4 ms·
You need to give an introductory class in yourself to others, over and over again, at the risk of boring yourself to tears, in order not to be judged by low-con
by vonnik 4y ago
You need to give an introductory class in yourself to others, over and over again, at the risk of boring yourself to tears, in order not to be judged by low-context people for your high-context comments. Which is a lot less fun than being clever. But probably more fun than being ostracized.
So it's basically impossible to perform yourself in a high-context way on an open social media platform like Twitter, because people reading you for the first time will always misread you, and rarely want to spend the time to understand the context. And as a result we have the usual fireworks of misunderstanding.
- whatshisface 4y agoEvery physics thread is 20% legitimate questions, 60% high-ego software engineers explaining how dark matter doesn't sound right to them, and 20% answers and refutations to the other 80%. About half of that 20% contains a misunderstanding, and the other half has a slight mis-phrasing or unimportant omission that all replies fixate on. >You need to give an introductory class in yourself to others, over and over again, at the risk of boring yourself to tears, in order not to be judged by low-context people for your high-context comments. The art of quickly and effectively bringing other people up, in the specific way relevant to a conversation, to a level that took you years to reach, is a complex skill and one you can learn to enjoy.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- CoolGuySteve 4y ago> About half of that 20% contains a misunderstanding, and the other half has a slight mis-phrasing or unimportant omission that all replies fixate on. I feel like this is more like 50% of the comment chains. It's the main reason I rarely comment on hnews these days if it relates to my area of expertise. I wish low brow nitpicking and sidetracking was more discouraged in the guidelines. It's a nuisance.
- ttpphd 4y agoYes, so very well put! The loss of context / transformation of context that Twitter and Facebook imposes is key to how it has been used, to fuel genocides and foment political turmoil as well as to cross-pollinate across previous cultural divides.