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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

To focus on one very small part of this article:

> For instance, shortly after college, I thought I would post a few funny videos on YouTube and, you know, become instantly famous2. I gave up basically right away. I didn’t have the madness necessary to post something every week, let alone every day, nor did it ever occur to me that I might have to fill an entire house with slime, or drive a train into a giant pit, or buy prosthetic legs for 2,000 people.

That's not the hard part.

The hard part is dealing with all the negative comments. My buddy posted a few videos on Tiktok a few weeks ago. Would any of you like to guess how many comments are straight up telling him to kill himself? Here's a hint: whatever you guess, it's likely much lower than the actual number.

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Comments sections on mainstream sites are universally garbage dumps, and you just have to ignore them. I don't know why sites even add them. Must be some "best practice" from Web 2.0 back in 2004 that nobody's questioned ever since.

Ha ha, my site has no comment section, no analytics.

Someone on HN asked me "What's the point?"

I am guessing it is because you probably have something important to share, and are less interested in the attention economy of narcissists =3

When you post something publicly, first rule of thumb is to never read the comments. Or just read the ones from people you know personally.

In many cases, the comments can be filled with people agreeing with the creator, the people who follow the creator, the people who would defend the creator.

If you're gunning to be a creator with an audience, I don't think the answer is to completely ignore your audience. It's to learn how to cultivate a target audience, how to not engage with malicious people, how to be strategic about your messaging, outreach, branding...

Of course, if you're not interested in those (truthfully tiring) things, then your rule of thumb is a pretty good one for most people.

Engagement, channel and platform loyalty. YouTube channels are asking for comments because it makes them rank higher.

Comment sections are often actually also the place where the gold is. Tons of authors find the answer to the problems that they were trying to solve in comments or they find greetings from other people doing similar things, or sometimes someone points them at some other person or group doing similar things. Other readers/viewers may find the answer to the question that lead them to read/watch the content in the comments. Or there's a TLDR or a correction there that's really useful.

Depending on the site and community, a comment section vs needing to find a way to email or phone or meet someone in person in order to give them something is often a make or break threshold for contributions. Sadly, it's often also the threshold for bad contributions.

But why do sites do it? Yes, like another commenter said, it boosts engagement. Both for the platform and the users. Creators and commenters and even lurkers.

Death threats are always inexcusable & unjustifiable; that said, what exactly did he post? Perhaps some forms of content attract way more spite and hate than others?

I think in this day and age, with the combination of a young & unruly audience plus the edginess allowed on many platforms, you're going to be exposed to shockingly unfiltered behavior.

I also think there are specific forms of content (and your strategy of engagement online) that can mitigate this, e.g. posting political content versus some non-topical artwork.

Death threats are claims of intent to kill others. They are not advice to others to kill themselves.

The latter is still inexcusable by default, but I don't like seeing it miscategorized.

> The hard part is dealing with all the negative comments.

That's the easiest part for anyone who's been on the internet long enough.

> Would any of you like to guess how many comments are straight up telling him to kill himself?

I wouldn't and don't care and your buddy shouldn't either. Modern content creation aka TikTok is basically shouting into the void. Why would I care what the void shouts back?

> That's the easiest part for anyone who's been on the internet long enough.

I've been on the internet for awhile. I've had people tell me to kill myself, I've had 3am phone calls insulting me, I've had to drop a handle on a social networking site because I got a death threat that was just plausible enough that I decided to adopt a pseudonym going forward.

But that doesn't compare to seeing dozens, hundreds, thousands of those comments directed at you day by day. I refuse to believe that it doesn't wear down your psyche after some time.

> I wouldn't and don't care and your buddy shouldn't either. Modern content creation aka TikTok is basically shouting into the void. Why would I care what the void shouts back?

I straight up told him to not read any of the comments, because you're right - it's better to shout into the void, than to attempt to make friends with it.

I have a feeling the usual "just have a thicker skin / ignore it" retort goes right back to the article's point.

People who are predisposed to having/developing a good "filter" suffer from false consensus effect (and in the case of internet personas, survivorship bias) that leaves them somewhat baffled as to why others don't-Just do whatever they do.

Like picking espresso machines and hiring/training employees, or "raw-dogging" long distance flights, successfully handling the vitriol of a tide of internet people hurling vitriol (whether it's someone's bad day or they're just crazy, tilting at windmills or containing a kernel of valid criticism) is highly personality-dependent in a way that many cannot just will themselves into powering through it every day forever (and will be absolutely miserable if they put themselves in a position where they have to).

I call this the "load-bearing just". :)

> is highly personality-dependent in a way that many cannot just will themselves into powering through it every day forever

Should probably do something other than content creation or commenting on the internet. Luckily, there are hundreds of different fields where one can be useful that have professional, non-toxic work environments.

As someone who's also posted quite a bit on sites like YouTube over the years, I wouldn't say the amount of negative comments have been that overwhelming. They certainly exist, but they've always been a minority of the comments on my own videos.

But it's definitely dependent on the topic you're posting videos about, the audience you're aiming at and I guess how unlucky you are when it comes to attracting trolls and other troublemakers.

You definitely do need a thick skin though.

Developing a thick skin is a part of all art. It just takes time.

This is so important.

Humans feel evolved to attack one another with criticism to lower the fitness of rivals. Deflecting the garbage while still being able to receive and process valid criticism is a true skill.

Statistically there are always people that try to find entertainment in others misery. Expect a base rate of 1:10 sociopaths, 1:100 psychopaths, and 1:5000 in active psychosis. Those groups covert narcissism means any perceived slight to their ego is never forgiven, and they often try whatever scheme they think they can get away with... The funny part is often at trial these people are honestly shocked their world theory doesn't hold up under community laws.

However, expecting other people to accept personal behavioral choices is also ethically a big ask of society. In some ways, honesty is less insulting than disingenuous sycophancy, or demanding people change to suit your preferences.

One must accept there are bears in the woods, lions on the plains, and poisonous snakes in the grass. Have a great day =3

It's not lions on the planes, it's snakes. Lions are on plains.

Yes, base error rates are also high in predictive text. lol =3

After all, you're explicitly restricted from bringing large Li-ions on planes!

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/...

Good one!

psychopathy and sociopathy are the same pathology.. they cannot have different occurrence rates. You have obviously no idea what you're talking about. I didn't read the rest of your comment (because why would I?)

Depends when you attended classes, and how you defined the antisocial behavioral spectra. In some ways, the >DSM-5 muddled a lot of disorder definitions to better cover more complex diagnosis under the US healthcare system.

>they cannot have different occurrence rates

I can see how one might reason this to be true, but that is just not consistent with the data collected over the past hundred years.

Psychopaths are born that way, and often start harming pets or other kids very early in life. The Internet just supplied an ecosystem to normalize parasitic behavior, and satiate their demanding egos. Even when proven wrong, they often still insult people during an attempt to apologize.

Have a wonderful day =3

The most common (layperson) use for the terms I see is that sociopaths are psychopaths who know how to behave themselves. That leads to an obvious difference in occurrence rates.

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