4 ms·

People should really learn to ignore the emotional channel of the comments they receive. Just try to figure out if the message contains any useful information w

People should really learn to ignore the emotional channel of the comments they receive. Just try to figure out if the message contains any useful information with a quick glance, extract it if it does and ignore the rest. People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable, and there are people who do it in the streets and there are people who shit in comments/messages. Why take them serious?

wffurr 7y ago
Easy to say, not so easy to do.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  Quite easy to do once you realize you can, adjust the mindset and have some practice. There probably is a lot of garbage in your spam folder - do you take it seriously? I used to do tech support and some people (not too many) wrote right out rude or nonsensical (like concluding I hate their religion just from the fact our service failed to suit their specific needs). I would just answer such sort of robotically (if their message contained a question which made any logical sense) or ignore them (despite I generally am extremely compassionate and always do my best to help). Have you ever looked at a glass of a window rather than at an object behind it? Just don't focus on the idea there is a person hating you (there are much more people loving you, by the way, even if they don't write you), instead focus on the fact you are viewing a string which only contains garbage data. Go to an anonymous image board and look at people writing things which would be unimaginable to see here. Write some yourself perhaps. That can make a nice practice quickly.
  - toyg 7y ago
    > I used to do tech support As someone who also "graduated" through the trenches of tech-support, I think you underestimate how much that job hardened you and made you able to evaluate this sort of situations in a more detached way. The ability to calm down, bypass a human, and get to the root of a problem standing behind such human, is a skill that few people develop outside of such jobs. Even in healthcare, where "troubleshooting" agitated people is an almost daily occurrence, not everyone learns to cope.
    - qwerty456127 7y ago
      Perhaps. And that's what, in my opinion, people should actively engage in learning. Perhaps somebody should build a chat-bot which would insult you in various ways and you are to just look at that and respond calmly (while being mindful of your feelings and avoiding feeling bad). That might suit for a risk-free exercise. And as I have mentioned, anonymous image boards are a useful experience too. BTW I've seen a number of movies about the military where a sergeant would shower the recruits with humiliating insults - perhaps that's the purpose of the act. Whatever, I can recommend "the fourth way" book by Peter D. Ouspensky to whoever feels interested in developing their capacity to deal with negative emotions rationally and doesn't mind a humble bit of mystical speaking (there is some + it is not really scientific as a whole yet I find it quite rational and, well, amazing). It has helped me a lot.
      - shadowgovt 7y ago
        The most famous of those movies is the one where one of the recruits snaps and murders the sergeant and himself. Not a great example of how human interactions should go.
arcatek 7y ago
> I used to do tech support and some people (not too many) wrote right out rude or nonsensical (like concluding I hate their religion just from the fact our service failed to suit their specific needs). This isn't at all the same thing. You were paid to do your job, and at the end of the day you could just joke about those weirdos. When working on an open-source project, everything becomes much more personal because your motivation is fuelled by your own personal attachement to the project. Imagine you're helping elderly people cross the street every day, and every once in a while they yell at you for not doing it better, whatever that means. At some point is it still worth it? And of course you can't just put that behind you once you're back home, because this abuse happens at home. I remember this time where someone literally told me to kill myself while I was fixing a bug - at midnight - in a project I handle. Or the time I woke up only to see that during the night someone public had decided to openly send me literal fuck emojis on Twitter to right a perceived wrong. Good times. So yeah - building a shell is the right solution, but it's hard and we really shouldn't have to deal with that in the first place.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  I get you point, it makes sense, but I feel like I personally have already grown over that and everybody can: just know what are doing the job for. Are you helping the elderly to get their gratitude? No, just because I'm doing the right thing and I know some of them are jerks because loosing their sanity to Alzheimer's and because of hard life they had. Are you maintaining a free project for users' gratitude? No, I do because it's fun, because it expands my experience, fulfills my own needs, improves my CV and because I'm glad if somebody can use it for good. Never expect a reward if it's not guaranteed in the first place.
mosselman 7y ago
Should they ignore the negative parts or should people who comment be mindful of the fact that a lot of open source they use is created in someone’s spare time and that they have a human being, not a company? I’d think the latter.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  Sure. Both should but that would be naïve to expect the others to do. I write "people should" putting myself in place of the protagonist. Going to the woods don't make drama of the mosquitoes biting you.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Is the reverse true? Should we make no hay of the fact that someone who was tired of being bit chose to leave the woods?
    - qwerty456127 7y ago
      I absolutely don't judge him and I do understand. I just feel like it could be great (for themselves and for everybody) if whoever is smart enough (and he certainly is) would consciously work on their emotional intelligence. Sadly, such an idea doesn't even come to the field of attention of most of the people so perhaps me suggesting that may help somebody. As for the jerks around there will always be enough and we can hardly expect them to improve. I've met too many in my past and once I've got too tired of them I've started to study emotional inteligence, mindfulness, applied psychology etc to become emotionally immune to them (and to many other things) and to communicate to them constructively. I just believe in him (and other people like him) and don't really believe in them (most of them) at this point (perhaps they could be different if they were taught a right way) - that's why I say what he should do, not what them should.
