As someone who is often (as the article describes) willfully indifferent to the finer arts of conversation, I personally appreciate the directness and sharpness of discussion here. I feel like I can take people’s comments at face value, and that I can usually assess a fair consensus about something by reading people’s reactions to it, rather than having to figure out what social factors are influencing the posts. So I’m anti-politeness!
I do know, though, that a lack of grace in these areas can totally drive away some personalities, which is probably a much more severe consequence than making life a little more ambiguous for us few social pariahs. To the extent that LW is made up of people who are willing to assume good faith on everything, I worry that it might be because we insulted everyone else until they went away, or never registered at all.
I have an alternate theory. Perhaps LW is made up of people who actually have good faith on everything most of the time, and we insulted or puzzled everyone else until they went away, or they never registered at all, thus leaving us free to assume it.
As someone who is often (as the article describes) willfully indifferent to the finer arts of conversation, I personally appreciate the directness and sharpness of discussion here. I feel like I can take people’s comments at face value, and that I can usually assess a fair consensus about something by reading people’s reactions to it, rather than having to figure out what social factors are influencing the posts. So I’m anti-politeness!
I do know, though, that a lack of grace in these areas can totally drive away some personalities, which is probably a much more severe consequence than making life a little more ambiguous for us few social pariahs. To the extent that LW is made up of people who are willing to assume good faith on everything, I worry that it might be because we insulted everyone else until they went away, or never registered at all.
I have an alternate theory. Perhaps LW is made up of people who actually have good faith on everything most of the time, and we insulted or puzzled everyone else until they went away, or they never registered at all, thus leaving us free to assume it.
As usual, I wish it was possible to upvote things more than once.