When I started commenting on Hacker News, I was worried about karma, so I wrote carefully. At some moment I achieved 1000 karma, and also decided that HN consumes too much of my time… that it would actually be better for me in long term to lose all that karma and the account. So I started writing whatever came to my mind. Now my karma is above 2500 (but I had to check as I was writing this comment to find it out).
But this advice is trickier than it seems, because I also see some people write whatever comes to their mind, and get downvoted to oblivion, both on HN and on LW. So maybe the actual rule is more complicated, and it requires a certain degree of competence first, and then stop worrying...
On further introspection, I am actually trying to hold myself to some standards, it’s just that those standards are not closely related to other people’s immediate feedback. I won’t write stupid shit, because that would make me feel ashamed of myself. Other than that, if someone downvotes me (or even blocks me), whatever.
Yeah, I feel very seen in this moment. I spent a long time polishing this blog post and while i think some of that was well-spent, some of it was just neurotically changing words around while being concerned about how it would be received.
I guess it feels harder in writing than in speech because in writing you in principle could spent forever polishing a piece before publication.
in writing you in principle could spent forever polishing a piece before publication.
Exactly the reason why I post articles so rarely, despite spending a lot of time on internet, even a lot of time writing stuff on internet. A certain short amount of text can be written and sent successfully before the anxiety takes over.
When I started commenting on Hacker News, I was worried about karma, so I wrote carefully. At some moment I achieved 1000 karma, and also decided that HN consumes too much of my time… that it would actually be better for me in long term to lose all that karma and the account. So I started writing whatever came to my mind. Now my karma is above 2500 (but I had to check as I was writing this comment to find it out).
But this advice is trickier than it seems, because I also see some people write whatever comes to their mind, and get downvoted to oblivion, both on HN and on LW. So maybe the actual rule is more complicated, and it requires a certain degree of competence first, and then stop worrying...
On further introspection, I am actually trying to hold myself to some standards, it’s just that those standards are not closely related to other people’s immediate feedback. I won’t write stupid shit, because that would make me feel ashamed of myself. Other than that, if someone downvotes me (or even blocks me), whatever.
Yeah, I feel very seen in this moment. I spent a long time polishing this blog post and while i think some of that was well-spent, some of it was just neurotically changing words around while being concerned about how it would be received.
I guess it feels harder in writing than in speech because in writing you in principle could spent forever polishing a piece before publication.
Exactly the reason why I post articles so rarely, despite spending a lot of time on internet, even a lot of time writing stuff on internet. A certain short amount of text can be written and sent successfully before the anxiety takes over.