Hate Mail and the New Religious Wars in Tech
pogue.blogs.nytimes.com
pogue.blogs.nytimes.com
We had a woman come up to us on vacation and say our 2 year old daughter was an "evil little thing" merely for chattering away while eating lunch. I said nothing and just grinned at her until she popped a vein and stormed off. There are plenty of antagonistic oddballs out there, just grin at 'em (or don't reply to their e-mails) until they go away or start being civil and rational.
I always have a problem with smiling. I smile a lot, and am generally a happy person. People hate that. They want me to look down, be depressed, and generally be a party-pooper. But I just cant do it. Have even been called names a work because of that.
My daughter is also like that, and usually gets the same treament yours got. And I'd like to apologize for that lady. Don't let that get in the way of having a great time. Fact is, the most fun I have is when I'm out with my girls (wife and daughter) and we just start having fun with whatever is in front of us. Last time we went to fly kites I found two broken kites, and used both to build one. Everyone was looking a me like I'm a nutjob, and even made some comments. But you know what? I gave my daughter that kite and it was he highest flying kite in the whole park!
Like the internet says: "Haters gonna hate". To which I add: "Let them hate while I have a great time, mate."
:)
The less obvious but much larger problem is simply miscommunication. It happens all the time, and the limitations of written text only compound the problem. When you think about the tiny fraction of a percent of the human population that qualifies as "great writers" over history, and the fact that they often rewrote their best works multiple times before publication, it's easy to see how our quick text writing (like this discussion forum) is pretty much doomed to constant miscommunication and increased hostility until things spiral out of control.
I don't claim to know you, but for years I've read the thing you've posted here on HN, and you've always seem like a good and reasonable person to me. None the less, I can think of a time when you and I interacted, and some strange miscommunication took place. It was regarding the decor of the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo. If you and I had been discussing it over a beer, I'm sure the miscommunication would have never taken place. I'm certain topic doesn't matter that much to either of us, and in person, we'd mostly agree on it, or at worse, agree to disagree in a friendly manner. That exchange of ours has stayed with me; it's a personal reminder to try being more clear in the things I write.
None the less, I see the same sort of thing constantly on HN and everywhere else. A poorly worded statement, misinterpreted out of context, spiraling the discussion out of control in some pointless, heated, and in some ways harmful direction.
Miscommunication happens to all of us, even when we're good people with good intentions. For the record, I'm sorry we disagreed about the decor of some hotel, but looking back at it, it's hilarious and it's a good lesson in how one poorly worded statement can make a pointless mess.
I surely wasn't implying I have a total lack of crazy ;-)
Crucially, it was a brief disagreement and not one either of us wanted to spur on. You're right, miscommunication happens. Backing away from trivial misunderstandings, as we did, is the smart move IMHO. Sometimes explaining one's motivations or responses can cause a cascade of miscommunications that makes things worse.
The sad part comes when this natural bump and grind of discourse spirals, as you say, into lengthy, heated grudge matches that result in lasting antagonism (although without this, I doubt Usenet would have lasted so long ;-)). That is what's really worth avoiding. The natural bump and grind of textual discourse? It keeps things interesting, if we let it.
I agree with you about how the presentation of differing views is what keeps things interesting, but the ability to realize a discussion has gone off the rails and ought to be dropped (rather than a "clarification" that makes the situation worse), is often in short supply.
Pre-web Usenet (1980's and early 90's) along with open mailing lists and BBS's were interesting and a lot can be learned from the interactions. Initially, there was a barrier to entry, namely it took some technical skill just to connect and participate, so there was a degree of self selection happening. As things progressed, the barrier to entry decreased (the earliest being university students gaining access), and discussions changed accordingly. The ever receding barrier to entry to text communication enabling the masses (for the most part) to take part in discussions has continued to change the nature of discussions. The only people left out of discussions these days are the poor, since having a computer and connection really are privileges of the comparatively wealthier people/nations on the planet.
Like yourself, I've been watching the gradual changes for decades, and I think they are just fascinating. As always, we've got to take the good with the bad, and not all of the changes are good, but it does remain interesting.
