To put it into perspective, imagine the sdmb was a little more active than it is now, and completely unmoderated, with no bar to entry. The majority of discussion would probably still be decent, because humans are mostly decent, but would it be tolerable with that (statistically sort of small) amount of bad behaviour that was both unrestrained and highly aggressive and personal?
This kind of relates to my axiom that some people are just born unlucky.
Most logical thinking people will disagree with this. But my argument is the average person lives about 70 years old. It’s not unreasonable to think that at least a handful of people are going to have more randomly unfortunate things to happen to them than others with in a 70 year time frame.
They are, to use your analogy, the coin that got flipped 10 times in a row. Only except not in their favor.
The argument works both ways. Some are born lucky and others are born unlucky.
I don’t think luck (at least not in the sense of destiny or fate) has a lot to do with the situation as it stands. I suppose the process of getting here involved some randomness, like everything does, and maybe the way my brain works is a product of everything that came before, some of which was random. I don’t think what’s happening here is unfortunate in any kind of general sense - in fact, it’s more like an unpleasant side effect of something that is on the whole very fortunate.
I wonder if all of us who pay attention to the news and/or social media nowadays are experiencing something like what @Mangetout is experiencing. Every time there’s an egregious example of someone being a jerk or a Covidiot or a Karen or a dumbass, anywhere in the country/world, the story gets picked up and goes viral and we hear about it. So even if the vast majority of people are decent and well-behaved, the sheer number of “wasps” makes us weep for humanity.
I think it’s probably true that it’s very easy for humans to be exposed to a lot more opinions than was likely say 30 years ago. I theory, that ought to be a healthy thing, but for this tendency for biased perception of negativity in total
I thought it might be useful to update this thread with my personal anecdote - not exactly on topic - more of an update to the topic (still mundane and pointless)…
This was about negative feedback, which I get a fair bit of, in the form of comments on my YouTube channel - it’s a tiny percentage of the total of feedback, the vast majority of which is lovely, but as the channel has grown significantly, the problem I described upthread occurred - the positive comments sort of merge into an uncountable ocean of ‘nice’, the negative ones, particularly as they are often personal attacks of different nature to the previous one, start to feel like they are overwhelming. in particular, the problematic comments were of the following natures (this list is not exhaustive):
- Personal attacks on some feature of my body, voice, personality, character
- Egregious and angry misinterpretations or assumptions of my motives
- Patently incorrect ‘corrections’ of my pronunciation, or of some facts I stated (usually arising from provincialism)
- Assumptions that, simply because I did not mention a thing, I must be ignorant of it
- Deliberate trolling
Many other YouTubers have solved this issue by simply withdrawing from the comments entirely, or turning them off. I have always been reluctant to do that because engaging with (the majority of) good comments is a rich source of inspiration for new ideas, but as the channel grew, it got harder and harder to deal with.
And my view was that I did have to deal with it. If someone says something in public about you that’s untrue, you want to put that right, don’t you? If someone misunderstands your innocent action as malicious, you want to explain yourself. If someone tries to correct you on something that’s not even wrong, you want to show them that the world isn’t like they assumed it is, right?
Which is all well and fine when it happens once a month, but if it happens dozens of times every day, it’s exhausting.
It’s impossible - and not only that, it’s a battle you’re constantly losing - it doesn’t matter if you explain to one person that, no, ‘bay-sil’ is not the only and true way to pronounce the name of the culinary herb Basil - even if you convince them to open their eyes, you haven’t won anything - because next up, here’s someone else, someone completely different, who also wants to say “ummm… actually… it’s pronounced ‘bay-sil’”
So that was where I was at when I opened this thread - feeling exhausted and sort of trapped by the ever increasing burden of trying to explain myself to people who honestly, probably don’t even care. This was something I had always done, and therefore felt like it was something I had to do, if I wanted to remain engaged with the audience.
I had pretty much the same conversation as this on a the Discord related to my channel, and someone innocently asked ‘OK, what would happen if you just took a week off from reading the comments at all?’
My immediate gut reaction was ‘but, but… I NEED to…’, however, I decided to give it a try.
The first couple of days, I felt twitchy. What if something bad was happening that needed my attention?
The next few days, I just noticed that I was actually being very productive - all that time I had been wasting trying to argue nonsense with people who aren’t even inclined to listen, was free to be used in other, better ways.
Toward the end, I started to wonder if I should go back at all. Only a week of respite, and it was remarkable medicine.
But most importantly, with this clearer head, I was able to formulate a plan…
My attention and time is limited. Not because I am some special luvvy on YouTube, but because I am an ordinary human with only 24 hours in my day. I need to make better decisions about how I expend that time, and so I decided:
I will not respond to anything that contains negativity, hostility, rudeness or unkindness. It doesn’t matter (*with one exception) if there is a valid or interesting point delivered along with it;
- If someone corrects me incorrectly, they can just stay wrong
- if someone can’t be polite, if someone wants to make angry wrong assumptions about me, that can live in their head, not mine
- if someone didn’t learn manners, it’s not my job to tutor them 1-on-1
I will continue to pay attention to, and interact with, that which is good, wholesome, uplifting, constructive, useful, and enlightening - and there is much of it, and I have been neglecting it.
(*The exception where I may accept negativity is cases where I might inadvertently do something that genuinely needs correction - such as accidental use of a racially charged term, or if I were to ignorantly assume something that is offensive, etc)
This might seem obvious, because it is obvious, but from the bottom of the deep hole I had dug myself into, I could not see it - I could not go to it.
