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I look around at every. single. internet community on the planet and I struggle to find a single one that isn't full of assholes. Including the very space I am

by tjr225 4y ago

I look around at every. single. internet community on the planet and I struggle to find a single one that isn't full of assholes. Including the very space I am on right now. And yet - when I step outside and go talk to people and hang out with my friends they suddenly recede into the shadows. Sure, here and there somebody will be an asshole but for the most part everyone is nice, helpful, and (especially in my friends group), welcoming. This includes people I disagree with politically. I think we should able to turn the internet off for everyone for arbitrary amounts of time. Don't really know how to reconcile this for those who need it like the disabled, medical, etc... My point is, I fundamentally disagree with this article.

bombcar 4y ago
It’s the distillation - you don’t know me at all, and even if you do it’s only though some vague recollections of previous posts. Friends are people who do and say things - and if they say something assholic once in awhile, it’s just something they said/did - but one asshole comment makes the poster an asshole forever, and people start treating them as such, which encourages it. Non-online communications have way more venues to interact with others.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
psyc 4y ago
AKA Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
- jakevoytko 4y ago
  Google's Real Names experiment helped simplify this equation. They proved that people don't even need anonymity to be fuckwads; all they need is an audience. I remember a lot of low-level bemusement and high-level consternation when the quality of discussion in YouTube comments didn't get any better after they tied everything to an identity.
Hellbanevil 4y ago
rtpg 4y ago
I don’t really understand the link between your post and the article, but I might have a context free theory: In the real world annoying people can only annoy so many people at once. On the internet everyone has to read when an annoying person is posting constantly into the group chat. Annoying people simply can take up more oxygen. Now for the contextful thing: there are loads of communities that aren’t filled with assholes! Check out subreddits for some of your hobbies, maybe a discord/irc channel for something you like, a relatively small community… there are nice places on the web!
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  violence or the option for it is an important part of communication. You have to behave your self or others will do it for you.
snowwrestler 4y ago
I definitely do not think HN is full of assholes.
- spoils19 4y ago
  We can chalk that up to dang. HN: one of the last remaining Great Good Places of the Internet, a lone tavern in an iconic gateway town to the now not-so-wild west. Beyond the western borders of this little town, the tech gold rush has both expanded to epic proportions, affecting all the economies in the world, and also gone through enough booms and busts that the phrase "gold rush" seems somehow off. As more and more young'uns join and jaded veterans return to throng the tavern alike, it often seems to be on the brink of either exploding with the largest gun fight in history, or jumping the shark. And yet, against all odds, it retains its original magnetism - drawing throngs that grow in number and diversity while seers like [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.y https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.y... and [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://new https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://new... continue to return - dispensing worldly wisdom worth its weight in gold from corner tables. The secret is the man at the corner of the bar @dang, always around with a friendly smile and a towel on his shoulder. The only sheriff in the west who still doubles as the friendly bartender: always polite, always willing to break up a fight with kind words and clean up messes himself. Yes a cold-hard look from him is all it takes to get most outlaws to back down, yes, his Colt-45 "moderator" edition is feared by all men, but the real secret to his success: his earnest passion (some call it an obsession) for the seemingly sisyphean task of sustaining good conflict - letting it simmer but keeping it all times below the boiling point based on "the code": "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression." May the last great tavern in the West and it's friendly bartender-sheriff live long and prosper.
danieldevries 4y ago
I personally love the neovim community. The subreddit is full of helpful people and the core developers / contributors are absolutely wonderful people. Everytime neovim has a major release, there is a presentation and plenty of interviews with said wonderful people.
hi_im_miles 4y ago
There are spaces on the internet where people are nice to each other, it's just they're usually heavily moderated or invite-only where there's a consequence to being an asshole. People don't act nice on the public internet because there's nothing disincentivizing being mean.
6510 4y ago
It's more easy than the article makes it out to be: You delete everything you don't instantly agree with. Don't get emotional about it, just sit there like a robot and delete everything. It's okay to be amused when people enrage to levels they themselves didn't think possible when you delete their comments then delete what she wrote again. No need to ban anyone. Each comment should be valuable to read and provide further insight into the mission. What does bigfoot eat? What is the best time to spot nessie? When was Dr Fritz channeled for last time? When will bitcoin finally die? etc etc No space for detailed explanations why the very essence of the platform is nonsense. Ideally written things served to other people are written by yourself but comments can be as good and sometimes even better. Nearly all of it doesn't make the cut. However polite the compliment to the author of the article, it is wasting other peoples time. It needs to be a homogeneous mass of remote viewers, color forth programmers or vic 20 evangelists aimed like lasers at a goal. Simply buying a Tucker Torpedo doesn't make you worth listening to. If the author just like you thinks the rapture is happening, then we have a keeper!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  I settled on deleting only prose written in uppercase and/or grammatically unparseable. One of the best moves I ever made was to get rid of title/body distinction in posts. Nobody gets titles right, anyway.
tracerbulletx 4y ago
Our friends and even acquaintances and people who live near us are a more selective group than we often think. I'm not sure it's the internet specifically. If you go to a school board meeting in a big city, or a Walmart or some place with lots of random people you will deal with some absolutely awful encounters in the real world as well.
bsder 4y ago
> welcoming. This includes people I disagree with politically. I disagree on this one vehemently. This is spoken like someone from a privileged position of the majority or in a relatively cosmopolitan area. Be an atheist or agnostic in the Bible belt. You will find yourself either in conflict or holding your tongue A LOT. Be a nurse in the Bible belt. You will get attacked by your family for promoting "vax conspiracies". Normally, I would just hold my tongue in these situations, but I've stopped doing that. I'm quite a bit more outspoken lately and becoming moreso. Why? Because I have had people breathe sighs of relief when I tell them up front that I am pro-vax and pro-science and pro-medicine and if they don't like it they can shut up. Because I've had multiple people crying with gratefulness because I stood up and forced some asshole yelling at them to back down. Whole swathes of US society are taking advantage of the fact that decent people normally avoid conflict. That is unacceptable. And it stops with me. I refuse to allow this to continue quietly. I won't seek conflict, but if you want to avoid conflict it's time for YOU to hold your own damn tongue, thanks.
- u8 4y ago
  Please clap
- Akronymus 4y ago
  The sam,e thing goes the other way as well, though. Like being pro gun in most democrat strongholds.
  - bsder 4y ago
    > Like being pro gun in most democrat strongholds. A very poor choice of example demonstrating a lack of actual experience with those people and groups. A LOT of hunters are from Democratic strongholds--Pennsylvania and New York, for example. So many people hunt in Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) that the first day of hunting season is a state holiday. And the "gun control" rhetoric in California originated with "Saint Reagan" (Republican, please note) when minorities started to arm themselves.

