Hello PCMR community!
On July 13th, we asked the community for your opinion if you would like to change the name of this community.
Results of the Survey :
- Yes - 28.1%
- No - 71.9% (winner)
Of the 1,201 responses received, we as a community have democratically decided that we should not change the name from PC Master Race. I am grateful to our community for your input, as this was a difficult topic to navigate together.
If you would like to review the history of this, please check out this post here: https://lemmy.world/post/1430610
We’ll pin this post for some time and then consider adding a bullet into the sidebar for this Community to help stave off further discussions around this topic as the community has already decided collectively.
Kind regards,
The Moderator Team
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
EDIT 30-Aug-2023:
Due to some of the recent targeted attacks against Lemmy.world, I noticed that the image I shared with this post was purged from their servers.
Here’s a new screenshot of the results for posterity: https://i.postimg.cc/jqNg5gWx/pcmrsurvey.png
You must log in or # to comment.
What should you do if you are unhappy with the results of this survey?
- I understand you are disappointed. This is how democratic decisions work, and is the reality of the situation.
- My opinion here is for you to take a moment to look inward and decide for yourself how you want to proceed.
- If the name of this community bothers you, my recommendation is to do the only thing you can do as a person: make a choice and opt out.
- There are other communities you can join and collaborate in. You can always spin up a new community in the Fediverse, on any instance out there, and create new content to attract users.
- However, if you are okay with accepting that the name of this community will not change, stay with us. We’d love to have you here.
Final notes to remember:
- We are all gamers. We are all united by our varying levels of PC enthusiasm. Let’s stay united in our hobbies, rather than allowing ourselves to become divided. Seems like these days there is so much division all across the world, all across social media, in our news, etc.
- For all the evils out there in the world, this is a safe place for us.
- Every person on this planet out there has a different opinion. Remember to be kind to others, even when no one is watching you.
This is how democratic decisions work
the only thing you can do as a person: make a choice and opt out
This is wrong
A democratic decision doesn’t make it just or moral. You always have a right to protest.
And it’s not just about what you have the “right” to do. You’re capable of moves like maneuvering to take control of its parent instance, starting a new alternative community, lobbying real governments that wield hard power to brutally suppress anyone using a name involving “master race”. Or buy up a bunch of PS5s and give them away to people who are on the fence about whether to get a console or PC.
Not that I want the name to change myself, but don’t try to limit what our opponents can do about it. Who knows, maybe their practice here will give them experience that will help overthrowing other oppressive regimes.
In a democratic government you have the right to protest. Less-so here. At the end of the day the mods have the final say. They could, at any point, dictate extra rules to us and enforce them with bans. We would have no choice but to obey or leave. That’s their choice because they own the community here.
It’s harder to leave a country than it is to leave a Lemmy community. That’s why protests won’t work here. If you disagree with the result of the poll, and by extension the way this community is run, you can always leave with a single click.
Side note: Morality is inherently subjective. Many middle-eastern countries consider women showing off their bodies to be immoral, but in the west it is accepted. Both cultures generally consider their way to be correct.
Also, the purpose of the government is to protect to minority from the majority. Just saying
Wrong. The purpose of the government is to protect you from other governments. It’s an extortion scheme but the devil you know is the better than the one you dont…
Also changes in ruling powers are usually bloody so the government exists to prevent that as well.
I’m just gonna link to the Wikipedia page for government. That way every position is covered and we can save ourselves from the inevitable slap fight when people can’t accept that their interpretation of the “purpose” of government are just interpretations and almost everyone has a different one
In theory but since most countries have majority rule voting this is rarely the case.
Things like gay marriage weren’t made legal until most of the country supported it already. Otherwise they’d lose too many votes.
What you can do is buy a Switch and cry yourself to sleep tonight, knowing you were never truly one of us.
Removed by mod
Folks seem to be missing why PCMR is even a thing. It is a tongue in cheek representation of PC users during the console brand fights of PS2/Xbox though PS4/Xbox One. The idea is that PC users sneer down on console users and don’t see the precarious position we are in with our bloated upfront costs to entertainment.
