So, something I’ve noticed on the #Fediverse is that there are these reply guys who sometimes don’t quite get why they’re being called out for being reply guys. No worries, though! I’ve got a little tip for you:
It’s generally best to hold off on replying to someone’s posts with unsolicited advice or “corrections.” While you might have good intentions and think you’re being helpful, trust me when I say that most people just want to express themselves without receiving random advice from strangers.
Of course, there are a couple of exceptions to this rule:
- If the original poster is openly asking for advice or help, then it’s perfectly fine to chime in.
- If you’ve built a good rapport with the original poster, and they’ve shown that they’re open to receiving advice, then go ahead and share your thoughts.
Now, I know some folks might be tempted to point out that I’m giving unprompted advice right now.
Well, you’re absolutely right! However, the key distinction is that I’m not replying to someone else’s post. To truly be a reply guy, you’d have to reply directly to someone else 🙂
Feel free to give all the advice you want on your own space. Just remember to be mindful when stepping into someone else’s space unannounced.
Honestly this mindset is extremely harmful for people who suck at social cues. A lot of “reply guys” on the Fediverse are just autistic people with special interests who see something they care about and want to talk about it. That may involve corrections, or suggestions for, say, what software they might like if Linux isn’t working for them, which is just a way for them to talk about their interests while helping other people.
People immediately jump to insulting them as “reply guys” without even explaining what the rules of conduct are. Clearly “never give advice to anyone ever unless they explicitly ask” is way too broad, because in a lot of places advice is implicitly expected, even in the Fediverse. More often than not, that kind of thing is perfectly okay and accepted, and they’re insulting people for something they didn’t know was an issue. They’re being grouped in with people who constantly correct and start shit with people in replies to harass them. That’s a completely different thing from someone trying to use a topic they care about to help people and start a conversation.
I find it hard to find this take to be in good faith a lot of the time when they don’t give any realistic advice to actually discriminate between people who find certain things okay or not. I think if these things are an issue, it should be up to the poster to communicate CLEARLY what their boundaries are for interaction.
One time I saw art, and said something along the lines of “Literally the only thing wrong with this is a [tiny insignificant thing], otherwise it’s perfect.” They interpreted it as me giving unsolicited advice, but I was using the tiny insignificant thing to highlight how good the art was and how little flaws there were. I explained that to them, and luckily they were understanding. But sadly not everyone gets that opportunity before they get blasted or insulted for stepping on a landmine.
If they had said “please don’t bring up issues with the art, I have a hard time with that” in their bio we could’ve avoided that entire interaction and me inadvertently making them feel like shit. That’s far more productive than putting ableist expectations until autistic people are bullied into not being able to have any interactions on the network.
Having these invisible rules that constantly change, where people give completely useless and unrealistic advice that isn’t actually able to be applied to anything, that’s ableism. I’m not saying it’s always intentional to be clear. Anecdotally, there’s a lot more autistic nerds here than in other places (hence the example I used with software) so that kind of behaviour is more widely normalised here than on, say, Twitter.
There are people who do clearly establish these boundaries. Usually it’s a small blurb on their profile with something like “Please don’t give me unsolicited advice.” That’s all it takes! If people aren’t respecting your boundaries, then I think that’s totally valid to complain. But don’t pretend like those boundaries have been set up because everyone should Just Know things.
The heck is a ‘reply guy’?
My first time hearing about this too lol
Traditionally, a “reply guy” is someone who replies to a specific person or group of people over and over with excessive corrections/“just asking questions”/other tactics with the intent to harass/waste time/make people angry. It’s a kind of troll that’s typically on Twitter.
There is a difference in intent between a minor correction and sea lioning.
I’ve also seen a lot of people on Lemmy take any form of criticism as criticism of the whole even if it just criticism of part of the discussion.
For those that were as confused as me:
Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of “incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate”,[5] and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.[6] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki,[7] which The Independent called “the most apt description of Twitter you’ll ever see”.[8]
P.S.: the comic in question:
That kind of sounds like a person actually asking for empirical evidence and relevant studies though
Ah yes, Popper’s paradox of tolerance strikes again. (If demonstrating intolerance is the appropriate reaction to witnessing intolerance, how can you distinguish between first order and second order intolerance in the behaviour of others?)
How does tolerance or intolerance interact with the questions regarding sources to claims?
The only context I heard this term in was to refer to the people who got made a career out of replying to Trump.
If you don’t want replies don’t post in a public forum.
Microblogging I can understand this being some sort of reasonable response. Discussion forums, however…
Especially on a relatively new/small space like lemmy. If people start agonising over whether they should reply or not then lemmy won’t get a chance to grow.
This is so dumb. Imagine being upset about people contributing to the conversation.
