
Too many people have peed in the pool - ctz
http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/15/peedinthepool/
======
bricemo
There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral
emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a
very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this
unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media.

Smithsonian had a good short article on it:
[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-
go...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-goes-viral-
fastest-180950182/)

Research shows that amazing good news, like a huge leap forward in cancer
research, is even more viral. But unfortunately those happen much more rarely
up than someone saying something stupid and getting lambasted.

Ryan Holiday's book "Trust me I'm lying" also really opened my eyes to how a
lot of this stuff works.

~~~
derefr
I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned
outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's
outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community.

Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature
that people would never be able to abide it?

(Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged _at_ the community—or its
management—and that'd be sort of an insidious policy in that case. I think it
could still work if there was a "side" area—like MetaFilter's MetaTalk—that
allowed outrage, but with the strong rule of not linking to the side area
_from_ the regular area, so people wouldn't just be having the same viral
arguments by link-proxy.)

~~~
randomacct44
I've been playing Clash Royale on iPad (it's a multiplayer battle game set in
the Clash of Clans universe that essentially drops the base building element
and concentrates on the strategic combat).

Generally, competitive multiplayer games can be pretty harsh (devolving into
toxic) communities. Clash Royale addresses this problem in an interesting way.
You're allowed to communicate with your opponent, but only from a fixed
vocabulary. There's just no way to be really hostile - the closest it gets is
an angry face, which says more "I'm frustrated!" than anything else. There are
a few faces and some simple speech -- "Good luck!", "Well played!", etc.

This has a really nice effect - it's actually a pleasant game to play and it's
pretty common to get a 'Good game' or 'Well played' at the end, or even during
the game when you make a good move. It works well in this situation because
it's a 1-vs-1 game -- you aren't coordinating complex actions with teammates,
which is where I think something like this would fall down.

Without hostility being in the vocabulary to begin with, you don't really feel
like anything is missing and it gets around the whole hurt-feelings problem of
'banning' nicely in this case.

~~~
meric
I like using the 'Well played!' when my opponent makes a horrendously bad
move.

~~~
Dr_tldr
Blizzard gave us six inoffensive emotes, and we still find a way to engage in
asshole behavior with them. It's kind of inspiring, actually.

~~~
Kurtz79
With open chat in Hearthstone, wars would be fought, friendships would be
hopelessly broken and feuds would run eternal.

------
jonstokes
I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation.
Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans
on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a
bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-
xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-
vs.-them thing on it that people would look at and amuse themselves with.

Now thanks to Twitter and FB, these little types of tribal territorial
markings are just about all that's left of public discourse.

I see things get passed around and think, 20 years ago this would have been
mimeographed and hung on a break room bulletin board, where it might have
acted as a crude conversation starter about some aspect of "who are we?". But
now people consider sharing and liking these things as their /contribution/ to
a conversation.

It's like the way that millennials communicate with emoji, except it's image
macros and memes and slogans and "gotchas" and hot takes that we consume,
copy, and share. The copying and sharing of all that stuff is what passes for
discourse now.

Me, I think that this development is double-plus bad.

~~~
AJ007
There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be
derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban
legends which were debunked four decades ago.

Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small
group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the
reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a relative one.
I saw it happen to very small online communities in the 90s. In some respects,
I watched it occur on a community I ran nearly 10 years ago.

Facebook's aggressive censorship along with non-public networks give each user
a white washed micro-community. Public forums, such as Twitter and Instagram,
do not.

~~~
chasing
> There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons...

I hate this super-condescending attitude.

Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear (which, don't pat
yourself on the back yet: there may be things these "morons" know way more
about than you do), it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just
be completely dismissed...

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear

> it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely
> dismissed...

Devil's advocate: If you're above average intelligence, you're smarter than a
majority of the populace by definition. Why would you not then dismiss the
thoughts and ideas of those less educated?

One person's condescension is another person's logic.

~~~
smithkl42
The obvious answer: because if you're wise, you realize that raw intelligence
is a fairly small part of what makes someone worth listening to on a given
question. On most questions of morals or politics, I'd rather listen to
someone of average intelligence, but with a humble, good and patient
character, than an MIT grad who's convinced they know everything.

~~~
enraged_camel
Interesting. I'm not sure I can relate, though. I'd rather listen to
Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins talk about evolution and atheism than
someone of average intelligence.

~~~
jimbokun
Because you really just want reinforcement for ideas you already believe?

~~~
enraged_camel
I didn't say anything about whether I agree with those ideas or not. Stated
simply, I'd rather hear any given argument from someone who is intelligent
than someone who isn't. Extraneous factors, such as the arguer's humility or
tone of delivery, don't enter the picture for me when evaluating the merit of
the idea being argued.

------
malsun
I left Twitter last year when it looked like the 'professionally offended'
were becoming too influential. They didn't affect me as I keep a low profile,
but it was like seeing an omen and noticing friends were buying into their
hype.

The way Twitter is now pandering to this lot with the recently announced
Orwellian-style group, and other odd behaviour suggests that they approve of
the current momentum.

I'm just glad to no longer have its weight on my shoulders. Life is great
without social media, but it must be difficult for public figures who stick
with it for the free promotion.

~~~
llamataboot
By "professionally offended", I assume you mean mostly marginalized people who
are the recipients of torrents of abuse/death threats/rape threats/sexual
harrassment/etc nearly every day they are active on twitter.

~~~
ryanlol
There's a plenty of people turning being offended into a business, see:

[https://www.patreon.com/zoe](https://www.patreon.com/zoe)

[https://www.patreon.com/freebsdgirl](https://www.patreon.com/freebsdgirl)

------
carsongross
I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and
the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have
such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable
differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and
so on.

It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we
will end up with a totalitarianism of one ideology or another, violence, or
both.

~~~
seren
I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach
by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance
to last in the long run.

Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat
confined and not always spilling in the common public space.

Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but
it seems you can not have a peaceful community without an heavy dose of
groupthink.

