((EDIT TO ADD: The original reason for writing this was completely subsumed by what happened afterwards as a consequence of the poor decisions in how I wrote it. More details here.))
(This is mostly just a blog post, me sort of rambling about an experience I had today but it feels topical to both the cohost experience, which admittedly I do really, really like this website and want to use it more, and tech in general.)
I've been having a years long grumble now when it comes to problems involving software or websites or the like. When I do manage to get solutions to these problems (important to note they usually just go unresolved instead and I just need to learn to Deal) I cannot help but feel the tone used by those providing the instruction is one of condescension, of "Oh this is so obvious how do you not get it?" It's kind of the same tone used by FOSS's worst advocates.
And earlier today when getting some help with cohost dev (the default color theme of the website does actively hurt my eyes to the extent I use it less than I'd like to) I think some of what the problem is got revealed to me. See as I was following a guide to a theme picker that I'd been linked, first of all the way it was set out, all very neat and pretty and clever, I didn't realize it was a guide at all. It said it was, but I saw no instructions. What I thought were bullets in a list turned out to be collapsible items. I have no idea how OP did this or who decided what symbol preceded each item you could click on to expand it, but from how I see and interpret visual data, it was a poor choice. After following the guide, I was once again left in a scenario where I was unable to actually do the thing it was suggesting. Upon installing the theme, the code for it all loaded up and a nice, friendly dialogue box with some options popped up as well, including the theme picker. Nice, right?
No, not nice. You fool, it said to me, You complete and utter imbecile, you cretin and Luddite, this is not the dialogue box you're looking for. I still don't know why that dialogue didn't do anything. The best I can tell it was just a little sandbox to show off that the script was functioning as intended. No, I needed to close the window that had opened in response to the install and know to instead go to the extension itself and open the theme manager, where it would launch the identical dialogue box but now it would work.
At some point during this process, something dawned on me, an issue that I feel like science education has already started confronting right as the Internet started to spread, as anti-vax bullshit with disgraced and license-to-practice-medicine-revoked former physician Andrew Wakefield got rolling, as the promises the 80s and 90s made to scientific advancement started failing: This shit is really complicated, and the state of modern science is advanced to the point that someone who isn't completely steeped in it is probably not going to be able to keep up. The ability to communicate scientific principals became critical. It wasn't just enough to do research and document it, but it was demonstrated time and again that if someone who isn't actively involved in STEM can't understand the basic premise of your work, you aren't done yet. And it feels like software and especially web folx just...never got the memo? I can think of one programmer who, when she takes the time to explain this stuff to me, both actively is checking along the way and challenging her own assumptions to make sure I'm following, and is also really careful with her tone and word choice so as to keep it from feeling demeaning or condescending. She's the exception. Probably because she's a hypnodomme and knows how extremely important word choice is. But in general when trying to get this sort of info even from friends it so often comes off as just, "Hey do this very simple thing, dumbass."
I don't know. I think about this and how opaque the Internet has gotten, how complicated software is, and I think about how shit like cryptocurrencies, NFTs, "AI" generated art and stories and such are becoming so widespread, and I feel that these do not exist in isolation from one another. I've got some unspecified and undiagnosed learning disability that includes making processing text difficult, and these tutorials meant to Help very rarely do. But I've got a B.S. in E.E. and have some vague understanding of what's actually happening. I can't imagine how lost someone with no STEM skills would be, how vulnerable to misinformation and hype and outright lies they would be.
I am decidedly an outsider looking in. I've tried coding and it's never worked out for me (but see above, I could have just gotten really shit instruction). But maybe, like physicists and chemists and civil engineers, more programmers and webdevs need to take a moment and realize they're actively losing the people they're trying to help and work with, and take some time to practice better communicating the concepts of their craft to the laity.
