this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
125 points (91.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

36243 readers
1405 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It's something I struggle with. Some bad news comes out about some public persona doing something shitty and they get cancelled. But sometimes I really struggle with giving up the things they've made because I like them. There are also occasions where the person has been accused of something and it doesn't seem true to me, or I think they're genuinely sorry and have been punished enough, and the context isn't being considered.

What do you think? Who do you feel conflicted about enjoying?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 67 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

Both of the Linuses

Sebastian and Torvalds

Sebastian because most of the shit he's been accused of has either been fixed openly, or was proven mostly false.

Torvalds because while he can be extremely rude, he generally only does it when the person deserves to be called out. It's not like he's going off at random people. Society says he should use more tact, but the dude is literally responsible for creating and now maintaining arguably the most important piece of the server software stack globally. There's also a very high chance he's on the spectrum.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 47 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah people can complain Torvalds was rude all day, but fuck me if the people he yelled at couldn't be aggressively disrespectful in bringing half-assed work to the table and doing damage or at best wasting other's people time.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 31 points 3 days ago (2 children)

He's the literal "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole". But if he wasn't that way, I wonder if we'd have what we have. A nicer developer wouldn't get the same attention.

[–] bytesonbike@discuss.online 5 points 3 days ago

I argue about this all the time, especially if you have to work with non-coders. People who don't code do not understand the big picture.

Steve Wozniak is brilliant, and had Steve Jobs explain the vision and sell it to non coders.

For Microsoft. That was Ballmer.

If youre a tech lead who lets a group of marketing folks try to define the course of any application, you need someone really strong at communication to fight for you. Unfortunately, Linus didnt have one and ripping people a new asshole was the next best thing.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

He's self aware and for some reason that bothers me less than an asshole who denies being an asshole.

[–] yyyesss@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

i've heard Torvalds be called rude but never "cancelled".

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think there have been attempts to cancel Torvalds after he's slapped down some idiot in a particularly harsh manner, but I don't think they ever stick because he doesn't go off on people unless they really try to do shit that would compromise the integrity of the kernel and didn't take the message to fix/bail on something when it was previously provided.

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

As I recall, he also apologized for the slap down, which seems like it often helps with getting cancelled

[–] ashughes@feddit.uk 8 points 2 days ago

How do you define “cancelled”?

As far as I can tell both Sebastian and Torvalds are just as successful (if not more) in their respective roles today as they were before any “controversies” surrounding them were made public.

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 19 points 3 days ago

Sebastian because most of the shit he's been accused of has either been fixed openly, or was proven mostly false.

From what I understand, nothing was proven false, but there were things that were not proven true, as in "we couldn't find documented evidence that this employee was sexually harassed", which obviously doesn't necessarily mean that it did not happen. They just couldn't find a paper trail of it happening, which is understandable.

On the other hand, things like all the factual inaccuracies and whatnot were absolutely undeniable.