The situations I was most imagining (from Sarah’s original post, not necessarily from Jessicata’s comment) were actually more Dunbar-ish-number-sized – a workplace or local community, that is large enough to have multiple interest groups.
In that context… well, there’s still a benefit of negative publicity (I have sometimes written things with intent to be medium-controversial, so as to get more attention to an idea). But it comes embedded with more personal costs than when you’re engaging the wider world and “no such thing as bad press” is a bit more fraught a guideline.
The situations I was most imagining (from Sarah’s original post, not necessarily from Jessicata’s comment) were actually more Dunbar-ish-number-sized – a workplace or local community, that is large enough to have multiple interest groups.
In that context… well, there’s still a benefit of negative publicity (I have sometimes written things with intent to be medium-controversial, so as to get more attention to an idea). But it comes embedded with more personal costs than when you’re engaging the wider world and “no such thing as bad press” is a bit more fraught a guideline.