# Communities of Not

There is a strange thing that happens in communities that gather around
abstinence from something: identity from opposition.  At their best these
communities are not *just* negative: childfree spaces can be about autonomy,
choice and acceptance, anti-car spaces about safer streets and transit, and
LLM-skeptical developer spaces about the future of labor, code quality and
slop[^1].  But the thing being refused often does not go away and instead
becomes the main subject of the community's identity.

That would be fine if it stayed at criticism, maybe even angry criticism, but
more often than not it turns into policing and hatred towards others.  An
influencer without children becomes a parent, an urban bike commuter by choice
buys a Porsche, a respected developer tries LLMs, and the community feels
betrayed because it assumed they were members of the same tribe.  The expulsion
of that person (who never signed up to be a community member) is entirely
imaginary but the punishment that the community unleashes is not: people pile on
and shame them, quote them out of context and turn their weakest moments into
proof that the person was always unserious, a sharlatan or should not be
listened to.

I do not think the answer is to tell people to stop paying attention.  Cars
shape cities even for people who cycle, children influence politics, workplaces
and taxes even for people who do not have them.  For us developers, LLMs show up
in editors, issue trackers, hiring conversations, management pressure and code
reviews whether we asked for them or not.  Resisting that can be legitimate but
that is no excuse for using one's rejection to justify shitty mob behavior.

I understand the thinking all too well, because I have done versions of this
myself in the past.  It took me a while to become more accepting of other
people's worldviews that diverge from mine.  Whatever insecurities we have,
finding a group of others sharing them can be comforting.  The danger is that
being part of a crowd of negativity can easily make us part of collective
harassment.

I can only encourage you to breathe, slow down, de-escalate when given the
chance, and resist the temptation to always assume the most catastrophic
reading.  Default to being [open to new things](/2026/4/11/the-center-has-a-bias/).
Being negative towards something, and making that ones identity, is an easy trap
to fall into.

[^1]: These examples are not meant as equivalents.  The recent
  [mob](https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/929) [against
  rsync](https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345332213390)
  is the LLM version that prompted this post.  I picked the others because I'm
  familiar with those communities and they all show similar cases of personal
  choices being interpreted as betrayal.