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Damn it! I have to be half-serious. > People assume that any review or discussion must target them or their interests, preferences, requirements, or circumstan

Damn it! I have to be half-serious. > People assume that any review or discussion must target them or their interests, preferences, requirements, or circumstances; therefore anything else is an affront. Great observation. So why? Why does that happen? That's the interesting thing, isn't it? Why do people assume it's all about them? Or react that way? Why are they so deeply entrenched in their beliefs? Because they are correct? All of them? That's where it gets interesting because it gets closer to a real definition of a problem instead of a set of symptoms.

ratg13 4y ago
“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius's point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark.” -John Barth
jackosdev 4y ago
My theory is they can't build anything worthwhile themselves, so they find something popular but with problems, which allows their ego to divert attention away from their own inadequacies.
ratww 4y ago
I wonder if there's a degree of FOMO there. People feel like they must participate in everything, so when there's something new that they didn't discover and research first, they compensate by doing some armchair criticism. If it were their had discovered it they'd say it's the coolest ever. It's funny, I thought this was an internet phenomena, but I've been seeing this all the time in meetups lately. Someone presents something that clearly works fine for their use case, and someone takes the mic to ask a question but eviscerates it instead. I also remember this with teenagers and music: the assholes always auto-dislike things others bring, and criticise the stupidest things, but if they rediscover it themselves it's the best band in the world. Myself, I prefer pretending I already know the stuff being presented. ;)
- mattlondon 4y ago
  I think this is a sort of non-humility thing. A humble person with humility would react with something like "oh cool! I had no idea this existed but I love it! Thanks for sharing this with me!" I have found myself on the other side of the coin many times. I have researched something, or invested a lot of time/energy/money in something and then someone who I assume (unconsciously or not) has not done these things and I instantly dismiss. E.g. if my mum turns up one day with a new phone and tries to tell me how great it is, there is no way (in my closed mind opinion) that she would have found something that I was not already aware of and using etc - what I picked and what I use is clearly superior for reasons X Y and Z and I will sub-conciously reassure myself that I am correct by pointing out why she is wrong. I guess it is a sort of pride/arrogance (and maybe even tribalism) thing - a sort of "you think you know something, but I know better than you, so I will explain to you how you are wrong as I know more than you about this. I am right and you are wrong, and I need to prove the point so you know that you are wrong" etc. Not just tech - people will do this about cars, sports, tools - anything. I try to stop myself being in this mindset as much as possible, and try to be more open to what others suggest.
csydas 4y ago
Because it's normal for humans as I see it to be selfish, and we've built systems that force selfish desires to clash repeatedly. Selfishness has a bad reputation, but in fact it's how you end up not starving and broke in the street and able to keep a safe life. Pure altruism taken to a logical extreme would be dangerous, so there's always a balance of self-preservation based on your own wants and needs. When you go to any public forum, nothing is really different; you do the things you desire and that protect yourself, you talk about the things you're comfortable about, you can most effectively comment about your experience and how items relate to you. Where the problem with the above comes out is when this aspect gets out of alignment as well, as pure selfishness is just as disastrous. At a certain point to obtain your desires, you need _something_ from someone else, and likely that gets forgotten on social media that without the someone else, there is no social media. All other things in life require the contribution of human labor somewhere, even with more reliance on automation (someone's gotta maintain those machines and the code, even Star Trek still had an Engineering staff running around fixing replicators that made bad coffee/tea). By forgetting this, people feel entitled to having it exactly as they want, and why not? It's their leisure time, shouldn't it be exactly what they want to relax? I absolutely understand the author's point, but in a sense, they're doing the exact same thing, and trying to define a requirement for social media that not necessarily everyone subscribes to. I happen to think this requirement is a good one, but not the point I suppose. Once you allow public access, you have to accept also the bad, and maybe even revel in it a bit. And let's not forget how algorithms exacerbate this issue. Older "anything-goes" simple forums appeal to me mostly because you get exposure to things you normally wouldn't and there's no feed that gets polluted with bad data if you just check it out and there's no rewards system to push the content up; you just have some entries in your browser history. The users that do try to make the forums "their own" get the option to do so without having a feed/rewards system push this data heavily, and users have an easier time avoiding such content. There's a safety valve for their desire without some system forcing their desire on others. Feeds/rewards systems really muck up the situation because exploring a topic you aren't interested in or even dislike comes back to bite you in the ass because feeds aren't very good at getting when you're just checking something out versus when you're interested; any interaction is a change to induce further engagement so the feed tries. Rewards systems that promote content do much the same, but the system is powered by humans (and bots) instead.
seydor 4y ago
'why' matters only if it helps fixing it. People who attempt to fix the internet usually want to make it be more about them
barrysteve 4y ago
The internet was built in the last 10yrs to hyper-personalize everything and silo everybody off into their recommendation zones. I don't see people doing anything other than what they were trained to do by the algorithms they surf. Of course people think the content they read has been sculpted to their taste or otherwise pushed deliberately in their face.
- ratww 4y ago
  I find this very noticeable here in HN. Every time something new pops up, some people are very quick to dismiss, criticise the author for making another "X", or to ask "why would I need this" without doing an iota of research. Well, maybe the post is not for everyone.

