Toxic community kills AetherSX2

[BigBadBeef]

In order to maintain the code of conduct on this forum, I will refrain from expressing my own opinion through severe harsh language, stereotypical to Balkan nations. Instead, I will just let Mental Outlaw do all the talking, and convey the message in a nice, civilized manner.

 

[Terminal Velocity]

Banning people for making stupid questions wasn't very polite on his behalf. Most people are not very smart, my self included. He started the toxicity in my opinion and then it turned back to him.

 

[BigBadBeef]

Banning people for making stupid questions wasn't very polite on his behalf. Most people are not very smart, my self included. He started the toxicity in my opinion and then it turned back to him.

Or it was the other way around. There is an old saying "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth". He has been numerously and continuously disrespected by choosing beggars acting like customers rather than possessors of his FREE software and continuously pestered by receiving questions which have already been answered in his FAQ by quacks for whom it is a major effort for smack rocks together let alone make use of his software.

He is putting out a message. And the message is that "its NOT okay to be stupid", its not okay to be dense, and strutting from day to day like a f***ing walking vegetable on autopilot is absolutely unacceptable.

I apologize for the vulgarity, but harsh language is the only way to affirm the seriousness of the problem that everyone seems to be casually dismissing. People are no longer aspiring to intelligence, they are belittling it. We are at best, two generations away from idiots having a rolling on the floor, drooling seizure from the mental strain of trying to figure out how to straighten a damned carpet.

I get it. It can happen to anyone. Even happened to me. That doesn't make me a hypocrite. The majority of those who engage in obtuse behavior, do it without any consideration, any second thought or any will to acknowledge their shortcoming and express a will to improve it. And such individuals are not only not being called out, they are even being pandered to in the form of "you shouldn't say that him, its very rude".

I am a foreman in a shipyard, that is I was until I simply had to leave. Most of you have likely only encountered such behavior in verbal form, but I have sustained multiples light injuries because of it, some of which left permanent scars on my body. I had to leave because half of my work time I was an ass hair away from some genius who thought he knew better, a slip away from an extended hospital visit because of it... or the morgue!

I do not write this to point fingers at anyone or anything, neither do I suggest a course of action to be taken. I am explaining what the problem is. One of my best portable PS2 emulators has gone to the crapper, but I support the reason behind why he has done it!

 

[JasKinasis]

I can see the guys point. He put a great piece of free software out there. And then was bombarded by rudeness, stupidity and ridiculous demands from his community of users when it got popular.

I didn't see anything particularly toxic from him in the video. Even his comment about a "Magical config" seemed reasonable. It may have been a little sarcastic, but I wouldn't say it was toxic per-se.
Anybody with even an ounce of intelligence would see that sarcastic comment for what it was and would think "Fair point!". All he was saying was - "If there was a one-size fits all config that worked for everybody, we'd make it the default.". It just shows how fragile the egos of these entitled, selfish, gamer-bro brats are nowadays.

After answering a bunch of these stupid questions and requests - I imagine he probably got stressed out and unloaded a little in that post, via a bit of light sarcasm. It's not like he unleashed a tirade of abuse or anything. I've seen much more toxic behaviour from developers in the mailing list archives of other free software projects! Some of Linus's past outbursts would make a sailor blush, ha ha!

But even that's nothing compared to the toxic behaviour and abuse you experience from other gamers in the voice-chat lobbies of online games. Considering the way they act in-game, I'm surprised they're not a bit more thick-skinned when dealing with some light sarcasm in online posts, or when banned from a community for failing to read, or abide by the rules!

So from what I can see, the toxicity seems to have stemmed from the users. Many of whom obviously had no understanding, or emotional interest/investment in free software and free culture - and felt that they were too important to read the FAQ, or the community rules. Users who chose to abuse the developer when it didn't work on their ancient, outdated mobile devices. Users who felt that they were entitled to demand things from the developer of a piece of free software. A developer who already stated that the software is made in his own free time as a hobby. And that he does not make money any from it!

