Internet Fights
So, Adam, tell me about these fights you're getting into.
Adam:So I'm not a I'm I'm not a big fighter. In fact, I hate conflict. I like, I my personality is such that I can't stand if someone's upset with me, but I seem to I seem to be attracting it on Twitter. I think on Twitter, I think I'm just kind of like a jerk. I I don't know.
Adam:Like, in person, I'm I'm much easier to get along with, I feel like. On Twitter, the way I write, the way I type words, I think it just comes off abrasive. And I just I yeah. I don't like it, but I'm definitely getting in more fights than normal. I think I've been kinda negative on Twitter too.
Adam:Sorry. This is not answering the question you actually asked. I'm just I'm just reflecting for the first time, I think. Yesterday, I got in a fight. Yesterday, I wouldn't say it's a fight, but it's still kinda unresolved.
Adam:Just conflict where I think we were just in two very different worlds talking about very different things, but somehow inflaming each other. Yeah. I guess I could tell you what it's about. Do wanna know what the fight was about or what the conflict
Dax:was about? Let's play back what happened.
Adam:Okay. So it's, like, 09:30 in the morning, and I'm just minding my no. I'm just kidding. I I don't know the timeline. I was just on Twitter, and I was upset about the DHH thing, which we haven't talked about.
Adam:I think we're just done talking about DHH things. But the latest thing, to quickly recap, DHH 37 signals base camp guy made, like, a a thing for orchestrating containers on your own bare metal hardware. Anyway, I got really upset because I feel like he keeps saying these things, and he's inviting, like, startups and founders into this conversation that, like, you should reconsider cloud, and you should consider doing all this other work that you shouldn't ever consider doing if you're a startup. And I just said something on Twitter about it because it upsets me every time I see anything that that man says. And someone that's a mutual follow of mine who I didn't really know how I knew him, or there's a lot of that on Twitter, I guess.
Adam:You some, maybe you don't really know how you know him. I think he maybe worked for AWS at one time, but I don't know what he does. I don't know his role, anything about him. And he sort of, like, took issue with something I said, quote tweeted it. It ended up in, like, a place where it was, like, never listen to startup founders or idiots and, like, quote tweeting more of my stuff.
Adam:And everything he would reply to me, he would retweet himself. So it was just, like, a very public conversation. And it turns out he works for Dell. Like, he works for Dell. He's, like, super into how data centers operate, and I don't care at all how data centers operate.
Adam:I care about building very early stage software companies and talking with people who do that. And we were just not we were not seeing eye to eye. We're still not. I guess we're getting on the phone later today, so we'll see if if it gets better. But, like, I think he thought everything I was saying sort of was attacking hardware vendors when I don't care about hardware vendors in the least.
Adam:I don't care about hardware. I don't wanna know about hardware. I don't know anything about data centers or how they operate. But the things I was saying somehow sort of, like, drummed up in him. You're attacking my essence.
Adam:Okay. I'm gonna stop and give you a sec.
Dax:I think that situation is a great example of something that happens over and over on on the Internet. The thing I am starting to say is I'm not actually looking for people to disagree with me anymore. I'm just kinda, like, looking for more people to agree with me if I'm being completely honest. I know you're not supposed to say that. But I think the reality is is there's kind of this assumption that and because it sounds innately good.
Dax:It sounds like, oh yeah, the internet should bring people from different bubbles and put them together so they can get better acquainted with each other's perspectives. And I think that can happen, and I think that does happen. But I think the majority of times, there's really no natural reason why certain two certain people should even come across each other. And I think the result is usually them getting upset with each other, thinking that, you know, one person is attacking another person when they really have no reason to come across like cross paths. And everyone kinda retreats further into the way they think or or, like, their tribe, whatever it is.
Dax:So it's this weird thing where people try to solve this conflict by, I think, increasing, like, the amount of, I don't know I don't know what to call it, like, intersections. But in a lot of ways, I think, you know, like, historically, like most of human history, like, everything was hyper local. You just interacted with the people physically around you. Yeah. And that maybe you limited your view of the world in a negative way.
Dax:So you definitely want a little bit more of that, but what we have today is definitely unnatural. And this is a funny situation because you're both in tech and you would think that is one single group, but you're in a completely different subsection. And your experiences don't actually overlap at all.
