> Nunberg can see how scrolling through AITA might be a “stupendous timewaster,” but he believes the sub has the potential to do some good in the world
I hardly believe so. Reddit is an echo chamber by itself and people's judgment there is way far from perfect. In this subreddit you can see a similar effect than the "fake news" one: present an emotional scenario in which you look like the victim, no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side. That's why you need to hear all the parties involved in a conflict resolution, otherwise you can be easily manipulated.
present an emotional scenario in which you look like the victim, no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side
That is in some ways the point of the subreddit. Many people are acting rationally, if not reasonably, from the facts and mental state available to them. And whoever was making them feel like a jerk and driving them to the site to get a second opinion either couldn't or didn't accept that second set of facts and mental state.
But sometimes even if you tell the story from your own perspective, you're still an asshole. Witness the large number of YTA resolutions: those were people who told their own side of the story and still had the angry mob come after them. The subreddit can't resolve all disputes, but it can identify those cases.
> That is in some ways the point of the subreddit. Many people are acting rationally, if not reasonably
I think you are mistaking commonality for rationality. That by no means sounds rational.
It is this sort acceptance and worship of echo chamber nonsense that I deleted my Reddit account. If I enjoyed being called names or slapped in the face by ignorant fools I would go work in a child day care or with developers too scared to death to read code in their primary language.
He's saying that at times the point is to demonstrate to an opponent that your side of an emotional narrative makes sense to broad numbers of others. Just about everyone is rational according to their own systems of reasoning, and it's the reconciliation of those oftentimes implicit systems that the subreddit is about.
I don't think the point of AITA is conflict resolution. On most of the internet people aren't really looking for the answer to a problem. They're reaching out for emotional support, human connection, and a little encouragement that they're not doing everything wrong. Part of the problem with the way many 'technically-minded' people act online is that they don't realise other people are perfectly capable of Googling the answer to a problem but they don't actually want the answer; they want something else.
Many years ago I was a fan of /r/personalfinance. To learn a bit but I also missed out on finance advice as a kid and wished that I had some good input, so figured I might be able to help.
But the sub spiraled into emotional stories about why people were so bad off and looking for comfort. Not that that is a bad thing, but a very different content than people looking for finance advice. Since the stories were one sided, it became hard to get useful insight out of it other than just be thankful to be fortunate.
I get the sense that some people are sympathy trolling for fake internet points, but it’s not really possible to tell one way or the other.
At least with Reddit, you get to choose your own echo-chamber by subscribing to subreddits. For some other sites such as Facebook and Twitter, you aren't even sure what echo-chamber the all-mighty "algorithm" is guiding you.
I think the best way to enjoy Reddit is to first unsubscribe to all the default ones (I did this with the exception of /r/Art), and then pick really niche subreddits that you want to be a part of, not the general big ones that usually has the shortcomings that you've mentioned.
>no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side.
I think you're overstating it with regards to the specific subreddit, but I take your point in the general case. Most (if not all) recent internet outrage mobs are driven by only taking one side of the equation and sometimes taking the word of the singular individual as gospel, even though the vast majority of cases are more nuanced.
One of the (many) problems with AITA is that given Reddits demographics you get an enormous amount of responses from teenagers to late 20s and they have a much shorter perspective to judge. Further, at least with teenagers they are not exactly known for emotional maturity.
The definition of an asshole isn't universal, if it was, nobody would need to ask the question. But biasing your answers from a largely 16 to 30 male population is going to guarantee a certain type of response in many cases.
I knew I'd become too old for Reddit when I saw a r/relationship_advice thread where the top comment was grossed out that a 30yo man was dating OP, a 24yo woman. That with an age gap like that, of course the guy was a bad egg. And everyone chimed in with how creepy it was.
Has the creepiness formula been somewhat accepted officially? I often see people using it to define the creepiness of a relationship, something I find very weird.
I can't answer your question, but if consenting adults are dating, how about we stay out of their business? How is it different to say "oh my God he's 40 and she's 22" than to say "oh my God, they're the same sex"?
If they can consent and did, it's nobody else's business.
Some people (not me) argue that it's not consent if the 40 year old is rich and the 22 year old isn't. The 22 year old has her free will impaired by her need to survive and if their financial situations were equal she wouldn't consent.
There are millions and millions of 22 year olds out there surviving just fine without dating a 40 year old. If that is literally the only option for literal survival then that's probably rape. Needing to get a job does not mean your free will is impaired.
I'm not sure what "officially" would mean in this context, but it's a pretty good rule of thumb which derives from what people already seem to generally think.