And when it comes to people making death threats, that's just going way too far. The fact that those death threats were probably from some spoilt, snot-nosed, pre-teen, keyboard warrior, who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, is completely immaterial.

Again, I'm not surprised he closed up shop and quit. It's sad to see, but it's completely understandable!

 

[BigBadBeef]

Or in other words, severe hypocrisy and entitlement. They expected to be patronized and catered to like paying customers, instead they got a well deserved reality check and accused the dev of being toxic for failing to pander to their willful incompetence.

 

[forester]

Or in other words, severe hypocrisy and entitlement.

Those attributes are much too common in our society, nowadays!

 

[BigBadBeef]

Those attributes are much too common in our society, nowadays!

That's what you get for belittling intelligence and catering to stupidity.

 

[MikeWalsh]

I've not watched the video. Yet. But I can fully sympathise with the guy; anybody who develops free software for the love of it needs a wee bit of encouragement and positive feedback...

I'm mainly a packager. For years I've re-packaged many well-known items of software to work with Puppy's admittedly oddball way of running. Over the last few years I've tried my hand at developing a few utilities, from scratch; mostly Bash scripting, sometimes compiling binaries, though it's not my forté; mostly I make use of existing functionality within the OS. A drive speed tester. A 'portable' manually-run TRIM utility for SSDs, with its own wee GUI. A multi-webcam controller, that could be used as the basis of a 'budget' CCTV system.....including the ability to record outputs, using the v4l2 kernel driver & mPlayer. I did an upgrade to gSmartControl a while back, when they added the ability for it to 'read' S.M.A.R.T data from external USB 3.0 HDDs. Stuff like that.

As time wears on, my projects get a bit more adventurous & complex as my skills improve. With assistance from several other members, I've developed a whole range of 'portable' packages exclusively for Puppy, inspired by the Windows portables from PortableApps.com, many of which I used during my final couple of years with XP.

And 'portable' apps fit Puppy like a glove.

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I guess I'm lucky. The Puppy community are, by & large, a joy to interact & work with. Many will follow me through the development process of whatever it is I'm working on. I'll make 'snapshot' tarballs available at intervals, for people to try out. Positive feedback works wonders; quite a few will report back as to how well or otherwise things are working; some will politely request or suggest improvements/extra functionality/perhaps an alternative approach to things.

I have no problem responding to this kind of feedback. Often, we end up with me developing things far beyond where I'd envisaged taking them to, and it benefits everybody....myself as well, 'cos I end up learning new ways of approaching/implementing various functions, etc.

As with every community, we too have our black sheep, who think everybody else is there to serve their wants/needs. We'll get newbies come in; often ex-Windows users, where the culture is totally different. They pay for their OS, so they expect a certain amount of "customer assistance", which they see as their God-given right! When they don't get what they want, they raise the tempo, and start demanding things at a louder volume, since they feel they're "entitled" to it. Which goes straight over my head; I don't respond to demands. They're not paying my wages, so they're in no position to "demand" anything.

But it does put the dampeners on the proceedings.....such individuals sour the atmosphere for all.

Ah, well. We do what we can, I guess.


Mike.

 

[KGIII]

I guess I'm lucky. The Puppy community are, by & large, a joy to interact & work with.

I'm on the dev team (as a tester/bug hunter, mostly). We get a few entitled people, but it's not frequent enough to really impact morale. I don't know why, but we don't seem to attract all that many of them.

When doing support, I have zero problem pointing out that we're all unpaid volunteers.

Otherwise, I only ever see them in chat and I don't really respond in chat much - unless pinged specifically. I don't really like chat anymore (for reasons). I do monitor a few chat rooms, but that's only because I might need some information they contain. We used to have weekly meetings but we haven't had any of those in a long time. I don't recall an official weekly meeting since I officially joined. I'm sure there's no connection between the two.