It might seem to an outsider that the live coding scene is all lovely and nice all the time. Which is true, nearly all of the time.
But, y’know, humans gonna human - sometimes people disagree, get annoyed, or even fall out completely.
I’m not going to mention people directly here to protect the innocent, but I’ll outline some examples and we’ll have a think about what - if anything - can be done.
someone
someone who was a relatively recent but good friend got very flustered after taking on too much stress (despite my pleas to chill, everything was in hand) then they had a bit of a meltdown 24hrs before the show and me being the huge drama queen got upset about it all. Anyway the show went ahead, there was some cooling off, some boundaries redrawn (this is hard) and we’ve been able to stay in touch since and get along well, albeit at more of a distance.
This was a tough situation and it could have easily resulted in a long term rift.
abstraction
We’re live coders, right? So let’s abstract away all details of this example:
person x <- person A says they're lovely
person y <- person B says they're lovely
person A && person B are both reasonable (and lovely) people
person x XOR person y => they don't talk to each other, despite being valued figures in the scene
I have no idea how this situation came about. I haven’t asked either (x || y) how it happened. I have no idea how to even begin trying to help heal the rift. Hmm, is it even my place to try and help?
other examples
One horror I live in fear of is someone feeling that they can’t come to events, because that other person might/will be there. This does actually happen and I would love to find a way around it (without taking sides).
An extreme approach would be to mediate a conversation where sincere apologies were spoken, but like that’s extreme?
Another way would be to have a digital way to co-ordinate when either person won’t be there so the other can come?
am I overthinking all this?
maybe the scene is big enough so people can slip into events despite rifts having occurred? I know of one rift which was quite painful and almost resulted in a very sweet person being defacto (and in a CoC violating way) excluded, however although no healing conversation has taken place, with some support they were able to continue bringing amazing energy to events.
I have no answers
should I have even brought any of this up?
One way to justify poking my nose in where it’s possibly/probably not welcome is that rifts can involve or reinforce biases that can impact the diversity of the scene.
But then maybe everything is fine and we actually have a scene that is overwhelming diverse and welcoming already. (I mean, I think so?)
please email or comment on mastodon/discord/signal wherever if you think you can contribute something to this discussion x
Comments
Heavy Lifting says (via email):
“I get it and it’s really difficult. Even if you don’t take sides, people can perceive that sides have been taken.
Ultimately we are all grown ups and people have to learn to get along - nobody is bigger than the scene (even the GOATs). Personally I wouldn’t take any action beyond enforcing the code of conduct to keep people safe. I think if you have a personal relationship with someone then you might choose to talk to them as a friend and support a resolution, but IMO I think beyond safety issues the scene needs to be able to take a sort of neutral, self-correcting position on rifts and falling outs. I guess I’m saying we can’t try to enforce a ’top down’ system of mediation or dispute resolution - no person or group of people can be responsible for anybody else’s actions and feelings. (As much as we might want to try to fix things!).
I guess you could potentially make yourself available to support mediation if people volunteer for that process, but I think that’s a really tricky place to put yourself and personally I would only want to do that with people I really trusted.
As you say we are all humans and we can’t expect everyone to get on all the time. The scene is big enough now that hopefully we can avoid too many “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us” situations.
However, having said all that, I do also think that by being super open and having these conversations it can help people to realise where their ego or behaviour might be crossing a line, and hopefully help them to self correct!”
Adding:
“CoCs are so important - IMO they are a bare essential for safety and accessibility. They are not a silver bullet by any means and they are difficult (impossible?) to get exactly right BUT at the very least they are a green flag for marginalised people who may be on the fence about entering a space and the more green flags we can display for those people the better. At best they can prevent serious harm from taking place.
(Slightly tangentially I also think accessibility statements are really important and underrated - here’s a really good resource: https://attitudeiseverything.org.uk/all-resources/diy-access-guide/)
Also agree listening is important and boundaries are even more important (and hard, as you point out). Both of those are personal responsibilities too!!”