

If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Kill Yourself - riklomas
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/28/not-safe-for-work-techcrunch-arrington

======
ardit33
I have to say the Hacker News in general is a much positive place, where you
got real good and honest feedback, from semi-anon users (some are known, many
are not). And usually the topics are intellectually stimulating.

But I have to say that a lot of nastiness can come from people that are
frustrated with the current coverage in the tech media, where a lot of good
technologies/projects/inovative startups are being ignored, and few people are
taking the limelight. I even know about Julia Allison , but really what has
she done? Except for being a great self promoter? What about Loc Le Meur
startup, which is really nothing inovating. Why so few people are taking the
limelight, while really good things are getting ignored? The ratio of noise to
signal in the blogosphere/tech startup media is really high.

I guess a lot of people express this kind of frustration against these self-
promoters, and not media itself.

It is like being annoyed at Britney Spears when the front page of CNN has a
story about Britney Spears, while medicare reform is somewhere in the bottom.

Really, people should be frustrated at CNN, by ignoring it.

That's why I like HN, as it is a breath of fresh air, comparing to other
sites.

(ps. we still have some shameless self promoters here, with github being one
of them. We get it, git is awesome, but here are a lot of other technologies
that get ignored, (HG one of them. Disproportionate coverage of something, in
expense to something else just as useful, is just noise and doesn't help the
community).

~~~
misuba
We could, of course, start accounting for the fact that communication skills
are as important as engineering skills when it comes to making a successful
business... thereby taking responsibility for our own perceived problems and
eliminating the frustration.

~~~
yters
But the people who devote themselves more to communication and promotion than
engineering seem to have a disproportionate leg up.

~~~
DougBTX
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to promote it, does anyone
come to the party?

------
old-gregg
I am curious to see how American Internet is different from other countries in
this regard. I have long had the suspicion that our love for hatred online and
South Park episodes comes as a psychological defense against insane levels of
in-your-face politeness, fake plastic smiles and excessive "political
correctness" dominating our offline lives. Even our everyday language is
affected by this: people don't die or get fired, they pass away and being let
go. George Carlin said it best: soon we'll be calling a rape victim "an
unwilling sperm recipient".

Perhaps the cure for online rudeness is being less hypocritical offline.

~~~
iron_ball
Interesting question, but it's complicated by the fact that an even more
polite society, Japan, is said to have an even more polite internet. More
anonymity, more group bonding, more political deference, when your theory
would predict the exact opposite.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I'm not sure that this is entirely the case. 2chan has been quite disruptive
to the culture. Its enforced anonymity and subsequent freedom from personal
societal retaliation is a very new phenomenon there.

------
tdavis
The only thing more annoying than bandwagon hatred is bandwagon altruism. What
happened to Arrington sucks, but this sort of shit happens to all sorts of
domain-specific personalities and famous people every day. I just don't see
what this "call to action" is trying to accomplish.

People aren't going to change, most especially within mediums that provide
complete anonymity. The thing, I think, that really surprises people about
this is the fact that online trolling has spilled over into real life and has
resulted in spitting and death threats. As I see it, the more our online and
offline lives merge thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, the more you're
going to see people acting as crazy offline as on.

~~~
unalone
I think it's an effort by a well-known negative personality to tell people to
cut it out. I'm certain most trolls become such after a personality makes them
think it's okay. And given the premise that you'll always have stupid people
being uninformed, I'd rather have said stupid people not threatening people.

~~~
tdavis
So cutting out criticism is the way to fix people being spit on? That's like
chopping off your head when you've got a headache. The rules slay me even
more:

1\. So everybody is magically going to stop being anonymous in a medium that
heralds anonymity above all else? Okay!

2\. So we shouldn't make fun of people we don't know? Right. I make fun of
people I _do_ know, and I'm not even one of the "spitters". This one ain't
gonna happen.

3\. Yes, because a 1:1 ratio of nice to mean things balances out the Universe.
This article is stupid; unalone, I like your hair. I mean, I can't see it, but
you probably have nice hair. HARMONY!

4\. Make your own judgements but trust my judgement on these rules!!

