The Impact of Toxic Influencers on Communities

Alex Hillman shared this over on Twitter, and it’s an excellent read.

This part about the cycle really stuck out.

It’s even harder when the leader of your community is a toxic influencer. (Like in the case of Linus Torvalds)

This is often the cycle:
1 A new person comes in.
2 They notice the abuse.
3 They try to do something.
4 The clique protects the abuser.
5 Everyone else is too tired to support, so they stay silent.
6 The new person, unsupported, retreats. By retreating they either now abandon the community, like all the others that didn’t even try to fix it and just left, or they stay and build their own defense mechanisms to tolerate the
behaviour: “I’ll just do my part, and try to ignore that person as much as I can”. It’s unlikely they will join the clique because they recognized the toxicity in the first place.

October 2024

19 likes and reposts

Alex Hillman
Oct 19, 2024, 8:29 AM PDT
Yeah, and I agree with the article that the only way out of the situation is removal of the person, no matter how painful that is. Some of the toughest community work I've had to do.
Kasper Timm Hansen
Oct 19, 2024, 3:35 PM PDT
Wow this is clarifying.
Joshua WoOoOd
Oct 19, 2024, 3:59 PM PDT
Right?! I thought so too.
Konnor Rogers
Nov 25, 2024, 4:05 PM PST
I find the linked article about Linus even more clarifying. intenseminimalism.com/2015/disasse...
Joshua Wood
Nov 25, 2024, 4:16 PM PST
Oh.
[photo omitted]
Konnor Rogers
Nov 25, 2024, 4:22 PM PST
The whole thing is like a Madlib. just replace Linux with {{ projectName }} and Linus with {{ toxicBDFL }}

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