It was never meant for a direct “PC is superior” idea - in fact it’s making the statement that PC users are silly and take themselves too seriously.
And even if it weren’t, jokes are allowed to be edgy.
You can say fuck on the internet, as they say.
And I for one lived through enough of the 90s (all of 'em) that I don’t care for this “must sanitize everything, think of the children” attitude just because it’s suddenly coming from the left.
So yeah, fuck’em, communities are accountable to their members, not random mouthbreathers barging in demanding to be accommodated.
You wouldn’t do it at your clubhouse and you shouldn’t do it here, either.
Something I have really learned about the “sanitize everything, think of the children” types are that the huge majority dose not mean “protect the children” they mean “ban it for everyone, because I don’t like it” and a lot of them don’t even know what they want removed, they just looked at the cover and said “this is bad”
Or worse yet, they do it to establish that they have the authority to decide what you get to read/watch/partake in/enjoy.
It’s a pretty fucking naked powergrab when people like Jack Thompson campaign to get games banned for being obscene or “localizers” censor content because they claim the culture they are localising for finds it objectionable, when really it’s just them, and the target demographic wouldn’t care or worse would actively prefer the original interpretation.
I still remember the utter shitfit some outlets pitched for Dragon’s Crown.
And over the last few years that upfront cost has gone up insanely between everything costing more during COVID and GPU pricing miking gamers first during the crypto craze and now with the AI one.
Though, the insane scalping also shot PS5 prices stupid high too.
You’re right. PS5s were mostly unobtanium for a while. A Youtuber managed to trigger a small riot in NYC offering free PS5s recently.
It was coined by Yahtzee as a way of making fun of PC elitists, we just took the joke and ran with it
Seriously. It was a constant shitting on. Games would skip PC. Console gamers would brag about their Master Chiefs and Kratos. Hell, I remember we were even lower than Mobile Gaming during that era! Fucking Angry Birds and Candy Crush was more important than any PC game!
Then thanks to Steam and mods and indie games, we reign supreme. Companies came over in droves. I, a PC gamer, can finally play Halo and God of War and Sonic. Nintendo still holds out but that’s okay.
So the master race was a joke, but also a rally cry for representation.
Rock paper shotgun used to have a tagline like “PC Gaming since 1873”. I always love that tongue in cheek.
I mean that’s fine but master race is a direct allusion to nazi germany . . . We could stop comparing ourselves to victims of genocide. But im not on reddit anymore so doesn’t affect me at all.
When making an allusion there are two possible outcomes: a straight 1 for 1 comparison with the names changed, or a mocking approach that uses the term ironically to show the shortcomings of the idea. PCMR has always meant, since it’s inception, the latter.
It is literally making fun of the idea of a master race because it is showing (not telling, so it isn’t obvious) how ridiculous the notion of a superior method of gaming is when we all play the same buggy releases on launch and use more processing power than NASA had for moonlandings but we use it on pixel games.
Master Race has never been anything but mocking the ideas of superiority when used by the community and if anyone uses it with seriousness then its probably more true that they are a Nazi than a communal joke name.
mocking
ironically
Stop, you’re confusing the Zoomers
or a mocking approach that uses the term ironically to show the shortcomings of the idea. PCMR has always meant, since it’s inception, the latter.
The problem with this approach is that new people or people out of the loop don’t really understand this idea. I am not saying you’re wrong about the inception of the name, but as the term gets older, that context will get more and more lost. You already see people legitimately using PCMR as a term to indicate superiority.
The origin of a term is one thing, but its meaning often changes over the years, and I think the same thing is happening with PCMR.
It is literally making fun of the idea of a master race
Right but it’s not funny i guess, like haha lots of people thought they were the superior race and killed millions and millions of people.
Idk, it’s like mocking a school shooter, like those kids, their victims, are dead, it’s not funny. It’s actually about the most serious thing anyone could imagine.
I get it, i frequent pcmr a lot, and i never took it seriously, but once the question is posed, i do feel like I don’t want to continue coming here with the name as is.
