Yesterday I published a post about my frightful Rogers bill, and later in the day, a fellow Vancouverite Mike Cantelon submitted that post to Reddit.

This freaked me out a little, as the one time that my blog got posted to Stumpleupon, I was bombarded with a lot more visitors and commenters than I'm used to. Sure, I know lots of friends, friends of friends, and fellow creative and geeky types read my blog, but... not complete strangers?

Anyway, I figured if anything, it'd help others who have questions or issues about roaming with Rogers to find my post, so fine, no harm done.

Today, I went to see if anyone had commented on the post and read this comment by user called KishCom: 

"I typically consider myself pretty savvy as far as technology goes"

Yet she owns an iPhone and appears to be too dumb to use wifi (which is practically ubiquitous in urban areas these days).

Now, I've been around the internet long enough to not take troll bait. My momentary thought "I should correct that person's wrongness!" was quickly reminded with more rational thoughts about it being a waste of time arguing with idiots on the internet - especially ones who clearly didn't read the whole post, since I clearly say that I was on wifi most of the time. Wifi??? What's that? OMG, why didn't I think of using the free wifi, thanks buddy! Also... sorry, I forgot iPhones are only owned by people lacking a few braincells.

But that's not really what bothers me the most. What bothers me is the underlying attitude that this dumb chick who thinks she's technically adept is clearly kidding herself. Hahahahaha.

It's not the first, and surely won't be the last, time I encounter this kind of an attitude. And it really does bother me, because I feel like I've put in my dues, like I've earned my nerd badge.

• Yes I use an iPhone as of a few months ago. I wanted to see what it was like. Before that I used an Android - one of the earliest models which I installed CyanogenMod on, and maintained running on nightly builds (because it was so buggy) for a few years despite its massive cruftiness. (Sometimes early adoptership is... too early.)
• I've probably spent more hours on IRC than that person.
• I spent a year (and more like 2 years unofficially) co-leading the documentation for a major open-source project.
• I've had a blog for about 10 years, and have maintained several sites for years now.
• I can build a basic website at lightning speed, and often am able to think of possible reasons for bugs faster than more experienced developers (thanks to lots of client support and managing several complex development projects).
• I regularly use command line and git/version control.

Anyway, I'll stop there, cause you get the picture. Sure, there are a lot more knowledgeable and competent geeks out there than me, but my skillz are not too shabby!

Why don't I stand up for myself when these things happen then? Sometimes I'll share my "creds" in person when I introduce myself, for example in a discussion group at a conference, so that my words are more likely to be taken seriously. But most of the time, I just keep it to myself. And the reason for that is that I don't want to make myself a target (and I'll abstain from linking to incidents that have happened to people I actually know, lest I draw more attention).

Sure, this guy only went as far as implying that I'm stupid, and (stupidly?) assumed I wouldn't see his comment. But the message it sends is that I should've A) known better, and B) regardless, I should shut up about the whole thing. Like how dare I tell my story on the internet, on my own website.

The commenter below that one on Reddit, reogin adds:

Yea, these kinda people have to use their brain first.. turn roaming off :|

"These kinda people..." What kind of people would that be? People who have never used data roaming before? New iPhone owners? Women? People who aren't savvy enough to actually beat the big telecoms?

Lin's old post on this still gets at the root of these issues better than I can express. When will women's words be taken at face value when it comes to technology? When will our presence be equally valued? When will the assumption that a woman posting on the internet about something technology-related get received with something other than "this stupid girl doesn't know what she's talking about", or "this person made a mistake or didn't know everything, it must be because she's a stupid girl."

And now, because of exactly this, to quote Lin:

Unfortunately, no comments

As I mentioned above, it feels really bad to have your experiences belittled, and I've seen it happen time and time again in comment sections when women talk about their experiences. If this piece resonates with you, I'd be happy to hear in other channels, but please folks, don't bring the drama in other channels.

ps.

Edit: I'd appreciate if y'all refrain from posting on that Reddit thread with any retorts, and generally if you can refrain from submitting any posts on my site to these kinds of services in the future. I've only had bad/weird experiences with it. Thanks!