Adam:At all.
Dax:Not even a little.
Adam:Yeah. And it's funny, like, if you think about all of human history, like, strong local communities where you're dependent on each other, all that, that's all broken down too. So we don't even have a lot of that. I think the more we go online and the more connected we are, we're not only, like, now interacting with people that maybe we just shouldn't, maybe we just don't have a reason to, but we're losing those strong bonds around us with people that kinda ground us. It's just a recipe for I mean, disaster.
Adam:It's it's well documented. Right? There's like a whole documentary about this. Right? The Facebook thing.
Dax:Mhmm.
Adam:Like, we're basically all headed toward destroying each other because we all hate each other more every day. Is that accurate?
Dax:Yeah. And I think the medium itself is also interesting. I've had this experience so many times where so as we can rewind maybe, like, five or six years. My friends started this Slack group that was not just so it was a bunch of my high school friends, and they invited just cool people that they knew through work or, like, other people kind of around the same age, kinda similar backgrounds, like, you know, it was very New York focused. And it was a great community I'd like to be a part of, But there were some, like, really epic, crazy fights that went down in there that lasted, like, hours with, like, tons of people chiming in and people dunking on each other.
Dax:And it would get pretty intense and it would kinda take up your whole day and you just wouldn't stop thinking about it for days. And over time, like, there were, like, these groups that formed that typically would fight each other. And you just had this crazy perception of these other people. But because we were all in New York, like, we would go to the same parties together and things like that. And in person, it was so normal and so like, we all, like, loved each other.
Dax:But then we'd forget, like, once we go completely online, like, we'd forget that, and then we'd have this other distorted view of people. And I think that experience, think I learned how to operate a little bit. Like, I remember when I first I would kinda do everything. I would, really get sucked into a lot of this stuff and and I kinda repeat the same the same cycles that were just kinda negative at the end of the I always regretted everything at the end. Yeah.
Dax:I always regretted engaging. I always regretted all of it. But I think that kinda built up a little bit of awareness in myself around what is worth engaging with and and what's not. Like, there is there's always, like, a potential good side that can come out of engaging, but oftentimes, it ends up being being worse than if you did nothing.
Adam:Yeah. So what's the argument again? Like, I know there are a lot of people that say we we need that outside influence. The other perspectives from people that aren't like us, is there just a right amount of dosage and we just get too much of it? Is that the problem?
Dax:I think there's just certain parameters that need that people need to abide by for this to be productive. So for me, if I say something and the first reply to it is not a question some of them might disagree. But typically, you usually wanna, like, get some clarification before you really, like, start aggressively attacking them. If the first response is to immediately scale it up to this guy's an idiot or even if you remove the name calling, like, you just look at it as they're just kind of they're they're coming out with a certain intensity. And honestly, like quote tweeting as a first move is kind of like that because a quote tweet tweet is just like, to your followers, say, like, look at this dummy.
Dax:You know, it's usually the format of that. And I and I've done it myself, and I think we all do
Adam:it. Same.
Dax:So if the first step is not that, I think it's worth engaging with. If it's that, I almost always take the approach of my interpretation of that as being the first move is they're not looking to, like, sharpen their awareness or, like, sharpen my awareness. They're kinda looking for the arguments that we're all addicted to. Like, we are all addicted to arguing and, like, it it is addicting. And we all feel bad after, but it is addicting in a moment.
Dax:So I can see when that's a first move, I interpret that as, okay, they're looking to satisfy that addiction. And I get pleasure out of depriving that mode. Like, oftentimes when someone, like, replies to me in that way, I'll just reply being like, yes. And I won't I won't say anything else. And then I can just feel the frustration because they, like, really wanted to get me
Adam:get me to the high road necessarily. No. No. You're you're it's like a sadist. Like, you're just enjoying their pain, but depriving them the arguing.
Dax:No. No. Yeah. I I'll try try to take the high road by not responding at all, but sometimes people just keep, you know, trying to, like, get in.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Like, the the other day I was talking about I was like, I had those tweets where I was talking about how the front end world has adopted serverless in a much more intuitive way where they don't even think about anything else and not even having these discussions around, like, bare metal or whatever. I and I thought that was interesting because us in the back end world were, like, still having this conversation and the front end world, like, completely moved on. Yeah. And that offended a bunch of people who were who identified as back end engineers. So a bunch of people were were replying.
