Many months later I’m revisiting this thread again in light of the post “The End of Personal Websites,” which, regardless of how it was intended, seems to have replicated the social dynamics of ragebait.
At this time of writing that post has over 300 comments on the original entry alone, and regardless of Medium not being “indie” itself, the post has at this point been linked on the indie web as well.
This case stands out all the more to me because lately I’ve been thinking about how to get better at inviting more discussion with my blogposts, and based on looking at this example, it seems like an effective way to do that would be to post something ridiculously foolish. I don’t want that to be the takeaway here.
So here’s what I’m wondering:
Is this kind of outcome just inevitable, or is there anything we could collectively do differently? Or, taking a step back, does this dynamic register as a problem at all?