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> I'm sure we could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in being controversial than in being correct I can't name any, so your comment is wron

> I'm sure we could all name columnists/bloggers who are more interested in being controversial than in being correct I can't name any, so your comment is wrong, and I don't care to respond to the rest of it, or even acknowledge that I read it. Of course I don't really mean that, but I feel this is the kind of pedantry the article is talking about, and not true factual incorrectness. The Twitter account linked to only has 36.2K followers, not 39K, so that paragraph is incorrect and stupid. ...Except the important detail here isn't the exact number of followers, just that there's a large amount. If this were a scientific paper on the number of followers various humor accounts gain, then yeah, I would be all for ripping this apart. But it isn't, so it's irrelevant. Writing defensively is more than just being factual. It's being overly factual where it doesn't really matter, because a vocal minority will likely yell at you otherwise.

ghaff 11y ago
A vocal minority will always yell at you. Fuck 'em and ignore 'em. Edit: I've written in a relatively public sphere, albeit not at politics level, for long enough to have a pretty thick skin. I realize not everyone is in that position.
- colmvp 11y ago
  Saying fuck'em and ignore'em is overly simplistic. Some people can do it. Most can't. Even athletes who earn millions of dollars and have hundreds of thousands of fans can get riled up by words from a single hater. At a Social Anxiety meetup, I remember one person who could in great detail recall a racist incident years back when a random person called the person a racially derogative word. Sure, he could've just shrugged it off as it was just a stranger and all. Yet it had a profound effect. Just as much as words from strangers can inspire us to commit profound change, so can words do great damage.

ghaff 11y ago

A vocal minority will always yell at you. Fuck 'em and ignore 'em. Edit: I've written in a relatively public sphere, albeit not at politics level, for long enough to have a pretty thick skin. I realize not everyone is in that position.

colmvp 11y ago
Saying fuck'em and ignore'em is overly simplistic. Some people can do it. Most can't. Even athletes who earn millions of dollars and have hundreds of thousands of fans can get riled up by words from a single hater. At a Social Anxiety meetup, I remember one person who could in great detail recall a racist incident years back when a random person called the person a racially derogative word. Sure, he could've just shrugged it off as it was just a stranger and all. Yet it had a profound effect. Just as much as words from strangers can inspire us to commit profound change, so can words do great damage.