project for which their wife is a maintainer.

~~~
yawaramin
I think these rules kind of all cease to apply at the marital boundary, and
there new and equally troublesome rules take over :-)

------
jondubois
Was this just taken off the HN front page?

~~~
tptacek
Almost definitely not; rather, the post was probably flagged by users. This
happens all the time, and your question is a very common one.

~~~
jondubois
'Flagged by users' \- Interesting. Do some of these users happen to be friends
with 'Jacob Appelbaum'?

I understand, the whole system is rigged to praise rock stars and screw the
plumbers.

~~~
throwllll
I flag (using my non-throaway account) any article that only results in mob-
and-pitchfork style discussion. Many comments in here are advocating that we
should abandon the court and justice system (because its unfair to the victim,
its too high requirements for conviction, ectra) in favor of just punishing
the assumed guilty. I will keep flagging stories like this as long as that
opinion still runs popular.

~~~
tptacek
Flagging stories because you think they're off-topic for HN, or should be
because of the threads they'll create, is legit.

Using the flag button as a downvote button for stories you disagree with,
while allowing stories on the same topics you do agree with, is an abuse.

~~~
throwllll
I find mob-and-pitchfork style of threads and articles to be off-topic for HN.

If someone posted an article about one of the accusers of JA and creating a
mob-and-pitchfork threads against them, I would flag it equally the same as
this one. If the only purpose of the submission is to attack people (see
attack articles on Wikipedia for definition and concept), then its fail the
first HN rule for the threads it will create, ie its not civil to have mob-
and-pitchfork threads and its not something anyone would say in a face-to-face
conversation with the accused or accuser. In a previous article discussion
about JA, someone compared him to hitler. Do you think they would be perfectly
fine say that in person?

>> any article that only results in mob-and-pitchfork style discussion >
"while allowing stories on the same topics you do agree with"

If topic == mob-and-pitchfork; goto flag-article(). How could I have been be
more clear in previous comment? All, any, and regardless if I like the person
being attacked or not, I do not find such article to be civil and productive
for discussion. I don't even find it productive for social change, as all it
does is raising the tone and driving out those that social campaigns tries to
convince. Left are those that are already convinces that they are right,
flaming against each other.

------
peterwwillis
First off, there is lots of different potential abuse in a tech community.
Second, not all of it comes from "rock stars" \- the aggregate cases of abuse
probably greatly outweigh rockstardom-enabled abuse. Third, the abuse was
perpetuated not because Jake was a "rock star", but because your community's
values suck and nobody would stand up and call him out, AND nobody cared once
they did. This was primarily a failure of your community. But like I keep
saying, this is a feature of all in-groups.

 _" Why are rock stars so common and successful?"_

Because communities like "leaders", and they have shit heuristics to determine
it. And everyone loves an asshole, and there's tons of asshole hackers.

 _" How do we as a community prevent rock stars?"_

Stop being a community.

I'm serious. Communities breed power in individuals and it's been proven time
and again (and "in studies", no less) that in an in-group, a person with power
and low morals is more likely to abuse their power. It's inherent to in-
groups. Remove the community, you remove the power, you remove the social and
other influences that bring the immoral, not-powerful person into contact with
the vulnerable. No community, no abuse.

 _" Our recommendations can be summarized as: decentralizing points of
failure,"_

....What? This isn't an Active Directory tree, these are humans. Every node in
your network is a point of failure.

 _" increasing transparency,"_

And what would that look like? Sending an e-mail to a listserv every time
someone says something passive-aggressive to you? Again, there is no simple
way to police the myriad of potential abuses, micro or macro, from all sorts
of personalities.

 _" improving accountability,"_

Which, for a community that shuns the police, looks like what? K-lining him
from your IRC server?

 _" supporting private and anonymous communication,"_

You already have that. This whole debacle has shown how anonymous
communication is dismissed until a real face is put to a complaint, and many
of them, all at once. This is pretty standard group dynamics, again.

 _" reducing power differentials,"_

So... everyone is an op. Nobody is allowed to like anyone else more, and
everyone has to be invited to your party.

 _" and avoiding situations that make violating boundaries more likely."_

No more alcohol or drugs and nobody is allowed to be in a room alone with one
other person, AND no PMs allowed, everything in-chat and logged. Got it.

\--

The points, one by one:

Codes of conduct won't be followed if the people enforcing the code of conduct
don't enforce it. This is why there are police that police the police.

