51–60 of 94 posts
"either this site is fake or nothing works WTF"
The annoying part was they didnt use an email address and I could not contact them to see what the problem was. The bizarre part was that same user was the most active for the next 2 days...? Still not sure what the problem was...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst part of that story is that his friends probably didn't mean it. Probably the meanest thing is people that don't believe in what you're doing but don't want to say it. They think it will discourage you. So, you go on thinking "well, they liked it at least" when they didn't. That's bad.
Trying to charge for your service is one way to quickly find out what people thing.
[ Sorry. Too late to correct the original comment. ]
Several years ago I co-founded a small game company. We busted our butt working 80 hours a week for months on end to get stuff done. We had one game that we shipped and were proud of; it was a budget game, but it was superior to many other games at that price point ($20). Anyway, one reviewer wrote: "I would prefer the soothing comfort of a spork being gouged in my eye rather than playing a few more minutes of this g…
If you want to see mean, try writing essays.
I can understand how demoralizing it can be -- short of re-evolving the human race, what is a good way to deal with this so you can stay positive and energized?
If you want to see mean, try writing essays.
And oddly, it happens more on the innocuous posts than ones I'd expect. For instance, I once called XKCD "about as funny as a partial birth abortion" and got a pretty good dialogue going with Randall Munroe. (Maybe I shouldn't be surprised a comic strip author took it in good humor.) Shortly after I wrote an article about why I think Android has a good shot at ending up on more smart phones than OSX and got death threats.
If you want to see mean, try writing essays.
It brings up a good question -- is an essayist obligated to read people's responses? Or do you hire someone to filter out negative responses? (Not necessarily opposing viewpoints, just reddit level commentary.) I can understand how demoralizing it can be -- short of re-evolving the human race, what is a good way to deal with this so you can stay positive and energized?
I probably have thicker skin than most though. A lot of writers have low self-esteem, so might actually be damaged by the insults. I just feel bad for the person who writes a 500 word essay about why I'm an asshole in my comment section, partially because I know he (and it's always a he) must be an extremely unhappy person for that to seem like a valid use of his time, and partially because he spent a half hour writing something that I deleted with one click.
It was a rough period, but I stuck to it because it's something I believe in. Thankfully, in the end, the community became more positive and supportive of each other, the user-created content has improved a lot, and registrations keep climbing.
I've thought about writing an essay or two about the effects of competition on creativity and education in the arts. It will probably draw even more hate from the die-hard competition crowd, but I think it's important, and I have a pretty unique perspective on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the fundamental problem is that writing essays seems presumptuous to a lot of people. They're used to the old print media model in which the only people who got to publish essays were credentialled experts in whatever they were about. That restriction is now gone. Online anyone can publish whatever they want. But I think it still seems to a lot of people that anyone using the essay form is implicitly claiming…
Yes, you mentioned that in http://www.paulgraham.com/newthings.html That explains the dismissive comments. The angry and really mean ones can be explained perhaps as people feeling threatened for whatever reason?