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This is so needed. This was a very encouraging article. "Being a fan is all about bringing the enthusiasm. It’s being a champion of possibility. It’s believing

This is so needed. This was a very encouraging article. "Being a fan is all about bringing the enthusiasm. It’s being a champion of possibility. It’s believing in someone. And it’s contagious. When you’re around someone who is super excited about something, it washes over you. It feels good. You can’t help but want to bring the enthusiasm, too." Stands in contrast to the Hemingway quote: "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors." It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. I'd rather be a fan.

pjc50 1y ago
Yes, but .. there is no worse critic than a scorned fan. There's a lot of fandoms all around the world, and while they're mostly harmless fun the edges can get weird and dangerous. Or when fandoms collide.
- HanClinto 1y ago
  Not entirely sure what you mean. Care to expound? Are you talking about people who act out on their fandom by criticizing others? "Oh I'm a fan of X, therefore I'm a vocal critic of Y". I agree that such things are toxic -- fandom doesn't need to be a polemic. I want to cultivate the kind of fandom that builds up without feeling a need to tear down others.
  - lukan 1y ago
    I rather think he or she means gamers for example, who send out death threats, because the developers introduced a new thing they don't like.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    They're referring to "anti fans". You see it with online personalities especially; the most rabid fans (often parasocial, think online streaming) are the ones who will become the biggest detractors or anti fans. Most people are "oh that's fun to watch ok" and then when they don't like it anymore, they get bored and forget about it entirely. The anti-fans continue to follow it, but rabidly hate it. Think Syndrome from Incredibles. He's always been the biggest fan.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Wasn't Selena killed by a scorned fan?
    - steve_b 1y ago
      Not quite. She was killed by someone who started out as a fan but then became one of Selena’s employees, who was then caught embezzling.
zupatol 1y ago
There's a healthy way to be a critic, which is helping people find and enjoy works they didn't notice. There are also unhealthy ways of being a fan, for example if you admire someone there's probably someone else you despise. It's much better to follow the title of the post and believe in people in general.
- rubicon33 1y ago
  I imagine being a healthy critic is a skill, something personal to be worked on. It’s just so easy to be critical and even if you have good intentions, being critical can take the wind out of a dreamers sails.
rubicon33 1y ago
I agree but, doesn’t the world need critics? I think of a company where young inspired engineers want to build new things all the time. Their heart is in the right place but they need someone(s) to be respectfully critical since their efforts and time spent have very real impacts on the company.
- phkahler 1y ago
  Critics maybe. Antagonists no.
  - o11c 1y ago
    I can't agree with this at all. There's something deeply wrong with the world if any form of opposition is considered problematic. Some variant of "the customer is always right" applies in the marketplace of ideas as well. People are allowed to have different preferences.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      I’ve learned that there isn’t a “magic bullet” policy that we can enact, that always ensures that we do things correctly. Human nature is messy and varied. A word of praise can be weaponized. I often encounter people that use praise as a domination tool. They praise you in a manner that suggests that, if they did not recognize and note something, you would not have it. They use praise to “declare ownership” of your good traits. I encounter this, because I have highly valuable skills, that can make others a great deal of money, and have an aspect that predatory people think is “weakness.” They believe I have low self-esteem, because I am not always tubthumping. Also, we have to be careful of saying things like “Don’t complain, if you don’t have a solution.”[0] [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/problems-and-solutions/ https://littlegreenviper.com/problems-and-solutions/
- mxmilkiib 1y ago
  it's easier to image a dystopia than an eutopia, or even utopia, depending how you see it
- 1y ago
vunderba 1y ago
> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. I'd rather be a fan. Trotting out absolute statements does no one any good. I could just as easily spin this on its head and say that it feels socially safe to always show blind enthusiasm for the latest trend lest you be labelled a "hater". It feels like we're just redefining critic to be synonymous with cynic. There's no reason that you can't simultaneously be both fan and a critic of X.
- MrJohz 1y ago
  In fact, the best critics of something are often its biggest fans. Roger Ebert, for example, wrote some pretty critical pieces, but nobody can deny that he was driven primarily by a love of cinema. Or take politics: I've seen people complain that left-wing commentators were too critical of Biden when they should have been criticising Trump, but often it's easier — and more useful — to criticise the things you like in the hope that they will improve, rather than spending all your time criticising something you don't like that will never listen to you. That said, it's still important to take the time to sing the praises of something you like. If Ebert had spent all his time talking down bad films, reading his columns would have been painful drudgery (see also: CinemaSins, Nostalgia Critic, and similar attempts at film-criticism-by-cynicism). A good critic wants their target to succeed, and celebrates when that happens.
