The Scarlet WWW

Ploum writes:

> With this small contribution, I hope to spread the world about Gemini to all those people tired of the attention-whore web.

jstree writes:

> When going to popular Web sites like YouTube or Twitter, or even seeing commercials on TV, I can no longer tune out the scores of scantily-clad women, over-decorated plates of fatty food, unaffordable high-end sports cars, and all sorts of material decadence that don’t bring any real happiness.

I’m not on board with this “Gemini vs the web sluts” schtick!

Update

Gerikson chimed in

and then JeanG3nie replied to gerikson:

> That said, rather than saying that geminispace has barriers in place which raise the cost of entry based on gender

But that’s not primarily what I’m criticizing.

I’m first and foremost protesting the “Gemini is good because we don’t as many scantily clad Babylonian whores” misogynist rhetoric.

> We’re assuming that women as a group have less of an affinity for text based communication

This might seem like a nitpick but that wasn’t what we were saying.

Instead we’re saying that visual media are being associated with women and text media are being associated with men. That’s not necessarily based in actual reality (as you correctly observe with the voracious readers in your own life) but that’s how it is being coded, which is pretty wack.

It seems to me that you skipped directly into gerikson’s post and didn’t see my post, with quotes that made me kind of flinch.

I felt like they were saying explicitly what has been lurking under the purity-oriented surface of the Gemini community for a long time.

Plain text is seen as sober, thoughtful, chaste, male, clay, ribcage, wands, clubs, odd, 陽, I bless Ra, the fierce sun burning bright.

The web is seen as intoxicated, impulsive, slutty, snake, apple, cups, hearts, even, 陰, I bless Isis—Luna in the night.

Plain text is seen as the honest truth.

The web is seen as Babylonian, tarted up, performed.

That’s a mythology that can get kinda pretty messed up very quickly, can create an environment where the proverbial bitches can’t hang with the proverbial streets.

That’s all I’m saying. I don’t wanna overstate the problem. Gemini isn’t cancelled.

“Attention-whores” and “scantily-clad women” do belong here.

As does hijabi and monks and nerds.

And then there was kind of a topic swerve into how to have Gemini reach a wider audience:

> that doesn’t make open source itself a bad thing

The licenses are great. I love them. It’s the community that has a way to go. The last three or four years we’ve seen great strides already, but it’s long way left.

> I’m not sure how one would make a hosted gemini service more “user-friendly” without having some kind of web portal, using https, html and javascript.

That would be awesome.♥︎

And, Flounder and Smol Pub are already part of the way there, which is great. More, please.

Or, less web-dependent: apps!

> But doesn’t that sort of defeat the purpose?

What is the purpose?

Later: IDK

I promised that after writing

my post about reactionaries

that I wasn’t gonna make this stuff my bread & butter.

I’m not just good at explaining it. I sound like time cube word salad to people who aren’t already hip to it (and for them, there’s no point since they already know it).

Those who could already see the issue from just my first version of this with the two quotes, they don’t need any more explanation.

While those who think those two quotes are “just fine what’s the problem”, I’d have to start from fundamentals and that’s gonna be hard to do in just one post anyway.

I just wanted to state explicitly that women are welcome here. Although right now, it doesn’t feel that way.