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You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

xeiaso.net

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Re: You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

#21

Post by theamk »

julianeon wrote: post #16

I really struggle with this; to this day I haven't found a good resolution. I'd say by analogy you could also say: "You don't have to pursue people romantically." It's really, really true: you don't. No one will blame you for keeping to yourself. In many settings it may even be better (example: a club, where the club organizers find the drama caused by romantic entanglements annoying). But there's a problem behind th…

But you don't have to engage on every topic, for example about your employer (as Xe mentions).

If something topic is not pleasant -- walk by, and satisfy your social impulse in some other way. Go to Hacker News and leave some comments under topics you find interesting. Go to your local Reddit and discuss how badly your town services work. Find a forum for your favorite series and start a --flamewar-- heated discussion about motivations of one of the main characters. In the age of internet, the possibilities for communications are endless.

(In-person/private communications is harder, but that's not what the post was about)

Re: You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

#22

Post by hnbear »

I have the "hide comments section" turned on my ad blocker. Makes the internet a much nicer place in general on a lot of general news/info type sites that aren't explicitly for discussion (eg. HN, Reddit).

I was pretty excited a couple of years back when some bigger news sites explicitly turned off their comments saying they only generated distracting noise and added no value.

Then, after that I can rigorously filter what I see - on Reddit I have multireddits that I care about, and set those to Home using Apollo to browse, and I keep only generally positive sub-reddits in there.

I think there's huge value in going out of you way to block negative noise in bulk. Same reason I deleted Facebook - don't invite in the noise, and don't engage with trolls.

It's the same old strategy - the only way to win is not to play.

Re: You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

#23

Post by Kamq »

oddity wrote: post #4

I was fortunate to learn this from pointless internet flamewars early in my life. Understand why you're in an argument and what you hope to accomplish by being in an argument. On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy. I think applying this has generally made me more successful outsi…

> On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy.

I'm going to disagree here. I've learned quite a lot from internet arguments. Admittedly, the majority of it was from attempting to argue positions I don't hold.

You're taking it as a given that the only goal of an argument is to convince someone, and if you can't do that, then there is no point. But there can be value in making an argument specifically in bettering your own understanding of a point.

With all that said, I will admit that some random news site's comments probably aren't the best place to do that.

Re: You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

#26

Post by SoftTalker »

bluedino wrote: post #13

Reddit is great because someone can says 1 + 1 = 3, get fifty upvotes, you can point out that it's actually 2, get downvoted into oblivion, and then some other idiot will come along and say it's 4

And worth keeping in mind that every sub, every comment section, including this place, is a self-selected narrow group that is very much not representative of public opinion in general.

Re: You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

#27

Post by simondotau »

oddity wrote: post #4

I was fortunate to learn this from pointless internet flamewars early in my life. Understand why you're in an argument and what you hope to accomplish by being in an argument. On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy. I think applying this has generally made me more successful outsi…

Like you I learned this early on. But I somehow manage to forget the lesson every time I engage on a significantly new platform. I had to re-learn it again on Twitter and on Hacker News.

It’s weird because it makes no sense rationally, but there you go.

Re: You don't have to engage with people on the Internet

#28

Post by [deleted] »

bombcar wrote: post #18
bluedino wrote: post #13

Reddit is great because someone can says 1 + 1 = 3, get fifty upvotes, you can point out that it's actually 2, get downvoted into oblivion, and then some other idiot will come along and say it's 4

I mean hacker news has it too - I’ll come along and point out that 1+1 is 10 in binary or 11 if it’s ASCII.

[deleted]
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