5 ms·

> Civility and basic courtesy is not copyrighted, use it in your public statements. POTUS would disagree. Civility and basic courtesy are no longer popular. Su

> Civility and basic courtesy is not copyrighted, use it in your public statements. POTUS would disagree. Civility and basic courtesy are no longer popular. Such is the world we now live in. Edit: Anyone care to dispute this? I don't agree with it, but I'm also not willing to ignore it.

samstave 8y ago
Funny - I was just thinking the same thing: "But wacky match would have you believe their lowball offer was anything but the offer of a loser! sad!" I mean, for crying out loud...
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  That’s not a real quote, right?
  - samstave 8y ago
    Paraphrasing the Trump Tweets as seen here: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/13/638161148/in-presidential-tweet-trump-says-former-aide-was-a-loser-and-vicious https://www.npr.org/2018/08/13/638161148/in-presidential-twe...
dilap 8y ago
I think you're right. Being civil doesn't pay dividends unless most other people are civil too too, and if incivility is punished. Neither of those things are true, generally, right now, so being civil just makes you look weak. C'est la vie.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  Real strength is in doing the right thing even when it is inconvenient to your image.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    And that and $2.95 will get you a cup of coffee.
    - hobs 8y ago
      It will also allow you to look yourself in the mirror every morning and not see a charlatan and a thief. It will allow those around you to have this thing called respect, which still is held dear by many.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        We're talking about a company issuing a press release about ongoing litigation. I really think you're going far too far with this.
  - mfringel 8y ago
    Survivor bias is not your friend, there.
  - dilap 8y ago
    Nah, not really. Real morality maybe. But there are environments where "doing the right thing" will simply fuck you. (I guess you could argue if you were _really_ really strong, you could do the right thing and survive. But that's almost tautological. The point is, the environment you're in may force you to make the choice of "do things you would rather not" or "fail".) Or, more concisely, hate the game, not the player.
    - Bjartr 8y ago
      I will agree "strength" is probably not the right descriptor there. I almost didn't play it because I wasn't entirely sure. I'm not perfect, far from it, but I try to fail graciously before I choose to stray from doing the right thing. That said, I absolutely do recognize that that is a luxury that not everyone has given their situation. However, I do think that some use that to justify not having to do the right thing in cases where that isn't actually true, and that at least striving to always do right, but sometimes failing to do the right thing due to circumstances is a better approach in the long term versus minmaxing immediate returns because doing the right thing is inconvenient. Or I'm hopelessly naive. Or somewhere between those.
m52go 8y ago
It depends on context. As much as some people would hate to admit it, communication and messaging is one thing POTUS is far from stupid about. On Twitter and TV, he speaks the way he does to maximize attention and media coverage. He has found that evading basic courtesy is an effective way to use those media to his advantage. In the context of a court statement or other official correspondence, I doubt you'd see him use such colorful language (indeed, check official White House correspondence signed by Trump: he doesn't).
- sosuke 8y ago
  Makes me worry we'll keep going until we start having news headlines when people aren't acting like assholes. "So and so could have been a butt-head but they weren't!"
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
I doubt he gets re-elected, so I would put forth the assertion that being non-civil and acting like a jackass doesn't work long term. People get a good look at it and it isn't appealing when they can see it for what it is.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  It got him elected to start.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    1.5 years of wall-to-wall TV news coverage got him elected. Has the TV news started to cover something else? Not that I've noticed; they have to chase the ratings after all and Trump has been a godsend for them. So, yeah, Hillary will lose to him again.
  - neffy 8y ago
    No, the Russians got him elected to start.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Well, and the DNC by choosing the by-the-numbers weakest major party candidate in the history of polling (with slower negatives than Trump, sure, but much more committed negatives.) Russian interference couldn't have tipped the balance (assuming it even did) if it hadn't been within range in the first place.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  He will be re-elected. Despite everything that was known before the election, he was elected. And he delivered on the major promises to his core supporters (Supreme Court, tax cuts, hard on immigration, rolling back regulations, etc). Uber is a great tech example of the same phenomenon. Many people on HN who rail about Uber's dubious business practices still use their services because it's convenient or because it is the cheapest. They may dislike the business but they aren't voting with their wallets. Uber "gets away" with slimy practices because "ends justify the means"
dang 8y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents and certainly not political ones.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Bjartr 8y ago
  Some of the best HN has to offer in terms of interesting and thought provoking discussion is on generic tangents, and so long as the discussion remains civil and contained to those threads concerning it I see no reason to discourage it for being discussed.
  - dang 8y ago
    I know how unsatisfying this is going to sound, but: this is a point on which we just have to pull rank. It's our job to foster the kind of site where signal/noise ratio doesn't completely suck, and many years of experience have taught us that generic tangents lead to low-quality discussions that grow like weeds.
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      Do you think tedious or blatantly illiterate comments get as many flags as vaguely tangential or vaguely controversial comments? (I really think there are lots of comments that are "blatantly illiterate", in that they respond to a meaning that is just obviously not in the parent. I guess that only kind of breaks the assume good faith guideline, as they are missing the meaning rather than mischaracterizing it.) The point of the question is whether the userbase has been trained to respond aggressively to only a subset of low signal comments.
      - dang 8y ago
        I'm not sure about tedious—there's an awful lot of tediousness in internet forum comments—but we certainly see many flags on blatantly unsubstantive posts.

