I can sympathize with your beef with Rich. I seem to have picked up a stalker or two on one or two of my other Substack subscriptions. They are disagreeable and get nasty when challenged. I no longer reply to anything they post to me. They seem to like attention and to rile people up. I am not going to feed their beast. If there was an "ignore" button I would use it.
Seeing that you gave this guy quite a bit of your time already, thanks for explaining it a bit further as I came into the comments section of your last stack post deleted comments and I was confused as to how Ungovernable Rich was being rude (although I agree that for a Bitcoin beginner post, the comments I was able to see were a distraction). For me, folks like Rich make it obvious with their comments alone and without any moderation how off the mark they can be. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most often, these kinds of posters are their own worst enemy. Now, he caused enough of a stir where he profited from his little antagonizing tantrum and here I am wasting more human hours writing about it and you reading about it.
I’m glad I’m still in your living room and I’m not missing the guy at the party who keeps pouring his beer over his head.
Apr 30, 2022·edited Apr 30, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
Some people are more verbally abusive than others allow themselves to be. This gets difficult for me as well, because I simply can't forget anything someone has said. My mind holds onto all those details, forever. We are also dealing with the phenom of what I would call 'mom abuse' or 'dad abuse' and by that I mean that simply engaging with a 'child' and being present and reasonable with the 'child' will mean that (some) children will hurl abuse at you because a) they have been similarly verbally abused in the past and think its acceptable or b) to see if you will return the abuse (at trap) or not return the abuse and instead continue to reason with them (possibly also a trap, if they simply continue being verbally abusive). Patience and Time indeed.
I would say to not let him get under your skin, but he obviously already has done, so no advice and just a lil' note to say you're heard, you're right and he seems a right asshole :)
Taking the time to communicate concisely and effectively is critically important for everyone that has good intentions. It doesn't matter if you're right if no one can hear you secondary to poor etiquette. To be clear, I'm not talking about PC or CRT. Those are methods to control communication, etiquette facilitates communication. Some with bad etiquette are simply incompetent communicators with good intentions. Others are acting in bad faith. You're right that there is often no quick way to tell the difference, although I do have a couple litmus tests I use.
I like thinking of flat earth, snake venom, "there is no virus" etc. as DDoS attacks. Has a less kooky ring to it vs. calling them psyops, although I will probably only use it with those that are somewhat tech savvy. Thanks as always for your efforts to communicate important issues Mathew!
I remember reading some comments that struck me as plain old trolling here on the substack. I was hoping would be infrequent. That's different than someone lying about you in personal attacks. I hope substack responds and you're able to settle this.
I for one am quite sceptical re: BitCoin and can be very acidic when it comes to criticism, but I certainly hope I haven't offended with questions or arguments. The main reason for my scepticism is simply not understanding the benefit of switching from one electronic fiat currency to another, and one without any kind of public access or overview at all to boot (and I'm sure there are things in that sentence that looks wrong to someone using BitCoin). That is not all I don't 'get' about BitCoin, but then I have never ever used credit cards or any form of electronic payment. Cash is King, as was proven yesterday and Thursday when major swedish bank Swedbank effed up an update and switched tens of thousands of customers' accounts to negative numbers. Rather annoying for people trying t buy things before the weekend or pay their bills.
Meanwhile, my paper money and coins worked just fine. When electronic money works as well, I'll consider it. Samthing with "smartphines": when they can stand being run over by a dumpster truck, call me. Until then, I'll stick with the CAT60. Good design is like the Volvo 240-series of cars, or the AK47. But now I'm off on a tangent.
One problem with people advocating BitCoin, NFTs, and whatever the next thing is called, is that you more often than not come across as zealots converting heathens - not to the point of the Cult of St. Jobs or the Teslatrons but quite close at times.
That does not inspire confidence but instead invites even deeper scepticism and fosters resent.
As for the person you mention above, ignore the retard. He comes across as an adherent on the Phoenix Project - check it out for a good laugh, communism dressed up as engineer's wet dream crossbred with the Sims.
I hope you don't take criticism of BitCoin or economic/financial theory too harsh, your articles are certqainly interesting, else why bother to comment on them? Keep'em coming, maybe I and many others will get our heads around this BitCoin-thingamabob, maybe not.
It's fine by me that Mathew wants substack to provide better tools for him to manage his community. I also think he can worry a little less about the ability of his subscribers to sort through the BS. If I can make sense of his Musk posting that depends on 7 different definitions of the word 'induction' (and I am not certain I can) then I can detect BS also.
It never ceases to amaze the cowardice people show, with the nasty, ugly language they throw from behind their avatar. Ooooh such a badass, arcticfox (or whatever).