  - RyanOD 1y ago
    It is a real skill to critique a thing and not come off as complaining about it.
    - sethammons 1y ago
      Instead of statements, I favor questions. Instead of "I, me, you, etc,", I favor communal "we, the code, the team." Be specific when possible. I try to focus on what should be done vs what shouldn't be done. "Why did you not handle $situation" -> "how does this code handle $situation?" "You shouldn't do $thing" -> "$thing has sharp edges, see $link-to-more-info. The general approach used in the code base is to $alternative."
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I always liked Brendan Behan's quote: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”
- nthingtohide 1y ago
  Critics could be experts of past era who have seen it all and are now seeing the same mistakes being repeated. Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. -- André Gide
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Love that quote! Thanks!
- watwut 1y ago
  Harems did not had much of heterosexual sex going on in them. Whole point was gender segregation. Eunuch in harem have seen women, but did not seen them having sex with men.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago
  Behan's criticism of critics then makes him an eunuch who's criticizing eunuchs... according to his own "logic".
DiscourseFan 1y ago
Feeling good about shit all the time isn’t practical and it indicates a lack of individual, refined taste. Its ok to like things that you like and dislike things others like and one should be able to hold their own opinions without influence from the crowd.
- tpmoney 1y ago
  Feeling good about things has nothing to do with liking or disliking something though. I dislike things about the Rust language and the larger ecosystem around it (things like async/await as the dominant concurrency model, or the separate and very different macro syntaxes), but I'm still a fan of seeing rust projects and things people do in and with Rust. If someone builds a database driver built on Tokio, no one (not eve me) benefits from me doing drive by "async/await is complex and annoying, you should have done this differently" criticism. I may think that, and I may not like a Tokio based driver. But I don't have to "feel bad" about it, and neither do the creators. Feeling bad about it won't make a non Tokio driver appear. Nor will just criticizing Tokio and Async/Await. For something different and better to appear, I have build enthusiasm for an alternative and I have to engage with the parts I do like. Spending a hour building the starts of a a non Tokio driver and giving it to other enthusiastic people would be a far more effective use of my time than spending an hour writing a take down of async/await and giving it to other like minded critics. The phrase "preaching to the choir" comes to mind, and too often these days I feel like criticism online is largely geared towards exactly that. Polemics for people who already agree with the author, about some thing that the author dislikes.
throwup238 1y ago
That's an amazing quote. I recently just started going to some LA Kings hockey games with my family for the first time, so this hits close to home. I played high school sports (with a three day hospital stay for a serious concussion to show for it - thanks, football), but I've never been a fan of watching sportsball on TV unless it's a social gathering like Superbowl parties. I've generally had a low opinion of people who cared about their city's teams and all the useless competitiveness that goes along with it. But being there, in the stadium around all the other fans? Fucking electrifying. I celebrated, I jeered, I cried, I booed Edmonton, I cursed the refs, I complained about the stadium food and the line for the men's bathroom, and I was probably the loudest person in the 318 section of the Staples center. I almost fell over the glass boards onto the ESPN newscasters during Wednesday's game on the fourth goal. Too much overpriced beer plus standing up to wave the "Built for This" towels too fast. I still don't give a flying fuck about the Kings or Lakers or Clippers or whatever, but I am definitely going to enjoy going to their games and feeling the energy. The exact words my mom used were "I've never seen this side of you." WE WANT SKINNER!!!
- weakfish 1y ago
  I advocate for going to a Hurricanes game :) loudest barn in the NHL, baby!
  - throwup238 1y ago
    I feel like every fanbase thinks they have the loudest barn. I'm saving myself for the Cleveland dawg pound. They are notorious (there's even a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawg_Pound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawg_Pound ). (Womp womp, the Kings just lost 7-4 with two goals on an open net)
keybored 1y ago
A top-of-thread subthread complaining about critics on the topic of believing in people. We didn’t last long.
igorkraw 1y ago
