There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably li…

Every “utterance” (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. “Let’s play this game”. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.

Some people deliberately choose to ignore, misread, disregard or denounce other people’s bids. Others are outright clueless and don’t know how to play, and sometimes cluelessness leads to worse bungling than deliberate malice (JJ’s razor) https://t.co/MC09cW3bCM

"The intentionality of an agent with behavior sufficiently indistinguishable from malice, is irrelevant." (JJ's razor > Hanlon's \U0001f609.) @cr1901
— JJ \u300cc\u03b9t\u03b9\u01b6\u03b5\u0273\u0192\u03b9v\u03b5\u300d \U0001f3f4\u200d\u2620\ufe0f (@CTZN5) June 6, 2016

I was a lot more belligerent and disagreeable when I was younger, in part because I simplistically thought playing other people’s games was a sheep-like way to live. Why should I support other people’s dumb games? Why not mock them instead? It’s easy, and intoxicating

I learned that you rarely build anything worthwhile that way. The “best” case scenario: you win over other disagreeable people. A few years of this & it becomes the world you live in – surrounded by other belligerent assholes who don’t know or care how to play nice. A cursed life

We can’t choose where we are born, or our family, and our initial set of friends is heavily influenced by happenstance. But we can choose who we want to be associated with subsequently. All problems are interpersonal problems, but we kind of get to choose which ones we want

Many different lines of enquiry have led me to this same conviction:

The best guiding question in life is, “Who do you want to share this life with?”

*Everything else* can be determined from this question. Your ethics, beliefs, actions, habits...

https://t.co/BVZYdJ9vyS

Circling back: why even bother with the pain of defeat when you can avoid it? You never signed up for life

I think it boils down to the company. Do you want to be around people who are running from the pain, or towards it?

My ethics is derived from my desire for good peers
— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) June 7, 2018

Francis Bacon, Of Discourse

- don’t be tedious
- let other people talk
- if someone is hogging, cut him off
- ask questions that people can look good answering
- don’t be a poser with smartass questions
- don’t bitch about others
- eloquence is overrated
- It’s Not About You

George Washington:

1. Respect others
13. If your friend has lice, remove it privately
38. When visiting the sick, don’t play physician
41. “Undertake not to teach your equal in the art himself professes”
46. Take all admonition thankfully
49. Use no reproachful language

50. ”Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparagement of any”
56. Associate with quality people
58. No malice or envy
61. Don’t intimidate the ignorant
62. Don’t ruin the mood; if someone else does, fix it
64. Don’t laugh at others’ misfortune
66. Be courteous

68. Give not advice without being asked

70. Reprehend not the imperfection of others

71. Gaze not on the blemishes of others and ask not how they came

73. Think before you speak

74. When another speaks, be attentive and do not interrupt

79. Don’t relate news if you don’t know the truth

80. Be not tedious in discourse

81. Be not curious to know the affairs of others

86. In disputes, be not desirous to overcome; give liberty to each to deliver his opinion

105. Be not angry at the table whatever happens

Relatedly: https://t.co/Tmq2pK8dug

Reason for this little thread is that many otherwise competent people don\u2019t seem to get how to \u201cplay twitter,\u201d going for the win-in-one-move mic-drop interaction, rather than \u201cplaying along\u201d to find the most satisfying banter chain.
— Venkatesh Rao (@vgr) August 25, 2018

examples of cruel (or incompetent) vs nourishing https://t.co/aURE61b1mR

Noobs: You made a mistake, haha, gotcha! I win, you lose! Suck it, sucker!

Friends: Was that a mistake? It\u2019s interesting how we both things wrong in distinct ways, that reveal our underlying assumptions and allow us to come to a better understanding of ourselves. I appreciate u
— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) July 22, 2018

IMHO this is an example of good reply game (contrast it with all the other replies) https://t.co/PllGcdrSV9

An interesting corollary to this that @jiggityk once pointed out: everything that is good & valuable *becomes* obvious on hindsight. Eg it took decades before anybody put wheels on luggage. But *now* it seems obvious. It seems obvious *because* the value is so apparent
— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) March 15, 2019

On good reply game when pitching reads to people. If you want us to prioritize your bid over everything else competing for our attention, you have to sell us on it https://t.co/37QxzZVaAX

Everytime I tweet non-trivial thoughts, I get a flood of links/pointers to work by others that people think I ought to be familiar with/connect to.

I appreciate it, but without specific hooks I\u2019ll likely ignore it. If I followed all such leads I\u2019d get no thinking of my own done.
— Venkatesh Rao (@vgr) August 3, 2019

Never mass-message people with some spammy “buy my book” message. Not only is it selfish and annoying, your odds of success are terrible. Everybody loses https://t.co/D2b1q19OVd

This is a great example of the sort of lazy sales and marketing people do when they think they are being #hustlers.

It\u2019s like going around pushing at 1,000 doors marked \u201cpull\u201d then patting yourself on the back.

All you did was annoy everybody https://t.co/To75jfIkHQ
— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) January 29, 2019

https://t.co/G616HEs2JK

Oscar Wilde, on bad reply game:

"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."
— visakan veerasamy (@visakanv) April 20, 2020

good classic thread about bad reply game https://t.co/mvYe0COUbt

Here's something I've been studying on here for a bit. A lot of men, seem to have been conditioned to think that telling someone that you disagree is the same as asking them a question. Like the way they learn to engage is by *creating a conflict*.
— Marco Rogers (@polotek) May 22, 2019

good reply game https://t.co/R56Lz0cdsG

Five years ago, I had a Creative Writing professor who responded to our bad stories the same way: he would never say, "This is wrong." He would say, "How can we make this work?"

From then on, that's how I've viewed critique. Never kill an idea. Help it become its best self.
— Emil Hofile\xf1a (@EmilHofilena) March 3, 2018

Benjamin Franklin's rules of bad reply game, 1750

On making good recommendations: https://t.co/uJTHRLtw3N

Let's say there's something you really really like, a book or movie or tv show or podcast or even just another twitter account

And you don't think enough other people are appreciating it

So you wanna fix that

This is an advice thread on how to write an effective rec tweet
— Gretchen McCulloch (@GretchenAMcC) February 22, 2020

There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably like 60-70% of people I’ve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to “support” the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can “mis-support” them by agreeing stupidly

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