from Hacker News

The Argument Machine

by __chrismc on 10/28/13, 10:52 AM with 15 comments

  • by jcutrell on 10/28/13, 1:14 PM

    There's a lot of this that I agree with, but there's also a lot of it that is limited by personal experience. I for one have never had a fight on Twitter - the closest thing being when I complained about my poor Comcast service - so I can't say I resonate with all of these things.

    However, something that should be pointed out: brevity is not inherently the cause for misunderstanding. Brevity is a constraint. Don't try to say hard things in fewer words if you don't understand wit. And, perhaps as importantly, don't say witty things who don't understand them. This is a lesson every good marketing class will teach you, and Ogilvy preached:

    "Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon."

    But, I suppose when you force the masses to be brief, they won't think of Ogilvy.

  • by petercooper on 10/28/13, 11:24 AM

    I think a lot of the antagonism you see from certain open source communities comes from Twitter nowadays. (That is, angry debates exist everywhere, but it leaks out of Twitter better than someone going crazy in an IRC channel.)

    Ten years ago, you had to write a blog post and hit publish.. and that gave you a chance to reflect and retract. But now you can tap out a gut reaction to the latest drama and keep the feedback loop going.

    This is all just based on personal observation and therefore unscientific, but I suspect most communities have similar levels of antagonism between members and topics up for internal conflict. Those communities whose members are communicating more on Twitter, however, have dramas that rumble on for longer and get more external coverage than those sheltered away on private mailing lists and IRC channels.

  • by VLM on 10/28/13, 2:14 PM

    "But every time I see some innocuous tweet spawn another long, bile-filled thread of awfulness, I become less interested in tweeting."

    He's giving us the answer we all want to hear; what we appeal to. Reality of course is the opposite, and manufactured drama attracts a lot better than education, for example.

    The article's argument is something like if people wanted to learn something they'd go to wikipedia or stack exchange, but they don't, they want to read (manufactured) drama. So twitter makes money off them. It would be a much harder sell for twitter to move into SE or wikipedia's turf, so they don't and shouldn't if they want to make money.

  • by TeMPOraL on 10/28/13, 12:10 PM

    > "If Twitter cared about avoiding arguments, there are so many things they could do: remove the outdated character limit, let us edit tweets, create progressive circles of privacy, don’t let retweets out of our networks, slow the whole thing down, and encourage smaller communities."

    If they try to do this, they may as well tell their users to move to Facebook and close shop.

    Twitter is what it is precisely because of, not in spite of, these "limitations". Like most new media it's defined in terms of constraints it has. Without them, Twitter will be no different than everything else.

  • by CurtMonash on 10/28/13, 11:33 AM

    I was hoping this would be a Monty Python reference.
  • by gngeal on 10/28/13, 1:16 PM

    So you set out to create a device that would ensnare normal, rational people and turn them into ranting lunatics.

    You mean like a mosque or a church? ducks

  • by schenecstasy on 10/28/13, 2:36 PM

    How dare he post this on his personal blog? That post is the property of Medium.
  • by auggierose on 10/28/13, 12:06 PM

    Is "supervillian" an actual word?