5\. End the violence; kill yourself!

~~~
unalone
Psh. People who've got something to say will say it regardless of how
important it is. They won't think rules matter. The braindead people might
start being nicer, though, which makes the Internet more fun for me. (Kind
communities, ones where there's no moderation but only smart people appear,
are _so_ wonderful. The Truthandbeautybombs forum for webcomics is a joy to
read.)

1) Anonymity hurts in most situations. I think it's good that we CAN have it,
but that doesn't change the fact that it's rarely used for good.

2) I think it's more polite to make fun of people you do know. There's more a
chance of you knowing that your insults are justified, then, and it's more
fun.

3) I get your point, and also thank you for the kind compliment, but I think
the idea is to be mean when mean is deserved, to be nice in other instances,
and to try to make sure that you're never mean for stupid reasons.

~~~
tdavis
_"...I think the idea is to be mean when mean is deserved, to be nice in other
instances, and to try to make sure that you're never mean for stupid
reasons."_

Well, geez, why didn't he just _say_ that?

Instead of all this arm waving and sweeping e-reform, how about just saying
"use common courtesy"? All this excitement will cause high blood pressure!

P.S. You're welcome ;)

~~~
unalone
I think it's because he's a very over-the-top writer. It's what makes his
rants so funny. And either he's used to writing like that or he can't help
himself, because he always does it.

~~~
tdavis
Dammit unalone, must you _always_ chip away at my arguments with your silly
logical conclusions?! ;)

~~~
unalone
It's because secretly I hate you. :-)

------
geirfreysson
I counted the occurrences of the words "me", "my", "myself" and "I" in the
article with a bash command:

tr -cs 'A-Za-z' '\n' < paul_carr.txt | grep -i -w -c "me\|my\|myself\|i"

Result: 82 out of 1858 words.

That's 4.4%, ca. 1 out of every 23 words.

The author is thereby scientifically proven to be on the very far end of the
introspective scale.

------
pixcavator
I liked this especially: "If you've got something to say online, say it in
your own name or fuck off."

~~~
tdavis
I thought the point of online anonymity was that it allows people to be judged
based on what they say and do, not by their name, nationality, certifications,
or whatever.

Saying everybody should use their own names means you not only want to judge
the opinions and actions of individuals, but you also want to judge them on a
personal level, which should be irrelevant to... everything.

Before last year I never used my real name anywhere online, nor did I use a
handle which contained any part of said name. I wrote no differently than I do
now and still hold the same opinions I did previously. Who I am doesn't
matter; it never should, here or anywhere else.

~~~
tomsaffell
I use my full name as my handle for a simple reason: I want a single identity
across the Internet and the physical world. I want to be able to meet people
(at conferences, coffee houses, etc) and have whatever opinion they have
formed of my online persona apply immediately to me in person. I want to be
one person.

~~~
baddox
Tomsa F. Fell? Is that really you? I haven't seen you since high school!

------
TooMuchNick
This just in: A lot of people in the tech industry have a harder time dealing
with criticism (both fair and unfair) than their counterparts in the
entertainment industry. When asked for help, Hollywood said "get over it,
nerds."

~~~
jmtame
haven't heard many stories about celebrities being spat on lately..

~~~
TooMuchNick
No, you're right. They've only been stalked, threatened, had pictures taken of
them every time they go to the beach, been the butt of jokes on TV every
single night, sometimes been assaulted, kidnapped, or shot. But thankfully I
can't remember any of them getting some saliva on them lately!

I'm not saying the life of a celebrity is a living hell. I'm just saying there
are thousands of people who already deal with the downside of a huge audience,
and tech reporters will have to learn how to do the same. That's a pain, we
all wish it could be otherwise, but it's not like Michael Arrington has to put
up with half the crap that anyone with a hit song or TV show goes through.

~~~
yters
It isn't a celebrities job to listen to feedback from the public, so they are
safe to ignore it and actively fight it as much as they want. It is the job of
someone like Arrington to wade through the morass of hatefilled comments,
while putting on an approachable as possible front, though. Can you see the
impact is different in either case?

------
invisible
At least he points out some flaws in the industry and where they can be
corrected. Blogging is a new industry (in some ways), and hasn't adjusted
completely yet.

Newspapers took quite a long time to adjust, and libel became against criminal
and civil law (although "cyberlibel" is around, there is maybe a total of 3
cases?).

------
Tichy
"You simply can't have a system which rewards nastiness over niceness..."

I don't think the internet is to blame, it is simply in the human nature.
People bond by agreeing to hate some other people together. It is not the only
way to bond, but it is a very common way.

------
sh1mmer
Something has been nagging my brain and I was trying to work out what it was.
Reading this article jolted it loose.

This whole horrible situation Michael Arrington has found himself in is
incredibly similar to Kathy Sierra
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra>).

The same comments by reasonable people are being repeated about how
unacceptable it is, and yet 2 years on it's happening to a different internet
personality, albeit not a woman this time.

Frankly sometimes I feel like I'm a hostage of the people the democratization
of web has enabled. Although, I'd still say there is much more good than bad
(I'm not Andrew Keen!).

