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If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Kill Yourself
- invisible 18y agoAt least he points out some flaws in the industry and where they can be corrected. Blogging is a new industry (in some ways), and hasn't adjusted completely yet. Newspapers took quite a long time to adjust, and libel became against criminal and civil law (although "cyberlibel" is around, there is maybe a total of 3 cases?).
- time_management 18y agoQuick comment: people in the future will look back upon 1980-2009 as a barbaric era of unbelievable interpersonal nastiness. The truth about the matter is more complicated. We're not really meaner than people of prior eras-- in fact, we've made a lot of progress as private individuals on racial/gender attitudes, even while social infrastructure has decayed-- but certain crass and mean elements of our society (casual sex, classism, internet harassment, homophobia and racism, so-called "irony", a heartless health insurance system) are being expressed loudly right now. Although we won't, at bottom, see the economic privations of the 1930s, 2001-2009(?) will be remembered as a difficult decade during which the future of civil society seemed uncertain. The 2000s have seemed like only a so-so decade to us, just as the 1930s appear to have been horrific in retrospect (people starved? no way!) but were still better, materially, than the 1900s and 1910s. The reason I predict an imminent and rather abrupt end to the "nasty era" is obvious. The people in charge of it have fallen from grace rather decisively, and we have a brilliant, inspiring president whose character is excellent by any standard, and downright heroic in comparison to what we've come to expect, and whose ascension represents a degree of triumph over centuries of racial bigotry.
- time_management 18y agoCan the person who downvoted me please criticize my post with a reply? I thought it was pretty solid. Feel free to downvote this post as well. Take it all the way to -50 if you care. Just let me know why, ok?
- dlytle 18y agoProbably the last bit talking about how you think Obama is awesome. (I didn't downvote you, btw, just my guess.) Also possibly mentioning casual sex in the same category as bigotry. It went somewhat over the top, and presented your comment in a light that made it seem very biased and unprofessional. That completely eradicated the point you were trying to make early on. Professionalism certainly isn't a requirement for posting, but a clear bias will make downvotes a lot more likely.
- time_management 18y agoI have no idea whether or not Obama will be a great president, though I suspect he will. What makes him unusual, if not earth-shaking, as far as successful politicians go, is that he seems to be a truly great human being. I'm not pol-bashing; I don't think most of them are bad people. I just don't think many of them are great people either. Casual sex is an example of the crudeness and nastiness of the current era, and I cited it as such. Bigotry is much less appropriate as an example of the Reagan-through-Bush-2 era's nastiness, because even though it's a lot more evil than casual sex, it's been a problem more or less throughout this country's history.
- dlytle 18y agoYou asked for reasons why you got downvoted, which is what you got. Your reasons for posting those were fairly clear, the issue is that people disagree with you. I certainly don't see casual sex as being an example of "nastiness" or "evil", and it may be that this is what most downvoters are taking offense to. Plus, it's off-topic. The article is about being rude, callous, and insensitive towards others. Specifically, about the hypocrisy and cowardice involved in doing so anonymously. Your post was both off-topic and (potentially) offensive, and as such you're getting hit with two different sticks.
- yters 18y agoWhile I don't agree with all his opinions, it is definitely not off topic. Plus, he should not be downvoted because he thinks casual sex is emotionally destructive. That, in fact, ties into his broader point. He thinks Obama will ease the polarization that leads to so many vehement disagreements, which he thinks bleed over to the online world. This goes hand in hand with the other poster's highly upvoted comment about PCness breeding repressed anger that is expressed online, of which the downvoting due to offense is a symptom.
- jwesley 18y agoThis will turn into Kathy Sierra part 2.
- blasdel 18y agoI really don't think so. While Arrington is even more insufferable than Sierra, he is an expert in the mechanics of trolling. He knows what he's doing: he's judged that the hype-value of publicising his detractors outweighs the foolishness of feeding the trolls, and I think he's probably right. He's not going to get taken hook, line, and sinker like Kathy Sierra did. She managed to prove her attackers correct (at least regarding her incompetence) in her reaction to them. That is the real lesson of the Kathy Sierra debacle, and why it is one of the most epic trolls of all time.
- BigZaphod 18y agoIs there a reliable summary somewhere of what all happened in the Kathy Sierra incident? I mostly ignored it at the time, but now I'm curious as to how that all went down and what went wrong.
- blasdel 18y agoNot really, every party is an unreliable narrator! This is undoubtedly a troll and goes way too far, but the base of his criticisms ring true: http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Full-Disclosure/2007-03/msg00507.html http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Full-Disclosure/2007-... "Kathy hollers like a stuck pig as she wonders why the trolls escalated to magnitudes which she could no longer control. The answer is obvious: she fought the LOL. The LOL won. She flew off the handle trying to silence criticism of her books, and this is what she got."
