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by alexandercrohde·9y ago·view on hn ↗
The problem she talks about is nuanced.

One the one hand, any opinionated information will upset some portion of the public, the internet just makes it more visible to you. From that perspective, maybe the solution is to exert better self-control and stay off twitter, not google yourself, and care less about imaginary internet karma points.

Her ask for compassion is coming from a sincere place. I think however the real long term answer is to examine how rules of the forum incentivize certain types discussion (twitter=outrage, youtube=insults, facebook=food pictures & generic upbeat life-observations, reddit=jokes, news.yc=thougtful comments, buzzfeed/tech-crunch/whatever=unreadable linkbait).

Another way to look at this, is that these famous people get something from public validation. In a sense, it's a trade of inside information for public validation. If she really just wanted to get the word out there, she could do what the rest of us do, post on a throwaway account, losing the karma points, losing the automatic boost by posting as a famous person, and see if her ideas are packaged well enough to rise to the top.

The thing that's slightly offputting to me is that I get a sense that a lot of these public figures actually are not as right as they seem to think. For example, I'd bet 5 grand that if I could talk to PG for a day about the things he's blogged about, I could change his mind on at least one of them. Yet at the same time I think he was quite troubled when he posted his 1%-money piece and people were outraged.

There's really a lot to this discussion.