by tjr225 4y ago

bombcar 4y ago

It’s the distillation - you don’t know me at all, and even if you do it’s only though some vague recollections of previous posts. Friends are people who do and say things - and if they say something assholic once in awhile, it’s just something they said/did - but one asshole comment makes the poster an asshole forever, and people start treating them as such, which encourages it. Non-online communications have way more venues to interact with others.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

psyc 4y ago

AKA Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...

jakevoytko 4y ago
Google's Real Names experiment helped simplify this equation. They proved that people don't even need anonymity to be fuckwads; all they need is an audience. I remember a lot of low-level bemusement and high-level consternation when the quality of discussion in YouTube comments didn't get any better after they tied everything to an identity.

Hellbanevil 4y ago

rtpg 4y ago

I don’t really understand the link between your post and the article, but I might have a context free theory: In the real world annoying people can only annoy so many people at once. On the internet everyone has to read when an annoying person is posting constantly into the group chat. Annoying people simply can take up more oxygen. Now for the contextful thing: there are loads of communities that aren’t filled with assholes! Check out subreddits for some of your hobbies, maybe a discord/irc channel for something you like, a relatively small community… there are nice places on the web!

throwaway14356 4y ago
violence or the option for it is an important part of communication. You have to behave your self or others will do it for you.

snowwrestler 4y ago

I definitely do not think HN is full of assholes.