Back when I was an Admin at the now defunct Doomstead Diner, we had a serial troll who's thing was to claim fracking would lead to eternal prosperity. He was also fond of saying things like the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki got what they deserved. We figured out eventually, he was an eminent geologist who had some influence in the science that led to fracking, and surely plenty of investments in that regard, and knew as well as anyone that fracking is mostly a ponzi scheme.
I know there are plenty of reasons for not instituting it, but I have thought since the advent of online commenting, this would be a more civil place if people had to be accountable for their language.
Dear Mathew, I have thus far enjoyed everything you have written, I find your work thought provoking and well researched and look forward to it in my inbox. I write from New Zealand, sadly our discourse here has devolved and there is little civilised discussion or appropriate boundaries, this has only become worse as governments employ psychological nudge techniques and incentivise the media to vilify dissenters, reasoned or not.
It has created a type of group think which more closely resembles the fundamental religious background I grew up within, with wanna-be witchfinder generals around every turn. I romantically think NZ was such a warm, friendly, open society before social media and neo-liberal reforms of the 80's - but the cluster-B personalities have always been with us. As my father in law used to say "You can always tell a c*nt, because you can't tell a c*nt anything".
It's quite easy to ban subscribers to your substack. For example as well as unsubscribing from your substack, as you describe above, I also banned you from my substack for 90 days. I'm sure that you would have received notification of that before (supposedly) writing this attack piece. Which is libel from beginning to finish.
Here's an image showing you exactly how easy that is (the image is hosted on amazon via substack and provides me with no tracking information).
I've not been to BoingBoing.net for many years now (since they fully Woked up), but one of the ingenious methods they used to employ (don't know if it's still used) was "disemvovelling" the comments of trolls, ie literally removing the vowels.
I liked it (apart from the genious alliteration) because it left the comment up and readable, whilst tripling the effort required to read ort engage with it. It disincentivised both the troll and the potential troll respondees. That seemed an excellent compromise and an alternate to completely muting.
I can sympathize with your beef with Rich. I seem to have picked up a stalker or two on one or two of my other Substack subscriptions. They are disagreeable and get nasty when challenged. I no longer reply to anything they post to me. They seem to like attention and to rile people up. I am not going to feed their beast. If there was an "ignore" button I would use it.
Seeing that you gave this guy quite a bit of your time already, thanks for explaining it a bit further as I came into the comments section of your last stack post deleted comments and I was confused as to how Ungovernable Rich was being rude (although I agree that for a Bitcoin beginner post, the comments I was able to see were a distraction). For me, folks like Rich make it obvious with their comments alone and without any moderation how off the mark they can be. I guess what I’m trying to say is that most often, these kinds of posters are their own worst enemy. Now, he caused enough of a stir where he profited from his little antagonizing tantrum and here I am wasting more human hours writing about it and you reading about it.
I’m glad I’m still in your living room and I’m not missing the guy at the party who keeps pouring his beer over his head.
Holy crap, Matthew Crawford made me famous!
That was the important part, right?
😉
Some people are more verbally abusive than others allow themselves to be. This gets difficult for me as well, because I simply can't forget anything someone has said. My mind holds onto all those details, forever. We are also dealing with the phenom of what I would call 'mom abuse' or 'dad abuse' and by that I mean that simply engaging with a 'child' and being present and reasonable with the 'child' will mean that (some) children will hurl abuse at you because a) they have been similarly verbally abused in the past and think its acceptable or b) to see if you will return the abuse (at trap) or not return the abuse and instead continue to reason with them (possibly also a trap, if they simply continue being verbally abusive). Patience and Time indeed.
I would say to not let him get under your skin, but he obviously already has done, so no advice and just a lil' note to say you're heard, you're right and he seems a right asshole :)
Taking the time to communicate concisely and effectively is critically important for everyone that has good intentions. It doesn't matter if you're right if no one can hear you secondary to poor etiquette. To be clear, I'm not talking about PC or CRT. Those are methods to control communication, etiquette facilitates communication. Some with bad etiquette are simply incompetent communicators with good intentions. Others are acting in bad faith. You're right that there is often no quick way to tell the difference, although I do have a couple litmus tests I use.
I like thinking of flat earth, snake venom, "there is no virus" etc. as DDoS attacks. Has a less kooky ring to it vs. calling them psyops, although I will probably only use it with those that are somewhat tech savvy. Thanks as always for your efforts to communicate important issues Mathew!
I remember reading some comments that struck me as plain old trolling here on the substack. I was hoping would be infrequent. That's different than someone lying about you in personal attacks. I hope substack responds and you're able to settle this.
I for one am quite sceptical re: BitCoin and can be very acidic when it comes to criticism, but I certainly hope I haven't offended with questions or arguments. The main reason for my scepticism is simply not understanding the benefit of switching from one electronic fiat currency to another, and one without any kind of public access or overview at all to boot (and I'm sure there are things in that sentence that looks wrong to someone using BitCoin). That is not all I don't 'get' about BitCoin, but then I have never ever used credit cards or any form of electronic payment. Cash is King, as was proven yesterday and Thursday when major swedish bank Swedbank effed up an update and switched tens of thousands of customers' accounts to negative numbers. Rather annoying for people trying t buy things before the weekend or pay their bills.
