12 ms·

A real person, a lot like you

624 points by terpua 17y ago

brianmckenzie 17y ago
I simply don't understand why anyone would send an unprovoked, nasty email to someone else. People on the internet have been pissing me off for nearly two decades now, and I don't recall ever doing this. But like clockwork, someone does it to me every few months.
andreyf 17y ago
I think those "hurt" in both stories are making something about themselves that really isn't. The point of a girl "rejecting losers" on a dating site has nothing to do with the losers and everything to do with reinforcing her self-image of "the kind of girl who turns down 10 guys a day". Same with the people who write long e-mails saying "you suck": if someone is looking for it, they can find a lot of evidence people around them suck. The point of writing e-mails about it is to build up one's own confidence, heal some hurt, or vent some frustration about some issue completely unrelated. The stories are really about people creating a self-image and protecting an identity (call it "reflexive brand management", if you will). While I'll concede that they're narcissistic in their disregard for how their actions affect other people, I think both are natural and healthy in terms of their own psyche.
- alexyim 17y ago
  I wonder if you can get the same effect by writing the email but clicking the "Delete" button instead
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    You definitely can. I write awful horrible insensitive scathing emails to people, and then delete them in the morning without sending them. I get the catharsis, and I don't lose any friends (actual or potential) in the process - everyone wins!
    - tel 17y ago
      The scary part is that delete and send are pretty close to each other in gmail.
      - alexyim 17y ago
        How many times have you deleted an email when you wanted to send one?
        jules 17y ago
        In Gmail? Zero, because you can undelete.
        amohr 17y ago
        If you act fast, you can unsend too.
        hvasishth 17y ago
        how?
        stanleydrew 17y ago
        Enable "undo send" in labs and then just hit 'z' (assuming you have keyboard shortcuts enabled too).
      - abstractbill 17y ago
        Yes, absolutely. That's why I never fill out the To field when writing an email that I'm not sure I should send.
        dennisgorelik 17y ago
        Without "To" field you risk to forget who you are angry at.
  - shrughes 17y ago
    Yes, you can. At least it works for me.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    In these occasions I find myself writing a draft of a letter, then re-writing it 5 or 6 times as my anger subsides. What starts out as a 10-page tome usually turns into 3 paragraphs of "Hey, this wasn't so great, Here's how I'd love to see it done."
  - wheels 17y ago
    I once heard someone say, "The quality of a man is measured by the size of his drafts folder relative to his sent folder."
- rokhayakebe 17y ago
  Nicely said. Whatever it is you say/write to someone says a lot more about you then the recipient. Also as a recipient you should know that you control whatever emotions you have when reading a letter or listening to someone.
- dkarl 17y ago
  The dating site story left out the dozens of real losers who emailed her things like "hey ur hot" or "You might think I'm out of your league, and it's true that I make a lot of money, but I'm actually really into chicks with big legs." I don't buy the scenario that she got eight well-written, nice, well-targeted messages in a single day and didn't get at least that many messages from jerks. Unless she's got some kind of bizarrely good filtering set up, or is on a really, really niche site, those kinds of messages outnumber the earnest well-spoken ones. This is a case where tidying up an anecdote for dramatic effect completely changes its meaning. Her comment was probably aimed at the real losers in her inbox rather than the appealing ones mentioned in the story. Plus, for a woman, being on a dating site is all about volume control. She probably only has time to go out with one new guy every week or month, so she picks the best guy out of the dozens of men who contact her every week. The rest are just noise. They're a boring and pointless part of her day. Calling them "losers" is unjustified, but none of them heard her, and she isn't obligated to spend an hour a day responding personally to every guy who emails her so he doesn't get his feelings hurt.
  - derefr 17y ago
    If by "really, really niche site" you mean "any site that charges money," that's about how it works, I believe. The point of her story, though, is that she deleted all the messages, and implied that she regularly deletes all the messages—she's not going out with any of them; she's fishing with no hook.
    - dkarl 17y ago
      Let's assume her womanly duty obligates her to go out with one new guy from the dating site per week. To accomplish that, she'll have to respond to approximately... one guy per week. Heck, let's be generous and say two. That's eight guys per month out of three hundred emails. Even assuming she never responds to two guys on the same day, she'll delete every single email over 70% percent of the time. That also assumes that she chooses her dates exclusively from the guys who contact her, forgoing her right to contact any men proactively.
      - 17y ago
- kareemm 17y ago
  > I think both are natural and healthy in terms of their own psyche. questioning why you're harboring beliefs that construct a self-identity that causes you to send "you suck" emails just cuz you're having a bad day seems healthier than practicing reflexive brand management. call it "examined brand management" :)
- sliverstorm 17y ago
  Ok, so even if we accept your hypothesis, that doesn't change the root message of the article, which is to remember the other end of the line is a person just like you. The explicit goal of the user may be different, but shooting someone down for pleasure and tearing someone down to pull yourself up often look to be one and the same, and have many of the same side effects.
presidentender 17y ago
