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There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very h
by bricemo 11y ago
There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media.
Smithsonian had a good short article on it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-goes-viral-fastest-180950182/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-go...
Research shows that amazing good news, like a huge leap forward in cancer research, is even more viral. But unfortunately those happen much more rarely up than someone saying something stupid and getting lambasted.
Ryan Holiday's book "Trust me I'm lying" also really opened my eyes to how a lot of this stuff works.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- derefr 11y agoI've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community. Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature that people would never be able to abide it? (Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged at the community—or its management—and that'd be sort of an insidious policy in that case. I think it could still work if there was a "side" area—like MetaFilter's MetaTalk—that allowed outrage, but with the strong rule of not linking to the side area from the regular area, so people wouldn't just be having the same viral arguments by link-proxy.)
- pyre 11y ago> Literally: express outrage, get banned. What is one to do then when someone does something truly outrageous? Ban the entire community?
- Joeboy 11y agoSo outrageous that literally nobody is able to talk calmly about it? I doubt such a thing is possible.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kowdermeister 11y agoSounds like a safe place :) Being outraged is still within the range of self expression. You are close to your limits of harming others, but not automatically.
- randomacct44 11y agoI've been playing Clash Royale on iPad (it's a multiplayer battle game set in the Clash of Clans universe that essentially drops the base building element and concentrates on the strategic combat). Generally, competitive multiplayer games can be pretty harsh (devolving into toxic) communities. Clash Royale addresses this problem in an interesting way. You're allowed to communicate with your opponent, but only from a fixed vocabulary. There's just no way to be really hostile - the closest it gets is an angry face, which says more "I'm frustrated!" than anything else. There are a few faces and some simple speech -- "Good luck!", "Well played!", etc. This has a really nice effect - it's actually a pleasant game to play and it's pretty common to get a 'Good game' or 'Well played' at the end, or even during the game when you make a good move. It works well in this situation because it's a 1-vs-1 game -- you aren't coordinating complex actions with teammates, which is where I think something like this would fall down. Without hostility being in the vocabulary to begin with, you don't really feel like anything is missing and it gets around the whole hurt-feelings problem of 'banning' nicely in this case.
- wildmXranat 11y ago>... You're allowed to communicate with your opponent, but only from a fixed vocabulary. This is what Nintendo did, at least in online Mario Kart for WiiU, and it's great. I allow my 6 year old get acquainted with this very safe version of online play and she loves saying all the positive things to the other players.
- meric 11y agoI like using the 'Well played!' when my opponent makes a horrendously bad move.
- DenisM 11y agoIf you ban sarcasm in addition to outrage I'll sign up to whatever thingamajig you're making there.
- LeifCarrotson 11y agoCan't tell if you're being serious or not. Would you actually enjoy that kind of network? Sarcasm is really hard to identify, and would be really hard to ban.
- mirimir 11y agoPoe's law :)
- DenisM 11y agoYes, absolutely. Sarcasm poisons the well of conversation like nothing else. When people disagree and provide an argument you can have a conversation about substance. When people disagree and provide no argument or a personal attack, it's easy to dismiss and move on from there. Sarcasm leaves you hanging precisely because it's hard to identify - is the person serious so you should continue to put effort, or is he not serious and you should quit this discussion? As to practical concerns - it's not the goal to catch every single instance of sarcasm, but rather to identify people who like to use it. People of this kind will be doing it regularly, and with various degree of subtlety, as such they will be caught in the act sooner or later.
- _0ffh 11y agoIt would be a strange use of sarcasm, in my opinion, to use it to keep people arguing to no avail. I'd rather call that disingenuous goading, not honest sarcasm. Personally, I'm rather fond of sarcasm and irony. But if I find myself in a dialogue, and another party seems to not get the point of a sarcastic or ironic comment, then I will point out the miscommunication.
- LeifCarrotson 11y agoCan't tell if you're being serious or not. Would you actually enjoy that kind of network? Sarcasm is really hard to identify, and would be really hard to ban.
- ldehaan 11y agoYou could do real time sentiment analysis on what someone is saying and it it is negative open a new input area for an explanation of their anger, greater than 500 chars (and validated as well as possible for realistic word structure), so the person would have to think through their anger, and possibly change their opinion or push it through with its attendant explanation as a expandable area on the message.
- foxylad 11y ago> I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. One of the reasons I like HN is that outrage is discouraged.
- abrookewood 11y agoAgreed .. especially compared it to the cesspool that Slashdot became!
- ethbro 11y agoI've mulled this over in watching the community. Unfortunately (for other sites), I've come to the conclusion that it's a cultural thing and therefore subject to the whims of the dominant culture at any time. HN certainly does things (thanks, team!) that make this more likely, such as playing around with the ability to downvote replies to yourself, etc. But I think a larger part of it is "monkey see, monkey do to fit in." If I see an angry, fact-lite comment getting grey-bombed into oblivion, I'm going to probably be less likely to make such comments myself. Sociology has a lot of language for this, but there are few things more powerful than the disapproval of one's peers, virtual or real. (Of course, 4chan/SA as cohesive social entities are simply fascinating too...)
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoit's a cultural thing and therefore subject to the whims of the dominant culture at any time It's also subject to the whims of dang the moderator, he's "the dominant culture". He's deservedly called me out a couple of times. Consequently I've tried to change my occasionally boorish behavior. Sometimes it only takes one person to create a culture.
- ethbro 11y agoOne person only scales so far / for so long though. If BusinessWeek wrote an article claiming that "Hacker News was the place to hang out if you want venture capital!" then I wouldn't have optimistic illusions of cultural persistence.
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- mst 11y agoI am part of a couple of groups where outrage/offendedness is really not socially tolerated, and will lead to tempbans and then permanent exclusion if continued. But they're closed groups built by invite; the concept could in theory be scaled up but I don't know how you'd make the moderation work out in terms of effort to available volunteer time.
- zby 11y agoIn traditional societies public outrage has always been taboo. In our society, when you take into account traditional communication modes, it is not that different. The problem is with electronic communication - which feels like a private channel and we feel dis-inhibited - but it is in fact public. Frustration is an emotion that we easily copy from one another - so when it is expressed publicly it spreads like a chain reaction. https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/online-conflict-in-the-light-of-mimetic-theory/2009/11/25 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/online-conflict-in-the-light-...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pacifier 11y agoRyan Holiday's book "Trust me I'm lying" also really opened my eyes to how a lot of this stuff works. Says the new HN account. Thanks for the comment Ryan.
- dwaltrip 11y agoCGP Grey did a great video about this. It's called "This video will make you angry, I highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- Outdoorsman 11y agoWe're human...everything we attempt involves other humans... Most "intelligent" humans think, at some point, that the way we go about our lives, on this planet, could be improved upon... How to build consensus...? How to design a series of universal (planetary, in our case) truths that all will immediately recognize as valuable, and be willing to live by...? Tons of obstacles, because we're human...tribalistic, nationalistic...we're short-sighted, likely by nature...
- BIair 11y agoDoesn't this just correlate with 10 people will tell others when unhappy, while they'll tell 1 if happy?