I don't interact much with others, so possibly, I'm too indifferent, but over time I've learned how my own opinion isn't particularly important, and I can live happily without voicing it. Like your strategy of just grinning in silence, I'm perfectly content without "winning" a confrontational disagreement. The tougher question is, would discussions still be interesting if there were more people like you and me around? The people who quickly say, "this is going all wrong, let's drop it and move on." --As you mentioned, part of the "fun" of Usenet was watching others have it out.
From the stuff I've read of his over the last decade, PG has put a whole lot of thought into the matter of discussions, and has done his best to formulate HN so the discussions here are beneficial. In spite of the growth in popularity of this site, it still mostly works as intended. Though I've also thought about it for a long time, I've come to the conclusion that I may not be smart enough to design a "better" forum.
As much as I hate to admit it, a "better" forum might be a whole lot less entertaining.
This is why the last few months I just stopped commenting here on HN, and quit a lot of other forums/communities. My communication skills just don't seem to be solid enough to help me avoid unintended conflict.
People who would normally be reigned in socially, or simply excluded from conversations have nothing stopping them from spiralling conversations out of control. This is not an easy problem to solve - we've been trying to solve it for the last 30 or so years.
What the fuck do you mean? Do you imply that all of us are ignorant buffoons that cannot read the actual intent behind your poorly worded (for lack of communication skills) comments?
I've never been that much insulted in my entire life!!!
(/s)
Technical discussions can often be contentious, but often, they are contentious for the "right" reason, people care. When people actually care about building the "best" possible code, emotions run high, even though such unrestrained enthusiasm has substantial drawbacks. As you already know far too well, many thrive on the competition and conflict as much as they thrive on getting things right.
As Peter wonderfully points out, none of us can claim "A total lack of crazy," or for that matter, "A total lack of asshole." On top of these all too human failings, we also have our moments when we just get it all wrong. It happens. Roll with it. Let it go, but learn from it.
Good communication takes practice. Ask grellas sometime about the effort he put into learning to write well. It shows. He wasn't born the skill he has. He learned it. If you stop communicating, you're robbing yourself of a chance to practice.
As for me, I rarely post on HN due to my health not being very good. I deal with chronic pain, and often it hurts too much to type. As you might imagine, when I'm hurting a lot, I can often be less than pleasant company, and it's best for everyone for me to just remain silent. For me, typing comes at a cost. It means I'll be more sore by the end of the day. The cost has taught me something important; the things I say should make a difference, but often, my opinions don't really matter.
Treebeard: "You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say." -- J.R.R. Tolkien
Perhaps. There's also the fact that people are communicating via typed messages, which are signal-deficient. People may be using a language which is not their first language.
People do not follow Postel's Law: "be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept" - saving that flaming response to draft and sending a few hours later would help.
Some online communities have been entirely too content with flaming and have done little to stop it.
And, I say this gently, some people just don't have the social communication skills they need.
Sorry to hear about painful typing - that sucks.
"None of us can claim a total lack of crazy or total lack of asshole" really hit the nail on the head.
And I'll remember "If you stop communicating, you're robbing yourself of a chance to practice." for the rest of my life.
(Personally, I think he should have gotten a Google Galaxy Nexus if he wanted his sister's mockery about constant obsolescence and non working hardware to stop.)
In reality I think more Apple users would ditch Apple as soon as something significantly better came along, than Android users (who chose to use Android, not people who bought a "generic smartphone") would ditch Android should something better come along.
They're all shite.
iPhone 4 will be 2 years old. It will only lack Siri, FaceTime over cellular network and support for 'Made for iPhone' hearing aids.
I wouldn't call that 'most features'.
So I get what with an iPhone 4? Passbook, Facebook, and a maps app that no longer tells me what train I can take?
Im going to have to stick to the most features.
The ability to run apps targeting iOS 6 and above, which is arguably more important than everything else you listed.
Yes yes I know Apple doesn't owe people free upgrades. It still bugs me.
You write as though your phone came with some kind of guarantee it would support future software.
Just because you can't upgrade to iosX doesn't make what you have shite.
No, I don't. I'm listing the three competitor OS's and explaining that they all suck.
Yes, it does. Because there is nothing wrong with the device from a technological standpoint, and it most certainly can handle the tasks. There are a few new things in iOS 6 that are going to be rolled into almost every new application, and they aren't in iOS5. So as a developer, I can either use Apples version and reduce my headaches by 1000 fold, or I can support iPad 1. This means that the list of available software is going to diminish significantly.