~~~
ahoyhere
So Arrington gets spat on, and everyone suddenly forgets what a giant,
dripping blowhard the man is?

Hello.

Spitting on somebody is totally déclassé, and death threats are never cool,
but the man is -- professionally speaking -- a bastard. That is an image he
has carefully cultivated.

He may be beloved of his friends & fam, but they're not the ones spitting on
him.

------
ananthrk
_...Let's all of us who consider ourselves human beings and who want the
internet to continue as a forum for free and frank debate get together and
decide on a few rules of engagement..._

This, I believe, is what HN offers me today. Cheers for that! _Sometimes_
opposing viewpoints get downmodded to oblivion, but as I see from recent
discussions, people have already started taking notice of this phenomenon [for
e.g. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446176>] and have taken it upon
themselves to fix it..

------
DanielBMarkham
Problem is: ugly sells

~~~
yters
Yeah, that is really unfortunate. We care more about shock than aesthetics.
It'd be nice to figure out how to combine the two in a way where beauty fixes
the ugly.

------
jwesley
This will turn into Kathy Sierra part 2.

~~~
blasdel
I really don't think so.

While Arrington is even more insufferable than Sierra, he is an expert in the
mechanics of trolling. He knows what he's doing: he's judged that the hype-
value of publicising his detractors outweighs the foolishness of feeding the
trolls, and I think he's probably right.

He's not going to get taken hook, line, and sinker like Kathy Sierra did. She
managed to prove her attackers correct (at least regarding her incompetence)
in her reaction to them. _That_ is the real lesson of the Kathy Sierra
debacle, and why it is one of the most epic trolls of all time.

~~~
BigZaphod
Is there a reliable summary somewhere of what all happened in the Kathy Sierra
incident? I mostly ignored it at the time, but now I'm curious as to how that
all went down and what went wrong.

~~~
blasdel
Not really, every party is an unreliable narrator!

This is undoubtedly a troll and goes way too far, but the base of his
criticisms ring true: [http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Full-
Disclosure/2007-...](http://www.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Full-
Disclosure/2007-03/msg00507.html)

"Kathy hollers like a stuck pig as she wonders why the trolls escalated to
magnitudes which she could no longer control. The answer is obvious: she
fought the LOL. The LOL won. She flew off the handle trying to silence
criticism of her books, and this is what she got."

~~~
ahoyhere
His criticism rings true?

He claims that she came out of nowhere because she was a prostitute at
O'Reilly conferences. A literal prostitute, not a metaphorical one.

That's beyond ridiculous.

How can you brush off something that bizarro and believe the rest of his rant
has merit?

~~~
blasdel
For starters, the literal and metaphorical are not mutually exclusive. He
literally (in the text) said she "got the train run on her", and in the
context of an outrageous troll it's a metaphor for her vapid self-promotion
and the co-dependent nature of the 'tech' conference presenter scene.

