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Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I never could learn to deal with this.

I set up a blog way back when blogs were first a thing, maybe 20 years ago. Started posting articles about internet, culture, tech, anything I found interesting.

Almost immediately, I had people dropping by and posting the most vile comments. Whatever I did, I did for bad reasons. I was a bad person and there just wasn't anything I could do or say to fix that.

I never learned how to mentally deal with this kind of blind anti-fandom, but I did learn an important lesson: never joke on the internet, or if you do, be very, very careful it's obvious it's a joke. Because whatever I think is funny because it's silly, obnoxious, or ludicrous? Somebody else will take seriously. And now you've got a new hater.

The net is drifting towards private communities. I think that's a good thing. This kind of environment really isn't healthy for folks.

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I forget where, but I read something once that said "Don't be afraid to delete a stranger's mean-spirited comments."

I've taken that up as a mantra, and never regretted it!

Exactly. My site, my world, my rules. It’s been my approach too. I don’t respond or acknowledge them. Delete and move on.

Private communities promote bubbles where people become entrenched in their preconceived beliefs. Much like genetics, you need variety, and the strongest beliefs/traits will survive in the long run. I think a healthy mix of public and private communities is the “right” way forward. I will concede there is the ever present problem that toxic people are more likely to speak their mind, which leads to moderates thinking the extremes are the norm. Smaller communities might solve this problem, but I’m not sure moving to all private communities is a good thing. /2cents

I completely agree. I study how groups of people interact. When working well, a group of people can tackle almost any problem. It's a magical thing to see.

Based on that, I experimented quite a bit with my blog, here on HN, and on various social platforms. Could that magic be reproduced online? Out of 1,000 or so online "friends", I have maybe 3 that consistently promote diversity of thought. Those people could moderate a room on about any topic. The people they gathered around them had all sorts of views and ways of thinking. It wasn't what I had seen in person, but it was the closest I've seen online.

So why not HN? Or FB? Or Twitter? Why did it work when some people ran/moderated discussions but not when others did?

There's too much to go into here, but one takeaway is that there was a system of incremental trust. New people we treat with kid gloves, see how they handle people who are smart and disagree with them. As we get to know you, everybody can relax more and have more direct, honest conversations. But when we did that, it was always full of things you wouldn't want copied and pasted to the public. Not bad things. Yikes! Just stuff that taken out of context would drive some folks nuts.

Online forums do not have that. So we're stuck desperately needing to meet and talk about complex and sometimes provocative things, but our tools are basically made for cat pictures and political memes. The social media services we have today simply are not in the public interest. There's no amount of tweaking that's going to fix that. They exist to serve base and lizard-brain impulses in various fashions.

One thing though. You're absolutely right about the dangers of echo chambers. But if you have an explicit small group, everybody knows what's going on. You know what's worse? Hell-banning, ghosting, and all of this damned AI trickery we do to one another to make people appear as if they are part of groups they are not actually part of. FB is getting so it'll stick you in that small echo chamber ... and you'll never know it. That's fucked up in more ways than one.

> Somebody else will take seriously.

I think there's an reasonable expectation to respect, but there are people out there that will take offense to almost anything.

We shouldn't be sacrificing our own rights to accommodate those people.

I completely agree with this. Ironically, it's also almost word-for-word what I've experienced many people say in defense of expressing hatred for people.

It really depend on the initiator, don't proactively hate anyone, however, if someone hate you, for things that are of no fault of yours. I think it's OK to not like them.

I want to say I remember your blog and that I enjoyed it. Thanks for that.

I remember growing up old (I think it was) either Car and Driver or Road and Track letters to the editor where they would publish wacky hate letters and then reply in a funny way to the absurdity of the position or thought. So they actually spun that into something of value.

> never joke on the internet, or if you do, be very, very careful it's obvious it's a joke

This is also true with respect to people who have fanboys. For example PG has fanboys and if you say something negative or that appears to be not respectful of PG (or for that matter certain YC companies) you need to package it correctly to appear to be respectful. This is similar to when people IRL will say 'with all due respect' prior to giving some criticism. In 'mafia' movies this was done with 'not to appear subversive but' (negative comment about the boss of the family).

"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches."

Andy Warhol

from a recent modern family:

Phil: "Who knew people on the internet could be so mean?"

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