Meanwhile, my paper money and coins worked just fine. When electronic money works as well, I'll consider it. Samthing with "smartphines": when they can stand being run over by a dumpster truck, call me. Until then, I'll stick with the CAT60. Good design is like the Volvo 240-series of cars, or the AK47. But now I'm off on a tangent.
One problem with people advocating BitCoin, NFTs, and whatever the next thing is called, is that you more often than not come across as zealots converting heathens - not to the point of the Cult of St. Jobs or the Teslatrons but quite close at times.
That does not inspire confidence but instead invites even deeper scepticism and fosters resent.
As for the person you mention above, ignore the retard. He comes across as an adherent on the Phoenix Project - check it out for a good laugh, communism dressed up as engineer's wet dream crossbred with the Sims.
I hope you don't take criticism of BitCoin or economic/financial theory too harsh, your articles are certqainly interesting, else why bother to comment on them? Keep'em coming, maybe I and many others will get our heads around this BitCoin-thingamabob, maybe not.
It's fine by me that Mathew wants substack to provide better tools for him to manage his community. I also think he can worry a little less about the ability of his subscribers to sort through the BS. If I can make sense of his Musk posting that depends on 7 different definitions of the word 'induction' (and I am not certain I can) then I can detect BS also.
It never ceases to amaze the cowardice people show, with the nasty, ugly language they throw from behind their avatar. Ooooh such a badass, arcticfox (or whatever).
Back when I was an Admin at the now defunct Doomstead Diner, we had a serial troll who's thing was to claim fracking would lead to eternal prosperity. He was also fond of saying things like the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki got what they deserved. We figured out eventually, he was an eminent geologist who had some influence in the science that led to fracking, and surely plenty of investments in that regard, and knew as well as anyone that fracking is mostly a ponzi scheme.
I know there are plenty of reasons for not instituting it, but I have thought since the advent of online commenting, this would be a more civil place if people had to be accountable for their language.
Yeah, he's still at it, and the ban button still doesn't work.
https://sagehana.substack.com/p/the-curious-story-of-not-a-virus?s=w
FWIW, Matthew, he decided at some point today that I am you, even though I've read like two of your posts, one the other day.
Monica Hughes sent me here.
I, too, sent in a Substack help request on the issue. He can't be banned.
Now granted. I'm going in on him now. I'm poking the beast.
He's a fucking asshole. But Substack support...is not great. They take forever to reply and they don't fix anything.
https://sagehana.substack.com/p/dunedin-city-council-elections-early?s=w
Dear Mathew, I have thus far enjoyed everything you have written, I find your work thought provoking and well researched and look forward to it in my inbox. I write from New Zealand, sadly our discourse here has devolved and there is little civilised discussion or appropriate boundaries, this has only become worse as governments employ psychological nudge techniques and incentivise the media to vilify dissenters, reasoned or not.
It has created a type of group think which more closely resembles the fundamental religious background I grew up within, with wanna-be witchfinder generals around every turn. I romantically think NZ was such a warm, friendly, open society before social media and neo-liberal reforms of the 80's - but the cluster-B personalities have always been with us. As my father in law used to say "You can always tell a c*nt, because you can't tell a c*nt anything".
Keep up the great work <3
It's quite easy to ban subscribers to your substack. For example as well as unsubscribing from your substack, as you describe above, I also banned you from my substack for 90 days. I'm sure that you would have received notification of that before (supposedly) writing this attack piece. Which is libel from beginning to finish.
Here's an image showing you exactly how easy that is (the image is hosted on amazon via substack and provides me with no tracking information).
https://tinyurl.com/byde6vfh
I'm about to up my ban of you from 90 days to a lifetime.
He's a pain in the butt, so I just ignore him.
Mathew,
Rich Seagar is a decent New Zealander has been badly mistreated by BOTH his Prime Minister and the Premier of Victoria Australia.
So, cut him some slack for his colourful verbiage :)
He is one of us. We have more in common than our minor, potty differences.
You and I already had a debate re BITCON. Did you not learn anything re bitcons and Chanada recently? It takes one simple stroke of a pen.....
I've not been to BoingBoing.net for many years now (since they fully Woked up), but one of the ingenious methods they used to employ (don't know if it's still used) was "disemvovelling" the comments of trolls, ie literally removing the vowels.
I liked it (apart from the genious alliteration) because it left the comment up and readable, whilst tripling the effort required to read ort engage with it. It disincentivised both the troll and the potential troll respondees. That seemed an excellent compromise and an alternate to completely muting.