You're very welcome. And I allege you know that's not how I meant it. Do you really want to assert that the subject matters at HN are part of mainstream culture? I do believe that IT people tend to use the internet differently, this is not an elitist observation in case it came across as such. It's just different.
I have a friend who is big into fantasy sports (blue collar job: construction). The first thing he does when he sits down in front of the computer is that he checks whatever roster he is managing at the time. Is he not "normal"?
I bet if he were talking about fantasy sports on a forum full of fantasy players, he'd neither be surprised nor upset at someone in the forum dividing the world into groups of fantasy players/normal people.
I get the feeling that you choose to misunderstand. If there is anything I can add to this line of discussion I will gladly do it, but I have to admit I'm a bit lost as to what your problem is here.
No, but you did choose to interpret them in a totally different context, deliberately giving them a meaning that was clearly not part of my statement. Then you ignored, yet still replied to, my clarification.
From my perspective this looks like either a huge misunderstanding or the definition of straw man rhetorics. And I have to say I don't get where your hostility comes from, but I neither recognize my message as it was apparently understood by you nor do I appreciate the tone. I'm always ready to admit that issues like these could be my fault as I all-too-often like to hide behind the fact that I'm not a native speaker. I just don't see it this time though.
In the spirit of being constructive: I don't think the application of the label "normalcy" or the lack thereof is a value judgement in any way, and being "normal" is something that must be interpreted within the given context - otherwise it makes no sense because it's not a global property that encompasses the entire personality of a person.
I brought the label of "normal" in a discussion with some friends. I have come to the conclusion that how someone interprets "normal" has a lot to do with their background. My friends with a strictly technical background (or those without some background in social sciences or the arts) did not seem differentiate between normal and average. In the social sciences normal has additional connotations/ramifications.
Instantly all kinds of connotations can be applied to pretty much any word, as long as someone is willing to completely ignore the context and the intent of the message. Which, I'm sorry to say, I think happened here. Of course we all have "trigger words" that we associate with our little linguistic traumas, but there is a line after the crossing of which you simply attack the wrong people for things they didn't even say. I know, because I've done that occasionally as well and it took someone external to tell and make me realize what was happening. So in this spirit I'm trying to tell you: this is what's happening.
Regarding the actual subject of normalcy I'm finding it difficult to add anything else without repeating myself. From personal experience, there is always "good normal" and "bad normal", as there is "good not normal" and "bad not normal", but even more often it just means "different from the other 80%". In this case, I chose the word normal because it instantly conveys the fact that most hackers use the web in different ways from most of the other people. That's all. It did its job.
It's unfortunate that this triggered something in you, but I encourage you to take a step back and recognize that you saw some things in my message that were simply not there.
I think there is a strong argument to be made that the myth of normal is a socially counterproductive concept -- much as the myth of race. "normal people" maybe sounds sort of close to "those people" which is trigger language that suggests one might not value diversity or might not judge all people as individuals. When I read your comment, I translated it to "adult consumer internet user" but still could not really empathize with your point.
There is also a point where misguided attempts at political correctness drag you down the rabbit hole into a land of pure absurdity where instead of communicating, perpetually offended people are just engaged in a cyclical exchange of trite phrases.
I recognize it might well be an expression of a cultural divide between us, but this is the way I see it: HN is populated by a huge group of very diverse people. While we are diverse in pretty much every aspect, we are also bound together by being hackers and by living, at least party, in whatever hacker culture means for each us. That's not normal, it's a subculture. Almost every single human being is part of at least one subculture, and many are members of several, and there are millions of overlapping points that defy categorization. I cannot for the life of me figure out why it would be considered wrong to express this fact.
I can say for sure that I am not normal in many aspects, and then again I am normal in a lot of others. It's not somehow evil to recognize and talk about this. I think before dfc's comment, the number of people who misunderstood my original comment was very low, but my point is tainted now, subverted and burnt beyond recognition.