A long time ago, at the dusk of the XXth century, I used to believe that
Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have
access to many different opinions and unbiased sources. Arguably that was a
pretty naive view, and instead we got new tribes disagreeing on almost
everything conceivable.

~~~
Paul-ish
I have been waiting a long time for someone to use lessons learned from
recommender systems to build a social media site like reddit, but rather than
having users group themselves up, they would be shown posts algorithmically,
based on how they have voted in the past. For example, if I vote for a lot of
pro EFF posts, maybe I will see more posts about free software or something
like that.

This also allows the site to treat votes as merely an expression of
preference, not a judgment of quality (which is hard to define). Many sites
try to enforce a rule that says "Don't downvote things disagree with." This is
an impossible battle to win, there will always be people who downvote things
they don't agree with. This behavior needs to be accounted for in the
platform.

This is more "socially scalable" to me.

~~~
spatulan
That sounds horrible. I don't want the internet to become a giant echo
chamber. I want to hear differing views from time to time, because I might be
wrong.

~~~
HCIdivision17
I would imagine you could also similarly find the things you either stay away
from or actively dislike. Sort of a topical noise cancellation. Train it to
know your preferences, but to occasionally give material outside the comfort
zone. I think you'd really need a substantial map of topics to have a good
understanding of where contrasts lie, but we're likely on track with the
datasets currently being built in public sites like Reddit.

Really, I'm surprised this feature isn't implemented anywhere, since one of
the joys of the Internet is being delighted by a new idea you haven't seen
before. I certainly would appreciate filtering of the obvious rubbish like Fry
is exasperated with, but having quality dissenting opinions available is
precious.

------
michaelwww
I've been accused of being sexist exactly once in my life, by an anonymous
male friend of a woman on Twitter because I dared to answer a question she
asked. I didn't realize she was asking in jest. Her friend said I should have
known that she was a very knowledgeable person (I didn't) and her question was
a joke, and because I answered it I was implying that she didn't know the
answer and therefore was manspainling and generally being a sexist dick. This
person wasn't satisfied and pursued me for several tweets until I apologized.
I did apologize, but I've noticed that it kind of soured me on Twitter. I'm
proud of my record of working women in tech and raising an independent
daughter. I use my real name on Twitter and I don't need some anonymous
busybody attacking me in public for dubious reasons. Perhaps if Twitter had a
real name policy it would level the playing field. I'm sure a famous person
like Stephen Fry is under constant attack from anonymous trolls.

~~~
tokai
>Perhaps if Twitter had a real name policy it would level the playing field

Didn't work at all with youtube comments.

~~~
ashark
We need the _opposite_. The collision of economic incentives to self-promote
online under one's real name with _the way the Web works_ has been a disaster,
in _many_ ways. We need a _no real names_ policy.

------
jccc
> 'to turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping.’

I had to look that one up:

Peace, by Rupert Brooke, 1914:

"A paradoxical image, comparing going to war as an act that cleanses the
participants, like a dip in a pool or river."

[https://movehimintothesun.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/rupert-
br...](https://movehimintothesun.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/rupert-brooke-
peace/)

I'm assuming that connection was intentional, because Stephen Fry is smarter
than me.

~~~
pgeorgi
Just remember that this vision of war was the prevailing attitude in pre-WW1
Europe (maybe also in America, but what do I know?).

It helped that the (thought) leaders espousing such nonsense rarely fought at
the front lines. For them the only things that could be bruised by war were
their ego and their wallet.

WW1's reach changed that (and WW2 shook it up some more)

------
chatmasta
My Facebook newsfeed feels like a cocktail party where the host has
surreptitiously arranged for the silent majority to observe a performance
wherein the most "unsophisticated" guests squabble with each other over
politics. The opinions on the feed, regularly produced by the same small group
of people, are rife with dramatization and lacking any substantive argument.
Yet hardly any of them come from friends who I know closely on an individual
basis.

Facebook seems like a platform that amplifies the voice of a minority on the
outskirts of the social graph, distributing its opinions to the silent
majority. This seems good in theory, and would hopefully result in some
meaningful improvements to civil discourse. However, it remains unclear
whether expectation meets reality in that regard.

~~~
rdancer
I have found that unfriending/muting people whose contributions to my feed I
don't value makes all the difference. Facebook is what you make of it.

~~~
spin
I totally agree. I have un-followed a few people and now I only friend people
that actually want to be friends with. I try to avoid posting political or
technical things (mostly). So now, my FB is mostly just sharing pics and
events with friends. (Actual friends, that I see IRL.)

(... now if only I could get rid of the ads...)

~~~
rdancer
> (... now if only I could get rid of the ads...)

uBlock Origin

~~~
spin
Oh, hey! That worked like a charm. Thank you.

------
haberman
Sanctimonious indignation is toxic. But to be fair, people post really
offensive stuff too, and often it's well-meaning people who don't even seem to
realize what they are doing.

The best example I've seen lately is Richard Dawkins, who posted a video I
won't link to where an Islamist and a Feminist are singing a song together.
The video makes a real point that isn't intrinsically offensive. But the
highly caricatured portrayal of these two people is, to me at least, a pretty
inflammatory gesture. Also it came out that the feminist caricature is based
on a real person who has received death threats for her work.

Humans aren't programmed to live together with people who are really different
from them. We evolved to preserve our in groups and unify against out groups.
We have huge blind spots about how other people will perceive things. We can
absolutely learn, but it takes effort and we'll make mistakes as we go.
Twitter is all of this happening in real time.

~~~
Niten
I think you've recognized something important here, which is that offense is
generally a subjective matter. In such cases an clear-headed statement of
objection may be warranted, but dogpiling and outright bullying is never
excusable.

------
lordnacho
It's a wonder he lasted as long as he did.

I've joined a number of online forums through the years, and I've always ended
up leaving them due to a spiral of "tone gets rough / the good people leave".

I'm still in this one, but I guess we'll see how long it lasts here. Seems
different somehow, but they all do in the beginning.

What are some innovations in solving the asshole/quality spiral? There's lots
of takes on moderation, but what are some interesting ones?