Adam:I I identify as a back end engineer. Go ahead.
Dax:Yeah. A bunch of people were like, look at this idiot front end engineer, like, thinking blah blah. And I'm like, everyone sort of thinks I'm a front end engineer.
Adam:Well, you know more about front end, to be fair, than most front end engineers. So it's you kind of are a front end engineer. You're just you prefer to be a back end engineer or whatever you are. I mean, you can have a conversation with Ryan Cardiato about the depths of React and Solid in ways that I don't think there are many front end developers that can do that. So the the front end label, I think, is aptly labeled or thrown on you.
Dax:You know, it definitely makes sense why people perceive me that way because most of my conversations on Twitter are about the front end. But, like, my day to day work is so far removed from that. Like, I'm literally working on infrastructure.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:So I offended a few people, and then someone was replying because trying to they just kept trying to, like, get me to fight them, and they kept being like they just kept implying that I was a front engineer and knew nothing about back end. So I just replied being like, I'm a back end engineer and didn't say anything else. And they replied again saying, well, if you're a back end engineer, that means you're saying that front end people are smarter than you. And I was like, yes. And then they stopped.
Dax:And I didn't feel bad. I felt good. Where if if I'm sure if I got into, like, a debate with them, I would have felt bad. I think we would have both felt bad. So I think I kinda saved both of us in some ways.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. No. Oh, that's just reminding me of an episode where I felt really bad for two days after a a pretty bad Twitter fight. And, like, I just said a lot of things I shouldn't have said, and I regretted it.
Adam:And I had to apologize to a whole lot of people. Got phone calls about it. Like, it was just a bad deal. That's where the Internet can lead you. And, yeah, I don't know.
Adam:Like, it it's like the first thing I say, generally, if I tweet something reacting to something that happened, it's always pretty inflammatory. And I think that's just kinda, like, instinct that you know that's kinda the stuff you say on Twitter. Like, is that the prob like, feel like anyone reacting to me negatively is fully justified because I kinda said something I just shouldn't have said in the first place. Even if, like, we're on different pages, we shouldn't really be arguing right now, I kind of invited it.
Dax:Yeah. I think it's with all this stuff, it's kinda complicated. Right? Like, if you take that to an extreme, you kinda eliminate all comedy in a way. Like, there is a level of I think some of the things I say are probably snarky if you like, just honestly, they are.
Dax:But they're also funny for the right audience. But for
Adam:the wrong
Dax:audience, they might get upset. They might reply to me in a way where they're annoyed. And you're right. They're a 100% justified in venting in that way because they I annoyed them. Yeah.
Dax:So I think it's okay. I think that I'm I'm not gonna say, like, the world needs to get rid of that because there is comedy there and other like, what are we gonna have otherwise? A bunch of, like, really bland statement with a million qualifiers. And people talk about this a lot where, like, there's, like, almost this Twitter speak that people get trained into where they qualify the heck out of everything they say because they're anticipating all the people interpreting them in some black and white way. Like, they'll say, like, mostly or, like, sometimes or usually or I know this, but I know that.
Dax:Like, it's you kinda fill it with all this filler stuff, which I get why people do that, but it's this defensive way of talking that I don't really love either. It's not very natural. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we
Adam:all get it. It depends. We get it. Like, everything depends. But that's not fun.
Adam:Like, that's not fun to talk on Twitter about how, like, this little thing is just an edge case where sometimes it's more fun to be like, you should always or this is the best because we're excited about things. I don't know.
Dax:Yeah. We're excited. And I think oftentimes when you need to make change or there's habits or biases, you do need to phrase things in that way so that it moves even, like, you know, 5% in direction that it should. Like, if you say if there's a there there there's, like, a bad practice that's rampant and common and you say you should never do this, that has a chance of reducing it by 5%.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:It's not like it's not like people are gonna hear that and, like, just a 100% listen to you and and no one's ever gonna, like, consider it again. So to me, that's kind of yeah. It's like what you said. It's boring. It's like, why focus on that detail?
Dax:Yeah. We're not dummies. We know that there's almost nothing that is always and almost something that's never. And we only have 240 characters. So
Adam:Well, I actually have a lot now. I think you can do as many as you want.
