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>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

>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_.
    - forensic 14y ago
      >Your righteous incivility is, ultimately, profoundly _boring_. All passions are boring to those on the outside. To enjoy the incivility, you need to join in. Now that you've jumped in, you must be having fun. If HN decides to censor tech fights like Stack Overflow, I won't mind at all. As long as we can engage in meta-drama, my dramatic e-penis will have plenty of material to engage with.
richardw 14y ago
>>Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names? >No. Sure we can. Your comments have set off emotions in me. Behold: I can still be civil, because doing so is in the guidelines of the forum and I'd like to support the relative oasis of civility that exists here. I don't feel any need to break them because I'm quite able to make my point without doing so. I'm a member of multiple fora (trading, mountain biking) and just don't need to make any of them fit what I think they should be. If they have written or unwritten rules, so what? When I drive in a foreign land, it's just easier to drive on their side of the road than insist that mine is better because it allows more self-expression. Ever heard of "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"? Avoiding both insults and violence is probably a good strategy, until we really need them.
- forensic 14y ago
  You're entitled to your strategies. Why do you have to push your strategies on me? When you do that you turn from a tolerant civil example into a Christian missionary pushing his beliefs on everyone. Civility is completely in the eye of the beholder and I'm pretty sure what Raganwald considers civility would be considered by most Hackers to be a lame net nanny kind of censorship that misses the forest for the trees. To me, strong opinions and emotions are not uncivil. Even commenting on individual people is not uncivil. I put civility on a similar plane as intellectual honesty and argument in good faith. I don't consider civility to be self-censorship to conform to the stifled emotional norms of Puritan America--where the slightest amount of passion or strong opinion causes all kinds of moral crusaders to condemn you and teach you with their ridiculous religious parables.
  - richardw 14y ago
    > You're entitled to your strategies. Why do you have to push your strategies on me? Not me. PG. The principles I'm trying to adhere to on this particular forum mirror PG's. He set up the forum and asked that people be "civil". His word. You're the one wants something different to that [1], not Raganwald. And if you now say you support civility but reserve the right to redefine it, you're straying from the dictionary definition: (Synonyms: civilian - polite - courteous - civic - mannerly) > I'm pretty sure what Raganwald considers civility would be considered by most Hackers to be a lame net nanny kind of censorship I don't know anything about Raganwald or his principles. But his post got 650 upvotes. While I'd never claim that proves "most" HN-ers prefer his position, you're making claims about him, the perspectives of "most" HN participants, most hackers, etc...entirely unsupported by proof. And you're redefining words to suit your argument. [1] "Why are you so fucking hung up on civility? What is it about you that can't handle a little incivility?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709310 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709310

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_.
  - forensic 14y ago
    >Your righteous incivility is, ultimately, profoundly _boring_. All passions are boring to those on the outside. To enjoy the incivility, you need to join in. Now that you've jumped in, you must be having fun. If HN decides to censor tech fights like Stack Overflow, I won't mind at all. As long as we can engage in meta-drama, my dramatic e-penis will have plenty of material to engage with.

richardw 14y ago

>>Could we not have strong emotions about tablets and phones without calling each other names? >No. Sure we can. Your comments have set off emotions in me. Behold: I can still be civil, because doing so is in the guidelines of the forum and I'd like to support the relative oasis of civility that exists here. I don't feel any need to break them because I'm quite able to make my point without doing so. I'm a member of multiple fora (trading, mountain biking) and just don't need to make any of them fit what I think they should be. If they have written or unwritten rules, so what? When I drive in a foreign land, it's just easier to drive on their side of the road than insist that mine is better because it allows more self-expression. Ever heard of "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"? Avoiding both insults and violence is probably a good strategy, until we really need them.

forensic 14y ago
You're entitled to your strategies. Why do you have to push your strategies on me? When you do that you turn from a tolerant civil example into a Christian missionary pushing his beliefs on everyone. Civility is completely in the eye of the beholder and I'm pretty sure what Raganwald considers civility would be considered by most Hackers to be a lame net nanny kind of censorship that misses the forest for the trees. To me, strong opinions and emotions are not uncivil. Even commenting on individual people is not uncivil. I put civility on a similar plane as intellectual honesty and argument in good faith. I don't consider civility to be self-censorship to conform to the stifled emotional norms of Puritan America--where the slightest amount of passion or strong opinion causes all kinds of moral crusaders to condemn you and teach you with their ridiculous religious parables.
- richardw 14y ago
  > You're entitled to your strategies. Why do you have to push your strategies on me? Not me. PG. The principles I'm trying to adhere to on this particular forum mirror PG's. He set up the forum and asked that people be "civil". His word. You're the one wants something different to that [1], not Raganwald. And if you now say you support civility but reserve the right to redefine it, you're straying from the dictionary definition: (Synonyms: civilian - polite - courteous - civic - mannerly) > I'm pretty sure what Raganwald considers civility would be considered by most Hackers to be a lame net nanny kind of censorship I don't know anything about Raganwald or his principles. But his post got 650 upvotes. While I'd never claim that proves "most" HN-ers prefer his position, you're making claims about him, the perspectives of "most" HN participants, most hackers, etc...entirely unsupported by proof. And you're redefining words to suit your argument. [1] "Why are you so fucking hung up on civility? What is it about you that can't handle a little incivility?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709310 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4709310