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Comment by trauco | Hacker News Reader

All the humming and hawing about how the author of the post is taking credit for someone else's work, etc, is a good example of the problem of reading one-off things on the internet and commenting on them here without understanding the context or the voice of the author.

As a long-term reader of that blog, it is obvious to me this is a little historical anecdote, mostly tongue-in-cheek, from a particular mac-centric community to which both the author and Gruber belong to. He's not being grandiose or trying to take credit.

Sometimes a story is just a story.

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Someone [1] recently put it very insightfully, that it was impossible to post things candidly on the Internet because your in-group shared background/assumptions aren't shared by randos on the internet that will come across your post and misinterpret it.

(I'm pretty sure this was linked on HN, but it's too vague for me to search/find it)

[1] feels like a patio11, or noahpinion thing?

The theorists call this "context collapse". A huge part of human communication is about what went before, where and when the communication happens, and what the speaker and listener know about each other and what kind of shared experiences they have.

But as the old saying goes, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog"

"Context collapse"! Yeah that was the term I remember.

It's possible, you just have to accept that people will come and complain. It's not a big deal.

The same thing applies to standup comedy. A good 80% of standup is presentation, delivery and context.

When you take all that out and read what the comic said verbatim with a completely flat newsreader inflection, it will sound really strange and maybe even offensive.

Trevor Noah explains this well here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an3G7F6k6GU

Sounds just like what the author could expect from a discussion in a community which is not the same community they usually find themselves in ("a particular mac-centric community", whichever that refers to).

Strangers on the internet will come across your little random story if it's public, and rather than blaming first-time readers for not understanding the context nor the voice of the author, maybe the author could adjust the article to provide the context or make the voice stronger/more obvious?

Honestly, I'm fine with not understanding everything from communities I don't generally hang-around, it's bound to happen at one point or another.

> Strangers on the internet will come across your little random story if it's public, and rather than blaming first-time readers for not understanding the context nor the voice of the author, maybe the author could adjust the article to provide the context or make the voice stronger/more obvious?

I'm not "blaming" anyone. I'm just pointing out that the commenters here are missing the point of the story because they don't understand the context, and that this is a fairly common phenomenon.

I think it's fine to tailor your writing to a community of like-minded readers rather than a first-time reader from here that is unlikely to come back.

> Honestly, I'm fine with not understanding everything from communities I don't generally hang-around, it's bound to happen at one point or another.

Me too, of course. It just makes a discussion without that context, i.e., what's happening here, detached from what the author meant with the post.

> Sounds just like what the author could expect from a discussion in a community which is not the same community they usually find themselves in ("a particular mac-centric community", whichever that refers to).

The author of the blog post did not submit the article to Hacker News.

Anyway, I wish that HN commenters would apply the same HN guidelines to article authors that they do to each other. It's all too easy to rip on someone who isn't here to explain or defend themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> maybe the author could adjust the article

That's how the web ends up filled with pablum that offends none but the most easily offended, but draws in the most eyeballs and most upvotes/likes/retweets to become viral.

To be fair, it’s posted to hundreds of people that read a headline expecting one thing, didn’t get it, and don’t understand the humor part of this random blog they just went to. It’s a risky post — almost setup for those kind of comments.

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