unreasonably irritated by the concept of the 'maker movement'
from 2025-01-26
by hexeaktivitat
warning: here be stress venting
sensibility is not guaranteed, for a refund I refer to you to the price of reading the web site, which is "free"
summary: programming projects on temporary hold due to Burnout Recovery, but do expect some post on my Very Own Useless Programming Language (spoilers: its a fucked up Lisp)
I'm very grumpy from burnout from work and autism both simultaneously, and work is "I run a publically accessible makerspace" and honestly I'm quite happy with the role I am developing for myself in that space at this moment but due to several factors I'm just really frazzled and burnt out with the whole ass fucking thing and the movement / concept in general. specifically the fucked up way it seems to be hegemonically Cisgender Male in some very weirdly specific ways. it's worth mentioning that as of this writing the structure of the library system I currently work is causing me no small amount of stress in and of itself (this is par for the course for public libraries unfortunately).
very generally: I think DIY is cool! I think the principles that it runs on (just do it yourself, learn how to do things) mesh well with me, I like learning and understanding how things work and taking some time to learn these things has been, generally, very pleasant. there's a lot of value is knowing how things like 3D printers and laser cutters and shit work, and even just interfacing with creative people in general and being able to share some technical knowledge is a really good thing.
do it yourself is also a cool anime you might have not watched so you should do that
the problem that I run across, and this might be a symptom of where I work and who I work with, is that lurking underneath all this is the gnawing sense that this is the only thing that has value, ever. there's a lot of STEM vs humanities lurking around, and since taking on this role and position I have felt that a lot of what I value (which is the humanities! I work in a library! we are all about the motherfucking humanities!) has been gradually sucked away by "look at this cool thing someone did on Hackaday" and it's a just a fucking box with a screen that plays bad apple to people who don't even know who Masayoshi Minoshima even is, let alone who ALSTROMERIA RECORDS are and where they came from.
it's irritating not because these things don't have value, or aren't worth building. I would love putting together a stupid box that plays caramelldansen at you. putting anime girls on OpenGL cubes is how I learned I hate bare metal graphics programming. a lot of these technology-driven things are things I have genuine interest in, but I feel like it's become too closely connected with this weird leviathan lurking under the surface of the maker movement in general that says "you have to do everything yourself." it's entirely possible this is just a figment of my own internal machinery, some monstrous neurodivergent Moby Dick trying to turn everything into a hyperfixation, but this heavily STEM-focused mindset feels like it's actively poisoning my brain in this position. I somehow feel like my capacity for complex thinking and processing has atrophied trying to survive in this kind of space. that could also just be the function of the burnout, but the burnout is directly related to feeling like I need to do and know everything.
it does not help that the people I work with directly are very openly more tech-driven engineering types and not people who have ever learned to process culture. "culture" is "how much Content can I Consume as quickly as possible" and, funnily enough, lines up perfectly well with mainstream tastes in their chosen genres and media. it definitely doesn't help that these people are Cisgender Men and despite the stated queerness that exists it's still very much a bunch of guys being dudes.
it also pisses me off how much Gender I have to deal with. parents bringing their boys (and it's almost always boys) over to learn how the cool whizbang 3D printer makes a useless trinket (I am building a collection of fidgets other people print, it's probably my favorite thing that happens on the job right now) and talk like it's something they should be interested in. there's some really sharp and enthusiastic engineer-minded kids that have crossed paths with me on this job and I genuinely hope they follow their passion, but it drives me off the wall when Parent No. 45387290 brings little Kevin (age 8, and a little shit who's clearly not even half interested in any of this but loves reticulated dragons) over to effectively enculturate them into Science.
ironically I'm having the best long-term success with women, specifically those invested in textile arts. embroidery is Big, sewing is Big, these tasks create interesting problems that are more aesthetic than technical in concern, and when technicality is needed it's clearly in service to an aesthetic goal, rather than "the slicer fucked up again".
short term I am going to refocus myself on more aesthetic concerns, like music composition and production, and probably learn more audio engineering (technically this relates to work, but I also am actively using it rather than having it foisted upon me, so I am having fun rather than feeling like I've drug work home for now). if I do any programming progress it will be as part of personal free time at work rather than something I try to shove at myself at home.