>My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition.
So hacker news and technophiles? Good grief you sound worse than the people you are criticizing. Heaven forbid people like something.
Liking a hobby/activity isn't a problem. The problem is when people start gatekeeping (such as "no real programmer uses Javascript", etc). For instance, I like whisky, but I actively hate most whisky aficionados because it often just turns into a competition of "who bought the rarest/most expensive bottle" rather than "I like this brand/year". This behavior definitely occurs in the tech sphere (I've been judged for using Windows, since no real programmer would possibly be able to use anything besides mac/linux), but this behavior is always obnoxious and drives people away from activities.
I guess the inverse is: heaven forbid people like something without letting their passion curdle into possessive competition with other people who try to like it?
So hacker news and technophiles? Good grief you sound worse than the people you are criticizing. Heaven forbid people like something.