ratg13 4y ago

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius's point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark.” -John Barth

jackosdev 4y ago

My theory is they can't build anything worthwhile themselves, so they find something popular but with problems, which allows their ego to divert attention away from their own inadequacies.

ratww 4y ago

I wonder if there's a degree of FOMO there. People feel like they must participate in everything, so when there's something new that they didn't discover and research first, they compensate by doing some armchair criticism. If it were their had discovered it they'd say it's the coolest ever. It's funny, I thought this was an internet phenomena, but I've been seeing this all the time in meetups lately. Someone presents something that clearly works fine for their use case, and someone takes the mic to ask a question but eviscerates it instead. I also remember this with teenagers and music: the assholes always auto-dislike things others bring, and criticise the stupidest things, but if they rediscover it themselves it's the best band in the world. Myself, I prefer pretending I already know the stuff being presented. ;)

mattlondon 4y ago
I think this is a sort of non-humility thing. A humble person with humility would react with something like "oh cool! I had no idea this existed but I love it! Thanks for sharing this with me!" I have found myself on the other side of the coin many times. I have researched something, or invested a lot of time/energy/money in something and then someone who I assume (unconsciously or not) has not done these things and I instantly dismiss. E.g. if my mum turns up one day with a new phone and tries to tell me how great it is, there is no way (in my closed mind opinion) that she would have found something that I was not already aware of and using etc - what I picked and what I use is clearly superior for reasons X Y and Z and I will sub-conciously reassure myself that I am correct by pointing out why she is wrong. I guess it is a sort of pride/arrogance (and maybe even tribalism) thing - a sort of "you think you know something, but I know better than you, so I will explain to you how you are wrong as I know more than you about this. I am right and you are wrong, and I need to prove the point so you know that you are wrong" etc. Not just tech - people will do this about cars, sports, tools - anything. I try to stop myself being in this mindset as much as possible, and try to be more open to what others suggest.

csydas 4y ago

Because it's normal for humans as I see it to be selfish, and we've built systems that force selfish desires to clash repeatedly. Selfishness has a bad reputation, but in fact it's how you end up not starving and broke in the street and able to keep a safe life. Pure altruism taken to a logical extreme would be dangerous, so there's always a balance of self-preservation based on your own wants and needs. When you go to any public forum, nothing is really different; you do the things you desire and that protect yourself, you talk about the things you're comfortable about, you can most effectively comment about your experience and how items relate to you. Where the problem with the above comes out is when this aspect gets out of alignment as well, as pure selfishness is just as disastrous. At a certain point to obtain your desires, you need _something_ from someone else, and likely that gets forgotten on social media that without the someone else, there is no social media. All other things in life require the contribution of human labor somewhere, even with more reliance on automation (someone's gotta maintain those machines and the code, even Star Trek still had an Engineering staff running around fixing replicators that made bad coffee/tea). By forgetting this, people feel entitled to having it exactly as they want, and why not? It's their leisure time, shouldn't it be exactly what they want to relax? I absolutely understand the author's point, but in a sense, they're doing the exact same thing, and trying to define a requirement for social media that not necessarily everyone subscribes to. I happen to think this requirement is a good one, but not the point I suppose. Once you allow public access, you have to accept also the bad, and maybe even revel in it a bit. And let's not forget how algorithms exacerbate this issue. Older "anything-goes" simple forums appeal to me mostly because you get exposure to things you normally wouldn't and there's no feed that gets polluted with bad data if you just check it out and there's no rewards system to push the content up; you just have some entries in your browser history. The users that do try to make the forums "their own" get the option to do so without having a feed/rewards system push this data heavily, and users have an easier time avoiding such content. There's a safety valve for their desire without some system forcing their desire on others. Feeds/rewards systems really muck up the situation because exploring a topic you aren't interested in or even dislike comes back to bite you in the ass because feeds aren't very good at getting when you're just checking something out versus when you're interested; any interaction is a change to induce further engagement so the feed tries. Rewards systems that promote content do much the same, but the system is powered by humans (and bots) instead.

seydor 4y ago

'why' matters only if it helps fixing it. People who attempt to fix the internet usually want to make it be more about them

barrysteve 4y ago

The internet was built in the last 10yrs to hyper-personalize everything and silo everybody off into their recommendation zones. I don't see people doing anything other than what they were trained to do by the algorithms they surf. Of course people think the content they read has been sculpted to their taste or otherwise pushed deliberately in their face.

ratww 4y ago
I find this very noticeable here in HN. Every time something new pops up, some people are very quick to dismiss, criticise the author for making another "X", or to ask "why would I need this" without doing an iota of research. Well, maybe the post is not for everyone.