- TweedHeads 18y ago"She fought the LOL. The LOL won" I like it, good for a snorg tee
- ahoyhere 18y ago
- pixcavator 18y agoI liked this especially: "If you've got something to say online, say it in your own name or fuck off."
- lacker 18y agoSo is "Pixcavator" your last name, or is it P. Ixcavator?
- unalone 18y agoMr. Acker, that was hardly called for. Sincerely, U. Nal One.
- steveplace 18y agoOkay guys, settle down. --Steve
- simonk 18y agoNot his name; but, his profile makes it easy enough to find his name. So not a anonymous comment.
- pixcavator 18y agoIt’s an old handle. If I was to sign up today, I’d probably use my real name. I put info and links in my profile, as a compromise. -- Peter Saveliev
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoProblem is: ugly sells
- old-gregg 18y agoI am curious to see how American Internet is different from other countries in this regard. I have long had the suspicion that our love for hatred online and South Park episodes comes as a psychological defense against insane levels of in-your-face politeness, fake plastic smiles and excessive "political correctness" dominating our offline lives. Even our everyday language is affected by this: people don't die or get fired, they pass away and being let go. George Carlin said it best: soon we'll be calling a rape victim "an unwilling sperm recipient". Perhaps the cure for online rudeness is being less hypocritical offline.
- iron_ball 18y agoInteresting question, but it's complicated by the fact that an even more polite society, Japan, is said to have an even more polite internet. More anonymity, more group bonding, more political deference, when your theory would predict the exact opposite.
- ahoyhere 18y agoExcept for the anonymous super free-for-all sites, like that one where you can write over images and video. I recall reading an article about a lady celebrity there who was trying to identify people smearing her online, to sue them. (Hadn't succeeded at time of writing.)
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoI'm not sure that this is entirely the case. 2chan has been quite disruptive to the culture. Its enforced anonymity and subsequent freedom from personal societal retaliation is a very new phenomenon there.
- shiranaihito 18y agoJapanese people actively avoid conflict, which is certainly part of why they're always so polite. It's an awesomely safe place, but they've got a high suicide rate and the occasional repressed salaryman on a killing spree.
- yters 18y ago
- Tichy 18y ago"You simply can't have a system which rewards nastiness over niceness..." I don't think the internet is to blame, it is simply in the human nature. People bond by agreeing to hate some other people together. It is not the only way to bond, but it is a very common way.
- ardit33 18y agoI have to say the Hacker News in general is a much positive place, where you got real good and honest feedback, from semi-anon users (some are known, many are not). And usually the topics are intellectually stimulating. But I have to say that a lot of nastiness can come from people that are frustrated with the current coverage in the tech media, where a lot of good technologies/projects/inovative startups are being ignored, and few people are taking the limelight. I even know about Julia Allison , but really what has she done? Except for being a great self promoter? What about Loc Le Meur startup, which is really nothing inovating. Why so few people are taking the limelight, while really good things are getting ignored? The ratio of noise to signal in the blogosphere/tech startup media is really high. I guess a lot of people express this kind of frustration against these self-promoters, and not media itself. It is like being annoyed at Britney Spears when the front page of CNN has a story about Britney Spears, while medicare reform is somewhere in the bottom. Really, people should be frustrated at CNN, by ignoring it. That's why I like HN, as it is a breath of fresh air, comparing to other sites. (ps. we still have some shameless self promoters here, with github being one of them. We get it, git is awesome, but here are a lot of other technologies that get ignored, (HG one of them. Disproportionate coverage of something, in expense to something else just as useful, is just noise and doesn't help the community).
- misuba 18y agoWe could, of course, start accounting for the fact that communication skills are as important as engineering skills when it comes to making a successful business... thereby taking responsibility for our own perceived problems and eliminating the frustration.
- tdavis 18y agoThe only thing more annoying than bandwagon hatred is bandwagon altruism. What happened to Arrington sucks, but this sort of shit happens to all sorts of domain-specific personalities and famous people every day. I just don't see what this "call to action" is trying to accomplish. People aren't going to change, most especially within mediums that provide complete anonymity. The thing, I think, that really surprises people about this is the fact that online trolling has spilled over into real life and has resulted in spitting and death threats. As I see it, the more our online and offline lives merge thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, the more you're going to see people acting as crazy offline as on.
- unalone 18y agoI think it's an effort by a well-known negative personality to tell people to cut it out. I'm certain most trolls become such after a personality makes them think it's okay. And given the premise that you'll always have stupid people being uninformed, I'd rather have said stupid people not threatening people.
