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Fernando B πŸš€
Fernando B πŸš€

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[Off topic] John Sonmez is not a Simple Programmr

I am usually not one to judge you in a few tweets, but wow this guy is proud of them. I am actually kinda sad that people like him have a platform to voice their hate. Won't say much since is all over twitter, but just wanted to raise awareness.

Tae'lur which I follow, and some other devs tweeted about it.

Another tweet by Michael Dowden:

Another tweet by Quincy Larson:

Maybe @ben can give us the pleasure of erasing this man from dev.to there are quite few a posts praising John in several podcasts.

Top comments (19)

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Ben Halpern

This whole incident was so sad and malicious, and Sonmez deserves whatever cancellation comes his way.

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Aubrey Fletcher

I was a fan of John's for awhile I'll admit. I actually wrote him a letter telling him that I thought he was cool and that while I didn't like his things about Donald Trump, or his views on White Male privilege were not kosher. I kind of went with it, until he started these videos about "Victimhood", and I was like, "Wow, this is some mess." I can't deal with this kind of person.

I am totally saddened by the taint of this ideology, and I think we need to use this as a teachable moment. It's time we call out these people who are supposed to be our leaders, much like many of us rebuked rms and others. I think though it's important to show who they are so that we have the choice to figure out, "Do we take them at face value, or do we walk away?" I'm going to walk away from this man, and I suggest others do the same, especially people of color, and women and our allies. That's just me.

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Matt Moran

Same here. I walked away from him a year or two ago after he started getting very insulting when I pointed out some of his more paranoid MRA fantasies & gave him some facts & figures. As I see it, it's great to have a growth mindset, to have an internal locus of power, to believe in yourself, but one should never believe that we're completely able to do without the respect of anyone. When you drive everyone away like John's done, you stand, and fall, alone. I hope he learns from this & uses his growth mindset productively.

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Fernando B πŸš€

I fully agree with you. He's not worth anyone's time. Glad I never watched any of stuff. He became relevant and irrelevant on Sunday for me.

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Damien Cosset

Another day, another white guy showing us his true colors...

Let that man and his toxic ideologies disappear from our communities. There are countless of other great people to hear from and to follow.

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Fernando B πŸš€

No doubt dev.to got tons of good and friendly people, part of the reason why I enjoy this community. It doesn't surprise me the least he got a good following, lots of people are just like him, pure cancer.

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Francisco Quintero πŸ‡¨πŸ‡΄ • Edited

To me, it was very weird to see him acting this way. I enjoyed his videos(before bulldog mindset xD) and even bought one of his books.

I took his advice very seriously regarding my career as a developer because that was the thing he used to make content about.

Don't know when he started showing this kind of bad behavior. Sad.

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Fernando B πŸš€

Well he's made good amount for through the years, maybe he just doesn't care to show his colors now.

If it was one tweet and he apologized I'd be ok, everyone makes mistakes but yesterday was sort of a rampage, and blatant disrespectful to a lot of people. He talked about SJW, I guarantee you he wouldn't be saying all those things on people's faces in real life, in a way his a social media bully hiding behind a keyboard.

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Robert Whitcomb

He started Bulldog Mindset which is aimed at young men. I think that got him involved in the "men's right" people which led us here.

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Fernando B πŸš€

I have no problem in people promoting a certain mindset, but just don't disrespect everyone along the way and think is ok.

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Warren Rumak

One thing is for sure -- he's not going to get a lot of opportunities to say these things to people's faces in the future. Conferences will take a pass on him in the months and years ahead.

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Jeroen Rombouts

I didn't think it was weird at all. In the past he has posted YouTube clips with a glowing review of Mike Cernovich's Gorilla Mindset and a sympathetic interview with James Damore.

He's just more open in his descent into MRA-dom. I think he's going after the Incel / Peterson dollars with his bulldog mindset nonsense.

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Jacob Herrington (he/him)

This was definitely rough. I've never been a Sonmez fan, but now I'm going to actively avoid his stuff.

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Fernando B πŸš€

Honestly I had never heard of him lol, but now I will never buy any of his crap. Not that he cares anyway, seems like a pretty unstable guy.

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Mike Bybee

TBH he's just been another spammer constantly flooding my inbox with sales pitches (technically ham rather than spam I guess, because at some point I signed up). Never bothered following him on Twitter though, I don't think.

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Fernando B πŸš€

I never knew him, until his rant day. I checked his videos and he had some good content pre bull era. Not sure what happened I guess he makes money with that toxic personality.

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πŸ¦„N BπŸ›‘ • Edited

Maybe @ben can give us the pleasure of erasing this man from dev.to there are quite few a posts praising John in several podcasts.

What, exactly, would this entail for the future of dev.to? As a platform, that is?

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Fernando B πŸš€

I don't know if anything was ever deleted, but I think it wouldn't have been up to Ben rather up to each developer he's ever worked with that made a post about him.

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Fernando B πŸš€

Not sure if this is a troll account or what, does sound a lot like John. And no, Sonmez doesn't sound like Hispanic at all.