2026 Nov 04
- Collecting favours - "and this is the bit I’ve been thinking about recently, because I see people falling into a really nasty trap, especially on twitter. twitter gives you extremely fast feedback. you say something a little edgy, something a little mean, maybe you think you’re being funny, maybe you think you’re punching up, whatever, and if it works, you know immediately. likes, retweets, followers, replies, numbers go up, and then of course your brain goes, ah, okay. more of that.
but there’s another set of numbers that you don’t get to see. you don’t get a notification that says, “three people respected you slightly less after reading that.” you don’t get one saying, “someone who was thinking about introducing you to somebody decided not to,” or “someone who thought you might be great to work with now thinks you seem like kind of a pain in the ass.” that stuff is completely invisible.
and the really dangerous thing is people usually won’t tell you. they’ll still be nice to you. they’ll still reply to your tweets. if you’re famous or powerful or useful enough, they might be extremely nice to you. they just stop inviting you to things, stop recommending you, stop sticking their neck out for you, stop giving you the benefit of the doubt.
so you can actually get more popular while quietly losing people’s respect, and you have absolutely no dashboard for it."
- The People Holding Up the Internet: Who Maintains Open Source