FUD and Flames And Trolls, Oh My!

Last weekend I gave the opening keynote at PHPNW14. The talk was recorded, and no, the video isn’t online yet. The basis of the talk was centered around community and how we can come together (and how we are drifting apart). But there was one point that I mentioned that I think requires further thought and discussion. And that point is that there is far less trolling going on than it may seem at first glance.

On "Wealth Inequality In America"

There’s been a viral video that’s been circulating the internet recently called Wealth Inequality In America. It’s actually been published for quite some time, but it’s crossed my plane of vision a few times in the past few days. While I don’t believe that the content is wrong (in fact, it is actually quite right), I believe that the point the video makes and how it makes it are both misleading. The video tends to imply some nefarious plot to keep the poor down. But in reality, all it is showing is the natural tendency for any system of sufficient complexity to trend towards having a power-law distribution.