      - shadowgovt 7y ago
        > As for the jerks around there will always be enough and we can hardly expect them to improve This is why many community systems have ban tools.
thrownaway954 7y ago
You obviously have never participated in open source and are talking about something you had ZERO experience with. Go participate in a toxic open source community for a couple of months and report back about not only the experience but also you emotional well being. I can guarantee you'll be reading your comment and cringing at what you once wrote. btw, there is and awesome life lesson in this comment i posted, if you can remove the emotional part of it ;)
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  Now I consider your message a puzzle and am curious about what awesome life lesson have you hidden in it. I am going to re-read it over and over again :-)
shadowgovt 7y ago
> People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable I don't think that's universally true. In fact, I think there's a handful of people who don't know how to treat others like human beings and a lack of accountability for their behavior online. The fact that there is a thing true of open source---it's a harbor for toxic cultures where people aren't held accountable for talking to each other like garbage---doesn't mean we need to just accept that or look the other way. As this situation demonstrates, toxic culture has costs.
fenwick67 7y ago
For some reason lots of people on HN push stoicism as a virtue. Not all of us are 100% unaffected by dealing with jerks, and we like to get ourselves out of toxic environments that make us unhappy. Is that so bad?
- forgottenpass 7y ago
  The value in stoicism is that it lets people transcend limitations they have control over. It's a tool and comes in many packages (e.g.: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."). Lots of "people on HN push stoicism" because a great many people in all walks of life share life lessons that can be categorized as stoic. >Not all of us are 100% unaffected by dealing with jerks, and we like to get ourselves out of toxic environments that make us unhappy. Is that so bad? This is reductive. If you were to undertake a real appraisal of the ideas with a goal to separate the wheat from the chaff, as well as feel out the boundaries of what is often presented as blanket advice (rather than try to get one over on "people on HN"), the advice people are trying to offer would make more sense.
  - fenwick67 7y ago
    Stoicism is fine, I don't have a problem with it, but I have a problem with people chiming in with attitude advice in face of a non-attitude problem. Saying someone should be more stoic, especially with a "like me", in the face of a problem, is like telling somebody "deal with it" or "lighten up". At best it's not constructive, at worst it's bragging and putting someone down. And it deflects the actual problem. The problem here was "too many people were jerks" not "you are too sensitive".
    - qwerty456127 7y ago
      > The problem here was "too many people were jerks" not "you are too sensitive". So what a solution would you suggest for such a problem? I believe it is more correct to say both are the problems. I have no idea what is possible to do with the jerks themselves but I know it is possible to become immune. When there is a disease outbreak obviously the problem is the virus but we can't just make it disappear magically so we choose to address it's couple problem - our immunity weakness, we take a vaccine, teach our immune systems to detect the virus, become immune and keep on going. I have never meant judging the Actix author for "being a pussy", I have proposed the only solution I could come up with. In fact I have already met some people with alike problems personally, explained them the idea and in some days they thanked me for showing them another perspective which couldn't come to their minds. They didn't know they could just observe the others' behavior (as well as their own feelings) and consciously choose what to feel. Perhaps this might seem like bragging again but I prefer to take a risk of being judged this way for the chance of actually helping at least a portion of people who reads this. When you have come through some problems successfully and developed a skill necessary, telling about that inevitably sounds like bragging, but IMHO keeping it for yourself (when it could help others) just because of being afraid of being shamed would be selfish. Your mind is entirely yours, it's the only really private place and you don't have let anybody in to spread chaos there. Trolls want just that and you don't have to obey. It's a magical space free from the limitations of the material world, entirely under your own power, your intention alone is enough to do whatever you want there. If somebody attacks you physically you can't just ignore that, they will damage you anyway. If somebody attacks you verbally you can react by feeling something or nothing at all, all you need is to know you can (and be mindful of what's going on at the moment in the first place), much like Neo in the Matrix.
j1elo 7y ago
I agree with you. Really it is something that probably can be learned over time. I think it helps a lot to just remember how much money this or that dumb hater have paid for their entitlements (i.e. nothing), which -at leas in my eyes- emotionally reduces their words to a child's tantrum.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  Sure, but it helps more to realize once and forever: all the shit anybody says is just a "child's tantrum". Real grown-ups don't behave this way, too many people just don't grow up as they age.
  - j1elo 7y ago
    On the other hand, we should also understand that a constant stream of insults, contempt, and general negativity around every step one takes, can and will bring anyone down, and even induce depression
empath75 7y ago
"The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way. Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do. Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to. But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it."
UncleMeat 7y ago
Because it is very very hard to ignore. I very occasionally get death threats to my work email due to people being unhappy with some public facing stuff I do. It's unsettling but I can mostly ignore it. But if it happened all the time and I wasn't able to open my email or interact with a community without getting hate mail I'd go into a cocoon. People aren't machines. When hatred is relentless it is unbelievably difficult to put it aside.

