commit: 0579704b840d4b183d2c453132e3a299f0825ff1
parent 4786b8b1c4c3129466fce1431f26065bafcd6287
Author: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2023 13:48:16 +0200
Burnout 2
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diff --git a/content/blog/Burnout-2.md b/content/blog/Burnout-2.md
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+---
+title: "Burnout and the quiet failures of the hacker community"
+date: 2023-06-29
+---
+
+This has been a very challenging year for me. You probably read that I suffered
+from [burnout](/2023/05/01/2023-05-01-Burnout.html) earlier in the year. In some
+respects, things have improved, and in many other respects, I am still haunted.
+
+You might not care to read this, and so be it, take your leave if you must. But
+writing is healing for me. Maybe this is a moment for solidarity, sympathy, for
+reflecting on your own communities. Maybe it's a vain and needlessly public
+demonstration of my slow descent into madness. I don't know, but here we go.
+
+Yesterday was my 30<sup>th</sup> birthday. 🎂 It was another difficult day for
+me. I drafted a long blog post with all of the details of the events leading up
+to my burnout. You will never read it; I wrote it for myself and it will only be
+seen by a few confidants, in private, and my therapist. But I do want to give
+you an small idea of what I've been going through, and some of the take-aways
+that matter for you and the hacker community as a whole.
+
+Here's a quote from yesterday's unpublished blog post:
+
+> Trigger warnings: child abuse, rape, sexual harassment, suicide, pedophilia,
+> torture.
+
+You won't read the full story, and trust me, you're better off for that. Suffice
+to say that my life has been consumed with trauma and strife all year. I have
+sought healing, and time for myself, time to process things, and each time a new
+crisis has landed on my doorstep, most of them worse than the last. A dozen
+things went wrong this year, horribly wrong, one after another. I have enjoyed
+no peace in 2023.
+
+Many of the difficulties I have faced this year have been beyond the scope of
+the hacker community, but several have implicated it in challenging and
+confronting ways.
+
+The hacker community has been the home I never had, but I'm not really feeling
+at home here right now. A hacker community that was precious to me failed
+someone I love and put my friends in danger. Rape and death had come to our
+community, and was kept silent. But I am a principled person, and I stand for
+what is right; I spoke the truth and it brought me and my loved ones agonizing
+stress and trauma and shook our community to the core. Board members resigned.
+Marriages are on the rocks. When the dust settled, I was initially uncomfortable
+staying in this community, but things eventually started to get better. Until
+another member of this community, someone I trusted and thought of as a friend,
+confessed to me that he had raped multiple women a few years ago. I submitted my
+resignation from this community last night.
+
+I went to GPN, a hacker event in Germany, at the start of June. It was a welcome
+relief from the stress I've faced this year, a chance to celebrate hacker
+culture and a warm reminder of the beauty of our community. It was wonderful.
+Then, on the last night, a friend took me aside and confided in me that they are
+a pedophile, and told me it was okay because they respected the age of consent
+in Germany -- which is 14. What began as a wonderful reminder of what the hacker
+community can be became a PTSD episode and a reminder that rape culture is
+fucking everywhere.
+
+I don't want to be a part of this anymore. Our communities have tolerated casual
+sexism and misogyny and transphobia and racism and actual fucking rapists, and
+stamped down on women and queer people and brown people in our spaces with a
+smile on our face and a fucked-up facsimile of tolerance and inclusion as a
+cornerstone of the hacker ethic.
+
+This destroys communities. It is destroying *our* communities. If there's one
+thing I came to understand this year, it's that these problems are *pervasive*
+and *silent*.
+
+Here's what you need to do: believe the victims. Stand up for what's right. Have
+the courage to remove harmful people from your environment, especially if you're
+a man and have a voice. Make people feel welcome, and seen. Don't tolerate
+casual sexism in the hacker community or anywhere else. Don't tolerate
+transphobia or homophobia. Don't tolerate racists. If you see something, say
+something. And for fuck's sake, don't bitch about that code of conduct that
+someone wants to add to your community.[^rms]
+
+[^rms]: And fuck Richard Stallman and his enablers, his supporters, and the Free
+ Software Foundation's leadership as a whole. Shame on you. *Shame on you*.
+
+I'm going to withdraw a bit from the in-person hacker community for the
+indefinite future. I don't think I can manage it for a while. I have felt good
+about working on my software and collaborating with my free software communities
+online, albeit at a much-reduced capacity. I'm going to keep working, and
+writing, insofar as I find satisfaction in it. Life goes on.
+
+Be there for the people you love, and love more people, and be there for them,
+too.