I really believe in the importance of praising people and acknowledging their efforts, when they are kind and good human beings and (to much lesser degree) their successes. But, and I mean their without snark: What value is your praise for what is good if I cannot trust that you will be critical of what is bad? Note that critique can be unpleasant but kind, and I don't care for "brutal honesty" (which is much more about the brutality than the honesty in most cases). But whether it's the joint Slavic-german culture or something else, I much prefer for things to be _appropriate_, _kind_ and _earnest_ instead of just supportive or positive. Real love is despite a flaw, in full cognizance if it, not ignoring them.
- worik 1y ago
  > I really believe in the importance of praising people and acknowledging their efforts, when they are... alive! At a funeral of a controversial activist, where all the living activist sang their praise, I watch their child stand up and say "...where were you all when my dad was alive" I now go out of my way to tell people I admire them, if I do, while they are still here.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  Yeah, I live in sweden and a compliment by a swede about how I play music is completely meaningless to me. On the other hand a compliment from my bosnian or croatian friends is a big deal.
paulpauper 1y ago
It's so hard to to believe in people or have a positive opinion of them when much of my interactions are negative. Or when people who embody the opposite of goodness are promoted and have status. It's like we live in a society in which mediocrity, borderline sociopathy, and meanness are rewarded. Unless you're Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, but there is a huge middle where people who are competent, smart, and do the right things do not get the promotion or recognition they deserve or are entitled to. It's like you have to super-brilliant to have any hope , or just lucky. No room for the hard-working middle.
- trinsic2 1y ago
  I feel this is a culture problem that can be localized on a per organization basis. If people are getting promoted for be douche bags you're working at the wrong organization. We feed sociopathy by our choices.
- tpmoney 1y ago
  > It's so hard to to believe in people or have a positive opinion of them when much of my interactions are negative. Or when people who embody the opposite of goodness are promoted and have status. It's like we live in a society in which mediocrity, borderline sociopathy, and meanness are rewarded. Which I think is why the original article has an important idea. We need to be fans more and encourage that as a way of thinking. If mediocrity and borderline sociopathy are rewarded by society at large, it must mean that mediocrity and borderline sociopathy are rewarded by society in the small. And sure enough, take a look around (and look at pop culture over the last couple decades) and you'll see that's true: * American "Kitchen Nightmares" took what was an often genuinely heartfelt show about struggling restaurants in its UK incarnation and turned it into a circus side show complete with jeering at the freaks. * Reality competition shows thrive on marketing terrible performances and smug take downs by Simon Cowell and his various low rent knockoffs. * The Daily Show / John Oliver thrives on the sort of smug "I'm better than these obvious idiots, and wink wink you are too because you watch me and we know we're very smart" behavior that ironically also powers the Glenn Beck / Rush Limbaugh contingent on the other side of the spectrum. * Trump himself made his own reality TV show where the entire premise was just firing people for not being sufficiently subservient. * And remember things like "The Weakest Link"? We've built a culture over the years, that has turned large swaths of the internet from small communities of fans and enthusiasts to large communities of "take down" artists and drive by clap backs a la twitter. We promote criticism and boarderline sociopathy on a daily basis and hold it up as an ideal to strive for, and turn to "You just can't handle the truth" whenever someone calls it out. Is it any wonder then that the people that are rising to the top in a world that promotes crab bucket mentality are the biggest and meanest crabs? But if we don't work to be different in the small. If we don't try in our day to day efforts even when it's extremely difficult to do so, to be kind, positive, and enthusiastic, where do we expect that behavior to come from in our leaders and the people we promote? If "harsh truth" people who "say what they want" and "don't care about your feels" are the sort of people we lift up at the bottom, why do we expect it to be any different the higher up we go?
whoknowsidont 1y ago
Not only is "it" not needed, "being a fan" is pervasive to a detrimental extent. "posio-paths" are everywhere and are basically the default. In order to say something correct, make a correction, or present a counter-factual you have to layer your tone with a thousand feel-goodism's and niceties. Otherwise you just get labeled as a hater, a contrarian, or worse - a critic. It's exhausting. People confuse being direct, dry, or taking a level-tone with dispassion, disinterest, or again being a "hater." I would even say I've seen so many people being "super excited" about something that it's the opposite of contagious for me, it causes me to doubt how knowledgeable or sincere they are about the subject (whether it's a general topic or even a person). We have too much fake-niceness, and we are over-enthused quite often on things that turn out to be nothing, at least in the U.S. We don't need more of it, at least IMO.