wffurr 7y ago

Easy to say, not so easy to do.

qwerty456127 7y ago
Quite easy to do once you realize you can, adjust the mindset and have some practice. There probably is a lot of garbage in your spam folder - do you take it seriously? I used to do tech support and some people (not too many) wrote right out rude or nonsensical (like concluding I hate their religion just from the fact our service failed to suit their specific needs). I would just answer such sort of robotically (if their message contained a question which made any logical sense) or ignore them (despite I generally am extremely compassionate and always do my best to help). Have you ever looked at a glass of a window rather than at an object behind it? Just don't focus on the idea there is a person hating you (there are much more people loving you, by the way, even if they don't write you), instead focus on the fact you are viewing a string which only contains garbage data. Go to an anonymous image board and look at people writing things which would be unimaginable to see here. Write some yourself perhaps. That can make a nice practice quickly.
- toyg 7y ago
  > I used to do tech support As someone who also "graduated" through the trenches of tech-support, I think you underestimate how much that job hardened you and made you able to evaluate this sort of situations in a more detached way. The ability to calm down, bypass a human, and get to the root of a problem standing behind such human, is a skill that few people develop outside of such jobs. Even in healthcare, where "troubleshooting" agitated people is an almost daily occurrence, not everyone learns to cope.
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    Perhaps. And that's what, in my opinion, people should actively engage in learning. Perhaps somebody should build a chat-bot which would insult you in various ways and you are to just look at that and respond calmly (while being mindful of your feelings and avoiding feeling bad). That might suit for a risk-free exercise. And as I have mentioned, anonymous image boards are a useful experience too. BTW I've seen a number of movies about the military where a sergeant would shower the recruits with humiliating insults - perhaps that's the purpose of the act. Whatever, I can recommend "the fourth way" book by Peter D. Ouspensky to whoever feels interested in developing their capacity to deal with negative emotions rationally and doesn't mind a humble bit of mystical speaking (there is some + it is not really scientific as a whole yet I find it quite rational and, well, amazing). It has helped me a lot.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      The most famous of those movies is the one where one of the recruits snaps and murders the sergeant and himself. Not a great example of how human interactions should go.