A really big "jump to conclusions".
First of all, all of those are marvels of technology, a state of the art unbelievable even 10 years ago, and would be considered pure Star Trek level technology 20 years ago.
Second,
(a): not being able to run with SOME features (where did you got thay "with most" features from?) on "2 year old hardware" is not the same at all to (b): "not being able to run at all on < 1 year all hardware" or (c): "could run, but will not because of carriers".
If Apple goes left he will go right, if they go up he goes down; he is still deciding his tech choices based on Apple's choices, only he's navigating the whitespace where Apple fans navigate the blackspace. If he were truly free, he would simply choose the best phone for his needs and lifestyle. Instead he is as slavishly bound to Apple as the people he mocks.
What I noticed though is that since there are great Android phones on the market, the number of fanboys seems to have diminished quite a lot. It is as if having some real reason to like Android, they don't need to crusade anymore. People are weird.
Seems unlikely.
Another trend: Writers are no longer seen as a protected class. Magazines, newspapers and broadcasters and other professional gatekeepers (PR agencies, marketers, etc.) used to control the discussion. While they still guide and feed the discussions, readers know they make mistakes and have biases. To many, the media is suspected of being under the thrall of some perceived agenda (liberal media, Apple fanboy, shill for XYZ).
Ah, and I'll add a possible contributing factor: envy. There may be a quite a lot of envy of the author's voice and audience, and acting out because the person feels powerless to influence their peers, like the author does.
The lack of trust and influence that contribute to the generation of such vitriol are actually very tightly linked. As standards for intellectual integrity go down, on a personal and societal level, trust decreases proportionally, and "influence" starts to depend more on emotion than reason. Seeing well-reasoned arguments lose again and again, people (quite reasonably) start adapting, start using the "effective" strategies for influence like invective, emotionally effective fallacies, and general buffoonery.
This is why Fox News is so corrosive. Whatever your politics, the people at Fox are all liars. A clearly biased news channel that bills themselves as "Fair & Balanced" - and yet they have a huge audience, and are extremely successful. People learn from this. This is also why people like Blagojevich are so corrosive: even though he (eventually) went to prison, his months of shameless pandering gave people the sense that shame and responsibility are truly outre. The Republican party in the US has been particularly bad about not accepting responsibility for mistakes, wrong-doings, or inconsistencies: they present a disciplined, consistent defense of any accusation of impropriety. And it works, and people see that it works, and it destroys us.
The blame is totally on the uneducated electorate (or "consumerate"). Conversely, IMO, education is the only lasting solution to these problems.
(NB, there is at least ONE non-liar at Fox: Shep Shepard. It's hilarious to see him directly contradict his co-worker shills, often earning him a place on Jon Stewart).
It is the very fact that we don't "blame" Fox News for choosing something that is evil, even when it works, that makes it work. It is up to those who have principles and who believe in right and wrong to draw real lines in the sand, and stop giving people a pass for choosing the expedient, if wrong, option. It's one thing to show compassion for people's foibles, it's another to completely abandon the duty of honest application of principles, if you have them.
Basically, we need to STOP saying, "You can't blame Fox for being liars because, after all, it works." That perpetuates the problem.
So, yes, the blame is on the consumer, but for every consumer that wholeheartedly believes in Fox, there are 10 more that know Fox is a liar but tolerates it because it "works". By pointing this out I hope to make a real difference in how behavior is perceived, and shape the world's institutions into the kind that I want: ones that value integrity above all.
There's also a tribal or team-oriented element. This effect is often seen in fora such as, yes, HN. Group behavior is also a very natural human trait. Some find it hard to resist it. If you dare go against tribal dogma you become the subject of a brutal "coordinated" attack. Unless you have a thick skin these events can be emotionally draining.
It is often hard to be the one thinking outside the group. People have a natural aversion to change and will resist and attack anything that goes against the direction of group thought. Either join them or deal with the punches. Just remember that all nearly all great discoveries stemmed from questioning what the majority took to be the truth, sometimes at great personal risk. The message is that, just because everyone thinks a certain way, behaves a certain way, supports a certain product it doesn't mean they are right. It just means that they are doing what "everyone else" is doing.