- tpmoney 1y ago
  > We have too much fake-niceness, and we are over-enthused quite often on things that turn out to be nothing, at least in the U.S. We don't need more of it, at least IMO. I don't think the original article is advocating for "fake niceness". It's advocating for enthusiastic uplift. That spirit that tends to pervade small hobbyist communities, where everyone is iterating and building on everyone else. If you've been in the 3d printing space over the last decade or so, there's plenty of honest criticism and knowledgable discussion. But it's also infectiously enthusiastic and there's a sense of exploration and desire to see everyone* succeed that's very genuine. Things don't always succeed or work out, but it's pretty rare to encounter hard "that's stupid, you're stupid and you should feel bad" sort of commentary. Compare this to the broader tech community as it appears in places like HN. Open any thread on someone's new project or experiment here and count the number of comments that are genuinely positive and encouraging vs the number that are nit-picking for the sake of nit-picking, dismissive and just generally unhappy or are outright actively tearing down the item in question. Even the ones that are "Oh this is nice, but hey you could do XYZ to improve it" very rarely have any follow up that submits the suggested improvements, even when the original item is an open source project that they clearly could submit improvements to. People love to talk about the shortcomings, but unlike "fans" rarely tend to put out the time and effort to make it better. It's bad enough that my general approach to HN these days is to only read the articles and make an effort to avoid the comment threads or at a minimum make sure I've read the original link in its entirety and thought about my own opinions of it before heading into the comments. And when I find something in a project that I think could be improved, I make an effort to ensure that I'm putting proper effort into trying to improve it, either with a patch/fix or if I'm incapable of patching/fixing, as much detail and testing as I can document in order to have contributed more than just a drive by criticism. Also, I'm not sure a "too much niceness", fake or otherwise, is the problem in the US right now.
fenomas 1y ago
Chiming in to add Bierce: CRITIC: n. A man who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
Ygg2 1y ago
> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. It also feels very socially safe to be group of rabid fans.
atoav 1y ago
As a practicing musician of 2 decades I of course have opinions on what good music is and what isn't on multiple layers. So I will critique music (the thing) but not musicians (the people). Receiving good criticism by other musicians is really good way to get better, as they will notice things you wont — provided they are open for the type of music you're making. However I noticed a peculiar thing. In every field you will find people who are really enthusiastic for the field without doing it themselves. Maybe we could call them "enthusiastic consumers". These are very often the people giving the harshest, most unfair, least constructive critiques for some reason and the closer your thing is to the thing they love the harsher they can become. To them consuming that thing is their identity, so which thing they consume is existentially important to then. To me music is much more about the making, and while listening about countless things. Musicians tend to be more open about what constitutes good mhsic than these enthusiasts. As a former art student one important leason I have learned in countless group reviews is that criticism based purely on taste are utterly worthless. If a classical music nerd dislikes your noiserock piece purely because of taste that just tells you something about them. This is what the criticism of most entusiastic consumers looks like. Another thing I have learned is that people are usually correct something feels wrong to them if they are really going into the thing with open eyes and an open heart. But people totally suck at telling you how to fix it. So my advice on how to deal with criticsm is: 1. Figure out the nature of the criticism and judge accordingly. Is it purely a matter of taste? Is the root cause of observation valid? 2. Most criticism can help you getting better or worse, which one depends a lot on how you deal with it. You can reframe criticism to not be about you, but about the thing you do (and try to do well!). In that case every valid point someone makes will now no longer be an attack on your person, but a chance to make your work even better 3. Do things for their own sake and you're somewhat immune to criticism. If you enjoy playing guitar, it should not matter to you that you suck while doing it. Everybody good sucked for a long time before they were good and many of the most innovative new developements were made by people who did not care they were "doing it wrong" 4. There is no single correct way to do a thing and thus there are always people who will hate your stuff for a various number of reasons. This means nothing unless they got a valid point be it in terms of craft or emotion. 5. In German there is the notion of "Wer macht hat recht", which very loosely translates to "those who do are in the right". Action beats opinion. Talking is cheap.
auggierose 1y ago
Lots of Trump fans out there.

