Comment by JohnMakin
14 hours ago
> That is not possible and it is extremely suppressive to express yourself.
Also for the fact that you cannot predict how future powers will view past comments - for instance, certain benign political views 20 years ago could become "terroristic speech" tomorrow.
I operate by a simple, general rule - I don't often say anything online I wouldn't say directly to someone's face in real life.
Depends on what you want to say. It can be safer to say something directly to someone's face than online because it is transient and generally does not involve random passers-by.
I am not going to give examples, because I don't want them to be pinned on me as my views, but I'm sure most of us have enough imagination to come up with them.
> I operate by a simple, general rule - I don't often say anything online I wouldn't say directly to someone's face in real life.
More people should keep this same energy. I try to stress this to my kids and it feels like it's falling on deaf ears in regards to my teen. Alas.
I can be a rude prick online sometimes, but I can be in real life too - basically though the reason I do this is I never want it to be some huge surprise IRL if someone sees what I write online and be like, "wow, I didn't know that about him." I'm pretty much what I am online and IRL the same. For some reason this seems to matter for me, at least in the past when people have tried to like, send employers stuff I may have written online. The reaction is like "oh, yea, we knew that already about him."
Nothing terrible, maybe slightly embarrassing, but you know how online spaces can be. just be yourself basically, at least I try to be.
Your framing is interesting. You may feel that you can’t change who you are in real life, but people have a choice on how they behave online (or choose not to engage at all). So you could choose to be nice (or at least not a jerk); I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t get people writing to your employer complaining. I’d argue that if you know you’re sometimes a jerk, it’d be less stressful for you and others if you didn’t bring that energy online.
1 reply →
This really hits a string with me, adding on to this, This is how I believe the same way but I would argue that I might be more nicer online than offline because I am better able to control any emotions imo when I give more thought to it.
Because I don't really appreciate flame wars and when that's the case, I like to take some time to find common ground and just have a respectable discussion when possible.
This approach is harder to work irl because those moments are also spontaneous & it does require significantly more discipline to control one's emotion within seconds rather than minutes, but its something that I think I can work upon as well.
But I would say that aside from that, most of my comments are pretty spontaneously written. I frame it as a question of being honest with myself at times, I think I am mostly pretty much the same IRL and online as well.
Another point but such forums also act like a journal to me for my future to read as well. I try to write comments in such sense that in future, I can read them and try to accurately remember what my mind was thinking during the time/days I wrote that comment for self-retrospection as well.
Edit: Although now that I think about it, there are definitely some subtle changes I might have online vs irl but I would still say that I feel like my accounts are pretty authentic fwiw (personally) but I am happy with my authenticity online but there's definitely a level of my thinking which worries about any comment being permanently available though.
As someone who gets dopamine hits from downvotes on HN, I approve of your behavior!
>just be yourself basically
Yea, it is boring when everyone is the same. I would like a rude but interesting world (even if I might not survive long in one), than a nice, boring one.
This is very import: you don't know how the cancelation culture will be in 20 years.
I like to use the example of a guy who did a blackface in a party back in 2000's. Although reprehensible, was not commom-sense racism back then. Today society sees it as completely unacceptable.
Eventually that guy became prime minister of Canada and things went pretty bad when that photo surfaced decades later.
Is it far to judge someone's actions by the lens of a different culture? When the popular opinion comes, they won't care about historical context.
Only idiots don’t care about it historical context.
I think the problem with this, especially amongst younger people, is having spent so much time online, they don't know where to draw this line anymore.
Interesting. You could probably get into trouble in those two places for extremely different things you said.
of course, and it has happened, but I think authenticity is usually appreciated
what two places?