Hacker News Reader

Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

> You frequent enough servers and you realise social media has taught people bad habits

There is a lot of that, and somehow it is acceptable online, while when you project it to face to face situations it would be really rude behavior. Like in a chat room when you ask someone something with an explicit mention of their handle, only to see the presence indicator pass it by without any response. Not even taking time to give a Yes, No, or Too busy now.

Or how in a private group someone who was invited suddenly leaves the group membership, hops off the channel. Comparative to walking out of a meeting without saying a word and provide a reason. A simple "I enjoyed it here, but I have to spend my time elsewhere" is just simply a polite thing to do, and costs only 2 seconds of time.

Social media has strong parasocial tendencies.

View on HN

> you project it to face to face situations it would be really rude behavior. Like in a chat room when you ask someone something with an explicit mention of their handle

The difference is that in person you as the asker are more polite about it also. You don't burst into an unrelated meeting just to ask someone a question. Or elbow your way through a group of friends having a conversation just to ask something unrelated.

But in chat rooms (and emails) you do. Easy for folks to get in a situation where dozens of people every day demand their attention and expect a response.

> Like in a chat room when you ask someone something with an explicit mention of their handle, only to see the presence indicator pass it by without any response.

Asking someone a question online does not obligate them to take time to answer it, or even explain why they don’t feel like doing so.

You’re not in a conversation with everyone who is online, so the comparison to in person conversations doesn’t hold.

> Not even taking time to give a Yes, No, or Too busy now.

People are doing other things while using their computers and you should not expect to be able to commandeer their attention on demand by tagging them. Again the comparison to in-person social norms doesn’t hold because you can’t see if this person is busy with something else.

I find this sense of entitlement to other people’s instant time and attention to be very negative for any digital dynamic. Whenever someone with this attitude joins a group chat it leads to people turning their statuses to Do Not Disturb all of the time or even leaving the group because they don’t want to feel obligated to drop what they’re doing and respond to that one person every time that person drops a tag in chat.

It depends on the context and situation. You are right for some random public channel. I am talking about for instance chatrooms where a small remote team joins for the express purpose to collaborate closely, and I often find these weird deviations from how you would behave offline in similar setting to be very detrimental for communication and productivity killers. Part of it is about setting expectations and fostering the 'room culture', and that can help improve things. But there is an overall behavior change to the online world. Comparable perhaps (but different in the details) to "road rage", a general behavior shift people have once they step into a car and are insulated from others by their hotrods window screens. And 'commandeering' never works well, btw.

> I am talking about for instance chatrooms where a small remote team joins for the express purpose to collaborate closely

I am too.

A chat room is not equivalent to a face to face conversation. You’re not in an always-on social engagement with those people.

If you need to switch to having face to face conversational norms, you need to request a time for that.

It’s not reasonable to expect that someone’s online indicator means you are entitled to request that they drop what they’re doing and respond to you. Online does not mean not busy.

Nah, you generalize things too much. A chatroom is whatever you make of it. Generally speaking all the social communication patterns we have in the offline world, have equivalents in online communication. A chatroom is but a channel to convey these patterns. A chatroom doesn't have behavioral norms attached to it. The assumption that this is the case, may be a large contributor to many social media problem areas.

Another example. A project chatroom, and the agreement is that comms are async. But there are moments where multiple members are real-time in the chat. It may well happen that you say "Since we chatting now @JohnDoe, we have a decision to make on this and that". John Doe answers "For sure, let's do that", so you give a follow-up with elaboration. Only to suddenly find John unresponsive for 5 days.

That is a ridiculous situation if you depicted that to happen to you offline in a face to face setting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com