It'd be interesting to see the range of hate-mail these tech columnists get.
The "pain" of insecurity balances over-confidence to help us find locally-optimal decision points. Like with other types of pain, the usefulness of it in some situations can get misdirected and misused pretty easily now that we're out of the jungles and not interacting with each other face-to-face. The anonymity of the Internet is so different from early human encounters that we have a lot of trouble dealing with it.
> Just remember that all nearly all great discoveries stemmed from questioning what the majority took to be the truth
Then again, a lot of sheep die by straying from the herd and getting picked off by predators. Like most things, cutting the balance the right way and making the best decisions at the right time is really really hard.
If it were easy, lots of animals would be competing with us for dominance of the earth.
It's not wanting to be disagreed with, even if right/wrong doesn't apply. If I decide product X is the best because of features Y and Z, and someone else decides product Q is better than X because they don't care about Y and Z, we may have both made completely correct choices based on our preferences/goals. It's not as though I was wrong about features Y and Z, or about their importance to me. But another person disagreeing about their importance can trigger psychological defenses.
The hate mail in the article concedes the phone has great hardware, but complains that it's a "nerd phone", "heartless", with "no vision". Posts on car forums might concede that a car gets great mileage but complain it has "wrong wheel drive". Blackberry guy thought it was important that he had a professional business phone that was designed with that role in mind. This is where that sense of tribalism comes in: someone has decided that a particular attribute is really important, and anyone who doesn't care about that is an outsider and a weirdo.
It takes a certain degree of maturity to recognize that things are good for different purposes and that it's OK if someone else's purposes don't match yours.
For example, I regularly work with no less than 7 different OS combinations (OS X, OpenIndiana, Windows, Linux, OpenBSD, iOS, FreeBSD), and don't hesitate to recommend different ones in different circumstances.
To recommend software or hardware without at least passing knowledge of the merits of alternative solutions is frankly negligent. For example, I don't have any Android devices (mainly because of the software upgrade issues), but I know situations where I'd definitely recommend them.
Living in a tech monoculture, whatever it may be, isn't healthy.
My phone is a bit crappy. There are definitely better ones on the market. But I don't care, it does the job. There are better TVs than my TV, better ovens than my oven and better vacuum cleaners than my vacuum cleaner, but they all do the basic job for which I bought 'em and their imperfections don't cause me any huge grief, so who cares?
I dunno. I see non-technical friends and relatives choose the wrong devices out of ignorance pretty regularly. They waste hours of their weeks fartzing with text messages that are much more difficult to type out, having trouble reading email from people they want to interact with, and spending lots of their hard earned money on other things like external cameras that are mostly unnecessary when you have a decent camera on your phone and learn how to use it properly.
I'm here with my in-laws this week and one of the problems I've noticed is that they paid for the lease of a really crummy wifi router from their ISP. The darned thing doesn't even let them Skype with their grandkids on their iPad unless they're in the same room. To compensate, they have to either go out and spend more of their fixed income on a new router or just not get the benefit of the technology that they've pretty much paid for (but bought the wrong one of).
Like most things in life, knowing when to spend the time and energy to care and when to just make due isn't an easy no-brainer.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151336
It isn't just writing nasty emails to people that positively review products from competing companies. It's that the level of adoration and devotion is so high in some cases, it affects people's choice of career. One quote in the article basically said, "I pushed Apple products for free, so getting paid to do it is even better".
I do not understand this behavior myself. I can see being a fan of various things (I'm a fan of Linux for example), but of a multinational corporation like Apple, Microsoft or Google?
But when it comes to technology this type of flaming is all over the place, even as times change: yesterday's Windows vs Mac has become today's Android vs iOS, and programmers are constantly arguing about static vs dynamic.
What is it about tech culture that makes people so attached to their decisions, and so willing to attack others who happen to have made a different decision because they happen to have a different opinion?
Actually, you pretty much do, in a lot of places. Mind you the segmentation is less Toyota vs Honda and more American vs Japanese vs European, but there's a lot of automotive fanboys having stupid arguments in the comments section of any automotive site you might care to check out.
lol do this in an unmodified civic you’d get your ass whipped by that camry
As an Amiga user I feel a bit different.