pjc50 1y ago

Yes, but .. there is no worse critic than a scorned fan. There's a lot of fandoms all around the world, and while they're mostly harmless fun the edges can get weird and dangerous. Or when fandoms collide.

HanClinto 1y ago
Not entirely sure what you mean. Care to expound? Are you talking about people who act out on their fandom by criticizing others? "Oh I'm a fan of X, therefore I'm a vocal critic of Y". I agree that such things are toxic -- fandom doesn't need to be a polemic. I want to cultivate the kind of fandom that builds up without feeling a need to tear down others.
- lukan 1y ago
  I rather think he or she means gamers for example, who send out death threats, because the developers introduced a new thing they don't like.
- bombcar 1y ago
  They're referring to "anti fans". You see it with online personalities especially; the most rabid fans (often parasocial, think online streaming) are the ones who will become the biggest detractors or anti fans. Most people are "oh that's fun to watch ok" and then when they don't like it anymore, they get bored and forget about it entirely. The anti-fans continue to follow it, but rabidly hate it. Think Syndrome from Incredibles. He's always been the biggest fan.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Wasn't Selena killed by a scorned fan?
  - steve_b 1y ago
    Not quite. She was killed by someone who started out as a fan but then became one of Selena’s employees, who was then caught embezzling.

zupatol 1y ago

There's a healthy way to be a critic, which is helping people find and enjoy works they didn't notice. There are also unhealthy ways of being a fan, for example if you admire someone there's probably someone else you despise. It's much better to follow the title of the post and believe in people in general.

rubicon33 1y ago
I imagine being a healthy critic is a skill, something personal to be worked on. It’s just so easy to be critical and even if you have good intentions, being critical can take the wind out of a dreamers sails.

rubicon33 1y ago

I agree but, doesn’t the world need critics? I think of a company where young inspired engineers want to build new things all the time. Their heart is in the right place but they need someone(s) to be respectfully critical since their efforts and time spent have very real impacts on the company.

phkahler 1y ago
Critics maybe. Antagonists no.
- o11c 1y ago
  I can't agree with this at all. There's something deeply wrong with the world if any form of opposition is considered problematic. Some variant of "the customer is always right" applies in the marketplace of ideas as well. People are allowed to have different preferences.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    I’ve learned that there isn’t a “magic bullet” policy that we can enact, that always ensures that we do things correctly. Human nature is messy and varied. A word of praise can be weaponized. I often encounter people that use praise as a domination tool. They praise you in a manner that suggests that, if they did not recognize and note something, you would not have it. They use praise to “declare ownership” of your good traits. I encounter this, because I have highly valuable skills, that can make others a great deal of money, and have an aspect that predatory people think is “weakness.” They believe I have low self-esteem, because I am not always tubthumping. Also, we have to be careful of saying things like “Don’t complain, if you don’t have a solution.”[0] [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/problems-and-solutions/ https://littlegreenviper.com/problems-and-solutions/
mxmilkiib 1y ago
it's easier to image a dystopia than an eutopia, or even utopia, depending how you see it
1y ago

vunderba 1y ago

> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. I'd rather be a fan. Trotting out absolute statements does no one any good. I could just as easily spin this on its head and say that it feels socially safe to always show blind enthusiasm for the latest trend lest you be labelled a "hater". It feels like we're just redefining critic to be synonymous with cynic. There's no reason that you can't simultaneously be both fan and a critic of X.

