Am I Too Prickly?

[hrj]

I think people who follow me on social media (especially here and fb) are aware of my habit of explicitly noting when I don't want "helpful" commentary/suggestions/feedback on something I"m describing--and, conversely, explicitly noting when I'm seeking input. But sometimes I worry that people take that as a signal that I don't want interaction at all. (Why in the world would I post things about my life if I didn't want any interaction?)

I'd love to have more actual conversations on social media. Back and forth, discussions of topics of mutual interest. But it feels like so few people stop to ask themselves, "Am I phrasing my participation in this conversation in a way that implies the original poster is ignorant or incompetent? Is there a way I could rephrase that makes it clear that I'm providing additional information for other readers, rather than implying this is something the original poster doesn't know? Or that I'm amplifying and agreeing with the post, rather than contradicting it or poking holes in it?"

Here's a generic example.

OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: [Subsidiary Information that could be assumed to be known by anyone who already knows Interesting Fact]

Compare to:
OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: What I love about that [Interesting Fact] is [Subsidiary Information].

The first implies the OP doesn't know the fact. The second shows solidarity by assuming the OP knows the fact and the commenter is sharing their love for it.

Now, one could object that people differ in their ability to communicate in nuanced fashions and some people just aren't good at analyzing on the fly how their comments might be taken. But from the other side, people differ in their ability to assume good will in the face of past experience. A mirror-world version of "I'm not good at reading social cues" is "I'm working very hard to read social cues and the false positives are abundant." Telepathy still hasn't been invented.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm whining about this (given that the inciting interaction was incredibly trivial).

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> explicitly noting when I don't want "helpful" commentary/suggestions/feedback on something I"m describing--and, conversely, explicitly noting when I'm seeking input. <<

That's useful. It's also possible to turn off comments for a post.

>>I'd love to have more actual conversations on social media. Back and forth, discussions of topics of mutual interest.<<

Things that play into that:

* Post links to articles and adding a few lines of commentary. ScienceDaily is a favorite source.

* Find a list of thoughtful questions and post them one at a time. This is my current list for Philosophical Questions on Saturdays.

* Some communities have discussion questions, check in posts, etc.

>> But it feels like so few people stop to ask themselves, "Am I phrasing my participation in this conversation in a way that implies the original poster is ignorant or incompetent? <<

It depends a lot on your audience. I tend to spell things out, and include definitions or supporting links, because I deal with a lot of touchy topics and also I have many fans who are a) from other countries, b) survivors of foster care or other abuse, c) asexual/demisexual, and other traits that mean they often aren't familiar with stuff that "everyone knows." I figure people already familiar with a thing can just skip the info about it. My rate is about 19 people who appreciate it to 1 who feels condescended to.

>>Is there a way I could rephrase that makes it clear that I'm providing additional information for other readers, rather than implying this is something the original poster doesn't know?<<

I often say something like, "My go-to reference for this is (link)."

>> Or that I'm amplifying and agreeing with the post, rather than contradicting it or poking holes in it?"<<

I usually start that with "Agreed."

Re: Thoughts

[hrj]

Interesting thoughts -- because I don't find "post a link to an article" to inspire me to conversation. It means I have to go elsewhere and read the article, or else try to participate in the conversation without the same background knowledge. (One of my current frustrations with fb--among all the others--is how much of my feed is people posting second-hand content rather than saying something from their own life and experience.)

Similarly for "question of the day" posts--I see people posting responses, but rarely see it turn into conversation.

A lot of the latter probably has to do with the format (especially in fb) which disrupts conversational flow and makes it difficult to return to an existing conversation. (See my comments on Usenet on another comment.)

[gurdymonkey]

Nuance doesn't come across well online. Some people also only seem to absorb a fraction of what they're reading anyway and miss some of the information or intent.

[life_of_glamour]

You know I feel you, so much. Also don't discount the fact that a lot of people are incredibly clueless and/or stupid. We were never meant to have this much access to other people's thoughts, and it's been a real education to get a view into that with social media. 😒

[heleninwales]

I read an article the other day that was bemoaning the lack of discussion online these days. Personally I blame Twitter and this writer pretty much agreed that Twitter was where the rot set in.

Back when we were both members of Usenet groups, discussions could get quite lengthy and mostly stayed civil. But Twitter only allowed short posts so nuance was completely lost and everyone just ended up shouting at one another. It's possible that the Twitter mode of "discussion" has now become the norm because that's how people come to social media. The sites where lengthier, more thoughtful threads happened are now defunct.

Re lack of lengthy discussions here, I think there just aren't as many active posters as there used to be and people may be spread over a number of social media sites. I'm here, but also follow many friends on Facebook as well as having a group on Slack and there's Discord and of course Mastodon. I therefore drew the line at Bluesky when a number of FB friends moved there.

[hudebnik]

On Quora, I see a mix of both styles: a bunch of "lengthier, more thoughtful threads", mixed with short "you're an idiot and your mother dresses you funny" gotchas. It would be interesting to correlate it with the poster's age: one suspects that the longer posts are from people over 50.