On the other hand, it can be dangerous to humanize internet people (or real-world people) too much. I have a great deal of trouble disagreeing with clients, and a huge tendency to absorb costs myself. I agree that it's best not to send these scathing emails to people without considering their humanity. I just have a hard time striking the balance between that and letting others take advantage of me.
raffi 17y ago
I remember there was a thread here a while ago about the most vicious attacks we've experienced. I don't think I get it too bad, but I do get them. I wonder where people come from saying some of the things they do, even here.
- billswift 17y ago
  A big problem here and most blogs is that you have to respond quickly or very few people will ever read your response. I prefer to think about things longer than is really possible when commenting on-line, which is why I don't comment as much as most people.
abstractbill 17y ago
Very insightful (as is usual from Derek!). I've developed a nice thick skin while working at justin.tv, but in the early days I'll admit some of the contact I had with our users was pretty devastating. At times I was simultaneously trying to scale the chat server code to handle more and more users, fighting off a bunch of script-kiddie attacks, and replying to emails telling me I must be just about the most useless programmer in the world :)
- davidedicillo 17y ago
  Wanna talk about thick skin? Try being a soccer referee in Italy...
  - davidw 17y ago
    But the kickbacks make it all worth it, right? ;-)
- smokey_the_bear 17y ago
  One of the best things about my co-founder is that he's thicker skinned than me. Some of our user email makes me really upset, but he just cheerfully replies so I don't have to dwell on it.
  - patio11 17y ago
    For those of us who don't have the luxury of human firewalls, I recommend a puppet. The puppet answers the emails so that you don't have to. He says whatever needs to be said to bring the business and customer to a successful resolution. The puppet has no ego, the puppet has no worries, the puppet has no deep-seated need for approval, the puppet exists only to reach mutually beneficial solutions. My puppet has gotten through a couple of cheerful responses to emails which, if I had read them myself, would have left me unable to sleep for weeks. My puppet also reports that the worst one had a follow-up "Thanks for getting back to me! Oh sorry I was so stressed yesterday lol." The puppet lols, too.
duck 17y ago
Everyone should read this and think about it. We all do it from one degree or another, especially when you think about the ignoring example. The web connects us to more people than we can imagine, but we often act as though we would never meet them face to face - and that is where true connections come from.
tjarratt 17y ago
Looks like not everyone has read the rules of Netiquette! It really amazes me how often people can write scathing letters and not realize that they are going to hurt individuals that are responsible for maintaining / running services and websites. The only conceivable explanation is that these are people that have never been responsible for something public facing and hence have never been criticized unfairly.
keefe 17y ago
On the other hand side, people should just man the hell up and stop caring. OMG somebody sent me an angry email. I've gotten dozens, who cares? OMG the girl on the dating site didn't respond to me, along with the other 500 I messaged, who cares? All I care about are my goals. I'll manage the client and if I lose him, move on to find another. I'll keep messaging until a girl responds to me, then go from there. People need to understand that there ARE hundreds of people online and just chill out about reacting to things like that. I don't bitch people out because it's counterproductive, but who cares, seriously.
- antipaganda 17y ago
  You make good points, but something is definitely lost when someone is forced to give up a sensitive personality due to an overly-abrasive society. Politeness is good for us.
  - keefe 17y ago
    Politeness is good for us. Weakness is not.
  - dnsworks 17y ago
    This used to be why I liked OKCupid. If you rated somebody with a 1-star rating, and they did the same, then OKC told you, and there were no hurt feelings, just "hey they're not interested". At some point someone got hurt feelings, and the instantaneous feedback of "if I give her a 1 star, do I get an email telling me she's not interested, since women tend to be indirect and not want to hurt feelings" went away. It turned into a wall you threw your introductory messages over, with a bottom-less pit on the other side of the wal.
  - billswift 17y ago
    "Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness [good manners] provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty", "meaningless", or "dishonest", and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best." - - Lazarus Long
vital101 17y ago
Remember when your mother told you "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."? It still holds, except it's even simpler: Keep it professional. Just because you feel wronged, doesn't mean you need to bring someone down. Try to resolve things like an adult, it will probably yield better results anyways.
araneae 17y ago
