About Darkademic

Introduction

Ahoy, I'm Darkademic.

The name is an amalgamation of dark, academic and epidemic.

"Dark" for my sense of humour and aesthetic predilection.

"Academic" for my interest in fields such as philosophy, politics, economics, anthropology and science.

"Epidemic" for my attempts to spread and develop ideas via debate and discussion.

Interests/Skills

I'm a programmer by trade. I primarily develop large-scale web applications but have also dabbled in game development. Over the years I've become very experienced with C#, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS and SQL and specialise in these languages, while also being familiar with Java, C++, Python and Lua. I also have plenty of experience with graphic/interface design and server/database adminstration.

I've always been interested in philosophy, politics and economics and over the years I've read the works of many prominent thinkers from each of those fields. I've also written a bunch of essays and articles and have spent a disgustingly large amount of time arguing on forums and on Twitter.

Embarrassingly I was a communist from my late teens until my early-mid twenties, and read most (all?) of the works of Marx, Lenin and other Marxist intellectuals. I subsequently spent several years in the early 2000s debating against supporters of capitalism, and after a while I started to realise how horribly wrong I'd been. Eventually, after a lot of reading, debate and reflection, I abandoned my communist beliefs entirely and have since become an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism.

I later found myself arguing against ethno-nationalists and neo-Nazis, so I researched anthropology and human genetics for several years, however my desire to continue these debates largely disappeared by around 2010 due to the near-irrelevance of the type of racism I was challenging (e.g. the belief that racial groups are fundamentally incompatible and should be segregated). Since then, a new and insidious form of racism has emerged which masquerades as anti-racism, whereby white people are declared to be inherently racist due to their alleged position of privilege. But there are so many infuriatingly stupid or evil ideas in the world today, and so many people espousing them, that it's difficult to find the motivation to engage with it anymore.

Finally, gaming has always been a big part of my life, partly due to having a PC from a very young age. I've led an online gaming clan/community called the Dark Reavers since 1999 which has participated in online leagues for C&C: Tiberian Sun, Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2, and has played many other games since, including Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar, Archeage and Black Desert Online.

On the gaming front I also love modding. I'm a contributor to OpenRA, an open source engine for Command & Conquer games, and more specifically I've spent a lot of time helping out with the Combined Arms mod. I also created a mod for Sins of a Solar empire (the Dark Reavers mod) which adds an entirely new faction, based on my eponymous gaming clan, to the game. I've modded other games to varying lesser degress; if a game I like can be modded, usually I'll try to mod it.

Other Info