{"id":53175,"date":"2026-10-13T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=53175"},"modified":"2026-10-14T10:11:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:11:58","slug":"done-with-daring-fireball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2026\/10\/13\/done-with-daring-fireball\/","title":{"rendered":"Done with Daring Fireball"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t really imagine he’ll care, but after literal decades of reading John Gruber’s Daring Fireball<\/cite> (I even had two different DF t-shirts back from when I thought he was worth supporting monetarily), the time has come to unsubscribe. (By which I mean, I’m dropping him from my RSS reader. He wasn’t getting money from me.)<\/p>\n

I’d been on the fence for a while, thanks to his occasional casual ableism (called out here<\/a>, and then again here<\/a>). But it was his recent “actually, hanging out in a nazi bar (X) is fine, actually” post<\/a> and subsequent “but if I had principles, I wouldn’t have any entertainment” whining (“The Ellisons aren\u2019t much better than Musk. Should I stop watching Warner Bros and Paramount movies, HBO, CBS, and CNN?”<\/a> and “The principled man has nothing to watch.”<\/a>) that finally pushed me over the edge.<\/p>\n

I’m often disappointed that so many high-profile people and businesses, including many of those that Gruber cites as reasons to be on X, are still (or again) posting there. But if someone I liked in the real world decided they wanted to go hang out with a crowd that I found morally, ethically, politically, and in many other ways reprehensible, that’d be their bad decision, and not only would I not join them, but I wouldn’t see much reason to hang out with them, either. It’s easy enough to do that in the virtual world, too.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of other people to read and sources of Apple and wider tech commentary and opinion.<\/p>\n

Kudos to the many people who have been pushing back against Gruber’s post, including higher profile names more likely to influence Gruber’s thinking (maybe, hopefully, but I’m not optimistic about it) than I am, like Anil Dash<\/a> over on Bluesky (first thread<\/a>, second thread<\/a>, third thread<\/a>), Lex Friedman on his blog<\/a> and with a followup<\/a>, and a few others I saw pass through my reading but can’t remember exactly who and where at this moment.<\/p>\n

I’ve been off X\/Twitter for almost exactly four years now, since November 20, 2022<\/a>, and I haven’t missed it. It’s really not difficult to not<\/em> hang out with racists, nazis, and pedophiles. At least, it isn’t for me. I wish it were that easy for more people.<\/p>\n

Updates:<\/p>\n