Is posting writing on the internet worth it?

Gary Sax wrote: But philosophically, even if I had something to say, I don't think it's worth trying to write on the internet about anything really interesting---all you get in return is, best case scenario, trolling, worst case scenario endless streams of hateful abuse and threats.

I think you are too much of a pessimist. I've had 90% positive feedback and 10% asshattery, 99.9% of which was at BGG. So, I think venue is the most important factor in what you receive.

There isn't a big enough positive payoff to writing to a large, uncontrolled internet audience about anything even slightly critical or controversial to make it worth it.

My philosophy is that life is about making the lives of others better, sort of a riff on the old "leave your campsite cleaner than when you found it", so for me, I feel obligated to help people in my daily life, which extends to the internet and my hobby. I write for me, as a creative outlet, but I also write my reviews because as far as I know, nobody really does what I do and how I do it: take a bunch of mostly non-gamers, stick a game they've never heard of in front of them, and play it a bunch of times, polling them each time to see if they liked it or not. So, that's my "schtick", so to speak, and I do it as a sort of PSA so that people don't piss money away on shit, or help them make a decision on what to buy. I find that if you look at things from a philanthropic perspective, what you get in return is irrelevant since some people will see what you've written, not comment on it, and you get the knowledge that someone, somewhere, was helped by what you did.

It's a shitload of work keeping up a website and/or blog though. The #1 complaint I've gotten over the years is that I don't write enough.

Since a fair number of you post for a general audience, I am curious to hear what everyone else thinks. I know one answer is "grow a thicker skin" or whatever. But to me that's just another version of the thing that tells a woman who is threatened with rape and death for writing something super innocuous that they should just ignore it.

I think it's not about thick skin, it's about doing it for yourself. If you don't want to write for the joy of writing, or for philanthropic reasons, then you're doing it wrong. People can be assholes, for sure, but the venue matters. If you post something here, you'll be met with virtual high-fives. If you write at BGG, well, then it's very touchy. You can really get shit on by entitled smegma-gobblers there who feel that because you wrote something, you are obligated to have it mirror their own views. So, it's about where as much as what you write.

Moreover, I wonder what it means for the future of blogs and general internet content that the tone is so hateful and it has become much more attractive to stop writing to a general audience.

Go to any given Facebook news story and you'll see the most vile shit ever. Stuff that makes me look like a sterling example of humanity. People mostly suck, and the internet has created this matrix where anonymity and unsolicited opinion meet, and people who are naturally a little bit asshole become the Sagitarrius A* of assholes because there's no possible recourse for the entity they attacked.

More of a conversation starter than anything else, but I guess I'm just so depressed about what virtual anonymity provided by the internet reveals about the median individual that it's on my mind right now. It has really ground me down over the past few years.

Not everyone is like that. Many are, and they're the ones who you remember. Think about this: For every "black kid killed by white cop" story, there's 1,000 "cop saves woman from being raped" or "firefighter risks life to save family pet" story that goes unreported. It's as if the media is actively attempting to make the world a more negative place, and it appears to be working. Don't let it work on you, and you win at life. Write, if you feel the desire to write, and fuck the haters. Until you charge them to read your stuff, you've got no obligation to them.

Gregarius wrote: The internet isn't the problem, the lack of a filter is.

I think there should really be a discussion about how to improve civility standards on gaming sites and moderation policies should be tightened a fair bit.

For example, should comments like this should be allowed?

Asshole on linked blog wrote: So some meanies online called you a name and it hurt your feels so much you went back to their message board to read them call you names some more, and then you went and hid offline and still can’t get over it?

Congrats?

I don't think so. But this kind of nastiness can be found on most gaming sites and not flagged by moderators. A friend of mine, who is a big cynic, claims it's because comment sections drive a significant amount of traffic but I simply think most sites feel that restricting comments would damage good discussions, would be looked down by the public and end up doing more harm that good.

I believe in the littering principle. If a street is clean the chances of someone throwing garbage are smaller than if the street is already full of it. And if nasty comments are common, more people will be driven to "witty" retorts and name-calling. Or simply driven not to post, so the bar becomes even lower as only trolls bother to.

And yes, this is significantly worse for women. It's incredibly pathethic that a woman I follow has an average of 12 people in her Twitch channel and she already has to give three or four people moderator powers to ban all the guys who ask to see her tits.

Erik Twice wrote: And yes, this is significantly worse for women. It's incredibly pathethic that a woman I follow has an average of 12 people in her Twitch channel and she already has to give three or four people moderator powers to ban all the guys who ask to see her tits.

Twitch is a neat service, but its chat is pretty damn repulsive. Luckily you can go full-screen.

I have been struggling with this a lot recently. I'm not completely sure if its shown up in my writing or not, but I do feel like the actual process of getting something down isn't nearly as easy as it once was. I think a big part of it is that because my own experience in the hobby has drifted from the main narrative over on BGG (and to a far lesser extent here). The result is that now and then I get weird pushback against stuff that I thought was completely benign.

For example, someone posted my "Boardgaming's Vanishing History" article to /r/boardgames, and a large percentage of the comments were people proclaiming rather angrily that 1) I was being a drama queen and 2) it wasn't a problem in the first place. I wasn't hurt by it or anything, but I was frankly baffled by the response.

It's little stuff like that that burns me out completely on writing at all, but like Legomancer I just find it therapeutic sometimes. It's definitely true that writing is a selfish act. A lot of times I'm just writing something that I would like to read or feel compelled to write, and I'm not really very concerned about how interesting it is to everyone else. In my experience that's how almost all writing is. That's not a bad thing, but it does give me a different perspective when I'm writing something for an audience. The only person I'm really interested in pleasing is myself.

Of course this is all kind of a trite discourse when comparing to the larger issue of sexism, general nastiness, and ridiculous sensitivity on the internet. I actually think that a lot of people have a list next to their computer, one that contains a series of subjects that they have vowed they will comment on, regardless of how touchy, stupid, or awful it makes them look.

R/boardgames is full of imbeciles that cannot read. My experience of the channel is the folks there spend less time reading than they do typing their responses to things. With introspective articles, particularly like your recent ones, you have to look at it as something personal to the individual, and only then can you see the worth in it. Rather impersonal flame channels like R/boardgames tend to mis such things.

Oh, I agree. I feel like it's entirely composed of people who are in the "buy everything" phase of the hobby, and they HATE it when anyone even hints at harshing that buzz. It's absolutely clogged with Kickstarter flotsam and jetsam too.

DukeofChutney wrote: R/boardgames is full of imbeciles that cannot read. My experience of the channel is the folks there spend less time reading than they do typing their responses to things. .

Ha! what a great fucking quote, I think you just described the internet in general though

Great post Pete.

Dogmatix wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: I guess I'm increasingly coming to the view that, in order for it to be about "uncontrolled women", then there would have to be a tangible difference in the way the bulk of the bad actors behave toward a man expressing the same opinion. What I tend to see in most venues is that the bad actors are complete dickheads regardless of the target's gender. Perhaps what I'm just not registering (as in, I don't take notice of; not that it doesn't happen) is that a woman is more likely to suffer endless abuse for near-100% of their online expression.

Men don't get rape threats, including people digging into their home addresses and such, for writing reviews of nerd movies that only give them a B+ instead of an A. A man may be told that he shouldn't have an opinion about videogames for some reason, but will not be told, en masse, that men in general should not have such a view. The comments on a man's column will seldom devolve into a discussion of his looks, women asking to see his dick, and women telling him to go fix their car.

There's a lot of bullshit on the Internet, but if you think it's handed out equally among men and women, you are incorrect.