Techonogy's Toxic Culture

Written by us 2026-05-15 (or so)

groaning

I'm getting déjà vu. I feel like I've seen this before. I feel like I've already lived through the consequences of this middle of the road culture once. I think I'm going insane?

There's no way, it's happening again? Right? We learned lessons from the first time right? The on going consequences of that first time.

Actually, I think this is more like the 6th or 7th, but lets call it the first since this one managed to grab everyones attention

I am going insane.

A Culture That Cannot Say No

You ever notice how tech really doesn't like you saying no? That it seems to just keep badgering you until you say yes. Actually, it's not just the tech. It's the people. Nobody respect consent and boundaries.

You can't just say no to something. You must have a detailed, technically sound, well formulated, ellaborate justification for saying no. Look what happens when you just say no to things! You miss out on The Internet, The Cellphone, hell you miss out on The Computer itself.

To say no to the advances of technology is death. You don't get to say no as it invades your life. You don't get to say no as it works its way into you. You don't get to say no as it demands your every facit of living. Even when you fork away you don't get to say no. It'll come for you regardless through other means. You do not reject the advances of technology. They would sooner kill you before accepting No for an anwser.

If someone present something that could be useful, you must say "maybe" then evaluate it. If someone present something that is useful, but does not align to your design goals, asperations, or values, well. No is not anwser.

The enterity of FLOSS is built on this culture. If someone demonstrates the utilty of something, if someone produces valuable results? Well, you can't say no to that. That's not science, that's not engineering, that's not logical. You say yes.

Well, AI is here. It could be useful. At least according to people that lack the ability to preform labor themselves, or have grown comfortable operating as a manager of labor rather than the practitioner of labor, or are just burnt out and were only motivated by that zippy high you get from pushing a successful release. So, you have to say "yes". It doesn't matter if it is "yes, but..." or "yes, as long as..." you said yes.

Like any good drug, you build tolerance, and tolerances build new tolerances, until you are hitting a near lethal dose to get your fix. I'm sorry to say, burn out only stops when you slow down. Possibly forever.

This is the culture of software development: "let met consider it" followed by "looks good to me". As long as there is some kind of value added, you say yes, you let the people stay in power, even as they passively use their power for harassement of marginalized people. They add too much value.

Oh, I know where I've seen this. We really don't learn anything do we?

No. We really don't.

The Middle Ground

The middle ground, we are told, is where the best solution is. The middle ground is where a community ought to strive. But, isn't wierd how the middle ground always seems to make things worse? I mean, what's the middle ground between "destory the craft of software development with slop" and "don't do that"?

What's the middle growned between "don't do a genicide" and "do genicide", "let trans people exist" or "eradicate trans people", "stop killing black and brown people" and "keep killing black and brown people". You get the idea.

Do it little bit? What parts are bullshit to you? What parts do you not care about? What parts do you think are Real Labor? What are you will to let be destroyed? The middle ground of "don't destory thing" and "destory the thing" is "destory some of thing".

What are you willing to burn.

Every time you say "well, LLMs are good at...", "I've found them useful for...", "I think they could be used in..." you are decided on what is worth destroying. What is worth throwing into the woodchipper. You have decided what work is bullshit. You are loudly proclaming those parts of your craft as bullshit. A task unfit for human cognition.

What are you willing to burn.

Do you think it'll stop at just the work you think is bullshit?

It never stops at what you think is worthy of destruction. Oh, how many times I have heard "I thought He would go after the bad people". It's the same bullshit.

Do you think the definition of "responsible usage" is immutable? That copyright cannot be swayed in favor of slop production? Because it shall be.

The argument "AI code cannot comply with the GPL license, thus it cannot be used in a GPL code base" sounds like a lawful good argument, but it is actually lawful evil.

It is fundimentally technology designed to kill you, the software developer. As soon as Zig said no to Bun (and by proxy Anthropic), they pivot to Rust. It's already amicable to agentic development. It's already got a signal of approve for Anthropic. Zig should have been easier to kill. They are smaller, accepting the PR could have built bridges to Anthropic funding. Andrew Kelley could have walked with some fat stacks. However,

Zig Said No

Zig said No. Sure, they cite sound technical reasons. But, Zig has a No AI policy. The reason is they are willing to bet on the smaller pool of people that care. They are not willing to burn any part of their labor.

