How to deal with negativity on Twitter.
I don't like to call out people; in fact, it makes me very uneasy. As
I'm writing this now, I'm still wondering if I'm going to publish this.
But I feel it's time that someone says something publicly. I've shared
my opinions with others privately so I know that I'm not alone in these
views.
@brixen @bascule @garybernhardt @zedshaw @tomdale
When I read the nicknames above, I instantly think of "negativity" and
"snarky comments".
Before I say anything else, I must clarify two things. First of all: I'm
not talking about these people personally or professionally now. I think they are
excellent programmers; I'm inspired by the code they write; I think it's
amazing how they actually manage to ship projects/products. I haven't met
them in real life, but I have no reason to believe they are mean and
negative in any way. This is all about their public image on Twitter,
Hacker News, reddit and blogs.
And secondly: I'm not saying that "these people are negative". All I
know is that when I read those nicknames, I somehow think of their
tweets as snarky. So if you don't think you're negative or snarky on
Twitter, I want you to know that your public image might not be exactly
what you want it to be.
So what kind of negativity are we talking about? It's mostly about
making "innocent" jokes about other communities. Node.js are reinventing
everything. Rails is just tons of magic. Rails programmers pick up Go
because it's cool. Client-side MVC framework X is terrible. Nobody knows
Ember.js. Callback-style IO has no use.
Of course, it's possible to state these things in a constructive manner.
But the tweets I'm talking about are not constructive; they are snarky
and smug. There's an attitude of "I know what's best, and this is just
completely crap". It's not about improving software or teaching people,
it's about making people laugh and retweet.
I laughed and retweeted for a while too. But something didn't feel
right. This was not the reason why I started programming. I started
programming because I want to create. I want to learn. I want to
collaborate. I want to teach. I want to show off this amazing thing I
just wrote. I want to see all the fascinating concepts you've been
working on. I want to understand what this world is all about.
We all need a place where we can vent and joke and relax, and
unfortunately Twitter is becoming this place. It feels so safe: Only 140
characters and a very fuzzy social network. You can't really see where
your tweet is going before you publish it. But Twitter has an enormous
reach. You can reach hundreds of thousands of users with just a few
retweets. And as you write your snarky tweets you are defining what's
acceptable for the community; you are teaching newcomers how this
community works.
Oh, and although I gave some examples above, I don't think
intra-language fighting is the real cause here. No, that is just how
it manifests itself. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't think
that the people behind the handles are terrible people either. It's
a combination of venting, being annoyed at computers, feeling a bit
superior (hey, we all think we know best) and having an extremely
inviting text field in front of you.
Another common theme on Twitter is how terrible Hacker News is. I find
this depressingly amusing, because for me Twitter is far worse. On
Hacker News comments are visible on the same page at the same time for
all the users. You see everything in context, and opinions equalizes
over time. One dumb comment leads to ten replies, where one of them is
good. Tweets have nearly no context because we all follow different
people. You don't know what the author had in his stream as he wrote his
tweet and following complex conversations over Twitter is painful.
Many users also have notifications enabled for Twitter, so whenever
they get mentioned in a tweet they are immediately pulled out of what they
were doing and are ready to reply. It's all in real-time so you have to
reply quickly while someone still cares. And if they were to come up
with something amusing on-the-go, they can share it instantly with just
a few taps.
The limitation of 140 characters is great ... if you have time to think.
There's something special about focusing your thoughts down to the bare
essentials. But when a discussion starts the limitation does no longer
any good. You are forced to cut down on your arguments and
misunderstandings are bound to happen.
I might seem very negative right now, but as I said: We all need place
to vent. All I'm asking for is that we don't vent all the fucking time.
And that you realize who are going to read your thoughts. Maybe you
could have a good laugh if you shared it with someone around you,
instead of everyone who looks up to you? Maybe you can find a better
medium to express your opinions?
As I'm writing this I'm reminded by @jcoglan, James Coglan. I've been a
great fan of James for some years now. I first stumbled upon his Scheme
interpreter, Heist <https://github.com/jcoglan/heist>, and was
immediately impressed by the code quality. I think Heist was mainly
about learning how to implement Scheme, but James treated it as a proper
project. When I read through that README and was struck by how polished
everything way. He had spent way more time than my silly personal
projects.
I was also stoked to see James releasing Faye, a pub/sub-library for
Ruby and Node.js: <http://faye.jcoglan.com/>. More precisely: I was
stoked to see other people getting excited by it; I wanted other people
to discover James as well. I had quite the man crush you see.
I'm not quite sure how it happened, but one day I went to
twitter.com/jcoglan and realized he'd joined the negativity. I felt like I
lost a good friend, although I hadn't communicated that much with him.
James summarizes this in his blog post "I'm not helping" which I think
everyone should read: <http://blog.jcoglan.com/2013/04/25/im-not-helping/>.
It restored my faith in James. Seriously. Read it now.
A few months later, James deleted his Twitter account. There is no more
@jcoglan. This makes me sad. He's still alive of course - he's publishing
more posts on his blog and answering the Faye mailing list as always,
but I do miss him on Twitter.
I hope you can understand this: I don't want to drive negative people
out of the community, I want them to show their positive side.
This post became longer than I anticipated so maybe it's time to
fulfill the title: How can we deal with negativity on Twitter?
Luckily, Twitter has an amazing feature that will instantly remove
negativity from your stream. It's called UNFOLLOWING. The next time
something feels a bit too snarky: Unfollow that user. Before you know it,
you'll have a really nice place where people have interesting and quirky
conversations.
Don't worry about unfollowing people; no one is going to notice.
Seriously, no one cares who you follow on Twitter. This is maybe the
best thing about Twitter compared to other social networks, there's no
hard feelings for not being connected. Don't feel obliged to follow
people who makes your day worse.
I could also write some tips for becoming more positive. But we are
naturally influenced by the people around us, and I believe that
surrounding yourself with a positive vibe is far more effective than
trying to change yourself today. Surround yourself with people who
inspire you, and you'll soon become inspired yourself.
---
I don't have comments on this blog, and I'm not going to bring this
discussion over to Twitter for obvious reasons, but if you have anything
on your mind: judofyr@gmail.com.
Oh, and I totally forgot: I'd like to thank @telemachus for reading a
draft of this post. He has also written about negativity on Twitter:
<http://ithaca.arpinum.org/2011/11/25/be-thankful.html>