~~~
blhack
I've been on this one for a pretty long time. A little over 7 years according
to my user page.

The quality has not noticeably gone down. There are a lot less technical
articles now than I feel like there used to be, but that might very well just
be because I've gotten more technical, and now everything seems like an
opinion.

I think it's because HN is actually willing to defend itself. We used to have
days where everybody would ONLY submit articles about some obscure programming
language (although I have forgotten which one it was...not arc, I don't
think...scala maybe? I think it started with an S).

We don't seem to do that anymore, but I think the culture is still there.
People are willing to tell you to leave if you're not a good member. That's
really important.

~~~
dasil003
Indeed, I joined 9 days after you (and have within 1% of your karma (!)), and
my experience is the same. HN was founded with a keen awareness of how online
forums tend to go downhill over time, and there are specific rules to avoid
it.

But IMHO, the saving grace is the fact that HN is not built to _grow_. Growth
is what ruins every online community. There are still plenty of small
communities have have been going fine for years or even decades because they
didn't experience explosive growth. As soon as you have something like Twitter
with massive investment and market expectations, you know the community is
done for. To Twitter's credit though, the mechanic of following individuals
does scale much better than a forum though. Subreddits were also a good idea
that allows some community while scaling. But in both those cases it works
because they create sub-divided communities rather than one massive one which
inevitably breaks down.

~~~
elcapitan
It also doesn't have to live on life support from the advertising industry.
That's quite important.

------
djaychela
I'm not surprised - I wouldn't be famous for all the money available (not an
option anyway, particularly given my lack of talent!) - so many people now
think they have a right to you, if they're a fan, or they've bought your work,
or they don't like your work, or whatever. Twitter seems to bring those sorts
of things much closer (as, of course, does much social media), and I'd think
anyone with any opinions on just about anything will end up getting drawn into
arguments over just about everything with people they've never met, whose
opinions they probably wouldn't care about in any other sphere.

I seriously think there will be a huge backlash against all of this sort of
thing in the next few years - people have binged on it ad nauseam, and given
the way my two teenage step-kids have reacted (removing themselves almost
entirely from most social media, and only using it to talk to people they
actually know and like IRL), I'd think there's more to come, in terms of
people just leaving such an arena behind.

~~~
mediocrejoker
> I'm not surprised - I wouldn't be famous for all the money available (not an
> option anyway, particularly given my lack of talent!)

Not sure that's a prerequisite anymore.

------
JamesBaxter
I've been thinking a lot about online communities since I listened to "So
you've been publicly shamed" by Jon Ronson [0].

I quite like twitter just now but I don't follow many people and nobody
follows me. I often see tweets from indie game devs discussing yet another
Twitter storm in a teacup and I'm frustrated by how much stupid stuff
escalates.

[0] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-
Shamed/dp/033...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-
Shamed/dp/0330492292/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455554372&sr=1-1&keywords=so+you%27ve+been+publicly+shamed)

------
dustingetz
Twitter is powered by an evil feedback loop where making people upset makes
twitter more money. Their UX is designed to generate easily-amplified content,
and amplify it, and this is the unanticipated consequence. I doubt they can
fix the feedback loop without torpedoing engagement.

~~~
CM30
Isn't that like any news site ever? There's a reason why articles in tabloids
and on clickbait websites tend to be as inflammatory as possible, because the
inevitable flame war in the comments will likely bring the page views (and the
links from people attacking it elsewhere will bring the backlinks for SEO
purposes).

------
k-mcgrady
Twitter needs to be very careful. I use Facebook to follow my friends. I use
Twitter to follow influencers/celebrities. If they start leaving and Twitter
is just left with the musings of the average joe they're going to lose and lot
of users.

------
danieka
I think this is a natural consequence of the twitter format. The short message
motivates (some) users to win cheap points, offend or simply scream loudly in
order to get attention. In my Luddite mind the political conversation is
becoming Twitter-fied and now focuses more on short sound bites rather than a
sound discourse.

~~~
rglullis
_Now?_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death)

    
    
      [Neil Postman] also repeatedly states that the eighteenth
      century, being the Age of Reason, was the pinnacle for rational
      argument. Only in the printed word, he states, could complicated
      truths be rationally conveyed. Postman gives a striking example:
      Many of the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have
      walked down the street without being recognized by the average
      citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their
      written words. However, the reverse is true today. The names of
      presidents or even famous preachers, lawyers, and scientists call
      up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any,
      of their words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively
      consist of carefully chosen soundbites.

~~~
Semiapies
Soundbites created by speech writers other than themselves, for that matter.

------
bshimmin
Probably worth noting as a bit of context to this that Fry was presenting the
BAFTA awards last night, said something offensive about someone who was a
friend of his (but the public wouldn't necessarily have known that), and
people on social media reacted badly.

~~~
tomku
People on social media reacted stupidly, but then he tried to engage the horde
and prove that they were wrong to be offended by retweeting dozens (hundreds?)
of people who backed him up. That was a strategy that could not result in
anything but defeat and misery. He worked himself up into a rage trying to
change the internet's mind, and when he failed, he took his ball and went
home. I was and still am a fan of his, but for his own mental health, I'm glad
he's not on Twitter any more.

~~~
bshimmin
I agree with this. I like Stephen Fry too, but I think his public persona of
being this loveable gentleman of the people - entertaining, eccentric, erudite
- quite often clashes with his tendency to make either silly or spiteful
remarks in public; and the difference between Fry and the people who make
their living from saying horrible things (eg. comedians in Britain like Jimmy
Carr or Frankie Boyle) is that 1) there's an expectation that these people
will say horrible things periodically; and 2) they can take the abuse when
it's dished back to them.

(I personally very much enjoy James Blunt's approach to Twitter.)

------
kyledrake
My new years resolution was to stop using Twitter actively, and I've basically
done that (spare a few offenses). I was intending to pin up a link to a page
explaining my reasons, but haven't gotten to it yet.

