4 ms·

Hate is a strong word. People can be very critical at times, myself included, but this isn't the same thing. People often vent frustrations and justify their ow

by willtim 10y ago

Hate is a strong word. People can be very critical at times, myself included, but this isn't the same thing. People often vent frustrations and justify their own personal choices by criticising. It might often be a tad anti-social but I don't believe it is generally "hate". Personally I am sad to see less competition for the GNOME technology stack.

wolfgke 10y ago
Couldn't it also be a very cultural thing: For example I (German) have to deal with east European mathematicians in my job (they are actually really nice people). The kind of strictness that they treat people who present mathematical bullshit (they are typically right in their mathematical reasoning) is sometimes on the borderline of what is considered as impolite in Germany (and in the US probably even more). I also went climbing with former Russians. I just say: What in their culture is considered as normal language is in Germany already considered as sexist (and US citizens would be deeply horrified :-) ). TLDR: What is perfectly acceptable behavior can be deeply different in cultures.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Both cultural (and not just by country), and certainly a personality type thing. In one company I worked at, I once had a conversation with someone while we were waiting for someone else, and this person out of the blue told me he used to think I was a massive jerk. I was flabbergasted - I had no idea why he'd think so. I liked him, and though I generally treated him well. Turns out that he had the impression that whenever we were in a meeting, and he presented an idea, I'd pounce on it and tear it apart. It took him a long time to recognise that I was generally presenting valid criticism, and that it was not a personal attack. But my reason for being surprised was that my impression of it was that he was someone I respected for often coming up with good ideas. Good ideas are worth taking the time to figure out how to improve. Bad ideas you shut down in the least amount of time possible - they're not worth spending time on. To me, the fact that I spent time going through his ideas and finding lots of smaller flaws in them was evidence they were good ideas. All ideas have holes at first, but good ideas can be turned into great plans. To me, investing time in his ideas was praise. But he at first saw only the criticism. It taught me to take care to praise explicitly as well, because I could not expect people to understand my motive for spending time criticising their ideas. But I might never have realised if he wasn't the type to be willing to be abrasive enough to start that conversation, as this was how I was used to people communicating in my circles.
- pipio21 10y ago
  Agreed, I have to remember myself that the hugging and kissing and close personal contact that is normal in Spain is considered offensive, sexual approach in north Europe or USA normally after some awkward situation. This culture disagreements combines with only text communications in which people can't see the body language and tone of voice of others. You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. Specially after "text only" communication would require orders of magnitude more effort to express yourself without misunderstandings and most people only have limited time for it. As a result you get an ugly thing.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. My impression about this is different. My personal hypothesis (which might also be wrong) rather is that the internet is a mouthpiece for people who have strong opinions about some topic (which does not imply that they are wrong here) that few people in the "real world" care about. Since few people in the real world will be interested in this topic, these people often appear as nice people in the "real world", since hardly any discussions about the "heated" topic will accidentally happen there. The same happens if these people discuss about different topics in the internet. The main difference is in the internet there are enough people that care about this exotic topic deeply enough to give contra (whether they have good points or not - at least they have a similar level of opionatedness). This leads to the impression that these people are toxic, etc. TLDR: I believe the difference is not about how you say things in internet vs. real life, but about how you talk about your "opinionated topic" vs. something different both in internet and real life.
talideon 10y ago
There are ways to criticise that don't mean being an asshole about it. The problem is that people have a tendency to act like an asshole when giving criticism, which is abusive to the person/people on the other end of the criticism.

by willtim 10y ago

wolfgke 10y ago

Couldn't it also be a very cultural thing: For example I (German) have to deal with east European mathematicians in my job (they are actually really nice people). The kind of strictness that they treat people who present mathematical bullshit (they are typically right in their mathematical reasoning) is sometimes on the borderline of what is considered as impolite in Germany (and in the US probably even more). I also went climbing with former Russians. I just say: What in their culture is considered as normal language is in Germany already considered as sexist (and US citizens would be deeply horrified :-) ). TLDR: What is perfectly acceptable behavior can be deeply different in cultures.

vidarh 10y ago
Both cultural (and not just by country), and certainly a personality type thing. In one company I worked at, I once had a conversation with someone while we were waiting for someone else, and this person out of the blue told me he used to think I was a massive jerk. I was flabbergasted - I had no idea why he'd think so. I liked him, and though I generally treated him well. Turns out that he had the impression that whenever we were in a meeting, and he presented an idea, I'd pounce on it and tear it apart. It took him a long time to recognise that I was generally presenting valid criticism, and that it was not a personal attack. But my reason for being surprised was that my impression of it was that he was someone I respected for often coming up with good ideas. Good ideas are worth taking the time to figure out how to improve. Bad ideas you shut down in the least amount of time possible - they're not worth spending time on. To me, the fact that I spent time going through his ideas and finding lots of smaller flaws in them was evidence they were good ideas. All ideas have holes at first, but good ideas can be turned into great plans. To me, investing time in his ideas was praise. But he at first saw only the criticism. It taught me to take care to praise explicitly as well, because I could not expect people to understand my motive for spending time criticising their ideas. But I might never have realised if he wasn't the type to be willing to be abrasive enough to start that conversation, as this was how I was used to people communicating in my circles.
pipio21 10y ago
Agreed, I have to remember myself that the hugging and kissing and close personal contact that is normal in Spain is considered offensive, sexual approach in north Europe or USA normally after some awkward situation. This culture disagreements combines with only text communications in which people can't see the body language and tone of voice of others. You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. Specially after "text only" communication would require orders of magnitude more effort to express yourself without misunderstandings and most people only have limited time for it. As a result you get an ugly thing.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > You add to it that people don't care about what they say on Internet like they care on reality. My impression about this is different. My personal hypothesis (which might also be wrong) rather is that the internet is a mouthpiece for people who have strong opinions about some topic (which does not imply that they are wrong here) that few people in the "real world" care about. Since few people in the real world will be interested in this topic, these people often appear as nice people in the "real world", since hardly any discussions about the "heated" topic will accidentally happen there. The same happens if these people discuss about different topics in the internet. The main difference is in the internet there are enough people that care about this exotic topic deeply enough to give contra (whether they have good points or not - at least they have a similar level of opionatedness). This leads to the impression that these people are toxic, etc. TLDR: I believe the difference is not about how you say things in internet vs. real life, but about how you talk about your "opinionated topic" vs. something different both in internet and real life.

talideon 10y ago

There are ways to criticise that don't mean being an asshole about it. The problem is that people have a tendency to act like an asshole when giving criticism, which is abusive to the person/people on the other end of the criticism.