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I spent ages 12-now on internet forums, ranging from video game boards, to anime imageboards, to HN. One "positive" thing about this is that by now I am desensi

I spent ages 12-now on internet forums, ranging from video game boards, to anime imageboards, to HN. One "positive" thing about this is that by now I am desensitized from rude and baseless internet comments. I've heard and been told everything! If I had a penny for every time I've been told that I suck and I need to kill myself, maybe I could be a YC partner and invest :-) But I always forget there's a lot of people that well, went outside a lot in their teens and only talked to their friends on AIM/Facebook/texting, so they take rude comments personally. So yeah, I agree with Sam. Ignore them. Unless they're personally harassing you, stalking you, etc. (or opposite, giving helpful criticism), it's just words that mean nothing.

grillvogel 10y ago
the thing about this is that you don't know whether or not its actually affected you. those words get into your brain and then they hang out in your subconscious and have a party.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  I guess I should've explained—Sam says to develop "thick skin" which I believe includes not "letting" rude messages into your subconscious, if that makes sense. I did that when I was 13 or 14, not in my mid 20s.
- nemothekid 10y ago
  Like the other poster, I've spent my entire adolescence on internet forums. I can't say they negatively affect me either (as anything other than noise). In general all the mean comments I've received have been lazy, contradictory and eventually you see these comments as a indicator that you've "won" as the other commenters are now "salty". One thing I can say it has affected me is I tend not to get into arguments over subjects I don't care about - online and off. Years of arguing online about inane subjects and logging in the next day to see your opponent's views have gone unchanged makes you realize how much time and energy you waste getting mad at things on the internet - there are far for effective ways to change the world. Even though I've spent probably entire years of my life reading comments, I am of the camp that most comments aren't even worth the silicon they are stored on. However, there are a lot of diamonds in the ash. I understand, however, that this experience might be much different on non-anonymous/social platforms like Twitter and Facebook where it may seem like the attacks are personal, but I'm not popular enough to have this experience.
JoBrad 10y ago
There's a good dude to this: you aren't affected as much by negative comments. But growing up seeing this interaction also normalizes it. Which makes it harder to have difficult conversations with others (maybe not for you, but certainly for people in general).
- sotojuan 10y ago
  The main problem I had is that I used to have little empathy for people that got insulted online and got really offended and sad. I'd be like "why? It's just the internet". Now I understand why :-)
billmalarky 10y ago
Agreed. That said the comments hurt more when they are about something you have worked hard to build. Focusing on the next problem helps move you past dwelling on hateful remarks.
lambda 10y ago
So, I think you are over-generalizing from a particular piece of anecdotal evidence. You, yourself, have spent a lot of time online and been exposed to a lot of nasty behavior, and you don't find that a lot of rude comments bother you. From this, you conclude that those years "desensitized" you. Other equally valid hypotheses are that you were less sensitive to such comments in the first place; the reason you hung around, and kept on interacting in the kind of places that make such rude comments, while other people may have just spent time with their meatspace friends, is that you were less sensitive than some other people who saw nasty comments, got bothered by them, and stopped hanging out in such forums. Or another ones is that those comments you say you are desensitized to are just things that you don't care about that much. OK, so some anon was rude to you about a throwaway comment on an imageboard. Big deal. But you might react differently when people in a community you trust or which might be influential, and which you want to value your work, actually say negative things about something that you have put a lot of your life into, but have had doubts about whether it's really the right thing for you to be doing. The list goes on. There are a lot of possible conclusions that can be drawn from "spent a lot of time on the internet and exposed to online abuse in youth, now finds self not particularly sensitive to online rudeness." Taking from that that some people might take offense at things because they haven't had such experiences is a big leap.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
CamperBob2 10y ago
Years ago -- decades, maybe -- on Usenet, there was a school of thought analogous to Postel's Dictum ("Be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you send"), but for message board posts rather than protocol implementations. The idea behind this doctrine was to condition yourself to ignore the manner in which someone offers criticism, suggestions, or advice, and consider only its content. Insults were never taken personally, because the power to inflict harm through verbal means was considered to be entirely dependent on unsupported mental "features" at the receiving end. Overt trolling was to be ignored, just as if it were any other form of line noise originating in a part of the network you didn't control. Through this stance, a Usenet participant could make the most of an uncensored, unregulated medium while keeping his/her blood pressure under control. Someone's name was attached to this philosophy, but I can't remember whose it was. Does anyone else recall? People would add it to their signature lines ("I follow xxxx" or something like that), perhaps to save other posters the trouble of trying to be artificially nice to them, or to warn other posters that their stereotypical Usenet flames were wasted on them.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Perhaps Crocker's rules [0] is the one you're thinking of? Someone shared the link with me recently in a thread on optimism and feedback [1]. > By declaring commitment to Crocker's rules, one authorizes other debaters to optimize their messages for information, even when this entails that emotional feelings will be disregarded. This means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind, so that if you're offended, it's your own fault. > In contrast to radical honesty, Crocker's rules encourage being tactful with anyone who hasn't specifically accepted them. This follows the general principle of being "liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send". [0]: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crocker's_rules https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crocker's_rules [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298898
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    That's it, thanks! I don't recall it having anything to do with Wikipedia, so it's possible that Crocker was channeling an even older idea.
acjohnson55 10y ago
Same here. It taught me that it's productive to treat people with civility even when they're being jerks. I put that to use when working as a high school teacher. I also learned how to call out attempts to shift the goal posts of an argument. How to find the underlying thread of an argument. How to avoid being drawn into putting in more energy in than a person I'm arguing with.

