3 ms·

The strange taboos of ingroups

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
To be fair, the guidelines[0] request of us: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Which, yeah. [0] – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- WhackyIdeas 3y ago
  Maybe one day HN will realise that giving the ability to downvote is pretty pointless and needlessly open to abuse. That negative ability just promotes negativity itself and a bloody pia when I am reading a greyed out message because I am too stubborn to go into the settings and change defaults - so I just steam on thinking HN are using a relic of an ideology.
  - throwaway892238 3y ago
    It's an ingroup reinforcement method. If you're part of a cult, and you're not allowed to eject someone from the cult, you can at least ignore them or walk away from them when they talk to you, if you don't agree with what they say/do. It's a way for the members of the cult to reinforce the ingroup's behaviors without having overt power over the group. For other people watching this behavior, it reinforces the need to align themselves with the larger group, to avoid the same fate. The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      You're just describing the behavior of every society ever. I'm not sure where some folks got the idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions, but that's clearly an inhuman expectation. I'm guessing that attitude is a byproduct of internet commenting. I guess you could call society an "ingroup" or a "cult" like you're doing. It technically fits the definition. It also gives you a convenient victim complex to wave about whenever you feel like people aren't agreeing with you enough. But let's be honest: not every social pariah is a Galileo.
      - fluoridation 3y ago
        >I'm not sure where some folks got the idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions Usually, historically, if you said something someone didn't like you could expect the person to either confront you directly, or to silently change their opinion of you and possibly change their behavior, perhaps to your detriment. Even before the Internet existed, there was something else someone might have done, which is to send you an anonymous note reading "fuck you". No argument, no way to reply, nothing but a cheap gratuitous offense that serves no purpose other than upset the person who receives it. I argue that downvoting a comment you don't like is equivalent to that.
        ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        > Even before the Internet existed, there was something else someone might have done, which is to send you an anonymous note reading "fuck you". No argument, no way to reply, nothing but a cheap gratuitous offense that serves no purpose other than upset the person who receives it. I argue that downvoting a comment you don't like is equivalent to that. A better equivalent would be arguing from an anonymous throwaway account (*cough*), where any replies go into the void, rather than to an established community member. A comment either adds value in people's opinion, or it detracts, or neither. The society that is HN has a voting system to communicate that info, because that is what we prefer. If people find the non-meta substance of a post interesting enough to reply, they absolutely will do so. But we have the guidelines recommending against moderation meta-discussion because you and the moderation of your comment aren't the topic, and you shouldn't try to make it the topic, because we find that to be more boring than the actual topic. Maybe you find yourself more interesting, or you think conversation is boring unless it includes moderation meta-discussion. In most cases, I don't think others agree (hence the guidelines and the voting). You can call our society an "in-group", you can call someone who ignores what society wants an "out group member", but in the end, I don't know why it surprises people that society responds with feedback (though perhaps not in the exact feedback format one may personally prefer).
        fluoridation 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

To be fair, the guidelines[0] request of us: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Which, yeah. [0] – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

WhackyIdeas 3y ago
Maybe one day HN will realise that giving the ability to downvote is pretty pointless and needlessly open to abuse. That negative ability just promotes negativity itself and a bloody pia when I am reading a greyed out message because I am too stubborn to go into the settings and change defaults - so I just steam on thinking HN are using a relic of an ideology.
- throwaway892238 3y ago
  It's an ingroup reinforcement method. If you're part of a cult, and you're not allowed to eject someone from the cult, you can at least ignore them or walk away from them when they talk to you, if you don't agree with what they say/do. It's a way for the members of the cult to reinforce the ingroup's behaviors without having overt power over the group. For other people watching this behavior, it reinforces the need to align themselves with the larger group, to avoid the same fate. The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    You're just describing the behavior of every society ever. I'm not sure where some folks got the idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions, but that's clearly an inhuman expectation. I'm guessing that attitude is a byproduct of internet commenting. I guess you could call society an "ingroup" or a "cult" like you're doing. It technically fits the definition. It also gives you a convenient victim complex to wave about whenever you feel like people aren't agreeing with you enough. But let's be honest: not every social pariah is a Galileo.
    - fluoridation 3y ago
      >I'm not sure where some folks got the idea that they could say whatever they wanted in whatever community they wanted and not expect any reactions Usually, historically, if you said something someone didn't like you could expect the person to either confront you directly, or to silently change their opinion of you and possibly change their behavior, perhaps to your detriment. Even before the Internet existed, there was something else someone might have done, which is to send you an anonymous note reading "fuck you". No argument, no way to reply, nothing but a cheap gratuitous offense that serves no purpose other than upset the person who receives it. I argue that downvoting a comment you don't like is equivalent to that.
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        > Even before the Internet existed, there was something else someone might have done, which is to send you an anonymous note reading "fuck you". No argument, no way to reply, nothing but a cheap gratuitous offense that serves no purpose other than upset the person who receives it. I argue that downvoting a comment you don't like is equivalent to that. A better equivalent would be arguing from an anonymous throwaway account (*cough*), where any replies go into the void, rather than to an established community member. A comment either adds value in people's opinion, or it detracts, or neither. The society that is HN has a voting system to communicate that info, because that is what we prefer. If people find the non-meta substance of a post interesting enough to reply, they absolutely will do so. But we have the guidelines recommending against moderation meta-discussion because you and the moderation of your comment aren't the topic, and you shouldn't try to make it the topic, because we find that to be more boring than the actual topic. Maybe you find yourself more interesting, or you think conversation is boring unless it includes moderation meta-discussion. In most cases, I don't think others agree (hence the guidelines and the voting). You can call our society an "in-group", you can call someone who ignores what society wants an "out group member", but in the end, I don't know why it surprises people that society responds with feedback (though perhaps not in the exact feedback format one may personally prefer).
        fluoridation 3y ago