The list is far from complete... many of these guys are reciprocal friends and all live nearby, it is a cultural thing mostly. It's like: we don't give a fuck and we critique everything is stupid, except they have an impressive lack of arguments and a very big focus on things they dislike. I can ensure you that unfollowing is not enough of an option... both at-messages and the search timelines are full of their tweets.
IMHO to deal with these guys the good recipe is:
1) If they have some remotely valid point, reply with arguments, try to move them into the "arguments land", and maybe they'll say something useful for a give project / community after all.
2) If they are trolling, you have two options, the wise one is ignoring them and just provide facts if it is a group-conversation on Twitter. Otherwise if you feel like that (I do), troll back. Usually this kind of personality is found in insecure people, it is not hard to find their weakness and troll back, can be quite funny actually.
I've met Zed. Had dinner with him. Same with Gary. I find them really interesting people in person to chat with. I think the point of the article was that he wasn't attacking them personally, since he doesn't know them in-person, but only by the personality exuded online.
I am not too clued into the personalities involved, but in the scheme of things, being snarky or critical seems a lot less offensive than calling people out by name in a semi-permanent and searchable medium to effectively say they're assholes.
I think one of the main themes during the popularization/destruction of any community is when a wave of "anti-negativity" comes in to sweep away any complaints about the degrading landscape of the community.
"Celebrity" developers on Twitter are much like political pundits on cable news. They say polarizing things to get a reaction. They aren't gunning for ratings, they're gunning for followers so that they can up their personal star-power in the industry. They speak loudly to sound smart.
It boils down to - I don't like hearing people say stupid things or things that are different from what I believe.
I think this is something people have to learn to get used too, given the unprecedented amount of noise our networks are creating.
Prior too all this noise, I am guessing the only people who had to really deal with endless floods of snark and criticism were politicians and celebs. Now anyone with a popular blog post or tweet has to deal with the same thing cause today they have the same reach.
The outcome I wouldn't be surprised by, is all of us soon start behaving like our politicians do. Maybe thats the cost of all that information we receive.
I think this post is spot on. You don't need to put up with negativity on twitter, and if you're constantly snarky yourself, think about the impact you're having on others. It feels good to have people laugh with you and validate you, but ultimately you're helping to create a culture of aggression that's not healthy for anyone.
Maybe this is a good place to mention that I've just finished re-writing my tiny "positive" social network: http://gratefulplace.com/ . It's meant to be a place for people to lift each other up.
Who are these people ? Just unfollow them if they're annoying. ?
Edit: Ok, admittedly I didn't get to the end before posting that, as TL;DR it concludes to unfolllow, but whoa that's a lot of writing to get to that point.
Come on, seriously. How to deal with negativity on Twitter and he's complaining about people he has been actively following?
Is this some better-by-proximity thing? Am I missing why it's so important to follow person X that apparently his sanity is being compromised (though granted I've no idea who these people are)?
Oh but I'm so inspired by their code. So look at their github repos instead. But then I guess we will have another tedious blog post on how people are discourteous and abrupt in pull request responses. Or have we done that already? I've lost count.
In the matter of "these people" to be honest. Who cares? It's so easy to stop following them and reading what they have to say! I don't even know them and I don't even care. Live your life, be happy and stop thinking about what other have to say. Snarky people will always exist it's your choice to follow them or not.
I think good criticisms are vital, and the default in social networks is probably to discourage them. The tendency is toward social affirmation. Even siloing. Certainly criticism should [not] be the predominant mode. Far from it, but we should be open to any "yeah, but ..." It might be a good catch.
I couldn't disagree more with the author. Twitter is what you decide to make it. If you don't like someone's tweets, don't follow them. Make twitter the experience you want it to be.
I'm not sure you finished the piece. The author says this:
Luckily, Twitter has an amazing feature that will
instantly remove negativity from your stream. It's
called UNFOLLOWING. The next time something feels a
bit too snarky: Unfollow that user. Before you know
it, you'll have a really nice place where people have
interesting and quirky conversations.
So you seem to be agreeing with him, not disagreeing.
There's an additional point: People may not realize just how negative the come across on Twitter.
I'm sure some people do, and do so on purpose, and if that's their choice then great. Follow or unfollow.
But if you find yourself turning to Twitter to vent you may not realize that, to many people, all you do is vent and complain. It may only be a small part of your total personality but if that's all you're showing to some people that's what they'll use to judge you.
A corollary to this might be that people should not be so quick to judge others based on some small sampling of their comments or tweets.
There's a very good chance they've said and done much more than what you've just happened to come across on the Intarwebs, and you've only seen a small part of that, and even that has been filtered though specific media and circumstances.
I, personally find content on Twitter, something I'm able to skip over pretty quickly as compared to Facebook where social context is key. Negativity, hence, doesn't really matter, does it?
This is like the strangest blog post I've ever read. He concludes that the best thing is to unfollow people you don't like, and also that you should focus on positivism. Yet apparently something is bugging him enough to write this rant as if any one of those that he calls out even would care? :S
How narcissistic are people these days? You where not born into this world to be exempted from negative people, morons, idiots, insults, offenses and whatever life throws at you!
Edit: Let's all create a blog post and announce it on HN, anytime you unfollow someone because you got a little offended for them speaking their mind. I'm sure this will be a wonderful place then!
IMHO to deal with these guys the good recipe is:
1) If they have some remotely valid point, reply with arguments, try to move them into the "arguments land", and maybe they'll say something useful for a give project / community after all.
2) If they are trolling, you have two options, the wise one is ignoring them and just provide facts if it is a group-conversation on Twitter. Otherwise if you feel like that (I do), troll back. Usually this kind of personality is found in insecure people, it is not hard to find their weakness and troll back, can be quite funny actually.