Show HN: Badges of kindness for your website footers, repos, and more
kindspeech.org
kindspeech.org
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To the wonderful author of this amazing creation:
No need to apologize. It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. They had a negative reaction to you doing something positive or neutral, that was not targeting them. Their feelings, their reaction, are not your responsibility. Those things have nothing to do with you at all, and are all about them. It's not something for you to be sorry for, because it's not something you did. But I get if you've got your own emotion about seeing them react like this.
I've been there. Many times. Sharing work and feeling vulnerable and reading people's meanness. One thing I noticed about HN is it is sort of random how this happens. Some time, you share something, and whether it's great or not, people are super positive. Then another time, something is shared, and again, whether it's great or not, people are negative. It's a bit like the tides. Some sort of natural cycle. Which makes sense, I guess...these people's reactions are nothing to do with you...they're just seeking an outlet for some inner mess. It doesn't feel great to see my work as part of their negative experience, so I get it if you're also experiencing that. Just wanna say thanks for this, there are also very good people here, but more important than here, is you, and I hope you keep creating wonderful stuff like this! :)
Your domain registration information is mostly blank (not private). Unusual, as registrars are required to collect proper information. This brings you, and the registrar you use into question.
This does not build any confidence in me to embedded links to your site.
One thing I've done but isn't really advertised is open source the backend: https://github.com/kindspeech/api
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying false praise is not kind. I see how that can be true. Telling someone they’re the best ice skater in the world when they’re not, for example, could be detrimental to them because of the unrealistic dreams or expectations that might create. I’m being very careful in curating the content of the badges and I don’t believe any of it would fall in the category of false or misleading praise. If you see one though let me know and I’ll consider changing or removing it.
If you tell me "I like your shoes", it will brighten my week. If I see you walking from person to person, telling every single one of them that you like their shoes, it won't feel like much of a compliment. It's not nice nor thoughtful. It's just noise.
You have the right spirit for trying to make the world a little brighter, but I don't think mass-producing generic compliments is the way to go.
Though I can tell you “I like your shoes” isn’t in the rotation, things like “you are a special person” are, and I get that it can sound dishonest, but I genuinely believe everyone is special and that some people will receive that message in the way that I intend it. There are also messages like “may you be happy” or “thank you for being here” and perhaps you would agree that these can genuinely be addressed to strangers. I’m certainly grateful for anyone who visits my GitHub repos, or who takes a look at this project and gives me feedback, so thank you. :)
It's actually worse than this. They're not doing it out of the kindness of their heart to be nice to you. They're doing it to manipulate your emotions to force a positive responsive with their interactions such that it increases your likelihood of paying them more money in the future.
They're not being nice to you, they're manipulating you.
Nice-sounding but random words don't make for kindness. Thoughtful handling of things makes for kindness.
I wish it were easier than that. I just haven't found that it is.
Off-topic, but you make ladle-wearing look great. Do you ever wear a colander? (I ask this as a Pastafarian.)
I will post them whenever I can which may be in January as I'm not spending my lockdown time at my own place where the stickers are.
For your off-topic question: I've been seen wearing a colander from time to time, but I don't have pictures of it. I'm not a Pastafarian however, as I do not especially like religions of any kind :D.
At times I've stumbled on graffiti in the street that were random messages of kindness from complete strangers, and they brightened my day. So I don't think it needs to come from someone who knows you to mean something.
Anyway, if the goal is to brighten someone's day, an innocent joke or a little pun may be much more effective. I feel like lighter words are better than emotionally loaded ones when interact with complete strangers.
If the goal is to brighten people's days, a short joke or pun could do the trick. Or something like `fortune -s` (but fortune is usually multiline).
Personally, I like the kind speech idea. But a short joke might be more engaging in terms of cheering someone up, and avoids the authenticity issues.
One thing I’ve realized based on yours and other people’s feedback is that this intention is not clear. In fact it’s not really explained on the Badges page. If the people using the badges understand and share this intention then I think it helps with the authenticity issue you mentioned. So that’s one action item for me.
I’ve also realized that some people don’t think it’s possible to communicate this message via an internet badge, and while I understand their skepticism I simply disagree.
So, to actually answer your question, I’m open to adding different types of phrases and endpoints, but I consider arbitrary jokes or puns to be out of the scope of this particular project at the moment, though I will keep the idea in mind. :-)
I initially missed the distinction between affirming speech and speech designed to make the recipient feel good. Jokes can make people feel good, but don't affirm that they are enough, as they are.
The Manifesto page explains it well; the badges page doesn't have as much depth.
That's on me for not reading enough.
I’ve not seen that. The unkind speech I see is people in the comments sections on various websites mostly.
"Media" may include social media.
But yeah, there's definitely a global climate of people not really feeling spiffy in general, with few happy places left to escape to.
I think the best explanation I can offer for how advertising does it in my view is the manifesto I wrote for the website's homepage: https://kindspeech.org/
tldr: creating a desire or a need for people, which is what advertising usually attempt to do, implies that they are lacking in some way. That's not a good feeling. And it's often simply false or vastly exaggerated. Imo, making people feel bad in order to sell is unkind.
Their website somewhat defines it.
I feel it leans into advertising being about convincing one what one has is bad, not good enough or embarrasing, such that a product is bought. I think I agree that could be considered covert unkind speech in media and advertising. The barrage of things telling people they aren't good enough or preying on insecurities would have detremental effects. Personally, I enjoy the kind-spirited effort behind this, I'll be putting this in the header of my running notes .md file.
If you're feeling like shit about your situation seeing something like "You got this!" can be annoying at best and may make you feel worse.
At best this is an attempt forget the disease instead of treating it.
The effective counterbalance is to cultivate kindness at core levels of society, in how parents treat their children and how children treat each other, and to stop rewarding unkindness (it's too easy in too many cultures to gain popularity by being a bitter asshole and expounding negativity), and most importantly, address the issues that make people bitter instead of telling them who to hate.
For people who are not feeling particularly depressed in the moment where they see one of these badges, I believe it could have an uplifting, positive effect. A small one, probably, but that's good enough for me.
Ultimately, I can't control how people react to these, but I am careful about curating the messages and I do intend for them to express genuine kindness.
I also agree that this is not a cure-all. No such claim was made, in fact. I do think we could use more kindness at core levels of society, as you say.