I don’t hate it though

Something I really don’t like is how “hate” is used so lightly — especially by tech folks. Same for “dead” too (tech doesn’t die it’s just sand that can think).

Over the last couple of years, I often get mischaracterised as “hating” stuff. Y’know, “Andy hates React”, “Andy hates Tailwind”, “Andy hates Twitter”, or more recently, “Andy hates Mastodon”. I don’t “hate” any of those.

In fact I use them all, quite happily. I use React on client projects, I use Tailwind on nearly all projects and use Mastodon most days.

I think people think I “hate” Twitter, React and Tailwind because I make fun of and shitpost about them. I don’t know how that gets categorised as hate — well, it probably is related to the modern tech industry being almost completely void of humour — but here we are.

Apparently I hate Mastodon for the same and also I dared to write about why it’s been giving me the ick recently. The horror.

Anyway it’s one of those thousand cut things. It doesn’t really bother me a lot of the time, but it is recently. It bothers me when people I consider friends claim I “hate” stuff too.

Being mischaracterised is one of only the few things I actually do hate, along with Nazis, Tories, Manchester City FC, Elon Musk and courgettes.

I don’t expect anything to change, but I dunno, maybe choose a new word, because hate is a very strong word and we’re using it wrong tbh