MrJohz 1y ago
In fact, the best critics of something are often its biggest fans. Roger Ebert, for example, wrote some pretty critical pieces, but nobody can deny that he was driven primarily by a love of cinema. Or take politics: I've seen people complain that left-wing commentators were too critical of Biden when they should have been criticising Trump, but often it's easier — and more useful — to criticise the things you like in the hope that they will improve, rather than spending all your time criticising something you don't like that will never listen to you. That said, it's still important to take the time to sing the praises of something you like. If Ebert had spent all his time talking down bad films, reading his columns would have been painful drudgery (see also: CinemaSins, Nostalgia Critic, and similar attempts at film-criticism-by-cynicism). A good critic wants their target to succeed, and celebrates when that happens.
- RyanOD 1y ago
  It is a real skill to critique a thing and not come off as complaining about it.
  - sethammons 1y ago
    Instead of statements, I favor questions. Instead of "I, me, you, etc,", I favor communal "we, the code, the team." Be specific when possible. I try to focus on what should be done vs what shouldn't be done. "Why did you not handle $situation" -> "how does this code handle $situation?" "You shouldn't do $thing" -> "$thing has sharp edges, see $link-to-more-info. The general approach used in the code base is to $alternative."

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I always liked Brendan Behan's quote: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”

nthingtohide 1y ago
Critics could be experts of past era who have seen it all and are now seeing the same mistakes being repeated. Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. -- André Gide
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Love that quote! Thanks!
watwut 1y ago
Harems did not had much of heterosexual sex going on in them. Whole point was gender segregation. Eunuch in harem have seen women, but did not seen them having sex with men.
bigbadfeline 1y ago
Behan's criticism of critics then makes him an eunuch who's criticizing eunuchs... according to his own "logic".

DiscourseFan 1y ago

Feeling good about shit all the time isn’t practical and it indicates a lack of individual, refined taste. Its ok to like things that you like and dislike things others like and one should be able to hold their own opinions without influence from the crowd.

tpmoney 1y ago
Feeling good about things has nothing to do with liking or disliking something though. I dislike things about the Rust language and the larger ecosystem around it (things like async/await as the dominant concurrency model, or the separate and very different macro syntaxes), but I'm still a fan of seeing rust projects and things people do in and with Rust. If someone builds a database driver built on Tokio, no one (not eve me) benefits from me doing drive by "async/await is complex and annoying, you should have done this differently" criticism. I may think that, and I may not like a Tokio based driver. But I don't have to "feel bad" about it, and neither do the creators. Feeling bad about it won't make a non Tokio driver appear. Nor will just criticizing Tokio and Async/Await. For something different and better to appear, I have build enthusiasm for an alternative and I have to engage with the parts I do like. Spending a hour building the starts of a a non Tokio driver and giving it to other enthusiastic people would be a far more effective use of my time than spending an hour writing a take down of async/await and giving it to other like minded critics. The phrase "preaching to the choir" comes to mind, and too often these days I feel like criticism online is largely geared towards exactly that. Polemics for people who already agree with the author, about some thing that the author dislikes.

throwup238 1y ago

That's an amazing quote. I recently just started going to some LA Kings hockey games with my family for the first time, so this hits close to home. I played high school sports (with a three day hospital stay for a serious concussion to show for it - thanks, football), but I've never been a fan of watching sportsball on TV unless it's a social gathering like Superbowl parties. I've generally had a low opinion of people who cared about their city's teams and all the useless competitiveness that goes along with it. But being there, in the stadium around all the other fans? Fucking electrifying. I celebrated, I jeered, I cried, I booed Edmonton, I cursed the refs, I complained about the stadium food and the line for the men's bathroom, and I was probably the loudest person in the 318 section of the Staples center. I almost fell over the glass boards onto the ESPN newscasters during Wednesday's game on the fourth goal. Too much overpriced beer plus standing up to wave the "Built for This" towels too fast. I still don't give a flying fuck about the Kings or Lakers or Clippers or whatever, but I am definitely going to enjoy going to their games and feeling the energy. The exact words my mom used were "I've never seen this side of you." WE WANT SKINNER!!!

weakfish 1y ago
I advocate for going to a Hurricanes game :) loudest barn in the NHL, baby!
- throwup238 1y ago
  I feel like every fanbase thinks they have the loudest barn. I'm saving myself for the Cleveland dawg pound. They are notorious (there's even a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawg_Pound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawg_Pound ). (Womp womp, the Kings just lost 7-4 with two goals on an open net)

keybored 1y ago

A top-of-thread subthread complaining about critics on the topic of believing in people. We didn’t last long.

