The internet has made defensive writers of us all

Post by Mz » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

flubert wrote: post #177

Mz wrote: post #79

So, about a week ago, I wrote a piece that I feel has a solid point and I posted it on Hacker News. It hit 39 karma and had 54 comments. Not impressive for Hacker News overall, but, hey, decent for my own personal blog's track record. The top voted comment on it is incredibly dismissive, completely dismissing my 6-ish years of college, more than 5 years working in insurance, etc. over one detail that wasn't thoroughl…

>You can't just turn the other cheek on everything. On an unrelated note, here's a interesting note on "turning the other cheek" http://dharmagates.org/other_cheek.html

Post by linkregister » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 11:11 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #133

linkregister wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that HN is one of the rare forums where this article doesn't apply. Usually the top comment in a particular thread contains the least hedges and most enthusiastically espouses a particular opinion. The comment is not usually overly bombastic (though it sometimes is). The comment almost always adopts the majority opinion on HN. Posting a comment not aligned with the majority opinion carries a risk of at most -…

It's not just the downvotes. They don't help, but it's also the responses. There is a major psychological effect from getting attacked for stating an opinion you might hold to heart. As an avid reddit/hn commenter, I feel it often. I don't really care if someone disagrees with me on something minor, but if it's something I truly believe is important and I see people disagreeing with it left and right and downvoting a…

Post by Mickchicken2 » Sat, Jan 09, 2016, 8:34 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #137

danieltillett wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at this positively and that if someone gets offended then at least people are reading your work. It is very disheartening when you take the time to write something thoughtful and you get no response at all.

This has been turned into art by professional media outlets. That's the whole point of almost every single article they publish - the more people they can outrage or offend, the more people read and thus the more ad money flows in. > It is very disheartening when you take the time to write something thoughtful and you get no response at all. Scott Alexander explored this topic in [0]. He also laments the fact that th…