spoils19 4y ago
We can chalk that up to dang. HN: one of the last remaining Great Good Places of the Internet, a lone tavern in an iconic gateway town to the now not-so-wild west. Beyond the western borders of this little town, the tech gold rush has both expanded to epic proportions, affecting all the economies in the world, and also gone through enough booms and busts that the phrase "gold rush" seems somehow off. As more and more young'uns join and jaded veterans return to throng the tavern alike, it often seems to be on the brink of either exploding with the largest gun fight in history, or jumping the shark. And yet, against all odds, it retains its original magnetism - drawing throngs that grow in number and diversity while seers like [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.y https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.y... and [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://new https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://new... continue to return - dispensing worldly wisdom worth its weight in gold from corner tables. The secret is the man at the corner of the bar @dang, always around with a friendly smile and a towel on his shoulder. The only sheriff in the west who still doubles as the friendly bartender: always polite, always willing to break up a fight with kind words and clean up messes himself. Yes a cold-hard look from him is all it takes to get most outlaws to back down, yes, his Colt-45 "moderator" edition is feared by all men, but the real secret to his success: his earnest passion (some call it an obsession) for the seemingly sisyphean task of sustaining good conflict - letting it simmer but keeping it all times below the boiling point based on "the code": "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression." May the last great tavern in the West and it's friendly bartender-sheriff live long and prosper.

danieldevries 4y ago

I personally love the neovim community. The subreddit is full of helpful people and the core developers / contributors are absolutely wonderful people. Everytime neovim has a major release, there is a presentation and plenty of interviews with said wonderful people.

hi_im_miles 4y ago

There are spaces on the internet where people are nice to each other, it's just they're usually heavily moderated or invite-only where there's a consequence to being an asshole. People don't act nice on the public internet because there's nothing disincentivizing being mean.

6510 4y ago

It's more easy than the article makes it out to be: You delete everything you don't instantly agree with. Don't get emotional about it, just sit there like a robot and delete everything. It's okay to be amused when people enrage to levels they themselves didn't think possible when you delete their comments then delete what she wrote again. No need to ban anyone. Each comment should be valuable to read and provide further insight into the mission. What does bigfoot eat? What is the best time to spot nessie? When was Dr Fritz channeled for last time? When will bitcoin finally die? etc etc No space for detailed explanations why the very essence of the platform is nonsense. Ideally written things served to other people are written by yourself but comments can be as good and sometimes even better. Nearly all of it doesn't make the cut. However polite the compliment to the author of the article, it is wasting other peoples time. It needs to be a homogeneous mass of remote viewers, color forth programmers or vic 20 evangelists aimed like lasers at a goal. Simply buying a Tucker Torpedo doesn't make you worth listening to. If the author just like you thinks the rapture is happening, then we have a keeper!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
I settled on deleting only prose written in uppercase and/or grammatically unparseable. One of the best moves I ever made was to get rid of title/body distinction in posts. Nobody gets titles right, anyway.

tracerbulletx 4y ago

Our friends and even acquaintances and people who live near us are a more selective group than we often think. I'm not sure it's the internet specifically. If you go to a school board meeting in a big city, or a Walmart or some place with lots of random people you will deal with some absolutely awful encounters in the real world as well.

bsder 4y ago

> welcoming. This includes people I disagree with politically. I disagree on this one vehemently. This is spoken like someone from a privileged position of the majority or in a relatively cosmopolitan area. Be an atheist or agnostic in the Bible belt. You will find yourself either in conflict or holding your tongue A LOT. Be a nurse in the Bible belt. You will get attacked by your family for promoting "vax conspiracies". Normally, I would just hold my tongue in these situations, but I've stopped doing that. I'm quite a bit more outspoken lately and becoming moreso. Why? Because I have had people breathe sighs of relief when I tell them up front that I am pro-vax and pro-science and pro-medicine and if they don't like it they can shut up. Because I've had multiple people crying with gratefulness because I stood up and forced some asshole yelling at them to back down. Whole swathes of US society are taking advantage of the fact that decent people normally avoid conflict. That is unacceptable. And it stops with me. I refuse to allow this to continue quietly. I won't seek conflict, but if you want to avoid conflict it's time for YOU to hold your own damn tongue, thanks.

u8 4y ago
Please clap
Akronymus 4y ago
The sam,e thing goes the other way as well, though. Like being pro gun in most democrat strongholds.
- bsder 4y ago
  > Like being pro gun in most democrat strongholds. A very poor choice of example demonstrating a lack of actual experience with those people and groups. A LOT of hunters are from Democratic strongholds--Pennsylvania and New York, for example. So many people hunt in Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) that the first day of hunting season is a state holiday. And the "gun control" rhetoric in California originated with "Saint Reagan" (Republican, please note) when minorities started to arm themselves.