samstave 8y ago

Funny - I was just thinking the same thing: "But wacky match would have you believe their lowball offer was anything but the offer of a loser! sad!" I mean, for crying out loud...

erikpukinskis 8y ago
That’s not a real quote, right?
- samstave 8y ago
  Paraphrasing the Trump Tweets as seen here: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/13/638161148/in-presidential-tweet-trump-says-former-aide-was-a-loser-and-vicious https://www.npr.org/2018/08/13/638161148/in-presidential-twe...

dilap 8y ago

I think you're right. Being civil doesn't pay dividends unless most other people are civil too too, and if incivility is punished. Neither of those things are true, generally, right now, so being civil just makes you look weak. C'est la vie.

Bjartr 8y ago
Real strength is in doing the right thing even when it is inconvenient to your image.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  And that and $2.95 will get you a cup of coffee.
  - hobs 8y ago
    It will also allow you to look yourself in the mirror every morning and not see a charlatan and a thief. It will allow those around you to have this thing called respect, which still is held dear by many.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      We're talking about a company issuing a press release about ongoing litigation. I really think you're going far too far with this.
- mfringel 8y ago
  Survivor bias is not your friend, there.
- dilap 8y ago
  Nah, not really. Real morality maybe. But there are environments where "doing the right thing" will simply fuck you. (I guess you could argue if you were _really_ really strong, you could do the right thing and survive. But that's almost tautological. The point is, the environment you're in may force you to make the choice of "do things you would rather not" or "fail".) Or, more concisely, hate the game, not the player.
  - Bjartr 8y ago
    I will agree "strength" is probably not the right descriptor there. I almost didn't play it because I wasn't entirely sure. I'm not perfect, far from it, but I try to fail graciously before I choose to stray from doing the right thing. That said, I absolutely do recognize that that is a luxury that not everyone has given their situation. However, I do think that some use that to justify not having to do the right thing in cases where that isn't actually true, and that at least striving to always do right, but sometimes failing to do the right thing due to circumstances is a better approach in the long term versus minmaxing immediate returns because doing the right thing is inconvenient. Or I'm hopelessly naive. Or somewhere between those.

m52go 8y ago

It depends on context. As much as some people would hate to admit it, communication and messaging is one thing POTUS is far from stupid about. On Twitter and TV, he speaks the way he does to maximize attention and media coverage. He has found that evading basic courtesy is an effective way to use those media to his advantage. In the context of a court statement or other official correspondence, I doubt you'd see him use such colorful language (indeed, check official White House correspondence signed by Trump: he doesn't).

sosuke 8y ago
Makes me worry we'll keep going until we start having news headlines when people aren't acting like assholes. "So and so could have been a butt-head but they weren't!"

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

I doubt he gets re-elected, so I would put forth the assertion that being non-civil and acting like a jackass doesn't work long term. People get a good look at it and it isn't appealing when they can see it for what it is.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
It got him elected to start.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  1.5 years of wall-to-wall TV news coverage got him elected. Has the TV news started to cover something else? Not that I've noticed; they have to chase the ratings after all and Trump has been a godsend for them. So, yeah, Hillary will lose to him again.
- neffy 8y ago
  No, the Russians got him elected to start.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Well, and the DNC by choosing the by-the-numbers weakest major party candidate in the history of polling (with slower negatives than Trump, sure, but much more committed negatives.) Russian interference couldn't have tipped the balance (assuming it even did) if it hadn't been within range in the first place.
TAForObvReasons 8y ago
He will be re-elected. Despite everything that was known before the election, he was elected. And he delivered on the major promises to his core supporters (Supreme Court, tax cuts, hard on immigration, rolling back regulations, etc). Uber is a great tech example of the same phenomenon. Many people on HN who rail about Uber's dubious business practices still use their services because it's convenient or because it is the cheapest. They may dislike the business but they aren't voting with their wallets. Uber "gets away" with slimy practices because "ends justify the means"

dang 8y ago

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents and certainly not political ones.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Bjartr 8y ago
Some of the best HN has to offer in terms of interesting and thought provoking discussion is on generic tangents, and so long as the discussion remains civil and contained to those threads concerning it I see no reason to discourage it for being discussed.
- dang 8y ago
  I know how unsatisfying this is going to sound, but: this is a point on which we just have to pull rank. It's our job to foster the kind of site where signal/noise ratio doesn't completely suck, and many years of experience have taught us that generic tangents lead to low-quality discussions that grow like weeds.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Do you think tedious or blatantly illiterate comments get as many flags as vaguely tangential or vaguely controversial comments? (I really think there are lots of comments that are "blatantly illiterate", in that they respond to a meaning that is just obviously not in the parent. I guess that only kind of breaks the assume good faith guideline, as they are missing the meaning rather than mischaracterizing it.) The point of the question is whether the userbase has been trained to respond aggressively to only a subset of low signal comments.
    - dang 8y ago
      I'm not sure about tedious—there's an awful lot of tediousness in internet forum comments—but we certainly see many flags on blatantly unsubstantive posts.