Life & Wisdom Quote by Mike Davidson

It takes a very particular kind of swagger to turn web standards into a masculinity joke, and Davidson knows exactly what he’s doing. The line performs a double move: it dismisses strict validation as a trivial metric while simultaneously admitting that, for some people, it functions as a badge - not just of competence, but of identity. By framing validation as a proxy for “manhood,” he skewers a strain of tech culture where tiny technical choices become moral tests, and where status is often defended with the emotional intensity of a sports rivalry.

The intent isn’t anti-standards so much as anti-piety. “If I somehow felt…” signals awareness of the standards crowd’s implicit hierarchy: clean, validating code as virtue; anything else as sloppy or unserious. Davidson refuses the premise that compliance equals worth. The subtext is workplace and era-specific: mid-2000s web development, when validation badges, XHTML zeal, and “view source” performativity were everywhere, and when shipping a product often meant wrestling with browsers, CMS constraints, ad tags, and legacy markup that never fit the ideal.

Then he lands on “We’re mavericks over here,” which is half self-myth, half rhetorical shield. Maverick language converts compromise into ethos: not “we can’t,” but “we choose not to.” It’s also a preemptive strike against critics: if you complain, you’re the humorless hall monitor. The wit works because it exposes how quickly technical debates become tribal - and how often the loudest arguments are really about belonging.