"I felt for those guys. Each one pouring out his heart, projecting his hopes onto Valerie, hoping she'll reply with equal enthusiasm, hoping she might be the one that will finally see and appreciate him. She said, “Ugh. Losers. I get like ten of these a day,” and clicked [delete] on all of them, without replying." While his thesis might be true, this is not a good example of it. Those guys undoubtedly sent off many such heartfelt messages each day. They're playing the law of averages, and their chances are much better if they indicate they read her profile. And like she said, she gets 10 of those messages everyday, so she can afford to be choosy. If she answered every one of them back, they would all e-mail her back, and get their hopes up, and she'd have to e-mail back... It's a waste of her time to bother. It's not callous, it's a reflection of the reality that men are much easier than women, making women a comparatively rare commodity. This happens in real life all the time, and the only thing that's different online is that men can send such messages without having to overcome their shyness. So women get many more messages, and have to be comparatively more selective with them.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  it's a reflection of the reality that men are much easier than women Despite what so many people believe, no such reality exists. But it's easy to console oneself by thinking so. The situation was summed up quite well by a (female) friend long ago: "it's easy to find a guy to sleep with. The much harder part is finding a guy you'd want to sleep with a second time." I've known a wide variety of people (intimately speaking) and I don't believe that men are easier, it's just that we're socialized to be the initiators and women the receptors. Many, many, many women would love to be the initiators (my friend above certainly), but societal pressures inhibit most of them. Thankfully that seems to be changing, but I'm married now, so lot of good it does me :-)
  - araneae 17y ago
    it's just that we're socialized Okcupid has the data, and men are more likely to message women than vice versa. Whether or not it's innate is irrelevant to this conversation. But since you like anecdotal evidence so much, here: http://www.wetherobots.com/comics/2008-01-07-Misinformed.jpg http://www.wetherobots.com/comics/2008-01-07-Misinformed.jpg
watmough 17y ago
Excellent article. I support an iPhone app and occasionally get emails where the person is obviously not expecting a real person to read it. Almost without exception, I write as nice an email back as possible, and usually people are disarmed. As I say, a great article, since it brings to light something that people won't generally see until they are supporting a web-page or app at arms length.
dan_sim 17y ago
That's how I begin to feel about the community here. When I wrote about selling our product for 25K$ (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1212966 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1212966), some people wrote that it couldn't work and things like that. If I would have been new in business, it would have hurt me a lot. Now, I just say to myself that these people are just bitter. They don't seem to care how much they can hurt others.
- holdenk 17y ago
  Out of interest, did you sell it? Also since your asking for CAD, I assume you are Canadian, do you mind me asking where in Canada you are from?
  - dan_sim 17y ago
    Didn't sell it yet but we had people interested in. We are from near Montreal.
- scott_s 17y ago
  That thread has skepticism, but I didn't think any of it was rude or anything close to a personal attack. That's quite different from what the author of this post described. The other side of the author's point is that you have to be careful not to take criticism of your work as criticism of you as a person.
- mrkurt 17y ago
  If you chalk everyone up who critiques something you're doing as "bitter", you're liable to miss a whole lot of useful information.
  - mos1 17y ago
    I'm sorry, I inadvertently downvoted you. I actually agree completely with what you said, especially after reading the thread he cited.
- gridspy 17y ago
sivers 17y ago
XKCD comic = 1000 words: http://xkcd.com/438/ http://xkcd.com/438/
- swombat 17y ago
  Most of us need to have things repeated to us many times, in multiple forms, before we get it.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  I have that as a print hanging on my office wall for this very reason.
RevRal 17y ago
Good timing. On OkCupid I was just told that I am an asswipe, that I have no personality, and no respect. Brought back some bad schoolyard emotions. Thanks.
- impeachgod 17y ago
  Hang in there, buddy. Probably you were just rejected by a bunch of high-maintenance princesses. Look for a decent woman, you probably deserve one.
- tjic 17y ago
  The bit in the post where the woman deleted a swath of emails touched on that. Ouch!
- donaq 17y ago
  Out of curiosity, what sort of introductory messages do you send? And how many times have you gotten such a response? I mostly get either nice responses or no response on OkCupid.
  - RevRal 17y ago
    I send lovely introductory messages. Here's a real response: "First, please allow me to thank you for sending me a message that doesn't suck." Everyone I have messaged, who has responded, says something along those lines. However, in this particular case, the scathing message was a response to a subsequent exchange, not the introductory. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything was going as planned, so I asked for her number. She didn't respond with her number. No big deal. I've wrung numbers out of girls on OkCupid before (read: assuaged their reluctance), with stuff like this: I understand. You're likely a poor collage student who couldn't pay her phone bill on time. Look, it's okay, you should've told me. I mean, I have extra ramen packets and cans of beans. Most of the time, the response is like this: "haha, how chivalrous. Here's my number...." This time it was something like: "WOW. Are you trying to be a dick? Blah blah blah. I'm independently wealthy due to my heritage asswipe blah blah blah and something about me having no respect and no personality." I don't know what her deal was, being "independantly wealthy" must be a touchy topic. My feelers were injured.
nathanh 17y ago
I've received some pretty biting ones from people that were upset about having to pay to use a product or service online. It's interesting that people are willing to put hours into a hate note, yet aren't willing to pay $20 for something online.
d0m 17y ago
In real life, cute girls turn off 10 guys a day without thinking about how they feel. Why would/should they act differently on a dating site. (I'm not saying that I appreciate this act thought, that's just how reality is.)
- impeachgod 17y ago
  A good way to feel better is to think: Wait a sec, what kind of people are these girls? Most likely they are spoiled princesses with a massive sense of entitlement. They, perhaps are not worth much as people. Why is being rejected by them supposed to feel bad?