igorkraw 1y ago

I really believe in the importance of praising people and acknowledging their efforts, when they are kind and good human beings and (to much lesser degree) their successes. But, and I mean their without snark: What value is your praise for what is good if I cannot trust that you will be critical of what is bad? Note that critique can be unpleasant but kind, and I don't care for "brutal honesty" (which is much more about the brutality than the honesty in most cases). But whether it's the joint Slavic-german culture or something else, I much prefer for things to be _appropriate_, _kind_ and _earnest_ instead of just supportive or positive. Real love is despite a flaw, in full cognizance if it, not ignoring them.

worik 1y ago
> I really believe in the importance of praising people and acknowledging their efforts, when they are... alive! At a funeral of a controversial activist, where all the living activist sang their praise, I watch their child stand up and say "...where were you all when my dad was alive" I now go out of my way to tell people I admire them, if I do, while they are still here.
LtWorf 1y ago
Yeah, I live in sweden and a compliment by a swede about how I play music is completely meaningless to me. On the other hand a compliment from my bosnian or croatian friends is a big deal.

paulpauper 1y ago

It's so hard to to believe in people or have a positive opinion of them when much of my interactions are negative. Or when people who embody the opposite of goodness are promoted and have status. It's like we live in a society in which mediocrity, borderline sociopathy, and meanness are rewarded. Unless you're Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, but there is a huge middle where people who are competent, smart, and do the right things do not get the promotion or recognition they deserve or are entitled to. It's like you have to super-brilliant to have any hope , or just lucky. No room for the hard-working middle.

trinsic2 1y ago
I feel this is a culture problem that can be localized on a per organization basis. If people are getting promoted for be douche bags you're working at the wrong organization. We feed sociopathy by our choices.
tpmoney 1y ago
> It's so hard to to believe in people or have a positive opinion of them when much of my interactions are negative. Or when people who embody the opposite of goodness are promoted and have status. It's like we live in a society in which mediocrity, borderline sociopathy, and meanness are rewarded. Which I think is why the original article has an important idea. We need to be fans more and encourage that as a way of thinking. If mediocrity and borderline sociopathy are rewarded by society at large, it must mean that mediocrity and borderline sociopathy are rewarded by society in the small. And sure enough, take a look around (and look at pop culture over the last couple decades) and you'll see that's true: * American "Kitchen Nightmares" took what was an often genuinely heartfelt show about struggling restaurants in its UK incarnation and turned it into a circus side show complete with jeering at the freaks. * Reality competition shows thrive on marketing terrible performances and smug take downs by Simon Cowell and his various low rent knockoffs. * The Daily Show / John Oliver thrives on the sort of smug "I'm better than these obvious idiots, and wink wink you are too because you watch me and we know we're very smart" behavior that ironically also powers the Glenn Beck / Rush Limbaugh contingent on the other side of the spectrum. * Trump himself made his own reality TV show where the entire premise was just firing people for not being sufficiently subservient. * And remember things like "The Weakest Link"? We've built a culture over the years, that has turned large swaths of the internet from small communities of fans and enthusiasts to large communities of "take down" artists and drive by clap backs a la twitter. We promote criticism and boarderline sociopathy on a daily basis and hold it up as an ideal to strive for, and turn to "You just can't handle the truth" whenever someone calls it out. Is it any wonder then that the people that are rising to the top in a world that promotes crab bucket mentality are the biggest and meanest crabs? But if we don't work to be different in the small. If we don't try in our day to day efforts even when it's extremely difficult to do so, to be kind, positive, and enthusiastic, where do we expect that behavior to come from in our leaders and the people we promote? If "harsh truth" people who "say what they want" and "don't care about your feels" are the sort of people we lift up at the bottom, why do we expect it to be any different the higher up we go?

whoknowsidont 1y ago

Not only is "it" not needed, "being a fan" is pervasive to a detrimental extent. "posio-paths" are everywhere and are basically the default. In order to say something correct, make a correction, or present a counter-factual you have to layer your tone with a thousand feel-goodism's and niceties. Otherwise you just get labeled as a hater, a contrarian, or worse - a critic. It's exhausting. People confuse being direct, dry, or taking a level-tone with dispassion, disinterest, or again being a "hater." I would even say I've seen so many people being "super excited" about something that it's the opposite of contagious for me, it causes me to doubt how knowledgeable or sincere they are about the subject (whether it's a general topic or even a person). We have too much fake-niceness, and we are over-enthused quite often on things that turn out to be nothing, at least in the U.S. We don't need more of it, at least IMO.