Public venues like Twitter have devolved into pitchfork-wielding mob battles
over extremely stupid, petty nonsense (on _all_ sides of the political
spectrum), and I expect this to just continue to happen over and over again as
the influentials of the "Twitterati" get better at pushing manipulable people
into whatever half-baked agenda they want to use them for.

The "influentials" are the people most rewarded by this system of relentless
psuedo-controversy: petty, shrill narcissists that contribute little (or
negatively) to anything of genuine value, merit or productivity.

Through a few personal experiences, I've been made a lot more cognizant of the
fact that I won't be able to avoid the mobs by staying out of them. I've
decided it's best to just not participate at all, and to work to break the
systems that enable the mobs in the first place by coming up with better
systems.

We need to go back to having sane, civil, intelligent discourses about real
issues online, and figuring out the best way to facilitate them. Twitter is
never going to work for that, no matter how many lunatics-running-the-asylum
tribunals they come up with.

------
michh
I think this is a tricky problem to properly solve. Or rather: An opportunity
for Twitter to really mess up attempting to fix this.

A big part of what makes Twitter interesting/worthwhile is the ability to
interact with lots of different people you wouldn't have stumbled upon.

But also, especially when you're just starting out on Twitter, people you
otherwise wouldn't have been able to get through to.

On Twitter I get to have a conversation with someone famous (in the industry
but even bona fide celebrities like the author). People who I could never send
an email, letter, call and actually get a response. On Twitter, I have a
really good chance someone like Stephen Fry will actually read my tweet and
even responding. I'm guessing the odds I'd be able to get him on the phone or
have him accept my Facebook friend request are rather low.

If Twitter builds a filter bubble around all famous/verified users, it loses a
big chunk of it's a appeal to the nobodies. Which includes both trolls and
decent people. And I think Twitter can't do without the civilized nobodies.

~~~
tomp
> I think this is a tricky problem to properly solve

I don't think it is. I think a few simple settings could easily fix this
problem; like (enabling/disabling) direct messages from people you don't
follow, and customizable opt-in-able blacklists (of either users or
words/phrases) that could be shared throughout the community. That way, some
would be able to keep saying whatever they want, while others would be able to
not feel offended by them.

------
VonGuard
Sad to say, but humans have been bred over millennia to be clannish, violent,
and prone to witch hunts. Quite literally, all of European history is about
taking the peasants off to murder other people, and bringing back only the
strongest ones who survived the battle to spread their seed to the next
generation. The ones in the aristocracy interbred to the point of serious
genetic flaws p
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_intermarriage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_intermarriage)
]. So, choose your side: the ones born from the strongest, heartiest fighters,
or the ones produced by many generations of selective in-breeding... At least,
this is the story for us white folks....

Humans are just irrational, flawed, and prone to freak out. And I, for one,
welcome our new robotic overlords...

------
rblstr
I watched the BAFTAs with my girlfriend last night and I have to say, when
Stephen made that comment we both said 'woah that's a bit mean' out loud. Of
course, being the general public we're not aware of Mr Fry's relationship with
the lady who won the award but from an outside perspective it came across as a
bit bullying.

I only found out today about the twitter backlash and I don't think it should
be lumped in with so called SJW movements, or the anti-anti-offensive
movement, it really sounded like a hurtful unnecessary comment that he
shouldn't have made without context or clarifying their relationship. It
really seemed un-characteristically mean for Mr Fry.

~~~
KerryJones
This is the problem. He shouldn't have to clarify his relationship, he
shouldn't have to explain everything. In essence, that _destroys_ jokes.

It's not our job to know, but as we should assume innocence until proven
guilty we should assume friendliness before assuming ridicule.

If Beaven had a problem -- let her handle it. She's a big girl, we're not her
collective parents.

~~~
rblstr
Without clarifying it it looks like he stood on stage in front of a bunch of
rich celebrities and slagged off the winner of an award for not wearing
conventional dress to an award show.

I'm all for offensive comedy, but this wasn't a joke, he was basically
slagging her off in public, live on television to a room full of people.
Without context of their relationship it really looks like bullying. That's
completely different to an offensive stand up comedy joke, especially when its
so personally targeted. Some context to clarify that it wasn't mean and
they're friends would have taken the edge off the 'joke' and nobody would have
cared, but it was so off the cuff and mean it just looks like he is bullying
her, which is probably what touched a chord with so many people. I'm sure Mr
Fry is the last person who would want to be seen as bullying anyone.

~~~
monksy
Take a look at what was actually said:

"Only one of the great cinematic costume designers would come to the awards
dressed like a bag lady."

If people weren't so quick to jump on the "blame the white guy" wagon... you'd
see that it was actually a pretty clever statement.

~~~
rblstr
I mean, I watched the show, I heard what he said, it's whole tone was off
compared to the rest of the night. It really stood out and sounded awfully
harsh.

Now I'm not going to go to twitter about it, it didn't offend me but it did
come across rather mean and crass.

~~~
chippy
>it didn't offend me

Fry's post says that one of the problems is due to people being offended on
behalf of other people they have never met.

So they are not offended personally (e.g like most people), but they imagine
that it would be offensive to someone else (e.g. a minority) and decide to co-
opt this imagined offence.

