I one time asked for advice here and the responses felt overly demeaning and presumptuous and largely ignored trying to help in favor of lambasting me for being in the situation at all. It was not a response I had been expecting and it made me feel bad and less likely to ask somewhat personal questions in the future. I don’t think anyone replying was intending to cause me any harm and it wasn’t a big deal in any sense of the word. But I felt disappointed with the outcome and the community.
I’m sure anyone sufficiently interested could find this out of my post history, but the details aren’t particularly interesting. To a third party it probably won’t seem like much at all, but at the time to me it wasn’t a good feeling.
I’ve seen at least one or two such occurrences like this on LW. There is a very cold and, well, rational tone to the responses here. Overall, I think it’s good, since there are plenty of other forums for people to go to get encouragement. But if this is your go-to forum for life advice, and you are going through something difficult and personal that you decide to share, the responses might not give you a warm fuzzy feeling.
Rationality is about winning. If your goal is to give people advice that they will accept, imbuing your message with hopefulness and cheer will assist you in that goal. If your goal is to get people to continue asking for advice, slapping a “Working as intended” on their complaints about your advice-giving technique is an abysmal failure.
I one time asked for advice here and the responses felt overly demeaning and presumptuous and largely ignored trying to help in favor of lambasting me for being in the situation at all. It was not a response I had been expecting and it made me feel bad and less likely to ask somewhat personal questions in the future. I don’t think anyone replying was intending to cause me any harm and it wasn’t a big deal in any sense of the word. But I felt disappointed with the outcome and the community.
I’m sure anyone sufficiently interested could find this out of my post history, but the details aren’t particularly interesting. To a third party it probably won’t seem like much at all, but at the time to me it wasn’t a good feeling.
I’ve seen at least one or two such occurrences like this on LW. There is a very cold and, well, rational tone to the responses here. Overall, I think it’s good, since there are plenty of other forums for people to go to get encouragement. But if this is your go-to forum for life advice, and you are going through something difficult and personal that you decide to share, the responses might not give you a warm fuzzy feeling.
Rationality is about winning. If your goal is to give people advice that they will accept, imbuing your message with hopefulness and cheer will assist you in that goal. If your goal is to get people to continue asking for advice, slapping a “Working as intended” on their complaints about your advice-giving technique is an abysmal failure.