He forgets the great Commodore / Atari rage wars and the great switch with the ST / Amiga.
http://www.marco.org/2011/04/10/fanoboy-fan-boi
fan•boy |ˈfanˌboi| noun
1. informal derogatory: a term used to describe people who bought a product that competes with the one you bought, which is probably more popular than your choice, for reasons that you wish to discredit or diminish because you’re secretly afraid or upset that you made the wrong choice.
>which is probably more popular than your choice, for reasons that you wish to discredit
At that time, the usual suspects Horace,Gruber, Siegler et al. were vehemently claiming that Android would never overtake the iPhone(which Marco seemed to have fallen for) but it happened later in 2011.
So that quote seems especially funny now in retrospect as it has been turned on its head and now actually describes Apple fans calling Android fans "fanbois".
I finally decided that it makes pretty good sense to take sides when your livelihood is at stake. For most modern people there choice of technology does affect their work, even if it's not directly related. The emotional tendencies towards tribalism are probably one of the "survival heuristics" that cause us to pay attention when faced with important decisions. Since it isn't always easy to tell which decisions are ultimately important, we are primed to treat many decisions as if they are. That's my desk chair hypothesis!
Businesses that recognize this and play to it will always have more loyal and ardent customers, but you have to be willing to black-ball some potential customers in the process.
I've actually worked to consciously question that. There are ideas and belief systems which are actively dangerous and hostile (Fascism, Qutbism/Islamist extremism, certain strains of new-agism, and, I'm starting to believe, so-called free market extremism and modern strains of Rousseauism).
Or maybe I'm just getting old and set in my ways.
This was fueled by the so called "tech journalists" that fueled the original mania about the ipods and iphones, etc. which basically resulted in a bunch of monsters that defined themselves by the type of gadgets they use.
So in a way that NY Times writer has only himself to blame.
But I think this kind of heavily-invested identity rivalry started way before advertising, right? And I certainly don't see how a product reviewer could be blamed.
Then again, I spend very little time shopping for clothes or reading about cars so maybe this is just a product of being less social than most.
Most (if not all) frustration in tech comes from the lack of it.
Yes, but more or less.
Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't changed at all...same irrelevant company with the same irrelevant, mediocre products.
Gm is just not good at making decent cars.i cannot think of a single GM car that i would ever consider purchasing..
Given that cars are so expensive and visible I can kinda see how people get their identity so caught up in them (though I strongly suspect that most of the people with the sorts of opinions expressed above are probably too young to drive). Phones, however, are a mystery to me.
Smartphones are devices we use constantly, all day, probably some absurd number of times per hour, and it is a statistic that is surely going up. It's hard to think of any other product we have a more intimate relationship with. It's become more and more of a tool that we cannot live without. These are the attributes of a product that cause an emotional attachment, and is the reason people get so worked up about "phones". (You'll note this ferver didn't really reach a fever pitch until after "phones" were no longer phones.)
So, they're like phones, then. ;) When I was a teen, my peers and I used our phones (some of them even were landlines) constantly. But the fashion attribute was minimal, and the functionality was pretty much identical regardless of brand.
Not that that kept me from feeling immeasurably cooler than everyone else when I got a nice and tiny Nokia 8290...
I might be the odd one out here, but I'll often go days without so much as touching my phone. Either I have my laptop with me, which is better than my iPhone at everything save being a phone, or if I'm just looking to burn time I'll read my Kindle. I have friends who are constantly glued to their phones, and I simply don't understand the attraction.
Really? In what other way except "battery life"?
Sound reviews found it had excellent sound, and same goes for reception. And the reliability of the phone network, even for simple calls, if far better than what it was back in the day.
And the contact list, search function, visual voicemail and ease of use for those functions is far better than most, if not all, pre-iPhone phones.
almost anything will cause it, i have seen ladies doing this for furniture companies and shoes.
I think it's harder to come up with categories I've never seen fanaticism over...
Meanwhile, phones are relatively cheap and disposable, so I agree the holy war is a mystery to me to. Perhaps its the same 14 year olds as with the consoles.
Because at that point it is about you. At a certain point, iOS vs Android or Ford vs Chevy comes down to something personal. Something about you made that choice, so you better defend who you are(not what the product is).