tpmoney 1y ago
> We have too much fake-niceness, and we are over-enthused quite often on things that turn out to be nothing, at least in the U.S. We don't need more of it, at least IMO. I don't think the original article is advocating for "fake niceness". It's advocating for enthusiastic uplift. That spirit that tends to pervade small hobbyist communities, where everyone is iterating and building on everyone else. If you've been in the 3d printing space over the last decade or so, there's plenty of honest criticism and knowledgable discussion. But it's also infectiously enthusiastic and there's a sense of exploration and desire to see everyone* succeed that's very genuine. Things don't always succeed or work out, but it's pretty rare to encounter hard "that's stupid, you're stupid and you should feel bad" sort of commentary. Compare this to the broader tech community as it appears in places like HN. Open any thread on someone's new project or experiment here and count the number of comments that are genuinely positive and encouraging vs the number that are nit-picking for the sake of nit-picking, dismissive and just generally unhappy or are outright actively tearing down the item in question. Even the ones that are "Oh this is nice, but hey you could do XYZ to improve it" very rarely have any follow up that submits the suggested improvements, even when the original item is an open source project that they clearly could submit improvements to. People love to talk about the shortcomings, but unlike "fans" rarely tend to put out the time and effort to make it better. It's bad enough that my general approach to HN these days is to only read the articles and make an effort to avoid the comment threads or at a minimum make sure I've read the original link in its entirety and thought about my own opinions of it before heading into the comments. And when I find something in a project that I think could be improved, I make an effort to ensure that I'm putting proper effort into trying to improve it, either with a patch/fix or if I'm incapable of patching/fixing, as much detail and testing as I can document in order to have contributed more than just a drive by criticism. Also, I'm not sure a "too much niceness", fake or otherwise, is the problem in the US right now.

fenomas 1y ago

Chiming in to add Bierce: CRITIC: n. A man who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

Ygg2 1y ago

> It feels socially safe, easy, and destructive to be a critic. It also feels very socially safe to be group of rabid fans.

atoav 1y ago

As a practicing musician of 2 decades I of course have opinions on what good music is and what isn't on multiple layers. So I will critique music (the thing) but not musicians (the people). Receiving good criticism by other musicians is really good way to get better, as they will notice things you wont — provided they are open for the type of music you're making. However I noticed a peculiar thing. In every field you will find people who are really enthusiastic for the field without doing it themselves. Maybe we could call them "enthusiastic consumers". These are very often the people giving the harshest, most unfair, least constructive critiques for some reason and the closer your thing is to the thing they love the harsher they can become. To them consuming that thing is their identity, so which thing they consume is existentially important to then. To me music is much more about the making, and while listening about countless things. Musicians tend to be more open about what constitutes good mhsic than these enthusiasts. As a former art student one important leason I have learned in countless group reviews is that criticism based purely on taste are utterly worthless. If a classical music nerd dislikes your noiserock piece purely because of taste that just tells you something about them. This is what the criticism of most entusiastic consumers looks like. Another thing I have learned is that people are usually correct something feels wrong to them if they are really going into the thing with open eyes and an open heart. But people totally suck at telling you how to fix it. So my advice on how to deal with criticsm is: 1. Figure out the nature of the criticism and judge accordingly. Is it purely a matter of taste? Is the root cause of observation valid? 2. Most criticism can help you getting better or worse, which one depends a lot on how you deal with it. You can reframe criticism to not be about you, but about the thing you do (and try to do well!). In that case every valid point someone makes will now no longer be an attack on your person, but a chance to make your work even better 3. Do things for their own sake and you're somewhat immune to criticism. If you enjoy playing guitar, it should not matter to you that you suck while doing it. Everybody good sucked for a long time before they were good and many of the most innovative new developements were made by people who did not care they were "doing it wrong" 4. There is no single correct way to do a thing and thus there are always people who will hate your stuff for a various number of reasons. This means nothing unless they got a valid point be it in terms of craft or emotion. 5. In German there is the notion of "Wer macht hat recht", which very loosely translates to "those who do are in the right". Action beats opinion. Talking is cheap.

auggierose 1y ago

Lots of Trump fans out there.