It's a curious difference in being offended personally, and defending others
via imagining the offence of that other. One can see another point of view,
but its harder to imagine another changing their point of view.

~~~
rblstr
Well I'm actually curious now what the twitter response was, because as I've
expressed here, I think his 'joke' missed the mark and came off harsh, which I
found hurtful by proxy I suppose. I wouldn't like to be called that live on
television. So I'm assuming most of the response was 'that wasn't very nice I
think you should apologise for that remark' and Mr Fry's response is to get
annoyed that anyone would get offended by his comment and eventually close his
twitter account. I'm sure there were much more extreme remarks but this is
twitter, you're going to get chaff with the wheat.

I personally think he was out of line and even with the context of they were
friends I think it was a mis-judged joke. I'm not going to go on social media
to tell him about it but my opinion of him has certainly changed based on this
behaviour.

------
r721
I wonder is it so hard to build an automatic "insult" detector with all recent
progress with deep learning. Quick googling gave quite a couple of older
papers:

"Offensive Language Detection Using Multi-level Classification"

[http://www.eiti.uottawa.ca/~diana/publications/Flame_Final.p...](http://www.eiti.uottawa.ca/~diana/publications/Flame_Final.pdf)

"Automatic identification of personal insults on social news sites"

[http://labfs.eecs.northwestern.edu/~sara/Site/Publications_f...](http://labfs.eecs.northwestern.edu/~sara/Site/Publications_files/JASIST_r1.pdf)

~~~
joopxiv
When this was a topic in University a few years ago, it was still very hard to
properly detect humor, especially sarcasm. If I understood this correctly,
this whole episode was kicked of by Stephen making a joke about some lady's
attire. I don't know what would be worse; the sanctimonious fallout or his
tweet being censored by an automatic insult detector in the first place.
(actually I do: the second).

~~~
r721
I was thinking about a tool, not a universal censor :) Something like a
special place for notifications: "Hate mail" \- some people with loads of
noise replies would definitely appreciate that. Also offensive replies could
be shown last when displaying tweet with replies, for example.

------
Nickoladze
> to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know

Never thought about it like this before. Sounds really strange when you put it
this way.

------
DenisM
And so, the Eternal September strikes again [1].

There's a ton of gold in figuring out how some communities succumb to it, and
others don't.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

~~~
CM30
I suspect it's at least partly to do with the subject matter. If the community
is united around a common interest, they can (sometimes) put aside their
differences elsewhere to talk about that one thing in a moderately civil way.

If it's a free for all about anything and everything, then well, it's like
herding cats and a vicious flame war is likely to ensue at some point.

------
746F7475
What's the big deal? If you don't like how a platform works just leave it, I
haven't used either Facebook or Twitter ever (I do have accounts, but I think
you can count my posts and tweets combined with fingers of one hand) and it
hasn't affected my life at all

~~~
s_dev
Thats exactly what Stephen is doing. He doesn't like it anymore so he's
leaving. What makes it it a big deal is that twitters success is based on
prolific twitterers like Stephen Fry using the service and using it well. At
the moment people are discussing how twitter is "doomed" for many different
reasons this new piece of information just seems to add to the pile of
evidence that twitter isn't providing value to the right people and this
threatens its future.

~~~
746F7475
So then twitter dies and something better takes it's place. I really don't see
a way out of this. I mean if random people being mean is the issue what can
they do? Other than start monitoring and censoring everything tweeted

------
gadders
It's ironic that social justice warriors have driven one of the most
progressive celebrities off Twitter.

------
hindsightbias
He should have read:
[http://web.mit.edu/marshall/www/papers/CyberBalkans.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/marshall/www/papers/CyberBalkans.pdf)

------
nickysielicki
Prediction: A neo-luddite renaissance is on the horizon. The anti-social media
sentiment that has only been seen among techhies is going to spread into
otherwise-mainstream youth conservatives.

The only thing in the way is that current services have not censored, but
they're beginning to, and decentralized alternatives haven't existed.

A maturation of bitcoin over the next year, especially with the fork, will
result in bringing novel usages of the blockchain to the average consumer.

------
markatkinson
Up you go!

Best part of not having Twitter and the book of faces is the mysteriousness
that you project when attempting to court the opposite sex, either that or
just a doushy superiority complex. Either way I want nothing to do with
Facebook (twitter is useful for finding out the status of services like
Firebase etc). As far as I am concerned in life, distraction is the enemy, and
if distraction is the enemy well then that makes Facebook a windmill to my Don
Quixote.

------
bendykstra
It was through the angry backlash to a tweet that I discovered Stephen Fry.
About eight years ago, Stephen couldn't get a Windows laptop to connect to
wifi. His Twitter outburst and the reaction of Windows fans became grist for
the tech blogs, which is how I noticed it. I wonder if Stephen is
romanticising the early years of Twitter or if those angry reactions have just
become more common. (Either way, I don't blame him for leaving.)

------
gthtjtkt
This is true of almost any internet forum today. Every comment you make is
meticulously deconstructed in an effort to find some kind of "gotcha". Well,
either that or it's completely ignored.

And god forbid you have an opinion on any subject in which you don't hold a
doctorate degree. You can't even tell people "it's alright to eat eggs"
without the conversation devolving into a back-and-forth war of citations.

~~~
teach
My wife does have a doctorate degree and you still get the back-and-forth of
citations.

Because she has a PhD in nutrition (really!) I can confirm that, yes, it is
okay to eat eggs. (Though I'd shoot for organic and cage-free, personally.)

But I still get arguments/pushback. Guh.

------
6d6b73
Or maybe you just have to go to a pool in a better neighborhood? After all on
Twitter you can choose from whom you're getting status updates, can't you?