Like you are mad that we are making fun of Nazis and you don’t get it so you want us to stop making fun of Nazis? Why are you defending the Nazis?
Not mad and not defending anybody
You know that gaming devices aren’t actually ethnic races, right?
We are the master race. Bow before the PC.
I was really tempted to reply to this:
Is that the famous goatse image I see everyone talking about? If not could someone link it so I can finally find out what the big deal is?
I’m glad I stopped myself from impulsively commenting that.
Oh, hello satan!
Hi! Greetings from Florida!
We just want people to enjoy what they have, the best way they can.
Im fine with console gamers too. (I collect consoles, they are great!)
As a PC enthusiast my main gripe has always been the lack of choice over performance options. I want the choice between higher fidelity or higher framerates. The new generations of consoles have included this option, and it is awesome. I also like how newer generation hardware has been able to run the older games it is compatible with at higher fidelity AND higher framerates, bringing the hardware improvements to those older games and increasing their lifespan/playability.
How do PC games not have this choice? The settings are usually way more granular.
What are you on about? I never said or even alluded to PC games not having settings… its pretty clear and obvious that I am talking about consoles when I mention consoles gaining a particular feature.
As a PC enthusiast my main gripe has always been the lack of choice over performance options.
This sentence can pretty easily be read as if you’re saying PC games don’t offer a choice between fidelity and framerates. I get what you’re saying, and it makes sense in context, but I don’t blame someone for thinking you were talking about PC games there.
I absolutely DO blame someone for thinking I am talking about PC games there lol… you would have to 1. Only read that one sentence out my single comment, none of the previous comments or the rest of my comment, 2. Misunderstand the premise of the sentence, and 3. Apply a preconception that I would be talking about PC games.
I dont care that someone misinterpreted what I said, and I dont think it’s a big deal, but if you are going to make a call-out comment on someone you should probably apply reading comprehension well enough to actually understand the comment you are replying to, or else the confusion in the situation is just going to compound. If someone doesnt understand then they should ask for clarification first, like I did when I asked what they were on about, and then I clarified my original comment to clear the confusion.
I dont think your comment is as clear as you think it is. Also he asked what you were on about? Is that not asking for clarification? He then stated that pc settings are more granular implying what he thought was wrong with your comment. You sound like a stuck up cunt In your replies. Get over yourself
Your comment reads like this:
“As a PC gamer I don’t like the lack of ability to choose framerate or resolution like consoles do.”
How the fuck is anyone supposed to read that and not think you’re complaining about not having graphics options?
Your comment is clear as mud, and then you turn into a huge asshole when someone interprets your comment on the only logical way any human with English skills could possibly interpret it.
You’re the worst kind of moron, the one that thinks he’s the smart one.
the problem isn’t that it’s offensive to console gamers it’s that it’s offensive to people in groups (jewish, queer, communist, Russian) who the Nazis killed over 12 million of, jesus why is this so hard to understand
Because it feels like those groups would have to go out of their way to find the offense when they, themselves, should see that it is mocking the Nazis. It seems baffling that making fun of the Nazis would be offensive to their victims.
you’re asking for a lot of mental gymnastics from those of us in marginalised groups, to ignore the more obvious interpretation that it’s a joke at the expense of the people the Nazis tortured and killed. If you find yourself needing to explain how a joke isn’t actually promoting Nazism maybe it’s time to retire it… Zero Punctuation had some good lines, this wasn’t one of them.
I find myself having war crimes explained to me and how they are tangentially related to what is at hand. The holocaust is genuinely a tragedy but the only thing connecting it and a joke about PC inferiority/superiority complex are only connected in your perspective. Using your own metric, your point is very subjective and not clear.
I’m sad you don’t get the joke or appreciate it like the rest of us. Why this alone gives you the right to take our fun is beyond me.
The holocaust is genuinely a tragedy but the only thing connecting it and a joke about PC inferiority/superiority complex are only connected in your perspective
No, what’s connecting the two is the use of term “master race”, a literal piece of Nazi ideology… which also makes war crimes more than tangentially related.
If your “fun” is causing marginalised people to feel bad then you’re punching down, and you need a better sense of humour.
