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> "just be yourself" I struggle with this. Because there are bits of my character that are popular, and there are bits that aren't. Some things that I say reso

> "just be yourself" I struggle with this. Because there are bits of my character that are popular, and there are bits that aren't. Some things that I say resonate with lots of people and get lots of fake internet points. Other things, not so much. After an incredibly short time "being myself" I find it almost impossible to not think of how what I'm posting will be received, rather than how much I want to say it. If I have an unpopular opinion, I know that posting it will cause a shitfight and I don't want to deal with that. So I don't post it. I end up only posting the things that I think will be received well. That's not "just being myself", that's putting some fake mask over myself in order to be popular, and that shit wrecks my mental health. How do you "just be yourself" on Twitter without dealing with this? Do you not have unpopular opinions? Do you avoid posting opinions that will start a shitfight? If a post you make does cause a lot of negative comments, how do you deal with that?

jacquesm 5y ago
I think the big difference between you and me is I don't actually care about what other people think of me. You can just ignore the responses, there is absolutely no obligation to 'be popular' or to pander to your audience. I have lots of unpopular opinions, on Twitter as well as on HN. I could not care less what others think of my opinions, as long as we can converge on a set of commonly shared facts that's already profit in my book. On HN this typically manifests as downvotes, but just like I am not particularly attached to the upvotes I learned over time to not worry about the downvotes either: they're not necessarily a reflection of whether you are right or not but it's merely a popularity thing and that's not the right yardstick to measure opinions by. Lots of people have toxic or bad opinions that are shared by such a large number of their neighbors that they believe that those are right, regardless of what the state of those opinions is when viewed through a more absolute lens. In the end it's just like your street: leave it a little bit cleaner than you found it and things will over time improve. Litter and degrade and over time you'll come to live in a garbage dump.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I can't seem to disassociate that much. I suspect my childhood bullying trauma is responsible. I guess social media is not for me then.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    HN is social media too and you seem to be doing just fine here, though of course I can't know how you feel about that.
    - aspaviento 5y ago
      I wouldn't compare HN with Twitter. On HN barely anyone would give you a nasty response (in my case, I rarely even check the name of the commenter, which is easy due to the lack of avatars and all, so I have even less reasons to take anything personal) while on Twitter people can harass you almost for anything and make a whole stormshit for a single comment.
      - oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
        HN is 'about' tech. When people have strong opinions, there's at least a consensus that we can discuss them in a reasonable matter. But it's not immune from the problem - I've observed, and been on the receiving end of, small pile-ons when introducing emotion into a HN topic. Twitter is, ostensibly, about everything. I've found it easy to filter out all the stuff I'm not interested in, but observed as a whole, without any filtering, an awful lot of discussion is about politics or social issues, and they are naturally divisive and cause conflict.
      - marcus_holmes 5y ago
        This. Also the mechanisms work differently. If I post an unpopular opinion on HN, it gets downvoted and disappears. There's no shitfight. If I post a popular opinion it gets upvoted and I get Fake Internet Points. It's asymmetrical and weighted in favour of getting FIP. Much easier to deal with. On Twitter other people can retweet my unpopular opinion and comment on it, tagging me on their reply. My feed fills up with people being nasty to me. I can't deal with that in a mature, adult fashion, as it immediately triggers old trauma. I curl in a ball and retreat. I had to leave Twitter.
zacte 5y ago
I've never really got into Twitter but to me your comment makes me ask, would you rather learn to be yourself and ignore the shitstorm, or do you want to force yourself to be quiet just because a couple of strangers on the internet didn't like what you had to say. Likely they won't even remember you in a few minutes anyway. I'm sure there'll always be people who disagree with something you have to say, and Twitter seems to give people an easy way to do so through retweets, but it's better than constantly muting parts of yourself. Also, I'd probably just block and move on I suppose, I really don't have any frame of reference since I rarely interact with people I don't know online.
oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
> Do you avoid posting opinions that will start a shitfight? This. I don't find it difficult - in the same way that I wouldn't walk into an office or a bar and shout something divisive, I just avoid talking about those kinds of things. I just steer clear of politics, really.
Mezzie 5y ago
"Just be yourself" is a terrible idea if you're a person who is on the edge of a tribe or someone who has bona fides in multiple communities that do NOT like each other. For example, I'm from a purple area in a purple state and I'm a homosexual who converted TO Christianity as an adult. Twitter considers my existing to be an incitement to a shitfight: Any random innocuous sentence could set SOMEONE off. This is why the only Tweets I make (as opposed to using it to read other people's Tweets) are shitposts. If it's all going to be a shitfight, it'll be a shitfight on the ground of my choosing.