There's a substantial number of apparently-really-knowledgeable posts mixed with the "Why do [insert group name] believe [insert obvious nonsense]?" political trolling. Somebody will ask a behind-the-scenes question about a particular movie, and get an answer from somebody who claims to have worked sets-and-props for that movie. Somebody will ask why modern windmill blades have three rather than four or five blades, and get a detailed explanation from a mechanical engineer who builds windmills. People ask questions about Tolkien and get answers with detailed (and cited) quotations from not only the books everybody knows but from the various posthumously-published letters and stories.

[hrj]

I can see how "exchange of useful factual information" would be one of your "love languages!" LOL I always hoped that my research blogs would spark conversations and discussions, but it's never really happened. (Part of that is due to the manual-approval process I had to implement on the blog due to the volume of spam comments. But it's not the only thing.)

[hudebnik]

I usually find your historical research interesting and informative, but it's so thorough and detailed, so far beyond anything I know about or even have an informed opinion about, that I don't have much to add :-)

[hrj]

The spread of socializing to many different venues certainly changes things. I find I have a fairly low limit to how many different social media venues I can be actively engaged in, simply because if I'm not reading a lot of the content regularly, I feel like a random drive-by commenter when I post, rather than feeling like a member of a community. So I tend to gravitate toward the venues where I can manage my consumption volume, but also feel like I'm actually getting to know the people I interact with. ("Feel like" because parasociality is a real thing and it's hard to remember whether I've actually interacted with someone substantially or simply read a lot of their posts.)

[cellio]

It feels like nuance is a dying art, especially but not only online. I loved the thoughtful, complex, nuanced conversations we sometimes had on (certain) Usenet newsgroups or mailing lists or in-person gatherings. In recent years that's been harder to find; more and more people in the places where I am are more absolutist, more one-true-way, more "any disagreement with me is hostile". Facebook and Twitter surely made it worse, with their algorithms amplifying conflict, but it's a deeper problem in our society and I wish I knew how to fix it. It has a chilling effect on dialogue. :-(

[hrj]

Your comment about Usenet brings me back to a though I keep returning to: that the interactional structure of a venue has such an enormous influence on the types of conversations/activities it will support/encourage. Usenet made it easy to follow the thread of a discussion, and to identify new material in that conversation. These things encouraged interaction and exchange of ideas. Twitter (and similar models) not only encouraged brief low-context posts, but it made it awkward to try to follow subthreads (and, of course, made it impossible to identify new content in a thread).

The structural influence isn't purely a function of online conversation. I pay a lot of attention to how the physical layout of convention spaces can either encourage or prevent casual socializing, extending programming discussions, and the pursuit of new social bonds.

[cellio]

the interactional structure of a venue has such an enormous influence on the types of conversations/activities it will support/encourage.

Yes, agreed. Places (both digital and physical) are set up in ways that encourage some interaction styles and discourage others -- the venue with convenient breakout space, the wiki with obvious talk pages, the Q&A site with linked chat rooms, the mailing list that is digest-only versus immediate-distribution.

Related to this last (but I was thinking of Usenet when I started to type this paragraph) is cycle time. In the earlier days of Usenet, where messages moved by UUCP and could take a day or three to propagate, we knew that our messages wouldn't be seen right away, with at least two effects: (1) we (or at least some of us) tried to think more about "will this message I'm about to send be redundant or overcome by events by the time it arrives?", and (2) we took more time to compose messages because there was no urgency or immediacy. Compare with social media today, where everything is now now now, where hot takes spread quickly and a clever barb can increase your following, and where the chunk size is really small. On Usenet, and LJ/DW, and mailing lists, I sometimes read thoughtful essays; on Twitter, if what you want to say exceeds a few tweets, it's probably not going to work -- the norm there is "stuff I can read while waiting for my burrito to heat up", and even if you do create that 40-tweet thread, Twitter's probably going to break it so people can't follow it. A platform gets the kinds of interactions it empowers, and social media empowers short passing thoughts of little consequence.

I think a lot about things like this while working on Codidact. For example, Stack Exchange (a previous home for many of our founders) was constantly fighting the war over "what comments are for", in part because of design decisions they made. We looked at how people were trying to use them, and built an interface that works with rather than against people. We looked at where the trampled grass was and put the walkways there, in other words. (And we know we need built-in chat, which we don't have yet alas.) We also have our own ideas about making things better, of course, but in all of our design discussions, I try to push on "how will people use this, and is that what we want?" as a guiding principle.

[hudebnik]

cellio, have you discussed any of these issues with jducoeur, who's also spent a bunch of time designing and building systems that are at least in part social-media? You might have some interesting exchanges of ideas.

[cellio]

Good suggestion. jducoeur and I were both on the Rialto when it was still a mailing list and have followed each other forever on LJ/DW, so we've had lots of passing conversations about things in this space. We haven't had explicit conversations about Codidact (or Stack Overflow), I don't think, but we talk around the edges and I should try to tap his knowledge more. I'd love to get him on Codidact just as he'd love to get me on Qwerki, but neither has gotten very far yet.