{"slug": "communities-of-not", "title": "Communities of Not", "summary": "Communities built around rejecting something—such as childfree lifestyles, car-free living, or LLM-skeptic developer spaces—often shift from healthy criticism to policing and mob harassment when members make personal choices that contradict the group's oppositional identity. The author warns that defining oneself through negativity can lead to collective shaming and expulsion of individuals who never agreed to be part of the tribe, citing recent online attacks against the rsync project as an example. The piece urges readers to resist the temptation of catastrophic interpretations and instead default to openness and de-escalation.", "body_md": "written on June 06, 2026\n\nThere is a strange thing that happens in communities that gather around\nabstinence from something: identity from opposition. At their best these\ncommunities are not *just* negative: childfree spaces can be about autonomy,\nchoice and acceptance, anti-car spaces about safer streets and transit, and\nLLM-skeptical developer spaces about the future of labor, code quality and\nslop 1. But the thing being refused often does not go away and instead\nbecomes the main subject of the community’s identity.\n\nThat would be fine if it stayed at criticism, maybe even angry criticism, but more often than not it turns into policing and hatred towards others. An influencer without children becomes a parent, an urban bike commuter by choice buys a Porsche, a respected developer tries LLMs, and the community feels betrayed because it assumed they were members of the same tribe. The expulsion of that person (who never signed up to be a community member) is entirely imaginary but the punishment that the community unleashes is not: people pile on and shame them, quote them out of context and turn their weakest moments into proof that the person was always unserious, a sharlatan or should not be listened to.\n\nI do not think the answer is to tell people to stop paying attention. Cars shape cities even for people who cycle, children influence politics, workplaces and taxes even for people who do not have them. For us developers, LLMs show up in editors, issue trackers, hiring conversations, management pressure and code reviews whether we asked for them or not. Resisting that can be legitimate but that is no excuse for using one’s rejection to justify shitty mob behavior.\n\nI understand the thinking all too well, because I have done versions of this myself in the past. It took me a while to become more accepting of other people’s worldviews that diverge from mine. Whatever insecurities we have, finding a group of others sharing them can be comforting. The danger is that being part of a crowd of negativity can easily make us part of collective harassment.\n\nI can only encourage you to breathe, slow down, de-escalate when given the\nchance, and resist the temptation to always assume the most catastrophic\nreading. Default to being [open to new things](/2026/4/11/the-center-has-a-bias/).\nBeing negative towards something, and making that ones identity, is an easy trap\nto fall into.\n\nThese examples are not meant as equivalents. The recent\n[mob](https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/929) [against\nrsync](https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345332213390)\nis the LLM version that prompted this post. I picked the others because I’m\nfamiliar with those communities and they all show similar cases of personal\nchoices being interpreted as betrayal.[↩](#fnref-1)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/communities-of-not", "canonical_source": "https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/6/6/communities-of-not/", "published_at": "2026-06-06 15:42:54+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-06 16:19:33.793531+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["large-language-models", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["LLMs"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/communities-of-not", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/communities-of-not.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/communities-of-not.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/communities-of-not.jsonld"}}