Show HN: My wednesday project Unsocialize This | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My wednesday project Unsocialize This

unsocializethis.com

16 pointsjrnkntl19 comments

This, IMO flies in the face of "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation." - Taken from HN Submission Guidelines [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html].

I have been following this advice well before it appeared on HN, and wish that everyone would.

If I have someone talking about something that I am not interested in, I have one of two options - tell them my concern and hope we can reach a common ground, or as hanshasuro correctly said, stop listening (by not calling them or interacting with them in any way). In the real world, I am pretty certain I would not ask someone else, let alone someone completely anonymous to hint at the issue.

Now that I have gotten off my soap-box, I do realize that it was for fun, though I am not sure it's the kind of fun I like to participate in.

There were 2 reasons I did this; first of all the 'social' aspect:

You can easily unfollow someone when you don't like what they're tweeting through Twitter. But, what if you want to 'tell' that person that what they're tweeting just isn't that interesting without having to tell them yourself? Then you'd use Unsocialize This :)

Secondly; on the technical side: I setup a Linode with nginx and php-fpm, which was incredibly easy but I had never done before. Played around with the Twitter API and some JS.

And, of course, it's for fun.

Why would you want to tell the person anonymously that what they are tweeting is uninteresting to you? Isn't that just a needless insult? It's not as if you are paid money to receive quality tweets. If you actually care what they think, why not communicate openly with them?

You should focus more on the "why" aspect. I enjoy the cheeky, opinionated angle that this project is taking on the act of unfollowing, but I don't think you've taken it far enough.

What are the different reasons someone might hit the unfollow button?

They might unfollow because the other person tweets too much. This would probably warrant a polite notification: "Your tweets are cool and all, but they were getting in the way of other people's tweets!"

They might unfollow because the other person said something that deeply offended them. This could involve a little more snark, but if you really want to sell the "let them know" approach, you should probably ask the unfollower to indicate which tweet was the "last straw."

I really like the simple design and unambiguous layout. Keep tweaking it, dude!

Thanks for your feedback! Next wednesday will be tweaking day. There's also more serious work to do ;)

I think you made an hilarious project, personally i would never bother to use it. But its a cool idea, that even got an implementation. But useful? No, not for me, sorry. :)

This seems needlessly petty and childish. Is there a real need to tell someone that you're not interested in what they have to say? Just stop listening.

Am I missing something?

No, you aren't missing anything. This is a passive-aggressive tool to inflate one's own self-importance by implying that the "unsocialized" individual should care that they aren't being followed anymore.

This is for the individuals that can't 'just' stop listening. They want to let them (the to-be-unfollowed ones) know that their 'social actions', in the broadest sense of the word, not go without consequences. That it's cowardly to do it through this service; without a doubt. That the service fills that gap for these people: I hope ;)

I'm just hoping you are not one of those people that believes that I should follow everyone (on Twitter) that follows me. If what I say interests you, follow me. I'll do the same.

Something like this: http://powazek.com/posts/2754

I agree with araneae, this would seem to be an awfully rare thing to do.

People who care about unfollows are likely already using a tool that'll tell them exactly who unfollows them.

Users who take your claims of anonymity at face value are going to be unhappy when they're called on it.

I assume you mean "unhappy to discover how dumb they are"

It's a bit bizarre. Why would someone use a service to tell them they're no longer following them rather than do it themselves? I mean, telling them in the first place is fairly petty, but getting a service to do it for them?

Having said all that, kudos to you for building something and shipping it in a day.

I did tweet to @newscientist that I was unfollowing them due to them putting all their tweeted articles behind a sign-in page.

But it seems like it would be a rare thing.

But why do that anonymously?

Obviously, so that you'll survive when someone writes an app that uses the Twitter API to communicate with the Blackwater Mercenary API to kill everyone who unfollows you with a snarky message. Of course, it will all fall apart when Google buys them out in a high-profile acquisition, and one of their engineers accidentally adds "walled garden" to the snark detection heuristic, which results in Facebook inadvertently putting a hit out on every single open source developer on the planet due to a mass simultaneous unfollowing in the aftermath of yet another content privacy maelstrom.

Or... I dunno. It's kinda awkward, I guess. Sometimes.

Spot the guy who is/should be doing NaNoWriMo ;)

What does "unsocial" mean in this context? When I hear it I guess I would think of someone that doesn't really use their account very often (like me), but is that really bad (as in bad enough that you have to anonymously say I'm punished)?

There is a need for such a service.

Anything that is done "in real life" has a purpose that applies equaly "online"

There is not point is judging an action by itself, only the consequences matter, but some actions have fairly predictable consequences.

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