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Raganwalder is one of those lonely social phobics whose entire social life is a collection of blogs and forums. If your entire social life happened online, you

Raganwalder is one of those lonely social phobics whose entire social life is a collection of blogs and forums. If your entire social life happened online, you might be tempted to try and improve the wall paper as well. The simple fact of the online world is that people express their true feelings which are always harsher, more negative, more hostile than their offline polite/fake feelings, so the online world is a harsher, more negative place. Some people who live in it perpetually also want to fix it. As soon as they fix it, however, all the users will just flee to a more anarchic site because the human spirit craves freedom and the internet liberates us to express our genuine hostility and negativity without being socially punished. People love the strong emotions of the Apple vs Android debate. The emotions are the POINT of the socializing. The strong feelings are the PAY OFF, and if you don't let people have their feelings, you'll just have a tumbleweed town. Raganwald's online utopia will be a dead and boring place. Not even Raganwald himself would go there; there would be nothing to get all self-righteous about. Nothing to complain about on his dramablog. If Raganwald actually wanted a perfectly sanitized experience, he would go to a forum that provided it. But actually he doesn't. His purpose in life is to find a forum without that sanitization and promote it on there. The promotion itself is a pay off for him: in terms of the feelings he gets from the socialization and in terms of the traffic he gets to his blog.

raganwald 14y ago
People love the strong emotions of the Apple vs Android debate. The emotions are the POINT of the socializing. The strong feelings are the PAY OFF, and if you don't let people have their feelings, you'll just have a tumbleweed town. Don't people enjoy expressing strong emotions about online freedom, startup life, the ethics of various companies, and many other subjects on the front page as well? Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names?
- forensic 14y ago
  >Don't people enjoy expressing strong emotions about online freedom, startup life, the ethics of various companies, and many other subjects on the front page as well? Yep. >Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names? No. Why do you want to Jesus-ify Hacker News? Isn't this a place for Hackers? How many Hackers go through life trying to avoid offending people? Blunt criticism and ranting is part of Hacker culture. The censors and net-nannies may succeed in shutting down discussion about certain topics, but they aren't going to succeed in their quest to sanitize the internet. As soon as a place becomes sanitized people flee. You're just a miniature form of the Grand Inquisitor, upset at the sin you see all around you. To save the poor sinners from their sin, you start a crusade. You appeal to the most powerful people--the authorities--to join you in shutting down this sin. For the good of the users. Why are you so fucking hung up on civility? What is it about you that can't handle a little incivility? The smartest people I know are not civil in private conversation. Their real opinions are full of strong emotions and incivility. They scrub their personality clean in public to avoid being ostracised or punished, but when anonymous and online, they let loose because all humans crave authentic expression. This authenticity is too raw for you to bear so you make these pathetic pleas for "civility" as if Victorian England was a good place. You want to return to some ridiculous sanitized culture where people sip tea and drop their monocles at the slightest provocation. This is no way to live. Instead of being a culture crusader, a net nanny, why not examine the roots of your discomfort with incivility? Why can't you handle incivility? This is an area of psychological growth for you. Learning to accept your own negative feelings as well as those of others. Learning to enjoy the negative feelings.
  - raganwald 14y ago
    "Father," said the small boy after his temper has subsided, "Why do I get so upset all the time?" "My son, we all have inside of us two strong dogs to help us hunt, to keep us company, and to protect us. One is warm and loveable and friendly, it helps us love and find friends and enjoy games. The other is mean and vicious, it protects us from enemies and it helps us hunt for meat." "The two dogs battle for control of our heart, and the one who is winning controls our feelings." "Which one is stronger, Dad?" "The one you feed, son." ---------- I'm not feeding you, my friend. I will give both of your comments upvotes for the effort.
    - forensic 14y ago
      You totally prove my point. That parable perfectly reflects the Last Man's desire for a dry and sterile life. You want to live in a traditional society where people are stifled and controlled through social norms that outlaw all kinds of strong emotions and passionate human expression. You want to clamp down on the very stuff of life that most humans find most meaningful. It's so delicious that you think this kind of parable could ever affect someone like me. To me, you are nothing but a small minded Christian moralist--an old spinster who tours the Salons condemning biscuit-eaters for their impropriety. "How rude! Why, why, you should be ashamed of yourself!!" You think you aren't feeding the wolves like me, but you are. The drama you create is better food for me than any boring nerd fight like Android vs. Apple and so on. Entrepreneurs are generally Type A personalities. Do you really think people here buy into your 19th century Victorian sensibilities? Fuck your idea of civil society. You are a rube--an uncultured pseudo-puritan. Your thoughts on culture and society are a fucking joke. In any venue other than the pseudo-intellectual blogosphere, your thoughts on culture would be laughed at. Our values are so orthogonal that you actually feel morally superior when I attack you. This is how different we are. I insult you; you feel like Jesus for weathering my insults with Christ-like passivity. Pathetic.
      - brennen 14y ago
        Your internet penis is _enormous_. This sort of bilious, spittle-flecked juvenile chest-thumping teenaged-courageous-loner noise is precisely why venues like Hacker News, despite the presence and attention of a good many smart people, have been rendered such sterile wastelands. No matter how much you enjoy the game, it's not getting us anywhere. Your righteous incivility is, ultimately, profoundly _boring_.
richardw 14y ago
That's pretty mean. There's a whole internet for personal attacks and I don't see why every forum has to trend to internet-level nastiness. PG mentions "niceness" many times, and HN's niceness has always been an attractive and useful quality. Arguing about the ball rather than the man forces people to think more clearly about the ball. That's a good thing. I think PG's stated principles helped build HN. I don't know why you want to dilute them when everywhere-but-HN is already the forum you're pushing for.
- forensic 14y ago
  The question is not whether attacking the ball is preferred--it is. The question is whether the forum should censor topics that raise strong feelings about that ball. Pg said that flat insults without intellectual content (e.g. "you're gay") are not an issue because they quickly get downvoted. I believe in a curated forum, I just think meta-drama brought up by attention whores is the worst sort of drama--NOT the "uncivil" arguments about various platforms.

