When someone posts on forums and social media, IME it's very common that the replies focus on how they can "make OP wrong". They only seem to care about how OP can be interpreted as ignorant or illogical or immoral, rather than insightful or helpful. I am sure I'm as guilty of this as anyone else.
It would be good if we understood this phenomenon better, why we do it and how we can be more balanced in our approach to what others say online.
> They only seem to care about how OP can be interpreted as ignorant or illogical or immoral, rather than insightful or helpful.
This is tied to the societal confusion that wrong is the same as bad. Culturally it's bad to be wrong, so we are made to feel ashamed when we're wrong. Really, we should be grateful because it gives us the chance to learn and grow. Being wrong isn't bad, staying wrong might me.
And then you tie in a societal misperception that some people hold that life is a zero sum game, and you can only get ahead by tearing someone else down, and you get the modern internet.
That’s a very good point. Being wrong is bad, changing your mind is bad, so people stick to something they know is probably wrong but changing and admitting that is even worse.
Agreed. I also think a lot of people don't know the difference between knowing something to be true and believing it to be true. I suspect most of us spend quite a few years in this space. It takes a commitment to epistemic honesty and self awareness to get past this. Though, I'm not sure humans can completely shake it.
The problem is that an online comment is not a dialogue.
If I'm conversing with someone in real life, and they say something I strongly disagree with, I can disagree, and we can discuss and perhaps they tell me that I misunderstood them, or they articulated themselves incorrectly, or we are proceeding from different assumptions, etc. I'm reading something online, and I reach a sentence that I strongly disagree with, I essentially have to stop reading at that point, because from that point on I have diverged from being in alignment with the perspective of the author. And there's no back-and-forth to be had, so I need to state my point as clearly as possible - otherwise someone will just do the same thing back to me.
I dunno, I kind of feel like I'm probably the type of person that's being described here, but I don't really intend to "make OP wrong". I just don't see any other option other than to state my disagreement as plainly as possible, so other people can pick it apart.
> The problem is that an online comment is not a dialogue.
I agree, but I think it has more to do with how online comments are presented. Start with that word, comments. The very word suggests a response rather than a dialogue.
Or look at it a different way, look at it from the perspective of how content is presented online. Have you ever noticed how the host of some YouTube videos invite people to comment with a prompt, such as soliciting information? It is meant to encourage positive conversations. Unfortunately, this is relatively rare with written content. People who have positive things to say may say those things, but negative comments are usually going to win out because the people who make those comments feel that it has to be said. Of course, you are going to have extremes on either side. A community of disciplined readers may keep things positive against all odds and a community of trolls are going to troll, but the lack of a prompt to encourage dialogue is simply gambling on the outcome.
> Have you ever noticed how the host of some YouTube videos invite people to comment with a prompt, such as soliciting information? It is meant to encourage positive conversations.
This is a great insight. I always wondered why video platforms seemed to have much more positive comments than text platforms, but now it makes sense. Most videos have some prompt ("leave a comment below if you have X" or "if this made you remember a funny time in your life leave a comment on my video") to answer whereas most text doesn't which primes folks to respond negatively.
On the other hand, most people double down even when they've been thoroughly corrected. I find that behavior even worse, somehow, than the typical, curt "make OP wrong" response.
That's because finding out the mistakes in OP is one of the biggest benefits of the public comment section. Let's say I read a post about how NEW-TECH is so much better that the current state of the art. I may now be convinced to try it, but how do I know what's written in OP is not omitting serious downsides? That's where the HN (and other fora) comes in: read the comments and see if there are any problems with it.
And according to the golden rule, this means I should also focus on negative comments. If someone told me an important NEW-TECH-1 downside in the past, and I see NEW-TECH-2 and I know its downside (maybe because I had to try it at work, maybe because I am an expert in the area), then I better hop in and post that.
Positive experiences are also useful, but they feel redundant: after all, if OP is positive about NEW-TECH, it likely already mentions all the good things already.
(note that "OP" is original post, not original poster. Arguing against people on internet is almost always a bad idea. Arguing against specific posts is much better.)
