A bad thing about social media is this pattern where a person with expertise starts rebutting bad ideas, and it’s great, but over time it primes them to see everyone who doesn’t hold exactly their opinions as part of a horde of goons with terrible ideas, because that’s who they end up interacting with.
Eventually their online persona is, like, Truth Gladiator. And that’s so much less interesting and important to me than Thoughtful Person With Useful Perspectives.
@vruba I feel like this is something @robinsonmeyer and I have tried to hash through from a few directions over the years and I keep coming back to the wisdom of people who mostly withdraw to conserve their subtleties and [idk maybe empathy]. It seems non-ideal but better than hardening into a human spam filter.
@kissane @robinsonmeyer The two of you are prime examples, for me, of people who manage to put themselves out there without hardening into Debate Me Gender-Nonspecific Bros.
@kissane @vruba @robinsonmeyer being aloof is a strategy with diminishing returns, but it's one a lot of people take
@vruba @robinsonmeyer Rob's a good influence.