In other news, nerds are human, and posture and bully and jockey for recognition like all humans do.
Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
21–30 of 89 posts
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#22From reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, I think it boils down to self importance. We like to put others down because it makes us feel more important. If you recognize and let go of that desire as the book tells you to do, you can use the phenomenon to your advantage instead, and you learn that making others feel important makes you win them over.
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#23[deleted]
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#24In my day, the internet was for porn. Now it's for porn AND self-righteous lectures about how many hugs everyone deserves because they're an 'innovator' or 'female' or 'lgbt' or 'autistic.'
Welcome to HN. I'd rate that troll 2/10, as it was a pretty obvious troll for a community of smart people. Hopefully nobody here would bite on something so obvious; that might have worked better on Reddit.
(You should go back.)
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#25You can't really compare skate-boarding critics to 'nerds' behind a screen. For 1, the reason we have so much of this is because of the anonymity of it all. It's quite easy to criticise others in an abusive manner when nobody/barely anybody knows who you are. In real life that wouldn't happen to such a degree.
but why this is happening? why people have that trait of behaving like this when they are confident about anonymity? probably it's consequence of problems in teenage-hood, or something. and adding to this topic, i'm also curious about reasons why people are 'trolling', especially when their 'trolling' is offensive, angry. and i have no clue what causes that behavior..
In a way I suppose because it's easy. A lot of people are unsure of themselves and feel better after they tell someone else just how dumb he is. The thought is: "Gee, I 'm not so dumb, just look at that guy!" Most designers I know tend to be unsure deep inside. Nerds? Could be just the same.
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#26Honestly I can't relate to this at all. Most of the people I work with (professionally and personally) are perpetually self-critical despite being very intelligent and more than capable. The humility comes from growth over time and being able to remember doing work they'd consider terribly flawed today. If you're working with arrogant people, they're probably not growing and it'll make it harder for you to as well.
I took it to be more about nerds online. I haven't met too many people face to face that are even a tenth as rude as 90% of the people I see online. Of course, I arbitrarily picked those numbers. I'm going to point that out before I get flamed.
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#27"(And yes, I realize that this post is super-critical. How meta)"
Protip: just because you realize the irony of your post doesn't excuse you from being part of the problem as well.
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#28This post is extremely stupid. What is this, the first grade? If you can't take honest criticism, you suck. If you think computer technology is full of mean people, try working in finance. My peers don't hesitate to give me honest criticism and that's one of the things I like most about CS. Maybe you should start your own company called "we should be super nice to each other all the time" and have your product be an email subscription service where your clients receive affirmations like "you are a skilled person with value and you have a cute chin" along with some heart graphics and sound effects.
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#29What do you think about stackoverflow.com?
Re: Nerds, we need to have a talk (2011)
#30The worst thing that can happen to a Show HN post is people totally ignoring it. When I post something of my own here, I expect a certain amount of honesty and criticism, as long as it is constructive.
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.