 _" Start with the assumption that harassment reports are true"_ \- if Jake
had made the first report against his victim, now we would have to believe
Jake. Default assumption of guilt doesn't work - this is why our own country's
laws do the opposite. All the examples given of _" investigating for bad
behavior"_ are things regular non-rapey people do all the time. _" nasty
emails, stolen credit, rude behavior, and unethical acts big and small"_ ?
That's every fucking hacker troll alive.

Making it easy for victims to find each other is not a good idea, because
coordination leads, again, to failed heuristics: one person felt uncomfortable
with a consensual act, another was actually violently sexually assaulted, and
now the first changes their story so they're taken more seriously. (This is
not something i'm making up to gaslight an invisible person, btw, this happens
to real victims) It would, however, be GREAT if there were a community-
specific organization that anyone could contact to discuss how they feel in a
safe way.

Watching for boundary pushing and react strongly - yes, 100%.

Call people out for _" monopolizing attention"_ \- uh.... Right, popular
female hacker scenester. Let's police the social convention of "taking credit
for work" or "being loud and outgoing". You and I both know nobody's going to
shout down the hacker media whores - and there are so, so many.

The _" deep bench of talent"_ thing is again, almost completely irrelevant to
generally preventing abuse in communities.

You basically explained why your point about hierarchies is invalid, so no
need to comment.

 _" Failing up"_ is a minor aspect of corporate hierarchy and has nothing to
do with social or personal power in in-groups, this is not relevant to the
subject.

And, sure, _" no relationships in the workplace"_. You go ahead and explain to
Sally and Joe (or Jane, or Zed, or whatever) that Sally is going to have to
support her kids without Joe's help because Joe needs to leave the company
because you feel uncomfortable that they might one day have a domestic
dispute.

 _" Avoid organizations becoming too central to people's lives"_ \- this
really has zero to do with the subject.

 _" Distribute the keys to the kingdom"_ \- Same.

 _" Don't create environments for potential boundary violation"_ \- Like I
said above - no drugs, no alcohol, never leave anyone alone with another
person. Your parties are gonna be a blast. Chiptune, diet shasta orange, and
vacation slides. Wheeeee.

\--

 _" We waited too long to do something about it."_

Correct. Now, next time, do something about it. That is really all that needed
to be said and all that needs to be done.

~~~
NetTechM
Well said.

Although I think it needs to be pointed out that sometimes, someone is a
Rockstar because they earned it. Which seems to be a possibility left
unexplored in this piece.

------
Saturnaut
Don't sleep with people you work with. Don't drink if you can't control
yourself or can't trust the people you are with. Don't do drugs if you can't
control yourself or trust the people you are with. Problem solved!

~~~
prawn
Wow, that's hugely insensitive. Why not try it from another angle and save on
typing: "Don't abuse people. Problem solved!"

~~~
Saturnaut
Well I agree with that statement as well. However, it never hurts to take
preventative measures in one's own life, instead of letting yourself get
screwed over and then wondering why it happened and who to blame.

~~~
prawn
Victim blaming is pretty insensitive though, as is "letting yourself get
screwed over". There was an infamous case in Australia where a cleric
responded to gang-rape by members of his community by labelling young girls in
skirts as being like raw meat attracting animals. The implication was "of
course the animals will want to eat the meat".

Yes, the reality is that if you never leave the house, live in a panic room,
cover your entire self at all hours, etc you reduce the risk, but ultimately
the action is on the abuser rather than the one being abused and that is where
we should direct criticism, especially in immediate/direct response to
something like this IMO.

What are we ideally working towards? A world where everyone must avoid a
defined level of risk (including certain level of dress!), or one where any of
us can walk anywhere with an expectation that we won't be abused by another
one of us? I'd like to think the latter.

~~~
tzs
> What are we ideally working towards? A world where everyone must avoid a
> defined level of risk (including certain level of dress!), or one where any
> of us can walk anywhere with an expectation that we won't be abused by
> another one of us? I'd like to think the latter.

The latter...but we have to live in the world as it is, not the world that we
hope to someday achieve.

If I were to put on a top of the line Rolex watch, pick up an expensive laptop
in one hand, and $100k cash in the other hand, and take a stroll alone at
night through a major city's most gang controlled, crime riddled, neighborhood
and found myself involuntarily relieved of watch, laptop, and cash, I think
people would be justified in putting some of the blame for the robbery on me
even though I would also be the victim.

~~~
strangecasts
Well, if you _really_ didn't want to get robbed, you should have donated the
laptop and cash to charity, donned a tunic and joined a monastery

------
super_id
Stopped reading at the trigger warning. When did the whole internet become a
joke from PCU?

~~~
some-guy
I suppose then you were "triggered" by the warning?

~~~
hypatiadotca
Some people are so sensitive, dontchaknow ;)

