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Describing someone else's success as messed up while riding the line between venting and emotional dumping. Blogging was seen as a weird nerd thing until the 20
by mkr-hn 4y ago
Describing someone else's success as messed up while riding the line between venting and emotional dumping. Blogging was seen as a weird nerd thing until the 2000s and got the usual response. I doubt Jason Kottke was spared the same experience. I sure wasn't! But I went a healthier path and took the chain of failures and small wins as learning experiences that have served me well in the years since.
Some people get bitter about failure, and then dump it in places where no one asked without any of the grace and introspection that might turn it from obnoxious to something others can learn from. That's the problem.
- wolverine876 4y agoThat comment is hardly in the top 33% of emotional outbursts I've seen on HN. Are people just defensive about their favorite blogger? That comment was nothing personal about Kottke unless you squint and read it literally.
- naikrovek 4y agoit isn't about kottke. it's about people pressing their will on me simply because they didn't like what I was doing, with a vague follow-through that humanity is doomed because this is just how we are to each other. it's how humans treat each other that I was saying is "messed up", because it is messed up. we are doomed. the number of people that can follow the written word is astonishingly small, these days. I'm not a professional author, I don't have that skill, but I was not hiding my meaning in any way. many readers just ascribe a personality to an author of a comment depending on their own mood at the time, then color their view of the entire passage as if that was the mood intended by the author, and they don't even realize they've done it. these people vote, too. doomed, I say.
- mkr-hn 4y agoI don't know what to tell you if you can't see how messed up this is in general, but especially as a completely off-topic response. Who asked? This has nothing to do with the announcement, it has no relevancy to the discussion. It has nothing to do with the topic or the comment you replied to upthread. This is you venting and soapboxing. Let's go back and remember what that comment was: >> "Dare I say no one has done more for the blog form than Mr. Kottke. His humble, almost monkish 24-year commitment to not only the pursuit of knowledge and meaning in the world, but his absolute insistence on sharing that pursuit with anyone who wants to ride along in that journey is one of the all-time greatest contributions to the web." >> "Godspeed, Jason. Be well and see you on the flip (in whatever way you deem fit)." What does your wordvomit about your trauma re: blogging and the human condition have to do with asellke's kind words? You made everything about you. >> "it isn't about kottke." Correct. So why did you post it? Don't answer that. Move on.
- karmajunkie 4y agoyou can turn that same lens on your own comments. why do you feel the need to tear him down instead of just moving on to another comment? who asked?
- mkr-hn 4y ago>> "who asked?" The person who asked, and who I responded to. wolverine876 decided to double down in response to that.
- wolverine876 4y agoI think that's entirely valid and happening before our eyes in this thread. But whenever I think like that, a second thought comes to mind: Why do you see the mote that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the beam that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the mote out of your eye,’ when there is a beam in your own eye? I find focusing on myself is a lot more productive and genuine to my frustration - it's usually, really about me. But everyone who ever built anything good, from Newton to MLK to Norman Borlaug, were also humans and suffered from (and enjoyed) human nature.