Are marginalized? Or are you white knighting this and defending others? Because it sounds a lot like you absolutely do not understand the humor at hand and you can’t get past a surface level similarity.
a surface level similarity
my sibling in christ, the only reason for the use of “master race” is its Nazi history, that’s the only cultural reference it is making.
and yes, i am someone that the Nazis would have tried to exterminate. are you? otherwise, consider the idea that it is not your place to be arguing in favor of jokes about Nazi ideology.
I’m not 100% confident on this topic, even with a majority poll saying it’s okay. Main issue for me is, imagine it was a (white) comedian making a casual joke about the N word. Many have tried, certainly. But those jokes, besides not being tremendously funny, normalize some of the minority-degrading terms they refer to.
Good for you, gamers. We programmers have lost the master branch forever.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but as someone who just started programming like 2 years ago, main makes more sense and is a more approachable name to me than master
Going to change to anything that made sense in git, trunk would have made most sense (or something along those lines). Since your project can have many branches… Tree puns!
But changing it after the product was out was a dumb idea regardless of whatever makes sense and what doesn’t. It was blatant pointless virtue signaling that broke some automation and makes a bunch of documentation needlessly confusing (someone just starting out and seeing main but the book they bought to learn says master… Now has to find out why).
Edit: my terrible spelling and grammar
pointless virtue signaling
What do we want? An end to blatant racist murders by police!
What do we get? Rename our git branches!
Why not both?
Cause one of the two is fucking stupid.
The word “Master” isn’t exclusively tied to slavery and to deem it offensive on those grounds pretty much guarantees you’re American and have an understanding of history that makes any actually educated person want to vomit.
A Master branch, like a master copy of a recording, is the reference copy against which others are measured, it’s not a master in the sense of ownership but in the sense of benchmarking, like a master of a craft.
This. And even if it were a matter of control, ‘master’ is a valid terms for that. It is perfectly fine for one piece of technology to utterly control another. It is not fine to do that with humans.
Cutting out the vocabulary just makes it so that when we run into a real situation, we feel like we can’t talk about it.
I will keep vocabulary, and keep history, because that’s how we know the reasons for the ways we’ve changed. Blotting things out of our conceptual vocabulary just makes the next generation susceptible.
They could at least uhh idk not contract with ice or other law enforcement if they wanted to show support
This is the main point to me. All the vocab adjustment is so inconsequential over the hope of actual ends to real effects on racism.
I won’t try to speak for black people, but I would hope/bet they they’d give white people full license to use the N-word if it meant every cop that ever mistreated someone for their race goes behind bars, no more pay disparity by race, or loan/homebuying mistreatment, and no more wealth gap effects in economic progress.
Yeah talking about virtue signalling is a great way to lose me. My company changed hundreds of repos and it wasn’t even a thing, and now they’re changed forever.
The concept of a master branch reaches back to CVS (that’s Concurrent Version System, not a pharmacy), and Subversion. Makes sense it wouldn’t make sense to you. Frankly it doesn’t make sense to
gitat all, but that’s a much larger discussion.The concept of a “master copy” has been around and in widespread use for around a century. It has nothing to do with either software nor social (in)justice. It’s just the thing you photocopy so you don’t end up making photocopies of photocopies. IMO It should make sense to anyone who, you know, has seen and used paper within their lifespan.
Some terminology, like “master and slave” for IO between devices, did always used to make me really uncomfortable whenever I heard it. But the branch name for software was probably fine.
Yeah, LP records have master copy and those have been around for some time (before going away and coming back again)
More than a century
Ever since Hammurabi
deleted by creator
It’s been a long time since I’ve used SVN by aren’t things like branching more difficult? I guess for personal it doesn’t matter.
Not really. If memory serves it’s just
svn checkout branch_nameI have never used Git professionally but I’ll tell you the three biggest pain points when working with SVN that I know Git has proper solutions.
No local commits. On the latest SVN versions there is the concept of “shelves” which just basically puts your changes in a separate folder… as of last I checked it was still in Beta but it works decently.
