by keepamovin | 2025-12-09 05:10:43+00:00
I think a few reasons for this are:

1) text is such a narrow band of comms, in the ideal it is used to convey logic, sans identity/authority - a leveler of speech, but in practice the "text as a logic conveyance medium" is often abused by posts which wear the mere color of logic, only to deliver something else entirely. Lacking logical or factual substance, and are in fact blovious, intimidating "absolute authority / no dissent" takes. Which narrows the range of text even more, to basically suppressive weapons against discourse expansion. In person this can't happen, because you take 1 look at a person and immedciately see how there over-the-top take is merely an expression of their personal pain, and call that out. That's why it's important to really "see the person" behind the post, and in that way, "disarm the abusive weapons" of toxic discourse by seeing the psychological cause, centering the utterance in the ground truth of the speakers personal projection, rather than pretense of logic, authority, morality or fact which such projection merely abuses as concealment. However, doing so (revealing the personal source of a toxic comment), is not a nice thing to do. You're exposing and humiliating someone for something (admittedly, something bad, toxic and abusive that they wouldn't have likely tried in person as it would be so obvious without the disguise of pseudonymity). So, maybe the best thing to do is just "ignore the haters".

2) Anonymous downvotes. I believe that "drive by" downvotes and flags are not helpful. If you have an opinion, we can at least see your opinion and associate it with a scope of identity. But if you flag or downvote, I believe we should also be able to see you, because it's useful information. Okay, you downvoted, everyone can see and judge what that was about. The anonymous flag or downvote has the "god like visage" of absolute impartiality, which is wrong. Obviously it's balanced, because it's "a power reserved" for the "elite" (just kidding, it's 500 karma or so, but the idea is not a terrible trade off). I just don't think it works. I think surfacing flags and downvotes to the community is a way to encourage good-faith, rather than abusive, or bad-faith usage of those things. A sort of co-regulation could perhaps emerge, a self-moderation, as it increases the intelligence of the collective rather than centering it only in the moderators (who inevitably at points get overwhelmed). Still, it's an experiemnt that would have to be run to see the results. I believe people have good reasons for designing it without that, but I think a more open approach should be considered. An analog is "reactions" on many platforms/comment widgets, which are often attributable.

3) You read the text in your own voice. This may not be an issue for everyone, but I found for myself, it was something major. Basically an idea becomes that much more personal and challenging for you, if you read it, in your own voice. Which is how I would read comments (and basically anything). Before internet forums, it was always "safe" to read stuff in such a personally intimate way because the stuff wasn't designed to "trigger or hurt" you. It was just "people's writing" not directed at you. But now bad comments are often intended to hurt or trigger or otherwise "win". I found it so much harder to deal with, emotionally, and mentally, by the way I was reading it: which was basically how I read anything, I read it, in my head, so it's "in my own voice", which comes across as "my idea". To internalize a toxic false idea about yourself, from people who don't anything about you, or anything about what they're saying, or to internalize an insult, etc, in this way increases its negative impact. When I realized this I actively tried imagining a person sitting there and saying it. I even, when it was particularly difficult, got out the voice memo, recorded the other commenter (like you would for a play to learn lines) and then made my response, spoken, and typed it out. I found it infintiely easier to "handle and deal with" something that was not coming from "inside me" but rather correctly externalized to be from another person. I feel text has this unique vulnerability to this kind of intimacy, and intimacy which is abused toxic commenters for to cause additional harm. I think because of that, text has to be wielded with more care. However, this could entirely be simply my own personal way of reading. Maybe other people read comments in a different way. I think I found that overtime, after this kind of deliberate practice, I was able to read comments as if they were spoken by a person not by myself, and therefore take them less personally.

By sharing this I hope it helps someone else deal with that stuff, or at least feel seen!

That's some of my thinking on the "anonymous text medium" so far.

Interesting HN experiment: can a curious discussion arise about this topic here or will it descend into flaggageddon and threadburning?