~~~
equalsione
A post the author of ggautoblocker on what is missing from twitter when it
comes to dealing with trolls etc: [https://medium.com/@randileeharper/putting-
out-the-twitter-t...](https://medium.com/@randileeharper/putting-out-the-
twitter-trashfire-3ac6cb1af3e#.gzqv4iktz)

~~~
FireBeyond
This was actually a useful post, moreso than I expected. But in it, you can
see shades of Randi's personality:

"That is dumb and you are dumb for suggesting it"

gives me memories of her latest encounter with FreeBSD, in which she tells
people they "fucking suck" (this is someone who claims to run an online
harassment organization), changed her Twitter name to "Kill All Men", posted
pictures of her drinking from a mug with the words "Male Tears" on it, etc.

But yes, many of these suggestions would go a long way to helping people
manage their Twitter experience the way they want, which is a good thing.

------
dwrs
it says right here in the HN approach to comments that "HN is an experiment.
As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our
hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to
resist decline, we can keep it from happening." the question therein is where
do we go now, and to which degree can we avoid twitter and other sites beyond
their ostensible utility

------
andrewbinstock
While I agree that much of social media is as he describes, I don't have this
problem on Twitter. I follow just over 100 people whose thoughts interest or
entertain me. I shut off the screamers, the haters, the high-emotion types.
With the result that my experience of Twitter is pleasant. Is there some
reason OP couldn't do the same?

------
maolt
The way I see it: 1: Really low barriers to entry for each snowflake to
express their views.

2: Social networks work as echo chambers, which allow anyone to find dozens
that share their views ("If they think like me, it must mean that I am
right!!").

3: Misunderstanding of the way the cyberspace works, with people not
understanding really that it is encroaching on the "physical" world, and
professing extreme opinions they would never have dreamed of voicing if not in
front of a screen in the safety and "privacy"(hum) of their home.

4: The powers that be, that is to say the social networks operators have so
much at stake that they are walking on eggs, wary of taking any action that
could jeopardise their cash cow(actual or potential).

The situation is a mix of all those factors, and the result is I think a bit
depressing.

Can you imagine our societies without a police force? Today's social networks
are not far from that imho.

------
mclovinit
I bounced back and forth on and off FB until, I bit the bullet and deleted
each one of my "friends" one by one. If I didn't do that, then I would be
plunged in an infinite loop of deactivation/reactivation hell.

It was interesting to see the reaction of people when I said I had deleted
them in order to make it less enticing for me to use my account. They were
actually offended for being deleted.

Could it be that the mere perpetual overuse (and/or misuse) of social media
breeds hypersensitivity? Hmm...I say yes. Nothing wrong with the occassional
indulgence, but there's just more to life. But that's just my worthless 2
cents.

------
jccalhoun
I think one of the problems about social media is that the experience for the
common person is often very different than that of (even moderately) famous
people. I hear tech journalists talking about their experiences on twitter and
they are so different than mine and I have to think it is because they have
thousands of followers and I have around 100. If they do something they get
tons of feedback but if I tweet the same thing I would hardly get any.
Certainly there are times when things erupt and someone becomes "famous" and
is bombarded but for most of us that doesn't happen.

------
mcv
I'm not active on twitter, but from what I've seen, particularly in the
aftermath of GamerGate, is that it's a putrid mess of hatred, threats, and
bigotry. The problem doesn't so much seem to be that people are _defending_
others, but that they are _attacking_ them.

I never really saw the point, but it in the past few years it has seemed even
more pointless. You just can't have a good, nuanced conversation in 140
characters. You can only shout one-liners and threats. It's what the medium
seems designed for.

------
pervycreeper
In a medium such as Twitter, there is not enough incentive to make users post
quality. Morons can post about whatever irrelevant nonsense they want and gain
approval from other morons. From inside a filter bubble, PC policing a
celebrity can seem incredibly courageous and clever, when in fact it is the
opposite. The potential harms of this are real. Richard Dawkins suffered a
stroke last week following such an incident, where a random interloper
peppered him with a barrage of criticism, taking her gang of followers with
her.

------
sixQuarks
Everything is evolving all the time, and future iterations are based on, a
reaction to, or rejection of what came before.

There are going to be cycles of products, some you love, some you hate, but
what won't change is that there are still like-minded people out there, no
matter what your tastes or opinions. We will learn from this generation of
social media , and future products will solve some of these problems to a
large degree, only to evolve into something we detest again - but each time it
should get a little better.

------
musesum
How about an "untweet". Basically a thumbs down for tweets that smell. Then
use collaborative UN-filtering.

Or how about using Word2Vec to usher turds to a remote part of the tweet
space. Use sliders to adjust your results. For example "I need a twitter hug.
What would happen if I turn down the 'Outrage' and turn up the 'Kittens' \--
awwww, how cute! Ok, now what would happen if I turn up the 'Death Metal' \--
kittens and death metal -- whoooah!

------
bambax
The irony here is that the person acting most offended is Stephen Fry himself,
who decides to quit in high fashion because, alleges he, some people pissed in
the pool.

Twitter is not his pool; it's not even _a_ pool: more like the sea.

Many people -- and all kinds of living things -- piss in the sea and do many
other things in it; if you're unhappy with that, well yes it's better if you
stay on the shore, but don't go around pretending you're so pure.

You're just afraid of the sea.

------
zarkov99
Assholes, the self righteous,plain evil, or simply stupid kind, are a minority
but they have a tremendous impact in any community which does punish or
prevent bad behavior. This is why we have to have door locks, police, jails,
passwords, etc. Any sufficiently large online community will end up including
a bunch of douche bags which, unconstrained by the these old school
deterrents, will eventually destroy it.

------
danharaj
The presence of justice and the absence of tension are not the same thing. I
think a lot of people have lived a large part of their lives completely
insulated from the tension that has existed in society over social justice
issues for centuries. Now that you can go on Twitter and find out exactly how
and why everyone is mad, it looks like comity and mutual respect has
evaporated. But really what has happened is that the absence of tension
engendered by the undemocratic dissemination of information in the pre-
Internet age has been revealed to be a lie: people have been angry for a while
_and they 're angry for reasons_. Shocking.

Asking someone to shut up is much easier than assuming they're acting in good
faith and have reasonable motivations that you can't perceive, because, you
know, _it 's the Internet_ and nothing is more ridiculous than a person
looking at the Internet and nodding condescendingly while explaining the exact
nature of all these human beings they disagree with.

If from the get-go you assume people are acting in bad faith and you demand
that they admit that this is the case before you even consider them as
reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead of treating them
as equals.