Dax:Yeah. Well I don't
Adam:know if there's an end.
Dax:That's if you shell out the money. Oh, is that just
Adam:for okay.
Dax:Yeah. Did I tell
Adam:you my wife got upset? Like, all the things I spend money on, my my my wife was like, why are we spending $8 on Twitter? She saw it on, like, iTunes bill. I didn't think about it being, like, on our personal stuff. Like, well, it's hard to explain, but basically, you have to pay for Twitter now.
Adam:It's it's important. And she's like, I don't think you have to pay for Twitter. Did you buy all your followers? I'm like, kind of. But not with Twitter Blue.
Dax:I I literally I've been paying for Twitter since even this is even before the Elon thing Yeah.
Adam:Same.
Dax:Just because I
Adam:$2 or whatever.
Dax:Yeah. I I spend so much time on this thing and Yeah. I wanna, like, help them in any way possible. I hate all the features I get with it. I literally pay for Twitter Blue and I turn everything off.
Adam:The undo, I can't see I I thought I turned it off, but I can't seem to keep it to stay off. Like, on web, it'll just keep showing up. I'm like, just send it now. Why would I wanna wait for this tweet to go out? Like, there are things in life I regret.
Adam:I don't regret that tweet.
Dax:Well, this whole this whole episode has been about how maybe you should wait.
Adam:Oh, yeah. Good point. Maybe I should think about it. Maybe that's a good feature. Read the tweet first.
Adam:Are you inflamed? Like, can I, like, objectively look at it? Yeah. Did I tell you I tried to get in a fake fight? Oh, so you're gonna say something important?
Dax:No. No. Go ahead. Tell me about your fake fight.
Adam:Yeah. I just remembered talking about Twitter fights. I it was another situation where I said something like, quote tweeted somebody. Well, it was rocks. I'm just gonna say it because it's fun.
Adam:I quote tweeted Rox, and I was sort of like oh, no. I subtweeted him. I didn't quote tweet it. It was worse. It was a subtweet.
Adam:And he figured out it was about him. I subtweeted Rox. He he DM'd me. He's like, hey. You wanna have a fake fight just to drum up some excitement?
Adam:That sounded fun. So we but we're both too nice, so it failed miserably. Like, we're we're trying to, like, find a way to escalate and neither one
Dax:of us could, so we abandoned it, like, an hour later. Yeah. You knew the real emotion behind it.
Adam:Yeah. There was a moment there were a couple people. Like, Donut, I remember, saw one of the tweets. He's like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you guys were going back and forth.
Adam:He thought we were really fighting. So we we convinced somebody, at least one person.
Dax:Nice. The other thing I was thinking about is communities that do this pretty well, and I think it's this concept of they just have certain rules and they accept that sometimes that means good conversation gets eliminated by those rules, but it's for the long term health of the community. As I know people hate on hacker news a lot, and there's, like, of course, all these funny things with hacker news that we can make fun of. But in terms of their comment section or how long they've been around, how much growth they've seen, how fast some of that growth has been, their comment section is pretty good. Like, it doesn't really turn that often into this kind of stuff we see on Twitter, stuff that just is unhealthy.
Dax:People stamp out very quickly. Their moderator, forgot his name, Dang, I think. He's he's amazing. He's incredible. I think he's he's been doing this for doing that for so long, and he's made very few mistakes.
Dax:And he just had a set of rules he follows. And the conversation there does tend to be pretty good. Like, I think people make fun of them because they're a bunch of nerds. We're a bunch of nerds. I shouldn't say they.
Dax:Like, we're all a bunch of nerds, and we have stupid ways of thinking sometimes. But
Adam:in terms of
Dax:the quality of the back and forth, I I find it to be pretty healthy. People generally give people the benefit of the doubt. This thing of, like, someone saying something and then someone figuring out, like, the most black and white flat interpretation of it and the argument against that and then that, like, devolving. I don't see that happen there that much. So, yeah, I think this kind of thing can work, and it does require certain rules people abiding by.
Dax:And, yeah, some days we're we're annoyed, so we we fail. We fall short of that, and that's okay. I I basically think it's all okay. I know, like, people get into really intense stuff, but you learn over time, like, what types of behavior leads to situations you regret, and you know that it's not worth it. And you just blown that over time, and maybe some people never do, but I feel like most people will figure that out.