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    The problem this approach is that you're not committing the same fallacy they have: you have dehumanized them by assuming bad things about them in order to make yourself feel better. Case in point: "they're not worth much as people". How are they "likely" to be spoiled princesses with entitlement complexes? How do you know enough to make even a wild-ass guess as to their worth as people? I understand your point about it hurting less, but I think it's an unhealthy track to walk down. Dehumanizing people is never healthy, regardless of the end goal. Not to mention by doing so you've sunk to their level. Not to mention you'd be missing the entire point of this post: " A real person, a lot like you "
    - jongraehl 17y ago
      Seems healthy to me, and accurate: "most likely".
    - impeachgod 17y ago
      In most cases I've known it to be "quite likely" and I found that I do know enough. You can't see the same kind of person over and over and not form patterns. I personally think that you're wrong to think that everyone has the same value. Gandhi and Jeffrey Dahmer don't have the same worth. Dehumanizing or humanizing people is the same thing, only on a smaller scale.
DaniFong 17y ago
That was beautiful. Thank you.
hristov 17y ago
Wow. That is going to make me think twice next time I flame somebody on HN or Slashdot. Apparently, it is not just karma I am burning. It is human feelings!
rapind 17y ago
The Internet is like your car.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
sh1mmer 17y ago
One day I want to meet Derek in person, because he just seems like one of those people in life that it's just good to be friends with. Thanks, Derek.
jnoller 17y ago
What ever happened to being simply polite, and thinking about people before you lash out? Hell; you should even be polite, and keep the tone civil if you hate the person at the receiving end. I think, to an extent, this is what's gone wrong with online communication and political discourse - when did civility become something we simply wear when it's convenient?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
dpifke 17y ago
The corollary to this is that companies also need to treat their customers as people. Too often when I call customer service I'm talking to a robot who can barely speak my language well enough to coherently read the set-in-stone, no exceptions, this-is-how-it-is policy off of his computer screen. His claiming to be named "Bob" doesn't make him any more of a real human being to me. And while I wouldn't be uncivil (or condone as much) towards "Bob," both sides of the conversation need to avoid dehumanizing each other. I wonder if the client in Derek's first example would have been such an ass towards Sara if large companies hadn't preconditioned us to expect mechanical, uncaring customer service.
- jnoller 17y ago
  Yes. Completely agreed; companies need to treat customers as people. Treating customer like annoyances, metrics or just "something to be dealt with" helps lead to customers who call up or contact you immediately on the attack.
- inimino 17y ago
  I find it odd that you go on to say "both sides of the conversation need to avoid dehumanizing each other", after "a robot" and "[not] a real human being to me".
  - dpifke 17y ago
    What's odd in starting with an example as to why it's easy to dehumanize someone in customer service and then saying not to do it? The choice in phrasing and imagery was intentional, if perhaps a bit clumsy.
mschaecher 17y ago
Sivers.org hasn't loaded for me in a few weeks now :( Anyone else?
- tb 17y ago
  Yeah me too.. I get XML parsing errors because there are a couple of extra bytes of garbage at the beginning of the file, things like: "1caaa" on http://sivers.org/real http://sivers.org/real and "df9c" on http://sivers.org/ff2 http://sivers.org/ff2
jlees 17y ago
It's not just about the negative. A lot of us have grown up with machines and technology, and we often forget there are humans involved in the simplest of transactions, such as shopping or customer service. Instead of fuming that you have to phone up to get your phone account cancelled, rather than click a button online, it's amazing what you can achieve if you put on a positive outlook and remember the other person is just like you, but working some shitty call centre job to pay the rent. Since I had this "eureka" moment (and I find it awful that I had to have one in the first place), I've had much better experiences - negotations, discounts, amazing customer service, etc.
roqetman 17y ago
Thanks - something we need reminding of from time to time
extension 17y ago
I prefer to think of the internet as force of harmony and understanding, allowing us to achieve unprecedented new levels of brutal interpersonal honesty, you douchenozzle.
quizbiz 17y ago
How do you show that those that have you on the top of their priority list that you are on their priority list as well. It gets to a point where it's tough to keep up with various people each with a unique personal approach. I really want to get better at that.
petercooper 17y ago
Stupid e-mails and comments used to bother me too, but I run some crazy statistics on it now: At least 1% of people are incurable, malicious idiots who have nothing better to do but spit bile all over the place. If I happen to encounter them frequently it only proves I have reach and what do you do with incurable idiots? Ignore 'em - they're the minority.
pnelly 17y ago
'Nobody to spoon at night'... Ugh, my heart is bleeding
mcantor 17y ago
I'm a little amazed (and somewhat disappointed) that no one has mentioned this related Penny Arcade comic yet: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ (Sure, arguably, dating sites are less anonymous and have less of an audience than the video game in question, but the gist is the same: "I don't need to take responsibility for my tomfoolery, so here goes nothing!") By the way, I feel compelled to mention again--as I do on almost every post from sivers.org--that Derek Sivers is a total badass, and we should all endeavor to have our heads on as straight as he does. Thanks, Derek!

