You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: How Steemit is healing my internet-inflicted wounds and paving the way for peace and freedom

in #steemit7 years ago

I'm glad you're enjoying Steemit. I've had a similar experience with Steemit insofar as civility goes. I much prefer the lower tension levels here than at other social media forums.

I have reviewed the comments you pasted here and I've seen the same profane, often vulgar comments from others in the circles that I follow. But I have learned to not just consider the source, I've learned to assign a different value to those comments altogether. I see it as a sort of programming exercise.

In the same way that we train ourselves to be motivated by money, we can train ourselves to be motivated or demotivated by input from others. So when someone explodes on my posts with profanities and insults in the comments section on my posts, I don't take it personally. I don't shoot back with the same. I demur, I parry, I try to find common ground if at all possible. I remind myself that civil discourse is not about scoring points, it's about making a point and seeing if there is some correspondence.

Since that time (the experiment is over), I've noticed that I have next to zero inclination to participate in discourse with people who think that they can win a debate with insults. That's an unreasonable and untenable position, so why bother?

Instead, I go where the love is. I can find enjoyable discourse here, on Steemit, with far greater ease. I also like that the money makes people polite. That means everyone is a customer. And he customer is always right.

Anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to know, but this topic has been on my mind so much lately, that I saw your post as a good opportunity to write a nice rough draft of my thoughts.

Have a great time here. Keep the posts coming and don't take anything personally. :)