She's supposedly a programmer, but she made a career out of giving the same
tacky clipart presentations about generic PR & Marketing bullshit over and
over. She fit right into the circle-jerk with Scoble et. al.. Some people
found her constant paid presence at the conferences they went to obnoxious and
wished she'd STFU, so they started griefing her. She was egotistical enough to
think that anyone cared enough about hating her to make those "death threats"
remotely meaningful, and she did exactly what they wanted.

~~~
ahoyhere
My background: I have spoken at OSCON, SXSW, Webstock, RailsConf, and more --
venues shared with Kathy Sierra -- and I have been an OSCON organizer, and I
was behind the creation of the new "People" track. I am a programmer, and a
usability expert.

Allow me to respond to your points:

A) she doesn't pretend to speak as a programmer

B) her stuff is not generic PR & marketing, it's about user engagement and
results in concrete recommendations about the business of building software,
AND

C) she cites psychological research, not marketing handbooks (she's pretty
damn current too, the lady does her homework)

D) she doesn't name drop or publicity whore, podcast, screencast, chum up to
people for photos or videos, or write product reviews (unlike Scobl

E) she actually made her career with the invention of the redonkulously
succcessful Head First book series, and that is why she is paid to speak --
tech books sell like ass... except hers (and Missing Manual, another O'Reilly
line)

F) Her talks are a bit repetitive, but I wasn't aware that giving the same
talk (slightly updated) a few different times was reason for death threats to
be _acceptable._

Would I have reacted in the same manner?

No, but then again, I'm not Kathy Sierra, I am a 24-year-old girl who grew up
online, and don't even have a hamster to worry about much less a teenaged
daughter.

I simply cannot fathom the ridiculousness of accusing Kathy of "vapid self-
promotion" (totally unfounded) and basically suggesting that she was asking
for it.

It has "socially disabled adolescent boy" written all over it. Just like the
original "griefing" and threats.

~~~
ahoyhere
For what it's worth, the origin of "griefing" is not found in the value (or
lack thereof) of a person's conference talks.

If that _were_ the case, then just about every conference speaker would get
"griefed" this way, because speakers are uniformly unprepared, unrehearsed,
completely unaware of the separation of "What I want to say" and "what my
audience wants to hear," incapable of making it 3 sentences without
stuttering, couldn't design a legible slide to save their hides, and leave the
audience wondering where the hell their 45 minutes have gone.

It is arrogance, it is disrespect, and it is absolutely fucking
unprofessional. It's also universal.

No, it comes from a feeling of insecurity.

You get somebody towards whom "everyone" feels warmly disposed (like Kathy),
and the people on the fringes -- who feel their own brilliance is being
ignored -- hate this _interloper_ , who _adds no value_ , _who isn't even one
of us for fuck's sake!_ And people like him/her! Act as if they are god's gift
to whatever!

Out comes the viciousness.

I've experienced this myself.

I've never received death threats, but I did have my own personal troll, who'd
come into the framework IRC channel and flood it with nasty, nasty things,
making it impossible for me or anyone else to hold a conversation, and
photoshop my pictures in rude ways.

I know who did it -- prominent people.

These were smart, smart guys. They had a lot going for them. But in their
eyes, it was a valuable use of their time to harrass a 20yo girl who wrote
some tutorials that people loved.

You have to question the ultimate utility of a person who'd rather harrass
some person who's off doing his/her own thing, rather than creating more great
shit.

Now me, I am nothing if not ballsy. I know who these people are, but I never
bothered to tell them I knew. Now they both treat me with respect, even like
me and use my ideas for their stuff. All the while, I quietly prove that I am
the better man.

But I do not think that being ballsy makes me a better person than someone who
is not ballsy.

~~~
blasdel
"You get somebody towards whom "everyone" feels warmly disposed (like Kathy),
and the people on the fringes -- who feel their own brilliance is being
ignored -- _hate this interloper, who adds no value, who isn't even one of us
for fuck's sake!_ And people like him/her! Act as if they are god's gift to
whatever!"

You understand!

You're right that the attacks come from insecurity -- but the insecurity is
not rooted in "I'm being ignored", it's "the emperor has no clothes!". They
can't see a way to make an honest non-anon criticism: the target wouldn't
accept it, and the fawning crowd would lynch him. "How the hell is this person
ever going to find out that not everyone thinks they're hot shit?" races
through their feverish mind. Taking a few seconds to send them some anonymous
vitriol will sure alert them to the fact that they are pissing someone off!

~~~
ahoyhere
You realize that it's only in the insecure attacker's _mind_ that the target
of the abuse thinks she is untouchably hot shit, right?

Only weaklings think they need to go around reminding other people that they
are not gods, because the weaklings believe _they themselves_ are the
_rightful_ gods.

Otherwise they wouldn't be intimidated by it.