It has issues in the teen years, but from about age 22 onward, it seems to match well with [US] societal mores.
That doesn't scale. A 40 year old person can date a 44 year old person.
The most common rule of thumb you hear is age/2 + 7. So for a 20 year old it indeed 3 "school grades" (more commonly known as years) but for a 30 year old it's 22
Both of these subreddits make me cringe so hard. Okay, maybe some RA posts are okay because they are legitimately about very complicated relationship issues, but the vast majority of the posts in both AITA and RA are just downright pathetic.
Who are these "adults" that constantly need validation and advice from strangers on the internet? How can they seriously expect to get any useful answers? Grow the fuck up, shut down your computer and talk to your fucking partner.
Similarly, if a bunch of people in real life are calling you an asshole for something you did, you were most likely an asshole. Posting some edited version of what happened to have a bunch of internet strangers soothe your feelings isn't going to change that.
A more charitable interpretation is that people have gotten into situations bad enough where they've ended up seeking advice from strangers on the internet. (Not every relationship squabble ends up in a reddit post.)
I'm not sure how that relates. I'm saying that it's obvious that reddit is full of teenagers because the standard advice to any sort of relationship problem is "break up".
"My boyfriend is wonderful but his feet smell" "oh my God dump that stinky-ass clown".
Ah, just making the point that the questions don't occur in a vacuum. By the time something's bad enough to consult random strangers on Reddit the problem has sometimes escalated beyond the point. Often the "dump him" answers come with people also sharing their own life experience. (I've seen my share of the silly questions/answers too of course.)
AITA subreddit is full of fake posts that people use to generate fake internet points. Seriously just go there and take a go look at some of the top so called stories right now:
AITA for getting a friend kicked out of school?
WIBTA for telling my boyfriend he probably can’t achieve his dream?
AITA for peeing in places that are not the toilet?
WIBTA if I record the audio of my neighbours having sex and play it back to them?
Really... do you people need any more proof. Those that think ANY of these stories are real, are the same people who think Ancient Aliens is a documentary.
Exactly... it's all done so that the accounts get enough karma so that those account can be used to "vote up" actual content they want to get to the frontpage of reddit itself or to other subreddits. Go follow the accounts that post there and you'll see what I mean.
Reddit at face value is a fun place to find things, but like any place, you have people that game the system for nefarious reasons.
It’s a respectable goal but a broken implementation.
Only one side of the story is presented, without opposition, without fact-finding or evidence. A court that worked like that would be obviously broken. The consequences here are only validation, but the decisions are equally broken: virtually always, the poster is declared "not the asshole".
And even if the story is presented even-handedly and thoroughly, Reddit's algorithm guts responses. It filters out thoughtful comments, nuanced stances, and minorities like experts and older people, it promotes split-second judgements, and over time it drives away people who resist those biases. Besides normalizing feedback, presenting only a single opinion instead of revealing that different types have different takes, the mentality it normalizes on is pretty immature. For example, tit-for-tat behavior is reliably supported (I've seen them OK destroying a man's life because he repeatedly spoke to the poster disrespectfully), and marriage is treasured only about as much as a second date ("other fish in the sea" comes out the moment somebody raises their voice).
Reddit often gets criticised for it's toxicity but I wonder if it's worthy of note for the number of places that it avoids toxicity. It's a huge petri dish of different communities with different moderation rules and community norms. If a subreddit is failing you then start another one.
Totally agreed. As I look back at my reddit usage over the years is that reddit provides a structured view into shifting social sentiment. Any sufficiently massive, long-lived, and topically comprehensive discussion community will give you the same thing, but I have yet to find one that gives as much of an overall view into what everyone else is thinking than does reddit, mostly for the simple fact that you are shown all the content by default.
I know that it inadvertently helped me learn a lot about what factors can make people feel the way they do and behave the way they do. As I follow juicy comment threads and such, I also see this happening for others. That is indeed cool as fuck.
You don't need to spend very long on that subreddit to see that it's just as susceptible to the typical narrow-minded, black and white Reddit justice as every other subreddit. When it's not crystal clear whether the OP is asshole, there is little room for any kind of nuance and people pile on. It's very similar to relationship_advice. Full of people who should be well aware that they don't have the whole story and that life can be complicated, but don't really care, since it's not their life, so it's easy to tell people they're an asshole or that they should break up with their partner of 5+ years or some such.
Although the number of 'white knights' on that subreddit is very high which leads to very skewed opinions on who is the asshole for relationship advice.
Pretty much the same as /r/relationshipadvice. I would advice everyone not to listen to __strangers__ opinions on the __internet__ on behavioral subjects based on a short description.