So my respite week has ended and I’ve been back into the comments for a week, and… it’s just easier to deal with. There has been no let up on the bad stuff, but it is very, very much easier to deal with both practically (doing nothing is easy) and emotionally (because I decided I will not respond, it’s easy to just stop thinking about what I would like to say in response).
And if I fail; if I do get sucked (or suckered) back into it, I know that a week off will restore me to this point where I am now.
And finally, it seems like there are more positive interactions to be enjoyed and celebrated. I’m sure numerically, they haven’t increased, but the time and attention I was wasting on the negative things is now available for the positives - and I’m noticing them more as a result.
TLDR: Short version: OMG Respite is good medicine. Get some if you can.
Those are all deliberate trolling, and apparently it is having its desired effect.
Maybe. I don’t always like to assume malice where stupdity is an adequate explanation, and whilst all trolls are assholes, not all assholes are necessarily trolls.
You are far more kind/understanding than I. Maybe you should work on that (to maintain your sanity).
I missed this first time around, but I’m sorry you have to deal with this crap. No matter the subject, it seems there are always X% of people that are assholes about it. I think you made a wise decision.
I’m sure I told you before, but I’ve been regularly checking out your stuff for years. It’s both informative and fun. Keep up the good work, please.
And fuck people that have to piss all over content providers because they have nothing better going on in their own lives. If you don’t like the content, just move on. We all have seen sites we don’t like. Most of us just don’t make a habit of going back just to be an asshole.
The good news is that the break-and-reset with hard rules appears to be working. I still have to encounter the bad stuff in order to experience the good, but just this morning, I found myself chuckling in amusement at the futile anger of someone incorrectly-correcting me over some pointless detail - in the past I would have felt the need to set them straight, but this time it was just so stupid it was funny and I moved on and left them being wrong. I can’t even remember what it actually was about now, 12 hours later.
Fuck That Shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
As someone who is a moderately sized fish in a small pond, it takes some getting used to for what you perceive (and rightfully so) as simply unfair and over the top hostile words. But if you are going to have any type of public exposure at all, that will be a part of the modern social media world, so I can either accept it or go be a farmer or something.
But it does hurt, especially those things that are somewhat true. Like, and I don’t even know you, so I am making this up, but those personal attacks on your physical character, you probably have some insecurity about and you get the “OMG, those people see it too” dread. But we all have things that are odd or quirky and those assholes are just good at seeing what hurts you the most.
I don’t know what advice to give you except that I don’t engage at all, but have a friend or family member who looks at the comments and says, “This person makes a good point. Possibly this is constructive criticism” and I read those, but the nasty ones are not seen or responded to by me or not responded to by anyone.
I think this is very insightful. Some people are just unfair.
But it still hurts, dammit, like the OP is hurting. We are social animals and any criticism hurts. I think my method works well. I used to get stressed out when a former client, as a hypo, would shoplift in full view of the store cameras, as his fifth offense, and confess to it after being Mirandized.
I think I bust my ass for that man and get him a deal for no jail time and publicly funded help for his drug problem which caused the stealing. And he abuses the chance and goes to prison and writes on a prison website that I am just a tool for the prosecution and probably shared my fee with them because he could “prove” he was innocent and I wasn’t hearing it.
I quit reading stuff like that and am a much happier person for it. But like I said, I do have a friend that reads all of it because through the crap, there is good criticism. We are all imperfect people and should learn as we grow and age. But there is a way to do it without the emotional heartache which will always be there as social beings.
If we put a twist on the OP hypothetical (since no one would really want to eat 100 apples even if there were no wasps,) we could exchange likelihood of death in return for money.
Years ago, I had said in a thread that I would be willing to accept a 3% chance of a plane crash if I were to be paid $10,000 for completing the plane ride. Several Dopers called me desperate for money or reckless with life, and maybe they were right.
I would still take 3% likelihood of crash and death, but today it would have to be a substantially bigger chunk of money.
But at a certain percent threshold, nothing would really do. Like, a 90% chance of death for a billion dollars? Sorry I can’t - even if, mathematically, I might take a 9% chance of death for $100 million. 90 percent is just much bigger than 9 percent while a billion isn’t meaningfully different to my finances than a hundred million.
For your own amusement, you could have one single tagline reply to haters:
“Goodbye to us”
I’m talking about stuff like ‘This guy kicks his dog off camera’ and ‘This guy is employed by the Tory government to prove that unemployment benefits should be reduced’ and ‘u are lying about x’ and as I write this, I realise I am responding to a statement containing negativity.
I was responding to what you said above about how people commented on your physical characteristics. I had no intent to offend you or be negative.
We are all imperfect. I will say that the upper part of my front teeth are discolored. No whitening treatment will cure them, and I am overweight. I also talk like I grew up in rural WV. I don’t think it is fair to poke fun or make comments about those things. But I know they are there, and they hurt the worst because they are there.
I again apologize.
It’s OK - no need, and you’re actually right - some of the physical stuff does have a basis in reality, simply because people are all different shapes and sizes.
But for me, I think being misunderstood often hurts worse than being told I have ugly fingers - I suppose because in the case of fingers, there’s nothing I can do - this is the hand I was dealt (pun intended), whereas being misunderstood implies that I have fallen short in my effort to communicate.
I mean, it’s seldom actually that, it’s far more often just people who like to be harshly and hastily judgmental - the internet provides a playground for these people.