I listen to Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier‘s podcast “Shop Talk Show“; Episode 185, “This Idea Should Die” was really excellent.
The best part was at the end, where the amazing Jen Simmons talked about an idea that should die, and it was so great I had to transcribe it. So here it is, because it’s amazing and it needs to be out there everywhere.
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What needs to die?
I think the whole expectation that everybody in the industry is the same one flavor of nerd.
That everybody is a 23 year old white straight boy who likes to eat cheetos and play video games and wear t-shirts from conferences. And maybe you are a 23-year old white straight boy living in Silicon Valley wearing, right now, a conference t-shirt and eating some cheetos. That’s cool! I don’t mean to say that you’re wrong. You’re not! Rock those cheetos. But what’s so stifiling and sometimes just overwhelming is this idea that we keep wandering around expecting that everybody is like that. Everybody wants to eat pizza and soda at this conference. Everybody wants to get as drunk as possible. Everybody is a man. Of course everybody is a man, girls don’t even like computers. Of course everyone is white, how in the world could anyone who is not white have ever gotten into our industry, because we’re so awesome and they’re so disadvantaged.
Like, that’s just so completely wrong. And I’ve been lucky enough- I’ve made decisions in my life to put myself into situations that are not like that. I just came back last week from yet another conference where the audience to that conference didn’t look anything like that tiny, tiny box that we seem to assume this industry is in. The whole industry is not like that. The whole world is not like that. Now some conferences are like that, some pockets of the world can be, or seem to be like that, and I’m just sick of it. I’m sick of it. I’m almost to the point where I’m over it and I don’t want to go to places that act like that anymore. I don’t want to go to yet another conference where you can’t even get some water to drink because the idea is that everyone wants to drink soda is so ingrained that no one even bothered to bring anything except soda. And it’s not about the soda. It’s about this idea that we’re all the exact same particular kind of person, and that’s where all the money is going, all the VC funding is going to the companies that look like a white straight male-dominated field. And it’s just time to grow up. It’s time for us all all of us to grow up and stop acting like that.
Because it’s not the reality that I want to live in, it’s not the world that I want to live in, it’s not the world that we do live in, and anybody who keeps advocating this idea that that is the world, is intentionally advocating a world where sexism and racism and classism and crappy habits and bad heath dominates and that’s not why I got onto the web.
I got on to the web because the web was a place after a century of a certain kind of power structure in a certain kind of way that like if you wanted to make a tv show, you had to go through these five big television stations or if you wanted to have a band and make music you had to go through these particular record labels. The Web was a place where those rules got broken-just smashed -anybody could start a band and put their album out there for the whole world to buy. Anybody could make a video series and put it online for the whole world to watch. Anybody could write an article or a column or a report on some news and put it out there for the whole world to read. That’s the web that I believe in, that’s the web I want to see.
And how we went from this idea that the web was going to be access and freedom and redistribution of power to this world where everybody is this one particular type of person and it’s all about money and it’s all we care about…that’s not why I got on to the web. I don’t think that’s why the web was invented, I don’t think that’s why a lot of people got involved in the web. So. Let’s take it back from that idea and let’s make it something for everybody. Especially globally. everybody to participate. Everybody to feel like they belong. Everybody to feel like they can go to a conference and chime in, or go to work and chime in at a meeting and have their ideas heard and not have this kind of oppressive, stifling, stereotypical idea of who is smart and who has good ideas and who carries who around. We don’t need hoodies. The hoodie stereotype….that needs to go.
-Jen Simmons
The Web Ahead