I've never said anything about a Zed Shaw link before, but this has my hands up in the air.
What comes to my mind is a fumbling art student who's been called out on a bad piece, so he's now claiming it's a parody of bad work, or, no wait, actually the reaction of everyone to the poor piece is the piece.
He trots out the persona argument all the time, but I won't give it to him. A persona isn't a set of fake glasses, nose and mustache you can wear whenever you don't want something attached to people's image of you. People with personas make a great effort to separate them from their real selves – wearing costumes, using different names, and actually behaving differently. Ranting from zedshaw.com under the name Zed Shaw doesn't fit my idea of a persona.
Also, it bothers me that the supposed real Zed Shaw uses this deletion to criticize people and put them down (for taking his "persona" seriously) – something his "persona" was well known for.
The blog was called "Zed's So Fucking AWESOME", and he had his name in flaming letters and silhouettes of strippers on the blog, as I recall. Did you really think it was a sincere effort?
There may be a part of Zed Shaw that is Fucking Awesome and that is highly opinionated (the audacity to even have an online persona, and to start software projects, points to a large amount of ego). But it was clearly always a self-parody. Unfortunately, self-parody doesn't work on the internet. Everyone always takes you at face value.
Did you ever know a kid who would say something mean and then quickly follow it up with "JK!"? That kid was annoying.
I don't think it was a sincere effort. That's my point. Zed just wanted to be able to say mean things about people and not experience any consequences for it. And that's silly.
This fumbling around now is annoying. If he wants to be a mean person he should be a mean person. If he wants to be nice he should say he doesn't want to be mean anymore and be nicer. Changing his behavior and saying it's because I wasn't smart enough to handle his persona – and by the way don't criticize him for anything he said... What is that?
You have a point. On the other hand, people are contradictory. I think it is quite possible to think to yourself "heh, heh, I'm going to create the most ridiculously aggro coding blog ever" but in doing so also express the worst aspects of your own personality.
I'm not saying it's not annoying, but whether or not it was sincere, I don't see where you're getting that Zed doesn't think he should experience consequences. If you give him the benefit of the doubt, you'll realize that you didn't read what he wrote before ZSSFA, and therefore he pretty much proved his point that people listen to assholes and blowhards, however mind-numbingly obvious that may have already been.
You know, I don't have anything bad to say about the guy.
I understand what it's like to put your persona out there. (And if you don't believe everything we put out on the Internet is, at a minimum, part persona -- you're full of shit.)
Wearing your passion on your sleeve can be intoxicating, but also painful. (Notice my last parenthetical statement, I'm passionate -- but I'm prepared to have folks zoom in and focus on one statement and disregard the argument.)
Would this world be a better or worse place without Zed in it? Even if he's a ball of ranting passion -- I think it makes the world a more beautiful place to stay.
You can be a hermit on the internet and just attack. Or you can be a passionate soul and take risks by sticking it all out there. Take your pick, but I'm betting the latter won't have nearly as many regrets as the former.
This guy is a passionate hacker. This guy has physical pain when he can't code. This place, Hacker News, should be the one place where he's definitely a hero.
I've met Zed a few times and I can tell you that he's not some scheming mastermind who wants to trick the world in believing anything, he's an honest and passionate person.
The only thing you might be able to hold against him is that in his enthusiasm he can also be rather erratic. I would hardly call that a problem, we all like a little bit of commotion and change.
What comes to my mind is a fumbling art student who's been called out on a bad piece, so he's now claiming it's a parody of bad work, or, no wait, actually the reaction of everyone to the poor piece is the piece.
He trots out the persona argument all the time, but I won't give it to him. A persona isn't a set of fake glasses, nose and mustache you can wear whenever you don't want something attached to people's image of you. People with personas make a great effort to separate them from their real selves – wearing costumes, using different names, and actually behaving differently. Ranting from zedshaw.com under the name Zed Shaw doesn't fit my idea of a persona.
Also, it bothers me that the supposed real Zed Shaw uses this deletion to criticize people and put them down (for taking his "persona" seriously) – something his "persona" was well known for.