The definition of a “reply guy” in these comments seems to just make it a rebranding of the word we’ve used for them forever, trolls. Y’all are free to block trolls on most platforms.
Anyone who doesn’t want genuine replies or advice can simply avoid posting in a public forum. That has been how it is since the inception of the internet and how it will continue to be.
A reply guy is a /kind/ of troll, and identifying certain tactics is important.
Ugh ugh. I already have huge anxiety over my poor impulse control when it comes to comment replies.
I’ve been rightly called out for jumping in to spaces that haven’t welcomed me explicitly. Holdover from an earlier internet where it felt like all comments were welcome. I felt deep shame, confusion and yes anger too at being told “go away, this place is not for you, we don’t want you here.” But then again I was told that a lot as a young teenager by the ever dependable bullies, so it might be more triggering for some people than others.
(I don’t have a formal autism diagnosis. Just ADD or executive dysfunction, but the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADD said I was on the spectrum and they wanted to test for that. But I couldn’t afford it and never revisited it. So if I’m unwelcome please tell me!)
I think the definition of reply guy changes depending on who you ask. So I try to remember that if I get a frosty reception, and I delete comments too. There’s no real rules, except don’t comment in women’s spaces as a man, gay spaces if you’re straight, spaces for people of colour if you’re white, unless you’re invited of course. It feels wrong and weird and unfair but that’s what some people want. Maybe it will change in the future as our cultural discourse matures? I hope so, I love commenting and finding out all about people, there’s trillions of stories to be told and I wish I could hear them all.
But I guess for the time being, lots of people don’t agree.
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Microblogs are different, they can be very personal.
Public forums are the third place of the 21st century. OOP can get on with the times or keep writing posts of frustration.
The thing is that there are reply guys who are in it just to be a nuisance. My criticism is that they aren’t trying to establish boundaries with innocent people, and that they resort to basically bullying people for trying to be nice, and have a conversation.
I don’t fully agree with the notion that a microblog is a third place like, say, Lemmy or Reddit is. A profile can be incredibly personal, and there can be tools used to limit who sees it for that reason. A profile can either be a massive one with a massive audience, or one with a few of your friends following. Those both are very different. The third place would arguably the instance the user is posting on, and those have rules and expectations. Federated conversations are very different. It’s more akin to a town full of third places. In the streets, you need to establish boundaries with people you’re having a conversation with if you don’t know them.
I want to clarify something. Establishing boundaries is okay, and a microblog can be very personal. A microblog can be a safe space for someone, but also a brand account that has everyone screaming at it. Establishing boundaries on an account that’s personal is more akin to establishing a boundary as a person. Some people get harassed. That’s just a reality. If someone is triggered by constant corrections because of harassment, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to establish that boundary. But that’s up to them to establish, not to assume everyone else would or should know and that people are evil if they don’t.
One of the traits of ASD is unintentionally offending people. That doesn’t mean people have to accept every rude thing an autistic person does without complaint, and they’re ablist if they don’t. It means you should be understanding and clearly explain boundaries. That’s exactly what the original post did.
Yeah, it’s annoying that some rules are usually unwritten because everyone else already knows them. It would be more annoying if everything anyone ever wrote had “Please don’t respond with advice or criticism” at the end.
This rule has been written down now, clearly and very politely. Maybe you or I didn’t know it before but we do now. If you refuse to listen and continue correcting strangers on social media that isn’t autism, it’s just being intentionally rude.
One of the traits of ASD is unintentionally offending people. That doesn’t mean people have to accept every rude thing an autistic person does without complaint, and they’re ablist if they don’t. It means you should be understanding and clearly explain boundaries. That’s exactly what the original post did.
No it didn’t, it tried to explain an invisible boundary like it’s a normal thing for everyone and everywhere when it isn’t.
Yeah, it’s annoying that some rules are usually unwritten because everyone else already knows them. It would be more annoying if everything anyone ever wrote had “Please don’t respond with advice or criticism” at the end.
…how is that annoying? People write little messages in content warnings all the time, and like I mentioned in the OP you can stick it in your bio and write it once. Not everyone knows them anyways, because even in the Fediverse that kind of thing can differ a lot. I honestly feel like you didn’t really bother to read my entire post, because your response doesn’t seem to be really addressing the criticisms I made in the post and their reasoning.
This rule has been written down now, clearly and very politely. Maybe you or I didn’t know it before but we do now. If you refuse to listen and continue correcting strangers on social media that isn’t autism, it’s just being intentionally rude.
Again, the OP is giving advice for interaction on the network /generally/. They aren’t just talking about themselves. Again, I feel like you didn’t really read what I said, because a lot of what you’re saying is a strawman.
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