They said No.

Tho, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Overseeing a discord and having to deal with a handful of boosters is already exhausting. Imaging how many people will be calling the Zig team "reckless" for allowing Anthropic to walk from them? Developers are hollow husk. easily swayed by hype cycles in place of real identity and community.

This is the only sensible thing you can do. You must say No. You must keep saying No. And you mustn't stop saying No. Otherwise, what are you willing to burn? What happens when the old middle ground isn't middle enough? What happens when you say no to something, but your community has drifted further to the right.

Because this is

How We Got Donald Fucking Trump

You realize that right? This is how we (US Americans) got him. Being reasonable. Being middle of the road. Being the high ground. Being the "listening to both side". Scoffing at the people that are "oh so unreasonable". Snubbing your nose at the people that "are unwilling to compromise". Rejecting the idea that a protest must be disruptive. Shrugging as you say "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" as a new horror appears on the horizon. One that could have been stopped.

AI boosters come out of the wood works like racist goblins always do when black people fuck up or get snubbed by white culture. They start needling community members, badgering them into silence. The pattern is eeriely identical to far-right tatics to radicalize a community. The only thing creepier is the "love bombin". "We stand with you", "don't let them tell you what to do", "people should choose for themselves what they believe in", you get the idea. It's a pattern I'm sure you've seen.

I think it's similiar cause AI is a fascist deathcult technology. I mean, god, look at who owns it all.

I'm sure anyone not in the USA or anyone progressive in the USA likes to think if 2016 had a do over, that they'd stop the bad stuff from happening. But no. No. A lot of you reading this wouldn't. Because you can't say no. God forbid if you need to be disruptive about it. Only "let me consider it", "let's try to find the middle ground", and "sure, lets do it".

Community is not formed by what you say Yes to. But, what you say No to. And how willing you are to show people who can't respect boundaries to the door.

I over see a small programming oriented space. It's centered around people interested in Concatenative Programming Languages (catlangs for short). For the past month now I have been doing nothing but saying "no this is not allowed" and "I don't care what the industry is doing" and "this is hobbyist space". I learned my fucking lesson.

I had let one sloppist skate by. I was told to just "let them burn themself out". Instead, the result was the uxn community in the catlang discord was destroyed. By ONE fucking person getting through. What do you think will happen to your community when you green light thousands of people?

Because, "responsible usage" is a yes.

You get America. You get volience from those feeling cast aside with no power in the system. You get to watch your passion and community distort further. You wake up one day and everyone you thought was friendly turns out to simply want you dead. Literally or metaphorically. The vibe of being polite and respectful is more important than actually respecting people. Everything is turned into a pale facsimile of itself.

It Is Not Inevitable

Stop fucking saying it is inevitable. Stop fucking saying you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We are literally watching a genie be shoved violently into the bottle. The internet, personal computing, it's all being snatched away from us. RAM prices, storage prices, the never ending waves of roaming DDoS attacks, the closure of browsers behind AI interface, the destruction of search systems, the capture of social media channels.

People like to compare AI to the car. However, the car was forced upon the world. People rejected it. And people are rejecting it. Successful reclaimation efforts are happening. Communities were destoryed. Paved over. People in power siezed their homes, their gathering places, their businesses. And paved them over with asphalt.

And, now. I'm watching that happen in real time. I'm watching people decided what is and isn't valuable. I'm watching people opine about how people will lie, so we should just let them pave over us. I'm watching people take the middle of the road stance for no fucking reason. I'm watching people try to protect their position in the heirachy over protecting the people doing the labor.

I am going fucking insane

That catlang discord server I mentioned? I've had to usher out at least 3 projects from the space because they are vibe coded, engage with agentic development, of have declared some part of software's creation bullshit. This community is miniscule. I could probably count how many people are active on any given day on one hand.