- tdavis 18y agoSo cutting out criticism is the way to fix people being spit on? That's like chopping off your head when you've got a headache. The rules slay me even more: 1. So everybody is magically going to stop being anonymous in a medium that heralds anonymity above all else? Okay! 2. So we shouldn't make fun of people we don't know? Right. I make fun of people I do know, and I'm not even one of the "spitters". This one ain't gonna happen. 3. Yes, because a 1:1 ratio of nice to mean things balances out the Universe. This article is stupid; unalone, I like your hair. I mean, I can't see it, but you probably have nice hair. HARMONY! 4. Make your own judgements but trust my judgement on these rules!! 5. End the violence; kill yourself!
- unalone 18y agoPsh. People who've got something to say will say it regardless of how important it is. They won't think rules matter. The braindead people might start being nicer, though, which makes the Internet more fun for me. (Kind communities, ones where there's no moderation but only smart people appear, are so wonderful. The Truthandbeautybombs forum for webcomics is a joy to read.) 1) Anonymity hurts in most situations. I think it's good that we CAN have it, but that doesn't change the fact that it's rarely used for good. 2) I think it's more polite to make fun of people you do know. There's more a chance of you knowing that your insults are justified, then, and it's more fun. 3) I get your point, and also thank you for the kind compliment, but I think the idea is to be mean when mean is deserved, to be nice in other instances, and to try to make sure that you're never mean for stupid reasons.
- TooMuchNick 18y agoThis just in: A lot of people in the tech industry have a harder time dealing with criticism (both fair and unfair) than their counterparts in the entertainment industry. When asked for help, Hollywood said "get over it, nerds."
- jmtame 18y agohaven't heard many stories about celebrities being spat on lately..
- TooMuchNick 18y agoNo, you're right. They've only been stalked, threatened, had pictures taken of them every time they go to the beach, been the butt of jokes on TV every single night, sometimes been assaulted, kidnapped, or shot. But thankfully I can't remember any of them getting some saliva on them lately! I'm not saying the life of a celebrity is a living hell. I'm just saying there are thousands of people who already deal with the downside of a huge audience, and tech reporters will have to learn how to do the same. That's a pain, we all wish it could be otherwise, but it's not like Michael Arrington has to put up with half the crap that anyone with a hit song or TV show goes through.
- yters 18y agoIt isn't a celebrities job to listen to feedback from the public, so they are safe to ignore it and actively fight it as much as they want. It is the job of someone like Arrington to wade through the morass of hatefilled comments, while putting on an approachable as possible front, though. Can you see the impact is different in either case?
- giles_bowkett 18y ago"kill yourself" is hardly a nice thing to say, under any conditions.
- ahoyhere 18y agoI wish people would stop thinking this is new just because this time, it's on the internet. Tales of loss and tragedy inspire more interest than tales of gain and happy occurances. This has always been so. Anonymity inspires hatred, violence, and depersonalization. Being around other people who are hating, being violent, and depersonalizing others confirms this behavior. Countless -- old, pre-internet -- psychology studies and case studies show this. It doesn't have to be online. Intentionally overcoming it is good for everyone. But. It's just the nature of the human beast. And this Paul Carr dude is trolling - again - with this article, because he knows negativity sells. And maybe he feels guilty about everyone thinking he's an asshole, but it's A) clearly his own fault and B) a habit he can't kick, because even this article has the same tone to it.
- sh1mmer 18y agoSomething has been nagging my brain and I was trying to work out what it was. Reading this article jolted it loose. This whole horrible situation Michael Arrington has found himself in is incredibly similar to Kathy Sierra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra). The same comments by reasonable people are being repeated about how unacceptable it is, and yet 2 years on it's happening to a different internet personality, albeit not a woman this time. Frankly sometimes I feel like I'm a hostage of the people the democratization of web has enabled. Although, I'd still say there is much more good than bad (I'm not Andrew Keen!).
- ahoyhere 18y agoSo Arrington gets spat on, and everyone suddenly forgets what a giant, dripping blowhard the man is? Hello. Spitting on somebody is totally déclassé, and death threats are never cool, but the man is -- professionally speaking -- a bastard. That is an image he has carefully cultivated. He may be beloved of his friends & fam, but they're not the ones spitting on him.
- ananthrk 18y ago...Let's all of us who consider ourselves human beings and who want the internet to continue as a forum for free and frank debate get together and decide on a few rules of engagement... This, I believe, is what HN offers me today. Cheers for that! Sometimes opposing viewpoints get downmodded to oblivion, but as I see from recent discussions, people have already started taking notice of this phenomenon [for e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446176 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446176] and have taken it upon themselves to fix it..
- geirfreysson 18y agoI counted the occurrences of the words "me", "my", "myself" and "I" in the article with a bash command: tr -cs 'A-Za-z' '\n' < paul_carr.txt | grep -i -w -c "me\|my\|myself\|i" Result: 82 out of 1858 words. That's 4.4%, ca. 1 out of every 23 words. The author is thereby scientifically proven to be on the very far end of the introspective scale.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- anthonyrubin 18y agoWhat a bunch of senseless drama.