3:26 PM
I didn't mind it initially; probably some edgy script kiddie trying to be funny. But it keeps happening—the joke gets old fast. I'm not sure if this is some running joke in the developer community or some kind of normalized racism, but it's becoming very frustrating. Every time I download or update anything through the terminal, I'm prompted: "Do you want to continue? [Y/n]."
I open up Twitter to see what others have to say about this and am utterly surprised to see no mention of this. Has no one noticed this yet? Has it become so integrated to sling around the term "[Y/n]"? Maybe everyone is too scared to speak up. I need to be their voice. I'll write up a post convicting the entire developer community of how they subtly included xenophobia. I think I make rational decisions; I have some good points to make.
Seeing my post blow up in a few hours has me both taken aback and at the edge of my seat. I'm thrown into the spotlight of this great movement that rose out of nowhere. Thousands of comments flooded my original post and many wrote their own, all displaying how abhorrent they found this practice—all exercising their reproachful judgment onto various software developers. Some tried to rebut my accusation, but their posts were viciously ravaged by online assailants—keyboard warriors, they're called. I skim over one of the responses to my original post, but I really can't imagine how they can be right in any world; this is a pretty clear-cut situation.
Over the next few days, I see this movement flourish; it's more of a riot now. I can sit back and watch it run its own course. #DEVRACISM is trending on Twitter now. There are some new accusations—for one, Git is being called out for being homophobic by using [G/b] as a contraction for "git branch." I'm not sure if they actually do though. Regardless, it has sizable traction. There are some YouTube videos, some with over a million views. One catches my attention, however. This one only has around twenty thousand views, but it's the only video I find that's against the movement. It's short, so I'll watch it. It makes a strong argument. In particular, it says that [Y/n] was used in many programs long before the slang was popularized.
Oh.
I want to write an apology post, taking the side of the developers who have been harassed by the keyboard warriors. That's probably a bad idea, however. I'd rather not be like that developer who got doxxed and had pizzas delivered to him, even though I really love pizza. I'll just leave this whole situation be. It's not my problem anyway.
***
It's been a few weeks since that [Y/n] episode. It seems to have disappeared off the internet. When I run "sudo apt upgrade," I'm still given the same "Do you want to continue? [Y/n]" prompt. I just respond by pressing "y" this time. If I do some digging, I can find some old posts and videos, but if I didn't know about it before, I wouldn't be able to find it now. I'm not sure if anyone else remembers. I'm not going to ask my friends. They'll think I've gone stupid.
I'll just grab another beer.
NOTE: "yn" is slang for "young n***a". [Y/n] is a common confirmation prompt
for programs you run in the terminal which I conflated with "yn". [G/b] means "gay/bi" and is a made up term.
I was considering confusing "ch" with Chinese and viewing blacklist/whitelist in
racial terms, but I chose to stick with [G/b].
POST-PUBLISH NOTE: I really thought a lot more people would know what yn means—kinda surprised. After asking a few people to review it, [G/b] probably can't be easily inferred as "gay/bi" or offensive if one tried. Maybe I just have an affinity for offensive phrases. I'll leave this story as is, however. It'll serve as a benchmark.