by tombert | 2025-09-08 22:10:06+00:00
> The woke stuff directly affects my job prospects and quality of life. That makes it important. I've been suffering because of it every since 2012. It escalated between 2016 and 2024, and only now is the pendulum swinging the other way.

I don't know anything about you, but I'm a white male born in the US who makes dirty and inappropriate jokes all the time who lives in one of the most "woke" cities in America, who has been working since 2006 and living on my own since 2012, the class that is claimed to be the victim of all the "woke" culture, and I can tell you that the woke stuff was overdone in 2016 and it's even more tired now. I somehow manage to do ok, despite what conservatives constantly claim.

If you really think that that "woke" stuff is hurting your job prospects in itself, I simply do not believe you. I believe that you believe that, but I do not think that that's actually the reason, I think it's an excuse you've come up to justify your lack of success. I think you should do some self examination.

> It happens. I don't think Lunduke is stupid though. He is in PR more than pure tech. That doesn't make him stupid. Neither does him being conservative.

You're right, being in PR doesn't make you stupid. I do think Lunduke is stupid, or at least acts like he's much smarter than he actually is. Also I think he was an engineer at Microsoft in the late 90's; he at least claimed to be part of the team that worked on IE for Unix.

It doesn't matter though; as you said being in PR doesn't make you stupid and being an engineer doesn't make you smart.

I am just saying that touting him working at Microsoft and OpenSUSE as some way saying that he has this well-informed opinion doesn't work for me. I've seen too much.

> It's not a theory. He regularly reports on awful treatment of conservatives. You'd be surprised at how malicious some of these woke people are. People have been banned from conferences for being seen on Twitter wearing a MAGA hat.

No it's still a conspiracy if you think it's a huge widespread thing. I'm sure you can find plenty of one-off cases of people acting stupid. The US has more than 300 million people, of course you're going to find plenty of people acting inappropriately. I would be against firing someone because they were caught wearing a MAGA hat, but I haven't seen any evidence that it's a widespread thing.

Your response might be "no even one is too many!!!!!", and sure, I agree, but let's play this a bit more. Would it be fair to call conservatives part of a "cult" because I can find examples of evangelicals abandoning their kids because they're gay? I'll bet I could find a lot more examples of that...

> He finds much more lurid stories to report than "mere" misgendering nonsense. The pronoun thing is just a litmus test to see whether someone is in a woke cult or not.

> He is not speaking to them or about them in the way they demand, you mean. People have a right to simply refuse to engage in the constant celebration of certain lifestyles and worldviews.

The fact that you (and Lunduke) call using a proper pronoun as part of a "cult" is precisely why people Lunduke so insufferable.

Frankly the opposition to using the pronoun that someone wants to be called has always baffled me. It really isn't hard. You can say it's hard, but then you're just actively lying, because it really isn't.

There are plenty of cases like this. If your name is "Stephen" but I insisted on calling you "Wally", then you might find that pretty annoying, especially if you corrected me multiple times.

You can use the term "demand" if you'd like, but that's kind of stupid. If you were to come into my house, for example, I would "demand" that you speak to me with a certain level of respect. The cool thing is, in my house, I get to define what "respect" means. If you didn't treat me in a way that I found respectful, I would tell you to get the fuck out of my house, and that's not weird; the same would apply to you and your house.

The people who run FOSS projects are allowed to put whatever definition of "respectful" that they would like. If you're going to be an asswipe about not respecting pronouns, then you are under no obligation to contribute to this project and these project maintainers are perfectly within their rights to tell you to fuck off. Again, this isn't weird. You're free to run your own project and have whatever moronic conservative standards you'd like.

Of course you have a right to "refuse to engage" with things that they disagree with, but you don't have the right to my, or anyone else's friendship, or to work on any specific project. It's not written in the bible "Thou Shall Be Allowed To Merge Arbitrary Pull Requests".

> Liberals have no problem demanding such things on a constant basis, ostracizing and seeking to banish anyone who disagrees even 5%, and that is exactly why we need people like Lunduke to bravely issue scathing critiques of these practices. Besides that, his tech news is kind of interesting and unique, and he has a good sense of humor.

You don't know me, but I'm in the category that would easily be shunned if there was really this huge epidemic of "shunning if you disagree even 5%". I grew up reading FYAD, I say very offensive jokes all the time, and I haven't been canceled yet. In fact, I think that only time I've ever been threatened to be "canceled' was when I was threatened by Richard Spencer's lawyer.

I have accidentally misgendered people who have transitioned, and you know what happened to me? Absolutely nothing, they understood it was an honest mistake and I wasn't trying to be a dick. I'm sure you can find a transgender person who's a jerk about that, but most people are reasonably understanding; they can tell if you're trying to be mean, and if you're not they usually don't get too upset.

> Lunduke to bravely issue scathing critiques of these practices.

It's really not brave. You said yourself that constantly talking about "woke" stuff is an easy way to get engagement on YouTube. I guess it might feel dangerous if you're really naive but I was pretty active on YouTube in 2016, and lots of creators with multi-millions of subscribers were able to be super "Anti-SJW" and it didn't seem to hurt their numbers at all. It's almost like finding an example of a feminist acting insane isn't really that hard, and also isn't really representative of anything.

I actually think it's cowardly; he says all this provocative shit, knowing it will upset people, and instead of owning it like a fucking grown up he just pretends that he doesn't understand why people are being so mean to him. You can't have your cake and eat it too; if you want to be provocative, that's fine, but then you shouldn't act surprised when people have a reaction.

> Besides that, his tech news is kind of interesting and unique, and he has a good sense of humor.

I haven't watched his stuff in awhile, so that might be true. The reason I stopped watching (predates before his idiotic "Conservative Nerds" blog) has already been explained: I got the impression that he would pretend he knows more about stuff than he actually does. It seemed like he would speak with authority on lots of stuff but it would immediately fall apart with any amount of examination.

I was actually a direct connection with him on LinkedIn for awhile (keep in mind, I used to be a fan), which is how I even found out how hard right he had become.

I highly doubt he's somehow become better informed on anything now than when I stopped watching his stuff like nine years ago.

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This can go on forever. I answered your question, which is why I think Bryan Lunduke is a pseudo-intellectual dimwit and then some. You're free to keep responding but I think we have thoroughly derailed this into politics, and I don't think that's productive for a post about SQLite.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to continue this discussion but I doubt either of us are going to be able to convince the other of anything.