> He says the criticism he received was harsh, congruous with some of the other feedback he’s seen on the site where people are eager to pass judgment and diagnose others, armed with only 3,000 characters of information.
Is this about someone learning the harshness of internet judgement for the first time? If you've been on the 'tubes for any amount of time, you understand that forum mobs are fickle and you probably don't want to invite attention to your psyche (even through an anonymous throwaway) without presenting all the facts and angles.
And then you get to the demographic nature of the particular forum (as sibling comments point out, those with little life experience.)
I think what I found fascinating and disturbing is how frequently posters will completely disregard the facts presented and construct an imaginary narrative for events. Depending on the group identification of the poster, this counterfactual narrative is either extremely exculpatory or damming.
The whole experience gives me a lot more sympathy for those who are judged a jury of their "peers"
All subs with more than 100 subscribers are either (1) karma farms (2) egoposting no different than r/gonewild without the (explicit) nudity or (3) sports.
In my admittedly limited perusing of the sub I've found that often the exact opposite result occurs: the OP is called out for their behavior and then actively defends themselves in the comments or is completely oblivious to why they're seen that way.
I had only one question coming in here: what was the verdict on the thermostat?
Anybody?
The only hint was "institutional misogyny", but that is not conclusive. If they overcame that bias, it ought to mean something. If not, I will have to look elsewhere for enlightenment.
Weirdly, the reddit Android app sent me a push notification this morning suggesting I subscribe to r/AmItheAsshole. I've never seen a push notification from the reddit app before.
Oh how I tire of profoundly sensitive people. There is something supremely adult about receiving negative (qualified) criticism well.
As a senior developer this is perhaps most evident when trying to mentor a developer who cannot read code (or refuses to do so) and any suggestion along the lines of RTFC (read the fucking code) must immediately equal asshole. This is the bane of my career. This is what causes me to look for new employment and cry into my pillow at night.
From observing this interaction, it seems to me that your quickness to assert superiority is a likely explanation for your criticism being taken badly.
Constructive criticism makes the other person better. Do you want them to be better? Or do you want to be better than them?
> I do not assert superiority and I also don't make baseless assumptions about strangers on the internet.
> I am in management, possibly longer than you have held your career.
I'm afraid these two statements are not compatible.
When you said it was supremely adult to take criticism well, did you mean it? If so, try to take this criticism well: You were rude to the person who commented above me, and to the junior who thinks you're an asshole. You dismissed my comment as baseless, the parent commenter as inexperienced, and your junior dev as "profoundly sensitive". By your telling, your problem is being surrounded by idiots and weaklings, but from where I'm standing the real "bane of your career" is your attitude towards people you see as lesser than yourself.
Criticism can be rude. I am a huge fan of harsh truths. It isn't a good idea coat yourself in the comfort of assumptions.
> By your telling, your problem is being surrounded by idiots and weaklings
Not idiots. That is not related.
I do think of people who have trouble with confrontations as weak. These could be situations that are rude, but not necessarily. Personally, I tend to prefer rudeness to dishonesty. I find it inconvenient when people lie to me and allow me to continue failing merely to save themselves (not me) the inconvenience of a minor correction. I think this is the very nature of what many people might consider to be an asshole though.
RTFC is an asshole response. If they're refusing to read, it's time for the mentor to get in some pair reading time.
Scenario: you tell the junior "we have this code that isn't documented. it's for a process that does X, but we need to understand how it goes about doing X. I need you to read and document the code." If they're refusing to do the task assigned, you've got a terrible employee, but you still don't have to be an asshole about it.
You are making several assumptions to qualify to something vague. If a developer doesn't understand the code after reading it the time is ripe for the mentor to get in some pair development time. Refusing to read code isn't that. The junior shouldn't be held to account for their lack of understanding, but they should be destroyed for their lack of effort.
Specific to the topic of this subthread: read the code with them. "I was looking over your commit, and I thought it might be helpful to show you how I approach solving the same problem." And then literally function by function, line by line, I explain why I made the choice I made. And when it makes sense to do so, I compare it to the code being submitted, and I ask, "Do you understand why I would do B instead of A?" until they indicate that they get it. I leave my code in a separate branch, and ask them to push updated code to their branch. I suggest that even though they have a working solution in another branch, that they type in their updates rather than copy and paste.