Adam:Yeah. I my mind's all over the place. But I I just started thinking through, like, is Twitter is it uniquely Twitter? Like, do most fights that I'm involved in happen on Twitter? I think of, like, Reddit.
Adam:Places where, like, people complain about the comments being so negative, but they don't really there's not fights on those platforms, at least in my experience. Is that are there other places other than Twitter? I guess Facebook probably, but I don't know anybody that gets on Facebook.
Dax:I think on Twitter, it feels a little bit more like a traditional fight because our identities are so visible. Like Mhmm. Like our personas are on Twitter.
Adam:Yeah. Like your g h d x r is very identifiable as Dax in that cartoon avatar.
Dax:Or don't. I just now I'm going through all
Adam:of the people on Twitter that I can think of trash dev, like, all these real people and their identities.
Dax:Yeah. I guess I didn't mean, like, their real identity. I just meant, like
Adam:I know what you mean.
Dax:The concept of a person is so visible. Like, you know, there's, a person. And so when when these fights happen, it's between these people that you could recognize.
Adam:There's reputations, like, tied to those identities even if they're pseudonymous or whatever the word is.
Dax:So so they feel a lot more like like beefs or fights. I imagine all the platforms are probably similar. I just I've never really been, a Reddit commenter, I so don't really know what kind of stuff happened there.
Adam:I read a lot on Reddit. That's it. Yeah.
Dax:I do get this thing when I talk to people in real life. Like, I mentioned Twitter or we the topic Twitter comes up. Oftentimes, there's like a groan of being like, ugh. Yeah. Like, always, like, regret going on it.
Dax:Like, I have always negative experiences on it or it just makes me feel terrible. And I don't have that experience at all. Of course, it happens every once in a while, but majority of my Twitter experience is is fantastic. It does take work, I think. Like, I'm very specific about who I follow.
Dax:I pay attention to who's quote tweeting stuff I don't wanna see into my feed. I think that's one of the biggest things. You know, there's my bubble that I'm a part of, and generally people in my bubble think a certain way. And then some people in my bubble will occasionally quote tweet something from outside my bubble being like, look how stupid this is, and then I'll waste ten minutes reading like, hate reading all the replies. Yeah.
Dax:And I think that's where, a lot of negativity enters for me. And as long as I kinda unfollow people that do that too much, my experience is pretty good. I don't know about you.
Adam:Yeah. I just I I need to do better about that. I don't unfollow people. I feel like I'm slapping someone if I unfollow them. Like, it just feels like a a hate crime.
Adam:I don't know. So I just basically have never unfollowed people. They just my follow list grows until the end of time. But I do mute people. If I cease and usually, though, it's not like this person said something that made me upset.
Adam:Usually just like, this person kind of annoys me, and I don't wanna unfollow them. That's rude. But I'm gonna go ahead and mute them so I never see their stuff. It's always funny when, like, those people are still kind of involved in the bubble, and you just see replies a tweet, and it's like, this person's muted. It's always fun to, like, tap that.
Adam:Like, who did I mute? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then I always
Dax:I'm always like, oh, that's why I muted them.
Adam:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Their reply to that tweet is, like, further evidence that they need to be muted. Yeah.
Adam:It's a hard thing. I I think Twitter is interesting because there you do have this little bubble that you exist in, but it so touches so many other bubbles that there's no way to keep it all out. Mhmm. Forget it. You have to actively have to stay on top of it.
Adam:And I've heard other people say that. So I think you're just probably good at that. I need to get better.
Dax:Yeah. I just get so much value from it that I it's like worth putting in the effort of making sure it works well.
Adam:I do love Twitter. It just feels like the place where we hang out, and I hope it never dies. So filter bubbles are good. That's what you're you're telling us.
Dax:Yeah. I think we should kind of embrace the fact that we wanna be around people that are somewhat similar to us. And that doesn't mean there's not diversity within that group. There's all kinds of diversity in there, but you need like a shared context and we can kind of we've all witnessed what happens when when you don't have that.
Adam:Alright. Well, don't get any more internet fights. I think we've we've had enough fights this week at least.
Dax:Well, on to the next week.
Adam:Yeah. Alright. See you next.
Dax:See you.
