Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

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I have to remind myself not to read too much into such things, for three reasons that we all know, but which may bear repeating to ourselves:

1. Open source is global, and not everyone is a native speaker of English.

2. Among English speakers, not everyone has the same cultural conventions and nuances. Even within US cities, you can drive 15 minutes, and find very different conventions. And culture in Boston isn't the same as in the Bay Area, isn't the same as in Bolivia.

3. Even within the same culture, not everyone picks up on signals in language to the same degree (whether perceiving or sending). And some people who think they're picking up on signals are conflating with biases more than some others do.

I say I have to remind myself, because this still hits me. For example, when I'm searching certain bug databases, trying to solve an annoying problem, and some prolific volunteer commenting on a bug report there speaks in a manner that comes off as brusque or dismissive. Where they're from (across the Atlantic from me), maybe it's interpreted as professional or capable, and is even reassuring.

I've had to referee disagreements between East Coast USians and Germans a few times before now, mostly in terms of acting as a protocol translation layer until they were both sufficiently calmed down to underail themselves and focus on the technical side again rather than being distracted by their differing communication styles.

Generally once I'd helped them unpick that they collaborated happily and came up with something good that they both liked, it's just once people are locked in to talking past each other it's often non-trivial to break out of that.

It would be interesting to read more about this. You should start a blog :)

I can highly recommend https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/ on the topic of cultural communication styles.

That's an essential point. At the same time the interpretation isn't completely random or unpredictable; we're all humans, with the same emotions, the same physiological expressions of them, and the same internal responses to others' emotions. If you yell at someone anywhere, you can expect a certain range of emotional responses.

Anecdotal counterpoint about "yelling". I was having a conversation with my mother at a Cafe. After 15mins the lady next to us, very genuinely and nicely, asked if we were ok because we were yelling at each other. We're Italian. That was our normal conversation!

Someone's definition of aggressive discourse is definitely not everyone's.

That's why "Sir, please don't raise your voice" is so condescending and just a way to make it look like the other party is escalating.

It's not just a way to do that. There's no point imputing a motivation you made up to the other person. It's doing exactly what you're saying they're guilty of: assuming.

I get what they’re saying though. It often has an accompanying tone that’s borderline meme-like. It’s this thing we say the moment somebody takes a tone we take any issue with - or we think we can publicly proclaim we take issue with to get those around us on our side. I think many of us were guilty of this at least once and would acknowledge it if we really sat back and thought about it.

The number of times I’ve seen people having a discussion with somebody online and they respond with “bro, calm down“ when the person has used no caps lock, no exclamation points, no particularly vitriolic language, is staggering and incredibly irritating.

The obvious solution to this: spend less time reading pointless online arguments, and go outside and touch grass.

to keep in line with the topic of communication styles and assumptions, this reads (to me) like a long version "bro, calm down" :).

I’m not quite sure why what I said warranted such an incredibly rude response.

Unfortunately words may be interpreted differently to how they are intended. My apologies if you took offence, as that wasn't my intention. I do often make snarky remarks on here but this wasn't meant to be one of them.

I think this is part of what I'm getting at, text conversations are missing eye contact, body language cues etc, and along with the anonymity of the internet, a lot of things can be misinterpeted and disagreements can escalate quickly.

I normally try not to engage in it too much - when the sun is shining and it's a beautiful day I'd rather be out exercising and patting peoples dogs than engaging in Internet drama. That is all.

Yep. The reason a lot of people do it is not to de-escalate. Quite the opposite. It's to give the appearance of de-escalation to outsiders while at the same time escalating the argument by using a fallacy to attempt to irritate the other person.

My mom’s side of the family is descendent from Italians. Sunday barbecues were always full of yelling, shouting and cursing at each other.

I miss those times. By the end of the day, everybody would hug and kiss and say goodbye until next Sunday.

Yes, a good example. That's what I meant by a "range of emotional responses" (emphasis added).

Also, our interpretation depends on context, such as in your example, and many other things. It's a bit argumentative to treat a short HN comment as a roadmap of every human interaction and find flaws.

You know, sometimes it's very hard to judge.

I'm of xUSSR descent, and sometimes when I see a group of chinese colleagues speaking together loudly, it is very weird to me, as soometimes they are so loud that if it was in Russian it would mean that the brawl could start any second. It is hard to judge sometimes.

Even in written communication it is was told to me many times that many Russians, especially those with B1/B2 levels, as well as Jewish people are extremely direct, and it may be perceived as native speakers as rude, although it isn't meant to.

That expectation of sameness is exactly the problem.

We don't all express ourselves or react in the same ways, despite whatever our HR training videos claim.

When someone "yells at me," I tend to think they're excited and it piques my interest in what they're saying. At the same time, they're excited so I expect them to omit some details and not give me a complete picture - I'm less discerning about the details. Was that one of the responses I'm supposed to feel?

> We don't all express ourselves or react in the same ways

I didn't say we did. I said there is a range of responses we can reasonably expect.

> some prolific volunteer commenting on a bug report there speaks in a manner that comes off as brusque or dismissive

Maybe they are being brusque and dismissive. Maybe they're allowed to. I know I use a somewhat different tone when I'm filing bugs against a project I've been submitting bug reports and patches to for ten years, run by a developer who I've known personally for 20 ;-)

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