Oppugn.us

There's nothing I hate more than people who rant about ranting. Is there anything more incredibly useless than basing your rant on the second order derivative of uselessness that is an already derivative rant?

You see, a problem most nerds have is that they think words are useless. It's actions that matter. Don't just complain about something, go out and fix it. Complaining does nothing. Writing, words, humor, are all pointless because society means nothing and social norms are nothing but a stupid obstacle to truly getting shit done!

Then, why the fuck are you ranting about it? Could it be, and bear with me here, that words actually are pretty damn important? Words have built societies, destroyed societies, founded countries, built nuclear weapons of chaos, inspired space travel, assassinated heads of state, and got lovers to make babies. Words are powerful, and when well written and transmitted through some form of communication technology, can have massive impact.

In fact, the US was founded by a damn rant. A bunch of pissed off white dudes who wanted their tea without taxes got riled up and said "FUCK YOU BITCH!" That rant convinced citizens to fight a war against an incredibly well trained military force and win. An entire very successful country was established and proved that a government run by the citizens could work. Most people don't get this, but at the time nobody in the world except Voltaire actually thought that peasants could run jack shit.

Many times, the only thing you can do if you want to actually change something is to speak your damn mind and do it with some passion. Of course, most technologists abhor passion. To them anything with anger, love, fear, humor, or countless other human emotions is pointless and scary. To them the world would be better if we were all like Spock.

Of course, the stupidest thing about people who complain about ranting (apart from the obvious hypocrisy and logical fallacy) is how would you solve this without a rant? By "solve" you mean write some code? Code? You mean more words? Oh, my bad, code isn't words. It's not writing. It's not communication.

No, code is this entirely different thing that's not anything like ranting and writing at all. Nobody ever started a piece of software because some other piece of software sucked so fucking bad that they just had to wipe it out. Nope, never. Everything that a real "fixit" guy creates is totally out of love and peace and harmony with the world.

I'd posit that 2/3rds of our existing infrastructure is inspired entirely by people hating some piece of software that came before it. The idea that you're going to go off and create something entirely new and totally positive is actually going to accomplish less than if you said, "I fucking hate Pylons. It's gotta die."

However, all of the above is pointless because of one simple fact: I don't make you read my rants. It's not like I'm putting porn on the Disney channel at 12pm and forcing your kids to watch it. I'm writing what I think in a place where you have to actively come here. If you don't like it then just don't come here. Shit this site is even named "oppugn" (meaning to disagree).

And by telling me that I shouldn't write what I think and I should "do stuff" you're basically telling me I should shut the fuck up. That's so fucking positive you fucking bourgeois bohemian hippie hypocrite.