If I was the typical software person or FOSS brained guy, I would bend. Could your project or community do that? Have you upheld your values and morals enough to eject possibly a major project from your space? You know why I do it?

But I refuse to be like the main Factor community. They were desperate for contribution. Desperate for validation. Desperate to have Factor iterate at the pace of other projects. So they kept around transphobic assholes that would deny COVIDs existance. And soon more people like that trickled in and we and others were pushed out. Now, there is clear indications that Factor's devteam is captured by AI development.

I will not let that happen again.

It Is Black and White

It is in fact black and white. Look at whose pushing this shit. DHH, the pinicle of white cismale tech machoism, is on his blog posting about how the white british should take back Britain. Elon is literally an arm of the US government. OpenAI's Sam Altman is trying to turn the very act of thinking into a service. If you think the decision about this tech should be made purely on technical grounds, you are actually fucking evil! I'm no gonna sugar coat it. You are actively siding with evil so long as it proves to be useful.

There is no ethical consumption, but for the love of god, don't choose worse. I am so fucking. tired. of people choosing worse. Stop choosing the worse option.

There is no fucking responsible usage. So what if people could lie? Anyone willing to lie to you over the course of weeks, months, YEARS should be permanently and publically blacklist. The "people could lie" argument is bullshit. Cowardice bullshit from a pathologically polite culture.

If someone is willing to menipulate you for an extended period of time for their own gratification, they are dangerous. They should not be allowed in you community. There is no naunce to be had. You get rid of them immediately once the ruse is up.

But what if they made a few good contributions?

You get rid of them.

But what if they are important to the project?

You have you comfort drink of choice, and then you get rid of them.

What if they were nice to me?

You confide in your friends, and then you get rid of them.

What if I'm afraid to confront people?

You steady your breathing and calm your heart, and then get rid of them.

But, what if I don't want to do any of that!? What if I just want things to go back to normal!?

Then you decide who and what you are willing to burn, and you drown in your dispair.

Those Left to Die

The catlang discord isn't the only space I over see. I over see another safe heaven: Nouveau. And in both of these spaces, I see people hurting. People ejected from a space they once loved. A space they thought shared their passion through and through. And now they are watching that all go out the window.

I'm watching it go out the window. We're all watching the mask drop, one by one. People's true colors come out. It's for their sake I keep the doors so firm shut against slop. No matter how miniscule. If someone's project is utilizing it in any capcity, it is unwelcomed.

Every day, on my federated feed, I see another person post about how they have lost their job. How a project they've loved and cared about has been engaging with slop. Entire fields of research evaporated. Ideals for computing people have pioneered now contorted into virtue signals for grifters.

And sometimes, there is a voice in the back of my head. A voice that worries that one day it'll be too much. That one day someone will simply post "I can't deal with any more. Goodbye.". I was nearly at that brink. The software I needed for my job was broken. My job has been pushing for faster timelines. People around me discussing AI automations for my team when the foundational software of my job is broken. I snapped.

Thankfully, I have plenty of sick days to use. Thankfully, I have interest outside of tech I can get back into. Reading, physical arts. Thankfully, work outside of tech and only deal with the fringes of the insanity. Thankfully, much of my coworkers are inherently resistent to the technology as it has negative utiltiy.

And we make sure to poison the well on this idea wherever possible. Giving our coworkers easy to utilize weak points to press on.

There is only one way this stops. We can stop it. We must say No, without reservations, without expections, without any belief there is utility in this technology. Do not help build the new car depedent infrastructure. Otherwise everything. Everything. You care about will. be. paved. over.

There is already places turning coding into gig work. Where you just churn out code for training material. I'd expect, soon, there will even be places where you fix snippets of code on the behave of LLM systems. Uber didn't die. It changed our world. Yet it seems like we have learned nothing from that?

We can still stop this. You can still protect your communities. You can put together resistance. Disrupt their pratices, their organizations. Exhile them from your communities. Preserve the value of you and everyone's labor.

This can be resisted. But only if you stand your ground, and never set foot in that middle.