624 points by terpua 17y ago

I simply don't understand why anyone would send an unprovoked, nasty email to someone else. People on the internet have been pissing me off for nearly two decades now, and I don't recall ever doing this. But like clockwork, someone does it to me every few months.

andreyf 17y ago

I think those "hurt" in both stories are making something about themselves that really isn't. The point of a girl "rejecting losers" on a dating site has nothing to do with the losers and everything to do with reinforcing her self-image of "the kind of girl who turns down 10 guys a day". Same with the people who write long e-mails saying "you suck": if someone is looking for it, they can find a lot of evidence people around them suck. The point of writing e-mails about it is to build up one's own confidence, heal some hurt, or vent some frustration about some issue completely unrelated. The stories are really about people creating a self-image and protecting an identity (call it "reflexive brand management", if you will). While I'll concede that they're narcissistic in their disregard for how their actions affect other people, I think both are natural and healthy in terms of their own psyche.

alexyim 17y ago
I wonder if you can get the same effect by writing the email but clicking the "Delete" button instead
- abstractbill 17y ago
  You definitely can. I write awful horrible insensitive scathing emails to people, and then delete them in the morning without sending them. I get the catharsis, and I don't lose any friends (actual or potential) in the process - everyone wins!
  - tel 17y ago
    The scary part is that delete and send are pretty close to each other in gmail.
    - alexyim 17y ago
      How many times have you deleted an email when you wanted to send one?
      - jules 17y ago
        In Gmail? Zero, because you can undelete.
        amohr 17y ago
        If you act fast, you can unsend too.
        hvasishth 17y ago
        how?
        stanleydrew 17y ago
        Enable "undo send" in labs and then just hit 'z' (assuming you have keyboard shortcuts enabled too).
    - abstractbill 17y ago
      Yes, absolutely. That's why I never fill out the To field when writing an email that I'm not sure I should send.
      - dennisgorelik 17y ago
        Without "To" field you risk to forget who you are angry at.
- shrughes 17y ago
  Yes, you can. At least it works for me.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  In these occasions I find myself writing a draft of a letter, then re-writing it 5 or 6 times as my anger subsides. What starts out as a 10-page tome usually turns into 3 paragraphs of "Hey, this wasn't so great, Here's how I'd love to see it done."
- wheels 17y ago
  I once heard someone say, "The quality of a man is measured by the size of his drafts folder relative to his sent folder."
rokhayakebe 17y ago
Nicely said. Whatever it is you say/write to someone says a lot more about you then the recipient. Also as a recipient you should know that you control whatever emotions you have when reading a letter or listening to someone.
dkarl 17y ago
The dating site story left out the dozens of real losers who emailed her things like "hey ur hot" or "You might think I'm out of your league, and it's true that I make a lot of money, but I'm actually really into chicks with big legs." I don't buy the scenario that she got eight well-written, nice, well-targeted messages in a single day and didn't get at least that many messages from jerks. Unless she's got some kind of bizarrely good filtering set up, or is on a really, really niche site, those kinds of messages outnumber the earnest well-spoken ones. This is a case where tidying up an anecdote for dramatic effect completely changes its meaning. Her comment was probably aimed at the real losers in her inbox rather than the appealing ones mentioned in the story. Plus, for a woman, being on a dating site is all about volume control. She probably only has time to go out with one new guy every week or month, so she picks the best guy out of the dozens of men who contact her every week. The rest are just noise. They're a boring and pointless part of her day. Calling them "losers" is unjustified, but none of them heard her, and she isn't obligated to spend an hour a day responding personally to every guy who emails her so he doesn't get his feelings hurt.
- derefr 17y ago
  If by "really, really niche site" you mean "any site that charges money," that's about how it works, I believe. The point of her story, though, is that she deleted all the messages, and implied that she regularly deletes all the messages—she's not going out with any of them; she's fishing with no hook.
  - dkarl 17y ago
    Let's assume her womanly duty obligates her to go out with one new guy from the dating site per week. To accomplish that, she'll have to respond to approximately... one guy per week. Heck, let's be generous and say two. That's eight guys per month out of three hundred emails. Even assuming she never responds to two guys on the same day, she'll delete every single email over 70% percent of the time. That also assumes that she chooses her dates exclusively from the guys who contact her, forgoing her right to contact any men proactively.
    - 17y ago
kareemm 17y ago
> I think both are natural and healthy in terms of their own psyche. questioning why you're harboring beliefs that construct a self-identity that causes you to send "you suck" emails just cuz you're having a bad day seems healthier than practicing reflexive brand management. call it "examined brand management" :)
sliverstorm 17y ago
Ok, so even if we accept your hypothesis, that doesn't change the root message of the article, which is to remember the other end of the line is a person just like you. The explicit goal of the user may be different, but shooting someone down for pleasure and tearing someone down to pull yourself up often look to be one and the same, and have many of the same side effects.