grillvogel 10y ago

the thing about this is that you don't know whether or not its actually affected you. those words get into your brain and then they hang out in your subconscious and have a party.

sotojuan 10y ago
I guess I should've explained—Sam says to develop "thick skin" which I believe includes not "letting" rude messages into your subconscious, if that makes sense. I did that when I was 13 or 14, not in my mid 20s.
nemothekid 10y ago
Like the other poster, I've spent my entire adolescence on internet forums. I can't say they negatively affect me either (as anything other than noise). In general all the mean comments I've received have been lazy, contradictory and eventually you see these comments as a indicator that you've "won" as the other commenters are now "salty". One thing I can say it has affected me is I tend not to get into arguments over subjects I don't care about - online and off. Years of arguing online about inane subjects and logging in the next day to see your opponent's views have gone unchanged makes you realize how much time and energy you waste getting mad at things on the internet - there are far for effective ways to change the world. Even though I've spent probably entire years of my life reading comments, I am of the camp that most comments aren't even worth the silicon they are stored on. However, there are a lot of diamonds in the ash. I understand, however, that this experience might be much different on non-anonymous/social platforms like Twitter and Facebook where it may seem like the attacks are personal, but I'm not popular enough to have this experience.

JoBrad 10y ago

There's a good dude to this: you aren't affected as much by negative comments. But growing up seeing this interaction also normalizes it. Which makes it harder to have difficult conversations with others (maybe not for you, but certainly for people in general).

sotojuan 10y ago
The main problem I had is that I used to have little empathy for people that got insulted online and got really offended and sad. I'd be like "why? It's just the internet". Now I understand why :-)

billmalarky 10y ago

Agreed. That said the comments hurt more when they are about something you have worked hard to build. Focusing on the next problem helps move you past dwelling on hateful remarks.

lambda 10y ago

So, I think you are over-generalizing from a particular piece of anecdotal evidence. You, yourself, have spent a lot of time online and been exposed to a lot of nasty behavior, and you don't find that a lot of rude comments bother you. From this, you conclude that those years "desensitized" you. Other equally valid hypotheses are that you were less sensitive to such comments in the first place; the reason you hung around, and kept on interacting in the kind of places that make such rude comments, while other people may have just spent time with their meatspace friends, is that you were less sensitive than some other people who saw nasty comments, got bothered by them, and stopped hanging out in such forums. Or another ones is that those comments you say you are desensitized to are just things that you don't care about that much. OK, so some anon was rude to you about a throwaway comment on an imageboard. Big deal. But you might react differently when people in a community you trust or which might be influential, and which you want to value your work, actually say negative things about something that you have put a lot of your life into, but have had doubts about whether it's really the right thing for you to be doing. The list goes on. There are a lot of possible conclusions that can be drawn from "spent a lot of time on the internet and exposed to online abuse in youth, now finds self not particularly sensitive to online rudeness." Taking from that that some people might take offense at things because they haven't had such experiences is a big leap.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

CamperBob2 10y ago

Years ago -- decades, maybe -- on Usenet, there was a school of thought analogous to Postel's Dictum ("Be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you send"), but for message board posts rather than protocol implementations. The idea behind this doctrine was to condition yourself to ignore the manner in which someone offers criticism, suggestions, or advice, and consider only its content. Insults were never taken personally, because the power to inflict harm through verbal means was considered to be entirely dependent on unsupported mental "features" at the receiving end. Overt trolling was to be ignored, just as if it were any other form of line noise originating in a part of the network you didn't control. Through this stance, a Usenet participant could make the most of an uncensored, unregulated medium while keeping his/her blood pressure under control. Someone's name was attached to this philosophy, but I can't remember whose it was. Does anyone else recall? People would add it to their signature lines ("I follow xxxx" or something like that), perhaps to save other posters the trouble of trying to be artificially nice to them, or to warn other posters that their stereotypical Usenet flames were wasted on them.

tedmiston 10y ago
Perhaps Crocker's rules [0] is the one you're thinking of? Someone shared the link with me recently in a thread on optimism and feedback [1]. > By declaring commitment to Crocker's rules, one authorizes other debaters to optimize their messages for information, even when this entails that emotional feelings will be disregarded. This means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind, so that if you're offended, it's your own fault. > In contrast to radical honesty, Crocker's rules encourage being tactful with anyone who hasn't specifically accepted them. This follows the general principle of being "liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send". [0]: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crocker's_rules https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Crocker's_rules [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298898
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  That's it, thanks! I don't recall it having anything to do with Wikipedia, so it's possible that Crocker was channeling an even older idea.

acjohnson55 10y ago

Same here. It taught me that it's productive to treat people with civility even when they're being jerks. I put that to use when working as a high school teacher. I also learned how to call out attempts to shift the goal posts of an argument. How to find the underlying thread of an argument. How to avoid being drawn into putting in more energy in than a person I'm arguing with.