I see the ideas on here, and the complexity of the arguments present, and I think "Holy shit" everyone on here is probably a great conversationalist and insanely emotionally smart. I know the trope of programmers being low IQ, but this just seems wrong.
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And then I speculate there is a high percentage of people here of at least minnium tertiary education (or equivalent), and furthermore people who are engaged and relentlessly self-educate. That's a literate bunch of people with strong skills in generating and critiquing ideas and philosophies in an arena where there is more "signal" and less "noise".
It'd be interesting to see the demographic breakdown of HN actually.
And there is a no-duplicate culture: If I have a point that I want to make, and someone always expressed it in a comment, I just upvote.
20% of my comments are discarded with the interrupt handler in my brain going “Wait, is someone wrong on the internet?” Hitting Ctrl+W just discards the message. It’s a feature for letting go.
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Nah they're all in their tracksuit pants.
We can also edit here. That makes a huge difference. Can't do that live or in person.
For very high levels of in-person charisma think Steve Jobs. His ability to convince people was called a "reality distortion field", it diminished once he left the room .. but he'd already got you to commit to building the impossible.
(Since I have 80k HN karma, and 80k karma plus eight dollars buys you a cup of coffee, I've been thinking of doing a data-driven "how to get upvoted on HN" thing. But I'd have to finish writing my scraper.)
Looking down at the plebs walking in the streets, articulating the best way to sell them all on Rust?
No? It's just me then.
Just kidding. Rust is too good for the common man. *sips*
And in that regard, I think there's a lot to be said for the medium here. There are certainly clever and highly technical people lurking around, but the ability to articulate your thoughts before posting anything is extremely helpful in conveying a clear, well put message. You have the time to really think about what you're saying.
However, this does not immediately translate to interpersonal abilities - charisma included. Talking in meetings, arguing in real time, and most of all being in a leadership position, those are totally different skills. If you're already there, though, it is easier to sound confident, and lots of people around here are at least somewhat experienced in the tech world.
On a more serious note I think people on HN tend to be way more pedantic than anyone I would want to spend time with in real life.
Agreed. Personally, I tend to be far more detail focused on discussions here than on Reddit, my work Slack or in real life, and it definitely crosses over the line into pedantry sometimes. I'm nowhere _near_ as pedantic in person.
Joking aside, I do think it’s a bit to be expected in an anonymous forum. It’s quite at a tolerable level here, even if it’s not what I’d look for in my irl friends.
In real life, people tend not to tolerate either.
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Written comments are very different from verbal communication which is different from charisma. So no, they definitely aren't all charismatic, far from it probably.
Also, "trope of programmers being low IQ"?
There is certainly a stereotype (reinforced by the media of course) of programmers being awkward, geeky, poor communicators to non-experts, emotionally a bit “weird”, etc
As OP is talking about charisma this is what I assume they meant anyway. I could wrong so hopefully OP can clarify.
Since outrage drives clicks websites are incentivized to turn into the jerry springer show. HN is not ad supported and the focus is mostly on technical subjects, too boring for the riff raf with underdeveloped emotional control.
Relative to this sad state of affairs we shine, I suppose. You could do a lot better just maybe not on the internet. If you want to see how this community is not immune to turning into a zoo look at any thread where anything remotely political crops up.
Compare and contrast with old timey talk shows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_PUUHLknDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz7tiBZdGvE
Deeming the awkward nerds here as 'super charismatic' really just shows how far we have fallen as a society. People used to be a lot more civil and eloquent. Some still are just not in any public sphere.
I don't particularly enjoy discussing certain topics that bring out some of the worst comments. This is usually contentious topics in the US like labour unions, mental health, LGBT rights.
Sometimes you get really nice replies, sometimes it will be absolutely insufferable braindead asshole takes. Sometimes the comments get soft-raided by people who only rarely actually post but are conspicuously invested in defending something (I noticed this happen a lot with posts discussing one website in particular that I'll leave unnamed). At least moderators eventually clean up the last kind.