Stop Sharing Quotes. You're Not Better Than Anyone.
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Sharing quotes is like telling jokes (most of which weren't invented by the speaker). I don't think people will accept an argument against telling jokes.
On the topic of quotes, here's one of my favorites: "While programming, you can write fast programs, and you can write programs fast, but you can't write fast programs fast." Guess who said it?
No clue, but I'll throw in a guess of "Fred Brooks".
Sigh. This kind of post annoys me. The purpose isn't to be "better than anyone", it's to share something you personally find interesting.
Most of the time like writing blog posts. But this time it's something I've seen before and here I really get the feeling that the writer wants to be "better than anyone". Well, at least show that "anyone" is worse.
That's fine, it's fair to project on you own blog.
Oh, you say it ironically, but oh boy, how fortunate we would be if more people took this advice. Including the author, me, and you.
I'm pretty sure we are all familiar with the StN ratio in information theory.
Regardless, I'm not one of those "quote" people on facebook or in general. To me this post says more about the author than it does the people he is judging. Why does he care so much about the quotes they post? Whether you like the quote, hate it, or are indifferent -- is it so hard to just move on?
He doesn't have to know what YOU did, he just has to have a good idea of what the 99% of the morons who shared such quotes have done. And they haven't read it.
Is there a better definition for a moron than that of someone who shares "simplistic ideas"?
Come to think of it, isn't "simpleton" a synonym for moron?
So, yes, "sharing ideas" makes you a moron, if the ideas are moronic (as it often happens with quoted "wisdom"), or they consist of soundbites that have been shared to death (as it also happens more often than not).
How else would you call the guy in the office that emails everybody the same BS hoaxes, "funny powerpoints" and "inspirational quotes"?
Anyway I would say that a moron is someone that is stuck at the level of simple ideas, not just someone that indulges in simple ideas from time to time.
I also run Twitter accounts with things like programming news and programming related links and it's far more common for those to be "favorited" than retweeted. So there's certainly something about quotes that makes people want to share.
| Something about sharing them on facebook strikes
| me as so counter to the point
Is posting something thought-provoking to your own wall being unhumble? Is facebook somehow incompatible with happiness?
"This epidemic, if you allow me to be hyperbolic, is getting so bad that we don't even seem to care if quotes are real anymore."
Or, quotes are sometimes fake. This is because of two issues. First, people don't fact check. Mostly, this is because the cost isn't worth the reward. If you find out the truth and you tell people, your reward is often looking like a know-it-all. There is a gap here for someone to make a better fact checking platform that reduces this cost through the magic of natural language processing.
Second, people pay too much attention to arguments by appeal to authority. Just because someone was respected does not mean that everything they said was correct. In fact, for many particularly talkative people, you can probably find arguments they've made on both sides of many issues.
I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself. -- Marlene Dietrich
I have heard that nothing gives an Author so great Pleasure, as to find his Works respectfully quoted by other learned Authors. -- Benjamin Franklin
Like your body your mind also gets tired so refresh it by wise sayings. -- Hazrat Ali
I think we have to quote, we have to copy, share, redistribute, what we can and what we should.
I will quote only one place for more details: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Quotations
For me a shared quote is a little piece of wisdom (or funny) packed into a few words. The fact that someone read it, liked it, and shared it is an act of generosity and also a bit of self expression (ie, "I value this thought").
But do I think I'm being better than anyone when I share a quote? Hardly.
What I do think is that the fact the author accuses quote sharers of trying to be better than other people reflects far more about the author's psychology than of the people who share quotes with him.
EDIT: Also - Writing a blog post demanding people change their behavior is one of the most futile things out there. Best thing to do is to unfriend people who share quotes or use whatever controls there are to not see stuff annoying people post.
Speaking from experience because we've launched an iPhone app called Quipio that lets people create and share such quotes in seconds (possibly this author's worst nightmare).
We've seen it grow pretty dramatically in the first three weeks: 42K quotes have been created, 115K+ shares. 70K+ downloads on the app store. There is no question that people reveal their emotional states through them. Makes for an interesting graph.
How to maximize the amount of meaning while minimizing the amount of content? Quotes, much like good jokes, are at the bleeding edge of natural language elegance. They're the Haskell of English if you will.
No wonder some people spent hours practicing their off the cuff remarks and preparing impromptu responses. ;)
This seems like a lot of misplaced frustration.