The thing is, if I'm looking for how something is wrong, I'm looking for substantive criticism. If someone says something like "yeah okay great system design but only BILLIONAIRES are going to be using this so late stage capitalism <insert rant on inequality here>" then that's not really substantive it's more of a rant by the author disguised as criticism. When a culture of criticism and negativity sets in you get a lot more of these rant-forms of tangential criticism than substantive criticism because it's much easier to write unsubstantive criticism than substantive criticism. Couple this with a tendency for folks to comment on titles rather than articles and you can get a ton of negativity slop all written in less time than it takes to read the article.
It's a fine line. A culture too positive and you get shills and "+1 that looks great" repeated endlessly. A culture too negative and you get tangential rants disguised as criticism.
The focus is not really on making some nebulous "OP" wrong, as if anyone thinks about anything but themselves. The focus is compelling the software to give a result in response. The more obtuse a comment is, the more likely the algorithm will deliver.
> why we do it
Because there is no value in writing a comment that doesn't offer a result. You'd write in your private journal instead if that is what you were looking for. Different tools for different jobs.
> how we can be more balanced in our approach to what others say online.
No need to try and make your hammer a screwdriver when you can use an actual screwdriver just as easily instead. That experience is found in not being online and going outside to talk to people rather than software instead. Use the right tool for the job, as they say.
Part of it is because people who simply agree don’t have anything to say.
Comments like “^ This”, are generally frowned on, because they don’t contribute knowledge to the discussion and we have votes to show agreement. Constructive criticism does. I think this is a good thing, on forums like HN I prefer constructive criticism over unconstructive praise.
However, it doesn’t explain unconstructive criticism (“how OP can be interpreted as ignorant or illogical or immoral”). Maybe people don’t know how to criticize gently and helpfully*, or being rude correlates more with expressing your opinion.
* My advice would be: make objective points and focus on the content, don’t make subjective points or attack the commenter.
It seems implied here that the main things that happen online are unconstructive praise and constructive or unconstructive criticism? So I wonder what's going on with the fourth possibility, constructive feedback that is neutral-to-positive. Why does that box go unmentioned? Are we somehow especially bad at, or uninterested in, doing stuff that fits in this category?
In my mind, there are three kinds of positive constructive feedback:
- Constructive criticism, but worded nicely. "This is a cool project, it would be cooler if..." is a nicer way (with some praise) of saying "This part isn't very good: ... [inverted]"
- Appreciating a specific part of the project, which I think is the technical definition of "constructive praise". "I especially liked X". This is useful because it implicitly suggests what to emphasize or elaborate (the part being praised) and what to improve or change (other parts). Unfortunately this may be the rarest, especially on HN; it's at least rarer than constructive criticism.
- Suggestions for new features. Actually these are pretty common on HN. I was lumping them with criticism ("you don't have X") but that's just a reinterpretation, and any constructive feedback can be reinterpreted as criticism ("I especially liked X" => "Every part was bad except X"). That's probably why I didn't address the other kinds of feedback, but thinking about it more, criticism is only the feedback that's phrased negatively.
Most content is promoting a product or someone's personal brand, or trying to get you the reader to do something. Even if the information in the post is true, it is much less likely that you should take the action that is implied (buy the thing, subscribe to the blog, join the cause). In a way almost everything is metaphorically wrong because our time is a scarce resource. People like to point out things that are wrong.
Conversly, the best way to get help fast is to state something wrong and wait for someone to correct you. Only asking takes more time to get an answer.
Probably because helpful people will be driven away when they open a thread and see contrarian attitudes. But contrarians that open a thread and see helpful attitudes will just be contrarian towards both OP and the helpful people.
So yes, there may be effects in play like zero-sum thinking, anonymity, ego, obstinacy, or self-selection for strong opinions or real-life jerks.
But it almost doesn't matter whether contrarian attitudes really are "very common". Absent a force that mitigates this unbalanced outcome matrix, it's almost an asymptotic statistical certainty that any Internet thread with enough participants will have enough contrarians in it that the entire thread (and the dominant strategy for anyone who wants to participate in the thread) devolves towards contrarianism.
Nowhere is this urge (and the reward for it) stronger than HN. In the majority of comment sections, the top comment is one that pounces on a few words from the posted article, however tangential or self-serving.
I definitely agree it happens more than ideal on HN as far as I've seen.
However, HN is also one of the few places where it's not uncommon for me to see people push back on it. And often comments that "pounce on a few words" are offering valid criticism on only that part IMO, while still accepting the larger work that's been posted.
It would be good if we understood this phenomenon better, why we do it and how we can be more balanced in our approach to what others say online.