Comment by overfeed a day ago
> Do you feel like the values you're propagating into the world align with your own personal values?
> Basically, if I couldn't get on tiktok and make an earnest video about why what I'm selling is useful and worth existing, and why it personally matters to me, I don't think I could sell that product in good conscience.
Have you ever involuntarily gone to bed hungry even once in your life?
Yes. I was homeless from 16 to 22. Both of my parents were drug addicts, in and out of jail/prison. I don't speak to anyone in my family, because they side with my extremely abusive grandfather, who raised me and frequently savagely beat me for not sharing his extremist Christian values. Until very recently, I had an extremely thin social support network.
I was awarded a full-ride scholarship to multiple state institutions after high school due to high test scores, but a vindictive teacher illegally altered my grade last-minute because I stood up to her for my peers, and disqualified me from being eligible. I was still 17, attending high school on my own, homeless, and had no parents to push back, and no money for summer remedial courses.
I couldn't apply for government aid because my mother was committing tax fraud by claiming me as a dependent despite not providing me a home or resources, and refused to help. There was no economic opportunity in my rural town and I didn't have a car, so I proceeded to struggle for years, scraping by, risking my freedom, while I rounded out my skill set to become employable in tech despite not attending college.
I've gone much longer than a day feeling hungry. Feeling starving. Feeling my muscles eat themselves and my face and jaw tighten from lack of nutrients. Friends in high school used to make fun of me for looking emaciated. I was a vulture, eating anything I could find, frequently stealing food to make up for an insatiable appetite. Now I have the opposite problem because of metabolism changes after years of malnutrition, and sometimes struggle with stress-related eating disorders.
I'm going to do you the favor and not make such asinine implications about your own background.
> I was a vulture, eating anything I could find, frequently stealing food to make up for an insatiable appetite.
Now I'm even more confused because you experienced this first hand but can't imagine how someone can engage in practices that have nothing to.do with personal values to keep their families fed and sheltered.
> I'm going to do you the favor and not make such asinine implications about your own background.
Weren't you just shaming someone whose personal beliefs and background you don't know just 2 comments upstream?
Can you point out when I shamed them?
I asked them a question and presented my own perspective and motivations for asking the question. They followed up, and I have responded. I see nothing wrong with discussing socioeconomics on Hacker News. Maybe instead of being negative, making insinuations and accusing me of shaming someone, you could just provide your own perspective, which I'd be happy to engage with.
> Now I'm even more confused because you experienced this first hand but can't imagine how someone can engage in practices that have nothing to.do with personal values to keep their families fed and sheltered.
Principles are principles. I live and die by them. I'm not perfect, but it's the thing I try to maintain that separates me from those who have contributed to the suffering in my life. I don't expect everyone to understand this.
I'm not religious, but I do have a patron saint, Joan of Arc. She was burned at the stake at 17 for refusing to bow to the Church. I haven't been killed for my beliefs, but there were definitely times I feared that I would be. I have suffered immense abuse for standing by my principles, when most would have caved.
I'm not asking anyone else here to hold to my standards, but I do have my own standards and the nature of growth involves finding chances to challenge them.
>Can you point out when I shamed them?
Probably the part where someone who was not talking to you mentioned a product that some people use and you responded with a 200 word mini essay about your conscience and feelings about consumerism. Nobody asked you about your principles nor was the discussion even remotely related to that.
The thread about the widget that generates Instagram posts from websites is a bizarre place to share, unprompted, that you have lived in abject poverty but also somehow never worked a job that didn’t meet your rigorous ethical standards. Like, cool man. That’s super weird and most people that have lived in poverty haven’t had that experience, so the only thing you’re communicating is your moral superiority. Which again, is both weird by itself and weird in the thread about the thing that generates Instagram posts from a website.
Edit: To be clear, I am not insinuating that your post was meant to shame the person you responded to, I am flat-out stating that your post was obviously intended to shame the person you responded to. Any argument to the contrary could only consist of you demanding that other people read the words that you wrote and selectively assign different meanings to them until it makes you look good.
What an incredibly sarcastic and off putting way to respond. It makes me feel like we should be asking you the same question. Exactly how much of your life is wrapped up in perpetuating things you know to be harmful singularly for enriching yourself? Why is it that such an earnest and straightforward, unemotional comment could drive such intense disdain and emotion out of you? Personally, I think they were completely justified in their statements and asking their questions in a nonjudgemental way. Do you have a guilty conscience?