Or think that somebody died & appointed them Head of the De-Godding Squad.

(The only people I've ever met who thought it was their duty to go around
telling others how good they aren't? Insecure assholes.)

------
anthonyrubin
What a bunch of senseless drama.

------
ahoyhere
I wish people would stop thinking this is new just because this time, it's on
the internet.

Tales of loss and tragedy inspire more interest than tales of gain and happy
occurances. This has always been so.

Anonymity inspires hatred, violence, and depersonalization. Being around other
people who are hating, being violent, and depersonalizing others confirms this
behavior. Countless -- old, pre-internet -- psychology studies and case
studies show this.

It doesn't have to be online.

Intentionally overcoming it is good for everyone. But. It's just the nature of
the human beast.

And this Paul Carr dude is trolling - again - with this article, because he
knows negativity sells.

And maybe he feels guilty about everyone thinking he's an asshole, but it's A)
clearly his own fault and B) a habit he can't kick, because even this article
has the same tone to it.

------
time_management
Quick comment: people in the future will look back upon 1980-2009 as a
barbaric era of unbelievable interpersonal nastiness. The truth about the
matter is more complicated. We're not really meaner than people of prior
eras-- in fact, we've made a lot of progress as private individuals on
racial/gender attitudes, even while social infrastructure has decayed-- but
certain crass and mean elements of our society (casual sex, classism, internet
harassment, homophobia and racism, so-called "irony", a heartless health
insurance system) are being expressed loudly right now.

Although we won't, at bottom, see the economic privations of the 1930s,
2001-2009(?) will be remembered as a difficult decade during which the future
of civil society seemed uncertain. The 2000s have _seemed_ like only a so-so
decade to us, just as the 1930s appear to have been horrific in retrospect
(people starved? no way!) but were still better, materially, than the 1900s
and 1910s.

The reason I predict an imminent and rather abrupt end to the "nasty era" is
obvious. The people in charge of it have fallen from grace rather decisively,
and we have a brilliant, inspiring president whose character is excellent by
any standard, and downright heroic in comparison to what we've come to expect,
and whose ascension represents a degree of triumph over centuries of racial
bigotry.

~~~
time_management
Can the person who downvoted me please criticize my post with a reply? I
thought it was pretty solid.

Feel free to downvote this post as well. Take it all the way to -50 if you
care. Just let me know why, ok?

~~~
jerf
The idea that Bush caused internet incivility is one of the stupidest things I
have ever seen attributed to Bush in a long line of stupid accusations.

(I'm not saying they were _all_ stupid, but there sure were a lot of stupid
ones.)

The internet was uncivil before Bush, the internet will be uncivil after Bush,
and if Obama gives a speech tomorrow directly exhorting people to be more
civil on the internet it won't do a damn thing, because the internet takes
absolutely none of its tone from the US President.

Drink a little less of the Kool-Aid, OK?

~~~
time_management
Bush is a symptom of the social illness more broadly described as the
"neoconservative era" that began around 1980. The man himself had almost
nothing to do with inciting internet incivility (aside from sometimes being a
target of it) but certain civil erosions ushered in by the 1980s did.

~~~
rglullis
You're being USA-centric when dealing with the global phenomenon that is the
Internet. Neither Bush (nor Obama) will ever be be a symptom of anything of
that magnitude.

I'll down-mod you not because I disagree, but because your reasoning is
incomplete and one-sided.

~~~
unalone
It's not grammatically correct to put (nor) in parenthesis, because it makes
your non-parenthetical statement grammatically incorrect.

I think it's more important that his argument is encouraging discussion. He's
not trolling. He's stating his beliefs. That's worth an upvote. He's _wrong_
and he's not arguing _well_ but he's genuinely trying to contribute.

EDIT: And apparently, defending somebody else who has an earnest opinion and
making a friendly grammar statement regarding a tricky bit of language is
worth downvotes too. I'm sorry. :-(

------
giles_bowkett
"kill yourself" is hardly a nice thing to say, under any conditions.

~~~
natrius
Unless you're saying it to someone who is dying of a horrendously painful,
incurable disease.

My war on universal quantifiers continues...

~~~
yters
So you're saying universal quantifiers are never correct?

~~~
natrius
If I were saying so, I'd be using a universal quantifier as well.

