Perhaps it's a matter of perspective, but I don't see it as derogatory. Rather I see it as a reflection of the way which questions about Urbit are typically asked. I.e. "Can someone explain what Urbit is and why it's relevant to a normal person like myself?"
Except that "normie" is the name a particular in-group gives to their out-group. It's not a name that out-group adopted. Most normal people seeing "normie" will both intuit what it means (a normal person), but also recognize the person using it is also signaling in-group status.
And, I'd add, gives to them specifically to be dismissive and to imply that the out group is failing to (or maybe isn't able to) understand things with the special insight the in-group has.
Insults are in the ears of the beholder. A bit of context goes a long way, when you realize that that the "in-group" is miniscule, and the the "out-group" is the vast majority.
If you frame it that way, it should be obvious that the "in-group" in this case would appear, on the surface, to be a bunch of deluded eccentrics, hardly anything to feel insulted about.
If the title had been "Urbit Is Not for Normies: How Urbit Will Save the Elect from Eternal September" I would agree.
As it stands, the intent here seems to be to disarm the reader's own insecurities about how whether they are able to (or welcome to) grasp what the Urbit project is about.
I'm curious what you mean by "inherently insulting". Do you think there are words that are insulting "inherently" whereas there are other words that are only contingently insulting?
I ask because it seems to me there's nothing inherent at all about the use of any word, so whether or not "normie" is insulting comes down to the degree to which people tend to use it insultingly. And I believe common use is overwhelmingly derogatory.
There may be exceptions, of course, and you personally may even be more familiar with the exceptions than the typical usage.
Hm.. when talking about the inherent meaning of a word (and whether there is such a thing) I might make reference to denotation vs. connotation, but I'm not prepared to dig into the semantics here.
I would say that my experience with regard to the use of the word "normie" is indeed different from yours.
Regardless, on a site called Hacker News, in an era where "geek" has a neutral or even slightly positive connotation (despite it's history and origins) I think the default should be to assess how an author actually uses a word, rather than how it often used in broader society.
When your goal is to initiate those in the out-group, it's counter-productive to use an in-group term in the title, especially when that term refers to members of the out-group itself. Insulting has nothing to do with it; in-group terms are not welcoming to the out-group.
Fair question. Relative to the Urbit community I am probably a "normie" in the sense that I am neither a user of Urbit nor do I have a deep understanding of what Urbit is (though I do have a general idea).
Let's just say that my reaction to this article title was "Oh, this could be helpful to me!" and I was rather shocked at the negative reaction in the comments.
My point is that it doesn't matter whether you see it as derogatory or not, because here we are arguing about it instead of Urbit (whatever it is), and therefore it is bad marketing.
The goal of good UX is to eliminate question marks, except for the questions you want people to ask. Usually those are, "Cool, how much is it?" or "Where do I get it?"
Having now read the article, I think have a better understanding of how they intend a non-technical person to use Urbit.
Take link sharing for example. Instead of going to a 3rd party site like Reddit or Hacker News, I would simply have a link sharing app on my Urbit virtual computer. Because I host the app, I have control of the links I share and who I share with, but I don't have to go through the rigmarole of actually deploying a LAMP stack (or whatever) or dealing with configuring a public IP address, firewall, CDN, authz/authn, domain name registration, or any of that stuff. I just say "share these links with these other people" and it just works.
Now, I don't know how that works under the hood. I don't even know if that actually works today (looks like it does?). But so long as I right about how I'm supposed to actually use Urbit, then I'd say the article was successful.