Common code is a pain in SVN. The only way you can do this is using the externals property which has annoyances that seem to be handled better by Git Subtrees.
Commit squashing doesn’t exist in SVN. Not a problem for me personally but I’ve worked with some people that make me really wish I could squash their commits.
Git is really inefficient for large binary files because of the decentralization. SVN for media and Git for text-based files makes sense. Otherwise— I only used SVN briefly, and then fortunately only for media— But yeah, Git is probably better and more useful overall.
I wouldn’t want to go back to svn. I’ve gotten very used to git’s ability to carve up changes, etc.
Wait, what? When did this even happen (in general)?
Ah, screw this. I’ll probably keep “
master” in anything that currently has it, and the next time I start something I’ll just go back to calling it “trunk” even though I was too young at that point to actually call ittrunk, but it makes the most sense for the organization flow.Oh god, you just gave me flashbacks to SVN. Specifically via Tortoises an, which I thought was the shit.
While convention is not about making sense (does Java class names make any sense?),
mastermakes more sense in this case becausemainimplies that there aresecondarythat’s not related to it. Which really shouldn’t happen in any sane repo.Tbf, ‘master’ can imply the same thing
Master implies hierarchy, all the other branches are derivatives of it. Main/secondary doesn’t have that.
You can sort of compare it to the master recording in audio, or a master key that can open several locks.
I still use it. When GitHub first forced it on everyone, it broke one or two of my scripts - so I ended up just changing the default back to
masterout of spite, and haven’t touched it since.s/master/mainIt took me all of 5 seconds to fix my automations when GitHub changed that. Also “forced” is a bit strong, they didn’t touch existing repos, and it’s only the default branch if you let GitHub initialize the repo (which I never do).
It’s not just about code, though. I have to write complicated procedures for my job (maintenance of large electrical and mechanical systems, not tech) and I was told I couldn’t designate a master procedure. I told that reviewer to pound sand, but if this trend takes hold it will unnecessarily complicate all kinds of work.
I was still a somewhat-clueless high school student at the time, and I had to create new repositories for every assignment in my CS electives. Niche, I know, but someone has to be the edge case…
(They used a dumpster fire home-grown autograder that couldn’t handle concepts like “assignment X is in directory Y.” Or any sort of file structure that deviated from the IntelliJ project layout. Supposedly they didn’t want to pay for a commercial service…)
Good riddance. Main branch master race. And I’m a vim user, so I usually love archaic bullshit
PC Monetary Regret
Oof I felt this one. But at least with my “investment” I can get all the frames on Stardew Valley.
picking parsnips at 9000 fps never felt so good
PCRM = Personal Computer Makes Rainbows
Motto: More RBG, more FPS
I don’t regret a single dollar thank you very much
The first PC I purchased with my own money:
- CPU: AMD Duron 1600, tray, $45
- Cache unlock with silver paint, $10
- OC to 2.3GHz
- Zalman 7000, $40
- Motherboard: ECS N2U400, NForce2, $56
- Volt mod via trim pot (no volt control in BIOS), $5
- Memory: second hand mix, $50
- HDD: Maxtor 40GB, second hand, $??
- Case: beige box from my last hand-me-down PC, $0
- PSU: Fortron (FSP), second hand, $20
- GPU: Radeon 9550, $60
- BIOS mod to 9600
- RGB: 🤦🤦♀️🤦♂️
Half-Life 2, Doom 3 go brrr, no regrets
Total: $320 or $530 in today’s money
- CPU: AMD Duron 1600, tray, $45
It’s OK, you can buy all your Steam games via Brazilian grey market resellers and then complain that nobody brings games to PC any more.
Unlike dodgy racial theories, the superiority of PCs over console plebs and iToddlers is an unmutable physical, psychological and metaphysical fact of the universe. No, I am not being ironic.
unmutable
Is that like when you hear something and you realize you can’t mute it? Or did you mean immutable?
How do you know someone is a PC gamer?
You don’t need to ask, and you can’t even mute them. You’ll hear about it soon enough.
Wait, are you saying that the personal computers are superior to the people who play on consoles and iphones?