~~~
chc
> _people have been angry for a while and they 're angry for reasons_

The reason they're mad here, evidently, is that Stephen made a joke to his
friend. It doesn't seem like it's Stephen who failed to assume good faith.

~~~
danharaj
he made a joke to his friend in public. i have friends to whom i could shout
"i hope you fucking die, you bloated moist abscess" at, but if i did that on
twitter as a famous person without the context of our friendship readily
visible, what people ought to think?

once it came to light that he was ribbing his good friend, then people ought
to have apologized and moved on. it doesn't make them terrible people for
being a little on edge about powerful famous men ribbing less powerful, less
famous women. the world isn't in the shitter just because he was misunderstood
on twitter.

~~~
chc
But didn't you just say, "If from the get-go you assume people are acting in
bad faith and you demand that they admit that this is the case before you even
consider them as reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead
of treating them as equals"? Isn't failing to do this precisely the source of
the outrage? And yet now you seem to be suggesting it was perfectly reasonable
for people to assume bad faith and try to tear him down, up until good faith
was proven.

~~~
danharaj
I think we're using different notions of good and bad faith. My notion of good
faith is sincerity and reasonableness in intention, likewise bad faith is
insincerity and unreasonableness in intention. All these people got outraged
by interpreting Fry's tweet offensively. Are they doing it for kicks?
(insincerity) or are they just stupid? (unreasonableness)

I don't think good and bad faith is a quality of their behavior, but of their
intent and mental competence as human beings. Someone can get incredibly
outraged but be sincere and capable of explaining their feelings reasonably.
It doesn't mean that one assumes the best in others, because that is just as
spurious as assuming the worst in others. One should just call it like they
see it and think it, nothing more, nothing less.

------
wcummings
I love Stephen Fry, but I'm conflicted. On one hand, he's upset that people
are offended and without a hint of irony is obviously very offended by their
sensibilities. That said, celebrities (intentional or otherwise) have a very
different experience on social media than the lay person.

~~~
dclowd9901
You've never had anyone dig into a comment you've made looking for you to have
been the most cynical version of yourself? It's awful.

------
vectorpush
This is not a twitter problem. If you're a famous celebrity with a gigantic
megaphone you have to accept the fact that the masses are going to react to
what you put out there. I think it's funny when celebrities get all wrinkled
over internet outrage but take for granted the fact that they are leveraging
the masses (via twitter and other platforms) to boost their own careers.
Woops, you said something that some people on the internet disagree with,
suddenly you have a deluge of hate mail instead of doting adoration. Well,
what did you expect? The masses are not autonomous eye-balls, they are people
with disparate ideas and opinions and if you say things that piss some people
off, this is the reaction you get.

So, in the face of internet controversy, what does a celebrity do? Retreat to
a convenient forum where they explicitly control the discourse so they can
publicly broadcast their disdain for the fickle judgment of masses without
having to actually listen to them. I suppose the so-called SJWs aren't the
only ones that need a "safe space" to speak their minds without fear of
criticism.

------
f_allwein
Wonder if Stephen Fry will blog more often now - I noticed ths is his first
blog post since May 2015.

------
pklausler
For me, what's important is not avoiding disagreement, conflict, or rage --
what I want to somehow exclude from my social media existence is just good old
craziness. The Internet has been enormously empowering to the stark barking
mad.

------
arjn
I agree with Stephen. A while ago I came to the conclusion that widespread use
of social media such as FB, tumblr and Twitter (especially twitter), has
caused a severe degradation in public discourse and conversation.

------
stretchwithme
There's tons of crap in real reservoirs. But we filter and chlorinate.

------
guelo
In certain forums these types of posts are called Goodbye, Cruel World posts
and they are summarily ridiculed. HN takes itself too seriously to give this
post the proper treatment.

------
typon
People are blowing this way out of proportion. Stephen Fry made a shitty joke
about his friend, people objected, and he got angry at them for not finding it
as funny as he did.

He has the right to his opinion as do others. This outrage culture is only
slightly more annoying than the people who constantly bemoan it.

------
nullc
I always thought it was called _twit_ter for a reason.

------
Zikes
Now that Twitter has created a committee by which those people are given
actual power on the platform, I'd say the pool is now mostly urine with just a
bit of chlorine.

------
melted
Should have gone full @Nero, and started tearing them new ones. They can't win
against a well spoken gay person who chooses to not give a damn.

------
woah
Might have been spending too much time on the internet.

------
marban
I miss Pownce.

------
mattbgates
Get the ____out and take a piss outside of the pool, assholes.

------
moron4hire
The problem isn't that this is a Twitter problem. It's that this is a cultural
problem. People kinda suck. People kinda suck a lot.

I was having a conversation with a friend at lunch, when I started putting
ketchup on my hotdog. He looked at me and incredulously questioned, "really?
What are you, like, 8 years old?" I had never even heard of the idea that
"only children put ketchup on a hotdog." Yet here was someone I had originally
thought of as a rational human being elevating it to a serious issue.

A lot of this stuff gets defended as "just a joke", but I don't see anyone
laughing. If you're so bad at making jokes, maybe you should just give up the
practice and stick to being generally pleasant to be around.

I guess I'm lucky that I'm not famous enough to get any randos following me on
Twitter. The people who follow me are interested in my work, they aren't hero-
worshipping me. I get to have excellent conversations with people on Twitter.
But that is only because--even though it's not 100% in my control--my lack of
celebrity allows me to guide and design my Twitter sphere. For a celebrity,
they just get inundated with folks they don't want to hear from.

Just read the replies to Notch's tweets sometime. I'm surprised he hasn't
become a complete recluse. Almost every single one has some 13 year old
complaining about "Minecraft sucks now that you're gone", even though he's
been gone longer than they've been playing it.

~~~
Kiro
Where are you from? I'm very surprised anyone would even consider eating
hotdog without ketchup so it must be a cultural thing.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
It's a capital crime in Chicago, if you do it in public.

That's where the joking about it comes from; ketchup on hot dogs is one of
those things that people take jestingly serious with tongue firmly planted in
cheek at all times. Nobody _actually_ cares, nobody's _actually_ going to kill
you in Chicago despite my joke, but people interpret the joshing as caring and
demeaning because nobody can actually _take_ a joke any more, as evidenced by
GP (and which is far more often the problem). And yet here we are, lamenting
the downfall of society.

I can't even fathom a world where someone giving a friend crap over lunch for
their choice of condiment is enough to start a Serious Conversation about
Culture. That's funny in itself, honestly, but I don't want to live in that
world. _That 's_ why _I_ eschew social media altogether.

I remember when I was a boy, laughing was something to be celebrated, because
sharing something funny with your friends was one of the high points of life.
Actually cutting loose and laughing with your friends about the stupidest
things is easily one of the best feelings you can experience, but now every
time I genuinely laugh at something that I find funny, I often have to look
around and be worried about who saw me do it. It's genuinely depressing, the
older I get. I don't even have humor any more. Now I just have liquor.