presidentender 17y ago

On the other hand, it can be dangerous to humanize internet people (or real-world people) too much. I have a great deal of trouble disagreeing with clients, and a huge tendency to absorb costs myself. I agree that it's best not to send these scathing emails to people without considering their humanity. I just have a hard time striking the balance between that and letting others take advantage of me.

raffi 17y ago

I remember there was a thread here a while ago about the most vicious attacks we've experienced. I don't think I get it too bad, but I do get them. I wonder where people come from saying some of the things they do, even here.

billswift 17y ago
A big problem here and most blogs is that you have to respond quickly or very few people will ever read your response. I prefer to think about things longer than is really possible when commenting on-line, which is why I don't comment as much as most people.

abstractbill 17y ago

Very insightful (as is usual from Derek!). I've developed a nice thick skin while working at justin.tv, but in the early days I'll admit some of the contact I had with our users was pretty devastating. At times I was simultaneously trying to scale the chat server code to handle more and more users, fighting off a bunch of script-kiddie attacks, and replying to emails telling me I must be just about the most useless programmer in the world :)

davidedicillo 17y ago
Wanna talk about thick skin? Try being a soccer referee in Italy...
- davidw 17y ago
  But the kickbacks make it all worth it, right? ;-)
smokey_the_bear 17y ago
One of the best things about my co-founder is that he's thicker skinned than me. Some of our user email makes me really upset, but he just cheerfully replies so I don't have to dwell on it.
- patio11 17y ago
  For those of us who don't have the luxury of human firewalls, I recommend a puppet. The puppet answers the emails so that you don't have to. He says whatever needs to be said to bring the business and customer to a successful resolution. The puppet has no ego, the puppet has no worries, the puppet has no deep-seated need for approval, the puppet exists only to reach mutually beneficial solutions. My puppet has gotten through a couple of cheerful responses to emails which, if I had read them myself, would have left me unable to sleep for weeks. My puppet also reports that the worst one had a follow-up "Thanks for getting back to me! Oh sorry I was so stressed yesterday lol." The puppet lols, too.

duck 17y ago

Everyone should read this and think about it. We all do it from one degree or another, especially when you think about the ignoring example. The web connects us to more people than we can imagine, but we often act as though we would never meet them face to face - and that is where true connections come from.

tjarratt 17y ago

Looks like not everyone has read the rules of Netiquette! It really amazes me how often people can write scathing letters and not realize that they are going to hurt individuals that are responsible for maintaining / running services and websites. The only conceivable explanation is that these are people that have never been responsible for something public facing and hence have never been criticized unfairly.

keefe 17y ago

On the other hand side, people should just man the hell up and stop caring. OMG somebody sent me an angry email. I've gotten dozens, who cares? OMG the girl on the dating site didn't respond to me, along with the other 500 I messaged, who cares? All I care about are my goals. I'll manage the client and if I lose him, move on to find another. I'll keep messaging until a girl responds to me, then go from there. People need to understand that there ARE hundreds of people online and just chill out about reacting to things like that. I don't bitch people out because it's counterproductive, but who cares, seriously.

antipaganda 17y ago
You make good points, but something is definitely lost when someone is forced to give up a sensitive personality due to an overly-abrasive society. Politeness is good for us.
- keefe 17y ago
  Politeness is good for us. Weakness is not.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  This used to be why I liked OKCupid. If you rated somebody with a 1-star rating, and they did the same, then OKC told you, and there were no hurt feelings, just "hey they're not interested". At some point someone got hurt feelings, and the instantaneous feedback of "if I give her a 1 star, do I get an email telling me she's not interested, since women tend to be indirect and not want to hurt feelings" went away. It turned into a wall you threw your introductory messages over, with a bottom-less pit on the other side of the wal.
- billswift 17y ago
  "Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness [good manners] provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty", "meaningless", or "dishonest", and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best." - - Lazarus Long

vital101 17y ago

Remember when your mother told you "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."? It still holds, except it's even simpler: Keep it professional. Just because you feel wronged, doesn't mean you need to bring someone down. Try to resolve things like an adult, it will probably yield better results anyways.

araneae 17y ago

"I felt for those guys. Each one pouring out his heart, projecting his hopes onto Valerie, hoping she'll reply with equal enthusiasm, hoping she might be the one that will finally see and appreciate him. She said, “Ugh. Losers. I get like ten of these a day,” and clicked [delete] on all of them, without replying." While his thesis might be true, this is not a good example of it. Those guys undoubtedly sent off many such heartfelt messages each day. They're playing the law of averages, and their chances are much better if they indicate they read her profile. And like she said, she gets 10 of those messages everyday, so she can afford to be choosy. If she answered every one of them back, they would all e-mail her back, and get their hopes up, and she'd have to e-mail back... It's a waste of her time to bother. It's not callous, it's a reflection of the reality that men are much easier than women, making women a comparatively rare commodity. This happens in real life all the time, and the only thing that's different online is that men can send such messages without having to overcome their shyness. So women get many more messages, and have to be comparatively more selective with them.

HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
it's a reflection of the reality that men are much easier than women Despite what so many people believe, no such reality exists. But it's easy to console oneself by thinking so. The situation was summed up quite well by a (female) friend long ago: "it's easy to find a guy to sleep with. The much harder part is finding a guy you'd want to sleep with a second time." I've known a wide variety of people (intimately speaking) and I don't believe that men are easier, it's just that we're socialized to be the initiators and women the receptors. Many, many, many women would love to be the initiators (my friend above certainly), but societal pressures inhibit most of them. Thankfully that seems to be changing, but I'm married now, so lot of good it does me :-)
- araneae 17y ago
  it's just that we're socialized Okcupid has the data, and men are more likely to message women than vice versa. Whether or not it's innate is irrelevant to this conversation. But since you like anecdotal evidence so much, here: http://www.wetherobots.com/comics/2008-01-07-Misinformed.jpg http://www.wetherobots.com/comics/2008-01-07-Misinformed.jpg

watmough 17y ago

Excellent article. I support an iPhone app and occasionally get emails where the person is obviously not expecting a real person to read it. Almost without exception, I write as nice an email back as possible, and usually people are disarmed. As I say, a great article, since it brings to light something that people won't generally see until they are supporting a web-page or app at arms length.

dan_sim 17y ago

That's how I begin to feel about the community here. When I wrote about selling our product for 25K$ (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1212966 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1212966), some people wrote that it couldn't work and things like that. If I would have been new in business, it would have hurt me a lot. Now, I just say to myself that these people are just bitter. They don't seem to care how much they can hurt others.

holdenk 17y ago
Out of interest, did you sell it? Also since your asking for CAD, I assume you are Canadian, do you mind me asking where in Canada you are from?
- dan_sim 17y ago
  Didn't sell it yet but we had people interested in. We are from near Montreal.
scott_s 17y ago
That thread has skepticism, but I didn't think any of it was rude or anything close to a personal attack. That's quite different from what the author of this post described. The other side of the author's point is that you have to be careful not to take criticism of your work as criticism of you as a person.
mrkurt 17y ago
If you chalk everyone up who critiques something you're doing as "bitter", you're liable to miss a whole lot of useful information.
- mos1 17y ago
  I'm sorry, I inadvertently downvoted you. I actually agree completely with what you said, especially after reading the thread he cited.
gridspy 17y ago

sivers 17y ago

XKCD comic = 1000 words: http://xkcd.com/438/ http://xkcd.com/438/

swombat 17y ago
Most of us need to have things repeated to us many times, in multiple forms, before we get it.
ErrantX 17y ago
I have that as a print hanging on my office wall for this very reason.

RevRal 17y ago

Good timing. On OkCupid I was just told that I am an asswipe, that I have no personality, and no respect. Brought back some bad schoolyard emotions. Thanks.

impeachgod 17y ago
Hang in there, buddy. Probably you were just rejected by a bunch of high-maintenance princesses. Look for a decent woman, you probably deserve one.
tjic 17y ago
The bit in the post where the woman deleted a swath of emails touched on that. Ouch!
donaq 17y ago
Out of curiosity, what sort of introductory messages do you send? And how many times have you gotten such a response? I mostly get either nice responses or no response on OkCupid.
- RevRal 17y ago
  I send lovely introductory messages. Here's a real response: "First, please allow me to thank you for sending me a message that doesn't suck." Everyone I have messaged, who has responded, says something along those lines. However, in this particular case, the scathing message was a response to a subsequent exchange, not the introductory. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything was going as planned, so I asked for her number. She didn't respond with her number. No big deal. I've wrung numbers out of girls on OkCupid before (read: assuaged their reluctance), with stuff like this: I understand. You're likely a poor collage student who couldn't pay her phone bill on time. Look, it's okay, you should've told me. I mean, I have extra ramen packets and cans of beans. Most of the time, the response is like this: "haha, how chivalrous. Here's my number...." This time it was something like: "WOW. Are you trying to be a dick? Blah blah blah. I'm independently wealthy due to my heritage asswipe blah blah blah and something about me having no respect and no personality." I don't know what her deal was, being "independantly wealthy" must be a touchy topic. My feelers were injured.

nathanh 17y ago

I've received some pretty biting ones from people that were upset about having to pay to use a product or service online. It's interesting that people are willing to put hours into a hate note, yet aren't willing to pay $20 for something online.

d0m 17y ago

In real life, cute girls turn off 10 guys a day without thinking about how they feel. Why would/should they act differently on a dating site. (I'm not saying that I appreciate this act thought, that's just how reality is.)