Yeeeh, I do feel very inferior to my computer. She’s a genius. My partner’s computer is even younger and smarter. And can run so fast. They both best me in almost every way.
Me, too, I just wondered if we were starting to acknowledge it.
I mean, they are. PCs are superior to a console in every way except the price point. Consoles shouldn’t even exist in this day and age, the only reason they do is because of exclusives, all the bullshit around PC parts and more recently bad PC ports.
Agreed, I was just making a joke about saying PCs are better than the people, not the consoles.
The fact this poll was necessary makes me really sad
For all the people that don’t understand where there name of the community came from, here is the video that started it all: https://youtu.be/P0dXtOVi2yo?si=Vlxetg3tmkjWGE70
Oh wow, that video has not aged well. Both in resolution and in content.
I love democracy
Senator Palpatine intensifies
Damn I missed it. Glad most of us (more precisely 71.9% of us) have good taste.
Long live PCMR
So no PCübermachines?
I put together a server once as a favor for someone at a university. This person didn’t know how to change the hostname so I set it to “killbot9000”. For years that whole lab had to log into killbot9000. (I’m sure they could have figured out how to change the name if they tried - I guess they thought it was funny too.)
Anyway my point is that I should have called it “ubermachine” and now I will live with this regret for the rest of my life.
No need for regrets. killbot9000 is a fantastic name.
MEHRZWECKCOMPUTERÜBERMENSCH, bitte.
PCÜM - gently rolls down your tongue
PEE CUM???
My God, this is still going on. I’m still having trouble comprehending whether this is just a very elaborate parody. The term “master race” is not in any way offensive and even if it is (to a small amount of people) they are perfectly within their right to be offended, but not to ban other people from using it.
Have not been there to see the discussion, but I have been seeing the shift the last couple years in tech on termonology.
Branch Names: master -> main
Distributed Systems: master/slave -> primary/secondary
Security: Blacklist/Whitelist -> Blocklist/Allowlist
I refuse to go out of my way leave master for main, literally who cares?
Do people take the same issue with a human master of animals and such too?
Just wild that we’re trying to forever burn these words. Languages should be allow to evolve not cut apart and banned
Am I gonna have to refer to my masters degree as a mains degree now? Lol
I kinda noticed the first one, but didn’t think it had anything to do with taking offense. The second one I haven’t noticed at all as well as the third one (the third one is especially bullshit in my opinion).
Probably will take awhile to trickle down if it even sticks on the latter two. My exposure was IETF working groups that write up RFC standards.
And this is a good thing. Those changes are far more clear on their intention and it avoids some dated language that makes some folks uncomfortable. It’s win/win.
Master can only be used in the context of slavery? Seriously??
What about my masters degree? Shall I call that mains degree too?
I agree with your overall message but we’re really in the fucking weeds with some of this stuff
I hate the 2020s. Can we just go back a couple years, back when meme pages didnt have sticks up their arses?
I mean, people were saying the same thing when it became not cool to call someone a gay slur for fun. Language evolves, and with it, what is acceptable evolves.
I personally am not offended by PC Master Race, but I also don’t give a fuck about the name, so what’s it really gonna hurt rebranding?
Honestly don’t get the attachment. Not like it’s particularly clever or anything.
It’s kind of my take as well, personally don’t really care but that in turn means I also don’t really care for a change.
But it also appears like a lot of people espouse the ‘who cares about this’ with a strong slant of simultaneously defending the status quo. I honestly felt the same when there was the whole master -> main phrasing change in a lot of git repository hosters.
We need something more humble, like PC god mode
I disagree, I’m not religious
We Are All Gods, friend. Seize the divine.
PC ascension?
In that case, my proposal is IDDQD (showing my damn age with this one)
PC spaghetti monster in the sky race
Wait is this where the name comes from? How did I not ever realize it?
It’s a reference to an old Zero Punctuation video.
TF is that browser?!
Firefox with a theme applied
The theme is called, Firefox Alpenglow. It’s a preinstalled theme.
Respect the democracy but what a ridiculous topic.
