Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, “How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?”'

That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…)

My takeaway/advice is - try to recognise when you're being manipulated by gamification techniques and choose to be aware of them and ignore/resist them when it's in your better interest.

Does anybody _really_ think Picasso would have painted iPad trifles for immediate social media validation, instead of starting and completeing Garçon à la pipe? I _seriously_ doubt that - from Wikipedia: "At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works."

Picasso _didn't_ paint for the twitterati - he painted for Picasso. Dustin should write for Dustin - not for Twitter. He's allowing himself to become distracted from achieving what he wants at achieve. That's not Twitters fault. Procrastinators gonna procrastinate (he said hypocritically while wasting time on HN…)

Picasso also made quick napkin sketchings for passersby. So yeah, I could imagine him painting "triffles for immediate social media validation"... he probably would've enjoyed the exposure. But that didn't prevent him from undertaking more meaningful / involved endeavors too.

Did he, though? I always took that story as a fictional parable and not an account of something he ever habitually did.

These two appear to have a ring of truth but I've not investigated in depth, just a brief google:

- http://www.mypicassosighting.com/4.html

- http://toshidama.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/on-being-a-picture...

On external validation, I wondered about whether a social network or community with a karma system could fake that validation for each user to motivate content creation or positive sentiment?

e.g., if I actually got 5 upvotes on a HN comment, but HN showed it to me as 54, and then 78 and then 104 on subsequent comments, would I be more likely to contribute more? As a new user, would I be drawn in deeper?

It wouldn't work too well with public validation like Twitter, but it could for something like HN (and /. from memory) where the upvote count is now hidden.

The upvote count for OTHER people's comments in now hidden. you still always see them on your own comments. So it still does have public validation mechanism.

I think you can't see it on other people's comments because this forces you to up vote something only if YOU like it and not based on what other users think. Eg on FB, a lot of people "like" stuff just because it already has a lot of likes (the need to conform)

Yes, aware of all this. But how would that stop HN from misreporting to me the upvote count on my posts? The true value wouldn't necessarily be shown anywhere.

I believe generally if a medium exists to communicate with others creative people will try to maximize how they can succeed with that medium. The unfortunate part of this is Twitter is both very popular thus potentially a way to reach a ton of people and also the bare minimum for any reasonable communication. Doubly unfortunate is that the mainstream media already oversimplifies, so while I suspect many people wish to present an alternative to how the mainstream media communicates we don't yet have a pervasive technical tool well suited for that.

Tricky though, for someone who probably gets paid at least partially because of his social media validation, to not care about it....

I liked what comedian Louis CK had to say on this subject recently:

http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone

My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

I dunno, it's fun for me -- I find writing a long essay to be contemplative, meditative. It requires you to challenge your own thinking, which is both interesting and a little bit scary.

But I'm willing to believe I'm an outlier in this regard.

I dunno its fun. I find writn a long essay to be zen. It req you to challnge ur own thinkn, is both interestn and lil bit scary #ImAnOutlier

140 characters

>My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

Is it a problem if they don't? There are now many, many insightful essays on the internet; one could spend a lifetime reading them and barely scratch the surface. If you were actually writing for the attention it gets you, rather than for the sake of the writing (and the comment about favourite or retweet makes me think that's his real motivation here), and then you find a more efficient way to get that validation, isn't that a good thing? The internet won't miss what you didn't write.

Very true and insightful. The OP writes as if it's a big loss for the world that he tweets instead of blogging, and that Twitter is to blame for this loss.

But

1/ it's not a big loss

2/ he's the only one to blame.

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