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Winston Marshall had to leave Mumford and Sons to be able to stand up for himself. For anyone willing to throw away a life's worth of investment into their care

Winston Marshall had to leave Mumford and Sons to be able to stand up for himself. For anyone willing to throw away a life's worth of investment into their career in order to speak their mind, that's a good piece of advice. For everyone else, apologize. Or better yet, avoid getting into hot water. I have found HN to be a great barometer for what's "acceptable" and what isn't. Recently, I learned a valuable lesson - I shared an accurate statement about FB's targeting precision, which I am pretty sure nobody would have objected to. But as soon as I tied it to their financial results, it instantly offended one person and others felt they had to jump in as well. Lesson learned: the fact that Facebook is printing money is such a thorn in the eye for many people that the minute it's brought up in an unrelated context, it will 1) derail the conversation, 2) get people to disagree with what would have otherwise been a straight forward argument, and 3) get people to vilify you. So now that we know about this thorn, we can not just avoid it in future conversations, but we can also leverage it to our benefit. For instance, all you have to say is: "Man, I wish we could somehow get Facebook banned. Here's how effective their targeting is..." - and voila, everyone is agreeing with you! Long story short - don't piss against the wind.

iamnotwhoiam 5y ago
It really looks to me like someone disagreed with you and you took it very personally. You jumped to claiming “offense” first. I think you should reread your thread in a few days when you’ve cooled off.
- aerosmile 5y ago
  It's always good advice to reread things later. But please know that I would never take anything on the internet personally. I am grateful for the insight that came out of that conversation, and see it as one of the benefits of actively participating on HN.
  - loopz 5y ago
    IMHO people take all the garbage written online too seriously and personal at times. It's mostly all just opinions and random rants. People's opinions do change at times. It's just not very visible to anyone.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amznthrwaway 5y ago
Hacker News does not allow anti-racist or leftist positions to be posted. Only right-wing positions are socially acceptable here. The center-right is as far left as is allowed. There is no limit to how hard right you may be.
sanity31415 5y ago
> For everyone else, apologize. The sharks are circling, maybe if I give them some blood they'll leave me alone.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
Winston Marshall had to leave Mumford and Sons to be able to stand up for himself. For anyone willing to throw away a life's worth of investment into their career in order to speak their mind, that's a good piece of advice. For everyone else, apologize. That is horrible advice. It is the goal of conditioning of any autocratic state. You censor yourself so the state / party / activists dont even have to act to ensure that dissidence and subversion does not occur. https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/on-censorship-pt-1 https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/on-censorship-pt-1 >""It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear, and every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view. Indeed as John Stuart Mill said: if all of society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person it would be most important, in fact it would become even more important, that that one heretic be heard because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous or appalling view." -Christopher Hitchens
lloydatkinson 5y ago
I found the same thing happened for something totally innocent and unrelated. Someone commented they were watching SG1. I said that I'm also doing that, but that I have to torrent it because Netflix took it down again. Also, that the episodes had been actually improved by AI effectively increasing the resolution, really impressive stuff. But was that last part what everyone talked about? Of course not, the part that causes the dumb and frustrating was about netlifx taking it down. Maybe had maybe a hundred replies all saying I'm being "entitled" for simply saying "netflix took it down again". People say HN doesn't have a hivemind like Reddit but it 100% does. The really interesting part was ignored, in favour of shitting on someone over netflix???

iamnotwhoiam 5y ago

It really looks to me like someone disagreed with you and you took it very personally. You jumped to claiming “offense” first. I think you should reread your thread in a few days when you’ve cooled off.

aerosmile 5y ago
It's always good advice to reread things later. But please know that I would never take anything on the internet personally. I am grateful for the insight that came out of that conversation, and see it as one of the benefits of actively participating on HN.
- loopz 5y ago
  IMHO people take all the garbage written online too seriously and personal at times. It's mostly all just opinions and random rants. People's opinions do change at times. It's just not very visible to anyone.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

amznthrwaway 5y ago

Hacker News does not allow anti-racist or leftist positions to be posted. Only right-wing positions are socially acceptable here. The center-right is as far left as is allowed. There is no limit to how hard right you may be.

sanity31415 5y ago

> For everyone else, apologize. The sharks are circling, maybe if I give them some blood they'll leave me alone.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

Winston Marshall had to leave Mumford and Sons to be able to stand up for himself. For anyone willing to throw away a life's worth of investment into their career in order to speak their mind, that's a good piece of advice. For everyone else, apologize. That is horrible advice. It is the goal of conditioning of any autocratic state. You censor yourself so the state / party / activists dont even have to act to ensure that dissidence and subversion does not occur. https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/on-censorship-pt-1 https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/on-censorship-pt-1 >""It is not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear, and every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view. Indeed as John Stuart Mill said: if all of society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person it would be most important, in fact it would become even more important, that that one heretic be heard because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous or appalling view." -Christopher Hitchens

lloydatkinson 5y ago

I found the same thing happened for something totally innocent and unrelated. Someone commented they were watching SG1. I said that I'm also doing that, but that I have to torrent it because Netflix took it down again. Also, that the episodes had been actually improved by AI effectively increasing the resolution, really impressive stuff. But was that last part what everyone talked about? Of course not, the part that causes the dumb and frustrating was about netlifx taking it down. Maybe had maybe a hundred replies all saying I'm being "entitled" for simply saying "netflix took it down again". People say HN doesn't have a hivemind like Reddit but it 100% does. The really interesting part was ignored, in favour of shitting on someone over netflix???