impeachgod 17y ago
A good way to feel better is to think: Wait a sec, what kind of people are these girls? Most likely they are spoiled princesses with a massive sense of entitlement. They, perhaps are not worth much as people. Why is being rejected by them supposed to feel bad?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  The problem this approach is that you're not committing the same fallacy they have: you have dehumanized them by assuming bad things about them in order to make yourself feel better. Case in point: "they're not worth much as people". How are they "likely" to be spoiled princesses with entitlement complexes? How do you know enough to make even a wild-ass guess as to their worth as people? I understand your point about it hurting less, but I think it's an unhealthy track to walk down. Dehumanizing people is never healthy, regardless of the end goal. Not to mention by doing so you've sunk to their level. Not to mention you'd be missing the entire point of this post: " A real person, a lot like you "
  - jongraehl 17y ago
    Seems healthy to me, and accurate: "most likely".
  - impeachgod 17y ago
    In most cases I've known it to be "quite likely" and I found that I do know enough. You can't see the same kind of person over and over and not form patterns. I personally think that you're wrong to think that everyone has the same value. Gandhi and Jeffrey Dahmer don't have the same worth. Dehumanizing or humanizing people is the same thing, only on a smaller scale.

DaniFong 17y ago

That was beautiful. Thank you.

hristov 17y ago

Wow. That is going to make me think twice next time I flame somebody on HN or Slashdot. Apparently, it is not just karma I am burning. It is human feelings!

rapind 17y ago

The Internet is like your car.

deleted 17y ago
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sh1mmer 17y ago

One day I want to meet Derek in person, because he just seems like one of those people in life that it's just good to be friends with. Thanks, Derek.

jnoller 17y ago

What ever happened to being simply polite, and thinking about people before you lash out? Hell; you should even be polite, and keep the tone civil if you hate the person at the receiving end. I think, to an extent, this is what's gone wrong with online communication and political discourse - when did civility become something we simply wear when it's convenient?

deleted 17y ago

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dpifke 17y ago

The corollary to this is that companies also need to treat their customers as people. Too often when I call customer service I'm talking to a robot who can barely speak my language well enough to coherently read the set-in-stone, no exceptions, this-is-how-it-is policy off of his computer screen. His claiming to be named "Bob" doesn't make him any more of a real human being to me. And while I wouldn't be uncivil (or condone as much) towards "Bob," both sides of the conversation need to avoid dehumanizing each other. I wonder if the client in Derek's first example would have been such an ass towards Sara if large companies hadn't preconditioned us to expect mechanical, uncaring customer service.

jnoller 17y ago
Yes. Completely agreed; companies need to treat customers as people. Treating customer like annoyances, metrics or just "something to be dealt with" helps lead to customers who call up or contact you immediately on the attack.
inimino 17y ago
I find it odd that you go on to say "both sides of the conversation need to avoid dehumanizing each other", after "a robot" and "[not] a real human being to me".
- dpifke 17y ago
  What's odd in starting with an example as to why it's easy to dehumanize someone in customer service and then saying not to do it? The choice in phrasing and imagery was intentional, if perhaps a bit clumsy.

mschaecher 17y ago

Sivers.org hasn't loaded for me in a few weeks now :( Anyone else?

tb 17y ago
Yeah me too.. I get XML parsing errors because there are a couple of extra bytes of garbage at the beginning of the file, things like: "1caaa" on http://sivers.org/real http://sivers.org/real and "df9c" on http://sivers.org/ff2 http://sivers.org/ff2

jlees 17y ago

It's not just about the negative. A lot of us have grown up with machines and technology, and we often forget there are humans involved in the simplest of transactions, such as shopping or customer service. Instead of fuming that you have to phone up to get your phone account cancelled, rather than click a button online, it's amazing what you can achieve if you put on a positive outlook and remember the other person is just like you, but working some shitty call centre job to pay the rent. Since I had this "eureka" moment (and I find it awful that I had to have one in the first place), I've had much better experiences - negotations, discounts, amazing customer service, etc.

roqetman 17y ago

Thanks - something we need reminding of from time to time

extension 17y ago

I prefer to think of the internet as force of harmony and understanding, allowing us to achieve unprecedented new levels of brutal interpersonal honesty, you douchenozzle.

quizbiz 17y ago

How do you show that those that have you on the top of their priority list that you are on their priority list as well. It gets to a point where it's tough to keep up with various people each with a unique personal approach. I really want to get better at that.

petercooper 17y ago

Stupid e-mails and comments used to bother me too, but I run some crazy statistics on it now: At least 1% of people are incurable, malicious idiots who have nothing better to do but spit bile all over the place. If I happen to encounter them frequently it only proves I have reach and what do you do with incurable idiots? Ignore 'em - they're the minority.

pnelly 17y ago

'Nobody to spoon at night'... Ugh, my heart is bleeding

mcantor 17y ago

I'm a little amazed (and somewhat disappointed) that no one has mentioned this related Penny Arcade comic yet: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ (Sure, arguably, dating sites are less anonymous and have less of an audience than the video game in question, but the gist is the same: "I don't need to take responsibility for my tomfoolery, so here goes nothing!") By the way, I feel compelled to mention again--as I do on almost every post from sivers.org--that Derek Sivers is a total badass, and we should all endeavor to have our heads on as straight as he does. Thanks, Derek!