jacquesm 5y ago

I think the big difference between you and me is I don't actually care about what other people think of me. You can just ignore the responses, there is absolutely no obligation to 'be popular' or to pander to your audience. I have lots of unpopular opinions, on Twitter as well as on HN. I could not care less what others think of my opinions, as long as we can converge on a set of commonly shared facts that's already profit in my book. On HN this typically manifests as downvotes, but just like I am not particularly attached to the upvotes I learned over time to not worry about the downvotes either: they're not necessarily a reflection of whether you are right or not but it's merely a popularity thing and that's not the right yardstick to measure opinions by. Lots of people have toxic or bad opinions that are shared by such a large number of their neighbors that they believe that those are right, regardless of what the state of those opinions is when viewed through a more absolute lens. In the end it's just like your street: leave it a little bit cleaner than you found it and things will over time improve. Litter and degrade and over time you'll come to live in a garbage dump.

marcus_holmes 5y ago
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I can't seem to disassociate that much. I suspect my childhood bullying trauma is responsible. I guess social media is not for me then.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  HN is social media too and you seem to be doing just fine here, though of course I can't know how you feel about that.
  - aspaviento 5y ago
    I wouldn't compare HN with Twitter. On HN barely anyone would give you a nasty response (in my case, I rarely even check the name of the commenter, which is easy due to the lack of avatars and all, so I have even less reasons to take anything personal) while on Twitter people can harass you almost for anything and make a whole stormshit for a single comment.
    - oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
      HN is 'about' tech. When people have strong opinions, there's at least a consensus that we can discuss them in a reasonable matter. But it's not immune from the problem - I've observed, and been on the receiving end of, small pile-ons when introducing emotion into a HN topic. Twitter is, ostensibly, about everything. I've found it easy to filter out all the stuff I'm not interested in, but observed as a whole, without any filtering, an awful lot of discussion is about politics or social issues, and they are naturally divisive and cause conflict.
    - marcus_holmes 5y ago
      This. Also the mechanisms work differently. If I post an unpopular opinion on HN, it gets downvoted and disappears. There's no shitfight. If I post a popular opinion it gets upvoted and I get Fake Internet Points. It's asymmetrical and weighted in favour of getting FIP. Much easier to deal with. On Twitter other people can retweet my unpopular opinion and comment on it, tagging me on their reply. My feed fills up with people being nasty to me. I can't deal with that in a mature, adult fashion, as it immediately triggers old trauma. I curl in a ball and retreat. I had to leave Twitter.

zacte 5y ago

I've never really got into Twitter but to me your comment makes me ask, would you rather learn to be yourself and ignore the shitstorm, or do you want to force yourself to be quiet just because a couple of strangers on the internet didn't like what you had to say. Likely they won't even remember you in a few minutes anyway. I'm sure there'll always be people who disagree with something you have to say, and Twitter seems to give people an easy way to do so through retweets, but it's better than constantly muting parts of yourself. Also, I'd probably just block and move on I suppose, I really don't have any frame of reference since I rarely interact with people I don't know online.

oneeyedpigeon 5y ago

> Do you avoid posting opinions that will start a shitfight? This. I don't find it difficult - in the same way that I wouldn't walk into an office or a bar and shout something divisive, I just avoid talking about those kinds of things. I just steer clear of politics, really.

Mezzie 5y ago

"Just be yourself" is a terrible idea if you're a person who is on the edge of a tribe or someone who has bona fides in multiple communities that do NOT like each other. For example, I'm from a purple area in a purple state and I'm a homosexual who converted TO Christianity as an adult. Twitter considers my existing to be an incitement to a shitfight: Any random innocuous sentence could set SOMEONE off. This is why the only Tweets I make (as opposed to using it to read other people's Tweets) are shitposts. If it's all going to be a shitfight, it'll be a shitfight on the ground of my choosing.