raganwald 14y ago

People love the strong emotions of the Apple vs Android debate. The emotions are the POINT of the socializing. The strong feelings are the PAY OFF, and if you don't let people have their feelings, you'll just have a tumbleweed town. Don't people enjoy expressing strong emotions about online freedom, startup life, the ethics of various companies, and many other subjects on the front page as well? Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names?

forensic 14y ago
>Don't people enjoy expressing strong emotions about online freedom, startup life, the ethics of various companies, and many other subjects on the front page as well? Yep. >Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names? No. Why do you want to Jesus-ify Hacker News? Isn't this a place for Hackers? How many Hackers go through life trying to avoid offending people? Blunt criticism and ranting is part of Hacker culture. The censors and net-nannies may succeed in shutting down discussion about certain topics, but they aren't going to succeed in their quest to sanitize the internet. As soon as a place becomes sanitized people flee. You're just a miniature form of the Grand Inquisitor, upset at the sin you see all around you. To save the poor sinners from their sin, you start a crusade. You appeal to the most powerful people--the authorities--to join you in shutting down this sin. For the good of the users. Why are you so fucking hung up on civility? What is it about you that can't handle a little incivility? The smartest people I know are not civil in private conversation. Their real opinions are full of strong emotions and incivility. They scrub their personality clean in public to avoid being ostracised or punished, but when anonymous and online, they let loose because all humans crave authentic expression. This authenticity is too raw for you to bear so you make these pathetic pleas for "civility" as if Victorian England was a good place. You want to return to some ridiculous sanitized culture where people sip tea and drop their monocles at the slightest provocation. This is no way to live. Instead of being a culture crusader, a net nanny, why not examine the roots of your discomfort with incivility? Why can't you handle incivility? This is an area of psychological growth for you. Learning to accept your own negative feelings as well as those of others. Learning to enjoy the negative feelings.
- raganwald 14y ago
  "Father," said the small boy after his temper has subsided, "Why do I get so upset all the time?" "My son, we all have inside of us two strong dogs to help us hunt, to keep us company, and to protect us. One is warm and loveable and friendly, it helps us love and find friends and enjoy games. The other is mean and vicious, it protects us from enemies and it helps us hunt for meat." "The two dogs battle for control of our heart, and the one who is winning controls our feelings." "Which one is stronger, Dad?" "The one you feed, son." ---------- I'm not feeding you, my friend. I will give both of your comments upvotes for the effort.
  - forensic 14y ago
    You totally prove my point. That parable perfectly reflects the Last Man's desire for a dry and sterile life. You want to live in a traditional society where people are stifled and controlled through social norms that outlaw all kinds of strong emotions and passionate human expression. You want to clamp down on the very stuff of life that most humans find most meaningful. It's so delicious that you think this kind of parable could ever affect someone like me. To me, you are nothing but a small minded Christian moralist--an old spinster who tours the Salons condemning biscuit-eaters for their impropriety. "How rude! Why, why, you should be ashamed of yourself!!" You think you aren't feeding the wolves like me, but you are. The drama you create is better food for me than any boring nerd fight like Android vs. Apple and so on. Entrepreneurs are generally Type A personalities. Do you really think people here buy into your 19th century Victorian sensibilities? Fuck your idea of civil society. You are a rube--an uncultured pseudo-puritan. Your thoughts on culture and society are a fucking joke. In any venue other than the pseudo-intellectual blogosphere, your thoughts on culture would be laughed at. Our values are so orthogonal that you actually feel morally superior when I attack you. This is how different we are. I insult you; you feel like Jesus for weathering my insults with Christ-like passivity. Pathetic.
    - brennen 14y ago
      Your internet penis is _enormous_. This sort of bilious, spittle-flecked juvenile chest-thumping teenaged-courageous-loner noise is precisely why venues like Hacker News, despite the presence and attention of a good many smart people, have been rendered such sterile wastelands. No matter how much you enjoy the game, it's not getting us anywhere. Your righteous incivility is, ultimately, profoundly _boring_.

richardw 14y ago

That's pretty mean. There's a whole internet for personal attacks and I don't see why every forum has to trend to internet-level nastiness. PG mentions "niceness" many times, and HN's niceness has always been an attractive and useful quality. Arguing about the ball rather than the man forces people to think more clearly about the ball. That's a good thing. I think PG's stated principles helped build HN. I don't know why you want to dilute them when everywhere-but-HN is already the forum you're pushing for.

forensic 14y ago
The question is not whether attacking the ball is preferred--it is. The question is whether the forum should censor topics that raise strong feelings about that ball. Pg said that flat insults without intellectual content (e.g. "you're gay") are not an issue because they quickly get downvoted. I believe in a curated forum, I just think meta-drama brought up by attention whores is the worst sort of drama--NOT the "uncivil" arguments about various platforms.