arcatek 7y ago

> I used to do tech support and some people (not too many) wrote right out rude or nonsensical (like concluding I hate their religion just from the fact our service failed to suit their specific needs). This isn't at all the same thing. You were paid to do your job, and at the end of the day you could just joke about those weirdos. When working on an open-source project, everything becomes much more personal because your motivation is fuelled by your own personal attachement to the project. Imagine you're helping elderly people cross the street every day, and every once in a while they yell at you for not doing it better, whatever that means. At some point is it still worth it? And of course you can't just put that behind you once you're back home, because this abuse happens at home. I remember this time where someone literally told me to kill myself while I was fixing a bug - at midnight - in a project I handle. Or the time I woke up only to see that during the night someone public had decided to openly send me literal fuck emojis on Twitter to right a perceived wrong. Good times. So yeah - building a shell is the right solution, but it's hard and we really shouldn't have to deal with that in the first place.

qwerty456127 7y ago
I get you point, it makes sense, but I feel like I personally have already grown over that and everybody can: just know what are doing the job for. Are you helping the elderly to get their gratitude? No, just because I'm doing the right thing and I know some of them are jerks because loosing their sanity to Alzheimer's and because of hard life they had. Are you maintaining a free project for users' gratitude? No, I do because it's fun, because it expands my experience, fulfills my own needs, improves my CV and because I'm glad if somebody can use it for good. Never expect a reward if it's not guaranteed in the first place.

mosselman 7y ago

Should they ignore the negative parts or should people who comment be mindful of the fact that a lot of open source they use is created in someone’s spare time and that they have a human being, not a company? I’d think the latter.

qwerty456127 7y ago
Sure. Both should but that would be naïve to expect the others to do. I write "people should" putting myself in place of the protagonist. Going to the woods don't make drama of the mosquitoes biting you.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Is the reverse true? Should we make no hay of the fact that someone who was tired of being bit chose to leave the woods?
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    I absolutely don't judge him and I do understand. I just feel like it could be great (for themselves and for everybody) if whoever is smart enough (and he certainly is) would consciously work on their emotional intelligence. Sadly, such an idea doesn't even come to the field of attention of most of the people so perhaps me suggesting that may help somebody. As for the jerks around there will always be enough and we can hardly expect them to improve. I've met too many in my past and once I've got too tired of them I've started to study emotional inteligence, mindfulness, applied psychology etc to become emotionally immune to them (and to many other things) and to communicate to them constructively. I just believe in him (and other people like him) and don't really believe in them (most of them) at this point (perhaps they could be different if they were taught a right way) - that's why I say what he should do, not what them should.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      > As for the jerks around there will always be enough and we can hardly expect them to improve This is why many community systems have ban tools.

thrownaway954 7y ago

You obviously have never participated in open source and are talking about something you had ZERO experience with. Go participate in a toxic open source community for a couple of months and report back about not only the experience but also you emotional well being. I can guarantee you'll be reading your comment and cringing at what you once wrote. btw, there is and awesome life lesson in this comment i posted, if you can remove the emotional part of it ;)

qwerty456127 7y ago
Now I consider your message a puzzle and am curious about what awesome life lesson have you hidden in it. I am going to re-read it over and over again :-)

shadowgovt 7y ago

> People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable I don't think that's universally true. In fact, I think there's a handful of people who don't know how to treat others like human beings and a lack of accountability for their behavior online. The fact that there is a thing true of open source---it's a harbor for toxic cultures where people aren't held accountable for talking to each other like garbage---doesn't mean we need to just accept that or look the other way. As this situation demonstrates, toxic culture has costs.

