

Why Young Hackers Are Killing Themselves - magikarp
http://log.nadim.cc/?p=107

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nerdfiles
I'm not quite sure how to formulate this, since I count myself a hacker, of a
sort, but I've also picked up a few hints about why my psychology is the way
it is.

There was the Age of Autism. My hand-wavey gloss is that we will see an Age of
Williams, of people with Williams Syndrome who will "teach us how to be happy"
or whatever intellectual debris gets tacked onto a population that carries the
"happy gene."

Scientists, linguists, psychologists seem to be in a hurried hunt, under a
hyperreductionist banner, to discover how to, it stands to reason, prevent
"the hackers from killing themselves" (assuming there's a strong positive
correlation between "hackers" and "autists") or to say the least, from
engaging in what seems like reactionary violence against the world or
themselves; that is, prevent such future tragedies by discovering the gene.

I'll tell you. 2011 I got absolutely fucking crushed, blasted. Arrested for
_personal_ weed; quitting the job out of guilt and fear of being fired;
multiple dental extractions; first (at age 21!, mind you) ex-girlfriend
brutally/ritualistically murdered shockingly while touring Germany (a sweet
woman who, like in many Williams Syndrome descriptions, could be said to be
"too naive" and "too open with strangers"); killer set to "insanity" plea
after attempting suicide; mother desperately poor, frequently taking money
from me without warning or call; alcoholic grandmother; emotionally
gutwrenchingly dysfunctional family where accusations of kidnapping of
biological sister still today go unchallenged (a sister I've "hung out" with
less than 10 times); drug addict father who I've yet to talk to since roughly
months ago (at age 27 now); mother riddled with disease and heavily dependent
on steroids, while also hyperbaptist/religious; and on top of all of that, the
only type of work that kept me afloat in Houston, Texas, of all places, were
demeaning "oil and gas" industry Web jobs, where I was probably ranked less
than a code monkey, though I still had to drill through FogBugz, etc.

Yet for some terrible reason, all I can think about is how I just nyan'd
(<http://nyan.cat>) for 5+ minutes.

Even now I starve, as I await for a client to possibly say okay to a logo.

Maybe I'm not stressed out in the right kind of way. But my "happiness" is so
unstoppable that what actually makes me angry or upset is the fact of being
upset or angry at all. I can be frustrated, but I can really admit to only
that. Even now, as I sit poor and crushed, with W3C's Specifications on the
brain.

One joke. One. Absolutely one joke can take me from a SOPA-ranting lunatic or
a painfully woeful and grieving romantic, to a kitty petting, child tickling
maniac. And I've got most standup comics committed to my highly reliably
aural-verbal memory.

~~~
shanelja
Not to demean you and I understand that you may dislike the idea of charity,
but while I don't have much money, I could spare $7.50 to your paypal account
to help short term with food, no pay back required. Consider me seeing this
message the universes way of telling me it's time to give back.

~~~
nerdfiles
I do appreciate it. But I've become pretty good at fasting; so please, keep
your money.

What I really want is for my gittip-for-the-homeless idea to get off the
ground; and that's more a matter of sharing the idea than building some app.
Indeed, it might simply be 1. Buy a [edit: __wifi __] pi. 2. Give it to a
homeless guy (or gal! but for rhyme) 3. with a login wall that takes you to
their gittip where it 4. explains why they're a street violinist.

Unfortunately since talking is a stronger form of learning for me, I find
myself spending less time being a good little coder and more time sharing
ideas with people (including coders who take them and run, which is a good
thing).

Our hotbed copyright system promotes theft and discourages sharing. If I can
get more hope about that turning around, I could fast for another week on joy
alone.

