

How to deal with negativity on Twitter - judofyr
http://www.tail-f.org/2013-07-24

======
antirez
The list is far from complete... many of these guys are reciprocal friends and
all live nearby, it is a cultural thing mostly. It's like: we don't give a
fuck and we critique everything is stupid, except they have an impressive lack
of arguments and a very big focus on things they dislike. I can ensure you
that unfollowing is not enough of an option... both at-messages and the search
timelines are full of their tweets.

IMHO to deal with these guys the good recipe is:

1) If they have some remotely valid point, reply with arguments, try to move
them into the "arguments land", and maybe they'll say something useful for a
give project / community after all.

2) If they are trolling, you have two options, the wise one is ignoring them
and just provide facts if it is a group-conversation on Twitter. Otherwise if
you feel like that (I do), troll back. Usually this kind of personality is
found in insecure people, it is not hard to find their weakness and troll
back, can be quite funny actually.

------
Peroni
_I 'm not saying that "these people are negative"._

In the case of @zedshaw I'll happily say he's negative. Unfollowing him was
incredibly cathartic.

~~~
foyc
I've met Zed. Had dinner with him. Same with Gary. I find them really
interesting people in person to chat with. I think the point of the article
was that he wasn't attacking them personally, since he doesn't know them in-
person, but only by the personality exuded online.

------
ddod
I am not too clued into the personalities involved, but in the scheme of
things, being snarky or critical seems a lot less offensive than calling
people out by name in a semi-permanent and searchable medium to effectively
say they're assholes.

I think one of the main themes during the popularization/destruction of any
community is when a wave of "anti-negativity" comes in to sweep away any
complaints about the degrading landscape of the community.

------
hodgesmr
"Celebrity" developers on Twitter are much like political pundits on cable
news. They say polarizing things to get a reaction. They aren't gunning for
ratings, they're gunning for followers so that they can up their personal
star-power in the industry. They speak loudly to sound smart.

------
Sven7
It boils down to - I don't like hearing people say stupid things or things
that are different from what I believe.

I think this is something people have to learn to get used too, given the
unprecedented amount of noise our networks are creating.

Prior too all this noise, I am guessing the only people who had to really deal
with endless floods of snark and criticism were politicians and celebs. Now
anyone with a popular blog post or tweet has to deal with the same thing cause
today they have the same reach.

The outcome I wouldn't be surprised by, is all of us soon start behaving like
our politicians do. Maybe thats the cost of all that information we receive.

~~~
Bosence
That's a terrible fate.

------
zalew
> How to deal with negativity on Twitter

apparently, whine.

------
nonrecursive
I think this post is spot on. You don't need to put up with negativity on
twitter, and if you're constantly snarky yourself, think about the impact
you're having on others. It feels good to have people laugh with you and
validate you, but ultimately you're helping to create a culture of aggression
that's not healthy for anyone.

Maybe this is a good place to mention that I've just finished re-writing my
tiny "positive" social network:
[http://gratefulplace.com/](http://gratefulplace.com/) . It's meant to be a
place for people to lift each other up.

------
supercoder
Who are these people ? Just unfollow them if they're annoying. ?

Edit: Ok, admittedly I didn't get to the end before posting that, as TL;DR it
concludes to unfolllow, but whoa that's a lot of writing to get to that point.

------
weego
Come on, seriously. How to deal with negativity on Twitter and he's
complaining about people he has been actively following?

Is this some better-by-proximity thing? Am I missing why it's so important to
follow person X that apparently his sanity is being compromised (though
granted I've no idea who these people are)?

Oh but I'm so inspired by their code. So look at their github repos instead.
But then I guess we will have another tedious blog post on how people are
discourteous and abrupt in pull request responses. Or have we done that
already? I've lost count.

------
xplorer
In the matter of "these people" to be honest. Who cares? It's so easy to stop
following them and reading what they have to say! I don't even know them and I
don't even care. Live your life, be happy and stop thinking about what other
have to say. Snarky people will always exist it's your choice to follow them
or not.

------
thomasfl
There are more people with the Naggum syndrome out there
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum)

Naggum was such a nice guy in person, but communication via email etc was a
horrible experience. He died unfortunately in 2009.

------
jjindev
I think good criticisms are vital, and the default in social networks is
probably to discourage them. The tendency is toward social affirmation. Even
siloing. Certainly criticism should [not] be the predominant mode. Far from
it, but we should be open to any "yeah, but ..." It might be a good catch.

------
justinph
I couldn't disagree more with the author. Twitter is what you decide to make
it. If you don't like someone's tweets, don't follow them. Make twitter the
experience you want it to be.

~~~
telemachos
I'm not sure you finished the piece. The author says this:

    
    
        Luckily, Twitter has an amazing feature that will
        instantly remove negativity from your stream. It's
        called UNFOLLOWING. The next time something feels a
        bit too snarky: Unfollow that user. Before you know
        it, you'll have a really nice place where people have
        interesting and quirky conversations.
    

So you seem to be agreeing with him, not disagreeing.

To me the larger take-away points are these:

1\. We should not idolize these people.

2\. We should try to be better ourselves.

~~~
jamesbritt
There's an additional point: People may not realize just how negative the come
across on Twitter.

I'm sure some people do, and do so on purpose, and if that's their choice then
great. Follow or unfollow.

But if you find yourself turning to Twitter to vent you may not realize that,
to many people, all you do is vent and complain. It may only be a small part
of your total personality but if that's all you're showing to some people
that's what they'll use to judge you.

A corollary to this might be that people should not be so quick to judge
others based on some small sampling of their comments or tweets.

There's a very good chance they've said and done much more than what you've
just happened to come across on the Intarwebs, and you've only seen a small
part of that, and even that has been filtered though specific media and
circumstances.

Perhaps apply Postel's Law to social interaction.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle)

------
swatkat7
I, personally find content on Twitter, something I'm able to skip over pretty
quickly as compared to Facebook where social context is key. Negativity,
hence, doesn't really matter, does it?

------
_sabe_
This is like the strangest blog post I've ever read. He concludes that the
best thing is to unfollow people you don't like, and also that you should
focus on positivism. Yet apparently something is bugging him enough to write
this rant as if any one of those that he calls out even would care? :S

How narcissistic are people these days? You where not born into this world to
be exempted from negative people, morons, idiots, insults, offenses and
whatever life throws at you!

Edit: Let's all create a blog post and announce it on HN, anytime you unfollow
someone because you got a little offended for them speaking their mind. I'm
sure this will be a wonderful place then!