At a high level, I try to find them something better suited for them to do. Sometimes reading the manual (or the style guide, or the code) isn't the best way for that person to learn. So, maybe I help them find a different way of learning. Or maybe that means pointing them to a different role in the company, or having a chat and seeing if there's anyone I know in my network who could better employ them, that's what I do. If this person got hired, they were the best out of a bunch of applicants, so there's usually something worth pursuing. I've helped ecommerce merchandisers pivot to QA roles, front-end devs refocus on backend, backend developers go heavy into infrastructure and deployment...
Several times in my career I've been the last stop for the developer that all the other devs have rejected as useless.
Sometimes, hey, they're right. Someone got in way over their head and is being dishonest, and you have to level with them and send them on their way. If they're being an asshole, let -them- be the asshole. Even the worst coworker I've had deal with has never had me thinking, "they should be destroyed" - I even felt a little bad as [this particular person] finally got let go, because they had started to turn things around. But I also knew they'd be better suited elsewhere, and we were better off without this person.
Several other times, I've seen people on the edge of being fired eventually grow into senior leads, after having some conversations about where they're struggling and what steps they could take to improve. Even people who refused to just read the code came to see past their insecurities and stubbornness, and became better at working with other people. Whether this has been someone in their 20s, or someone in their 50s, my approach has been to help work towards a better solution and solve for a problem... not to tell them to "RTFC or be destroyed".
I knew a guy like that. A junior dev in the desk next to mine was struggling with some code, and this dude (notorious for being an asshole if you let him) was yelling at him about how he needs to just figure it out. I was fed up with these interactions, so I stood up and asked the asshole how he'd fix the problem. He stammered a bit, looked at the code a bit, and said he didn't know how to fix the problem either. Well, why are you being a dick about it if you can't help? He walked away, I helped the dev with the issue.
I'm going to bring out that e-word here, because it's not just a buzzword to throw around, it's something that is incredibly helpful once you incorporate it into your problem solving: empathy. Find out why that person is struggling and help them.
The nature of your comment is what I call apprehension. Let's be very clear that we are talking about a job that provides compensation in exchange for work. If there is something that is not understood, even a little bit, it is more than acceptable to ask questions. This is generally encouraged. However it is helpful to have some clear questions to ask. This is when a mentor can step through the code with them, line by line if necessary and that's fine.
Simply throwing up your hands because life is hard isn't an acceptable answer. Yes, I have encountered this frequently. This is typically manifested by hoping a tool writes your code for you only to be followed by soul crushing defeat (and endless excuses) when the reality sets in that the tool in question is a leaky abstraction.
Simply asking a developer to try does not an asshole make, but actually it does (matter of perspective). I call this entitlement. It isn't a lack of empathy. Empathy is manifest through good mentorship on the part of the mentor. You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink when they as they think they should have to.
This confusion is why I am walking myself out of the corporate world. I just received a recruitment letter last week from one of the FAANG companies and I will not respond. I am tired of the fun and games. You can have it. I am on my way to somewhere more selective that takes mentorship a bit more seriously.
One of the most consistent means of self-improvement I've found is to think about the behavior that other people exhibit that has been irritating me, and consider whether or not I'm actually upset about my own behavior and projecting that elsewhere. It sucks, but more often than not, I've found that the things I'm upset at other people over are reflections of my own behavior.
So, just in this thread, I've noticed a few interesting statements.
> I am in management, possibly longer than you have held your career.
vs.
> I do not assert superiority and I also don't make baseless assumptions about strangers on the internet.
Do you understand how those two statements are in direct odds with each other?
>Oh how I tire of profoundly sensitive people.
vs.
> This is what causes me to look for new employment and cry into my pillow at night.
Obviously this is an attempt at humor, and it's funny, but maybe not in the way you were thinking.
>Simply throwing up your hands because life is hard isn't an acceptable answer.
> You can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink when they as they think they should have to.
> I do think of people who have trouble with confrontations as weak.
[...]
>This confusion is why I am walking myself out of the corporate world. [...] I am tired of the fun and games.
So... you're confused, having trouble with confrontations, and are throwing your hands up... because you're weak and life is hard? ;)
Sincerely though, best of luck in your future endeavors! A few paragraphs in an HN thread is in no way an complete insight into the years you've had working wherever it is you work. Nonetheless, in this window you opened up, I hope you see some patterns in the feedback you've gotten here on HN from your posts in this thread and take that into consideration when working with other people in the future.
I hardly believe so. Reddit is an echo chamber by itself and people's judgment there is way far from perfect. In this subreddit you can see a similar effect than the "fake news" one: present an emotional scenario in which you look like the victim, no matter what you do, and the majority will get on your side. That's why you need to hear all the parties involved in a conflict resolution, otherwise you can be easily manipulated.