fenwick67 7y ago

For some reason lots of people on HN push stoicism as a virtue. Not all of us are 100% unaffected by dealing with jerks, and we like to get ourselves out of toxic environments that make us unhappy. Is that so bad?

forgottenpass 7y ago
The value in stoicism is that it lets people transcend limitations they have control over. It's a tool and comes in many packages (e.g.: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."). Lots of "people on HN push stoicism" because a great many people in all walks of life share life lessons that can be categorized as stoic. >Not all of us are 100% unaffected by dealing with jerks, and we like to get ourselves out of toxic environments that make us unhappy. Is that so bad? This is reductive. If you were to undertake a real appraisal of the ideas with a goal to separate the wheat from the chaff, as well as feel out the boundaries of what is often presented as blanket advice (rather than try to get one over on "people on HN"), the advice people are trying to offer would make more sense.
- fenwick67 7y ago
  Stoicism is fine, I don't have a problem with it, but I have a problem with people chiming in with attitude advice in face of a non-attitude problem. Saying someone should be more stoic, especially with a "like me", in the face of a problem, is like telling somebody "deal with it" or "lighten up". At best it's not constructive, at worst it's bragging and putting someone down. And it deflects the actual problem. The problem here was "too many people were jerks" not "you are too sensitive".
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    > The problem here was "too many people were jerks" not "you are too sensitive". So what a solution would you suggest for such a problem? I believe it is more correct to say both are the problems. I have no idea what is possible to do with the jerks themselves but I know it is possible to become immune. When there is a disease outbreak obviously the problem is the virus but we can't just make it disappear magically so we choose to address it's couple problem - our immunity weakness, we take a vaccine, teach our immune systems to detect the virus, become immune and keep on going. I have never meant judging the Actix author for "being a pussy", I have proposed the only solution I could come up with. In fact I have already met some people with alike problems personally, explained them the idea and in some days they thanked me for showing them another perspective which couldn't come to their minds. They didn't know they could just observe the others' behavior (as well as their own feelings) and consciously choose what to feel. Perhaps this might seem like bragging again but I prefer to take a risk of being judged this way for the chance of actually helping at least a portion of people who reads this. When you have come through some problems successfully and developed a skill necessary, telling about that inevitably sounds like bragging, but IMHO keeping it for yourself (when it could help others) just because of being afraid of being shamed would be selfish. Your mind is entirely yours, it's the only really private place and you don't have let anybody in to spread chaos there. Trolls want just that and you don't have to obey. It's a magical space free from the limitations of the material world, entirely under your own power, your intention alone is enough to do whatever you want there. If somebody attacks you physically you can't just ignore that, they will damage you anyway. If somebody attacks you verbally you can react by feeling something or nothing at all, all you need is to know you can (and be mindful of what's going on at the moment in the first place), much like Neo in the Matrix.

j1elo 7y ago

I agree with you. Really it is something that probably can be learned over time. I think it helps a lot to just remember how much money this or that dumb hater have paid for their entitlements (i.e. nothing), which -at leas in my eyes- emotionally reduces their words to a child's tantrum.

qwerty456127 7y ago
Sure, but it helps more to realize once and forever: all the shit anybody says is just a "child's tantrum". Real grown-ups don't behave this way, too many people just don't grow up as they age.
- j1elo 7y ago
  On the other hand, we should also understand that a constant stream of insults, contempt, and general negativity around every step one takes, can and will bring anyone down, and even induce depression

empath75 7y ago

"The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way. Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do. Again, please don’t think that I’m giving you moral advice, or that I’m saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it’s hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won’t be able to do it, or you just flat out won’t want to. But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it."

UncleMeat 7y ago

Because it is very very hard to ignore. I very occasionally get death threats to my work email due to people being unhappy with some public facing stuff I do. It's unsettling but I can mostly ignore it. But if it happened all the time and I wasn't able to open my email or interact with a community without getting hate mail I'd go into a cocoon. People aren't machines. When hatred is relentless it is unbelievably difficult to put it aside.