~~~
moron4hire
See, you're part of the problem. You think you understand my friend's tone
better now that I'm relating it to you better than I did at the time that I
experienced it. You don't believe my version of the story, even though the
only evidence you have is my telling of it. You've treated me as if I'm lying
to you, yet you don't just come out and say it. This is the very definition of
passive aggressive behavior.

Just because something is post hoc declared as a joke doesn't mean it was a
joke. And just because something is styled as a joke, doesn't mean it is
funny. I don't have a problem with taking jokes. Most people just suck at
humor. It's not an easy thing to tell a joke. And besides, most people are
just using "it was a joke" as an excuse to cover up for some serious comment
they made that went over like a lead balloon.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Actually, I believe your version completely and don't think you're lying at
all from your perspective. What makes you think I feel otherwise?

This is an odd, and overly defensive, reaction to something that you've
clearly misinterpreted. (That sounds familiar.)

~~~
moron4hire
How could I have so clearly misinterpreted "GP can't take a joke" to be a
refutation of my assertion the guy wasn't joking?

Must be you were also telling a joke and I just don't get jokes.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
See, you think it's personal and that I've made some kind of determination on
your character based on my conclusion. You've totally come off the rails and
started attacking me personally at the mere suspicion (not even to you!) that
you might have misinterpreted things. I've merely read and worked with the
information that was made available; you call this person a friend, for
example. You were having lunch with this person. This person felt comfortable
enough with you to remark upon your condiment choice. I've observed many, many
people remark upon the same choice in a jesting fashion.

Now, which is more likely from my perspective: that a misinterpretation by you
is at work (and which is spilling over here, since you clearly don't have
closure on this egregious scenario), or that your friend is the one person out
of millions who _actually_ cares about ketchup on a hot dog and was ready to
fight with you about it? Someone you identify as a friend chose ketchup on a
hot dog as his Maginot Line in your relationship and demeaned you over it.
Okay, maybe that _did_ happen (in which case you should think long and hard
about who you identify as friends), but my point was it's extraordinarily
unlikely, and you cannot fault me for concluding that in my own time and with
the facts given.

You can't relay a story and then expect everyone to blindly accept your
interpretation without reading objectively. That's unfair. I think you very
likely misinterpreted things, yes, and I base that on the entire story
including believing your perspective entirely. I don't think you're lying at
all. That's the entire point, that I think you're telling the truth from your
perspective, and your perspective might be a little bit off. It's nothing
negative. I don't think less of you. I see misunderstanding like this all the
time.

Yet you felt passionately enough about it to go after me personally and call
me part of the problem, simply because I didn't subscribe immediately to a
half story. I feel I'm exercising the better option: I'm reading objectively
and drawing my own conclusions rather than immediately buying into a single-
sided narrative. That's what we _should_ do when confronted with unfamiliar
situations relayed by people we don't know, because it's the fundamental brick
in the foundation of avoiding mobs, rash conclusions, beheading people over
blogs, and so on.

And see? Now we're arguing about this. About ketchup on a god damned hot dog.
Remember how I didn't want to live in this world?

(Edit: Also, please, please, please tell me you didn't compare your choice of
condiment to the plight of minorities in an upthread comment. I _will_
conclude something about your character after reading something like that, if
you mean it.)

~~~
philovivero
Holy shit you put a lot of thought and care into deconstructing that situation
logically and rationally. You would probably make a great super-forecaster.
Head over to Slate Star Codex!

Thanks for doing such a thankless job. It made me smile on many levels.

~~~
alphapapa
But that's just it: it wasn't logical or rational. It was irrational and
biased, because he wasn't even present at the event in question. He dismissed
the only actual evidence available (the first-hand witness account) and
fabricated his own story out of thin air based upon his own life experiences.
Then he accused him of misinterpreting and overreacting. Mind-reading is bad
enough second-hand, but third-hand?

And this passes for objectivity, logic, and reason? And this makes you smile?

Of course, the joke's really on all of us, because this kind of human
interaction/communication/judgment/reasoning failure has been going on since
the begnning of time. It's not as if I'm not guilty of it, too. And by the
time we overcome it (if anyone ever does), we die, and people who haven't
overcome it take our place.

Perhaps the ultimate lesson is to lower our expectations. Haha.

------
MCRed
"To leave that metaphor, let us grieve at what twitter has become. A stalking
ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to
leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of
others they do not even know. It’s as nasty and unwholesome a characteristic
as can be imagined. It doesn’t matter whether they think they’re defending
women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists … the ghastliness is
absolutely the same. It makes sensible people want to take an absolutely
opposite point of view. I’ve heard people shriek their secularism in such a
way as to make me want instantly to become an evangelical Christian."

This is a fair description of how Stephen Fry (as much as I love him) acted
towards me on Twitter several years ago. (about the time I left twitter for
good)

I don't think he's a bad guy, I think there is just an authoritarian streak
running thru out culture right now that is so strong that a guy who, at the
time, had just played a persecuted gay man in V for Vendetta was advocating
for the persecution of people he didn't like! (though I'm sure he didn't
realize it/recognize it/intend it.)

I think Stephen is a well intentioned guy who doesn't intend to piss in the
pool, but I think propaganda has scared and manipulated him, as it has done so
many others over history.

