[Dave]

This great video has implications beyond the world of automotive repair. I believe you could generalize the thoughts of this video to almost any modern enthusiast pursuit.

I dabble in a lot of hobbies: playing video games, building computers, participating open-source software projects, working on cars, and some light electronics, knitting and sewing thrown into the mix. What has surprised me as an adult is that every single one of these communities has people who act the way you described in the video. (I thought for sure knitting would be different, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time on ravelry.com to find people having strong disagreements about the “right” way to do something.)

Eric, I think you were getting very close to my hypothesis about why things are this way when you were talking about people sounding like they are trying to convince themselves more than you. The way I like to think about it is these kinds of hobbies/pursuits have become a much larger part of many of our identities. I believe the people who jump to rudely correct you feel in some way that your perceived incompetence somehow damages or cheapens their identity. I suspect rapid advances in communications technology have played a large part in this, although I think you could make a good argument that the Western world has been moving in this direction for some time now with things like identity politics and identity advertising. (The Century of the Self documentary comes to mind.) I bet a real anthropologist could have a lot of fun doing a language sentiment analysis of enthusiast communities.

Not to stroke your ego too much but I think Eric The Car Guy is a great example of resource that gets it right. I knew very little about cars beyond the concept of the 4-stroke internal combustion engine before subscribing to your channel and I always felt that you approached your videos from a “I want you to feel the same joy I do when I fix something, and you can absolutely achieve that” (Eric is the Bob Ross of automotive repair!) perspective rather than “This is the One True Way, and you’ll never be as good as me.” Your attitude is one of the things that makes your videos a pleasure to watch.

The goal of more civilized discourse comes up quite often in open source software. I don’t think anyone quite has it figured out yet but a fair number of projects are starting to lay out written principles for civility in their guidelines. I don’t know if it will ever be a “solved” problem, but every little bit helps.

[Dave]

This great video has implications beyond the world of automotive repair. I believe you could generalize the thoughts of this video to almost any modern enthusiast pursuit.

I dabble in a lot of hobbies: playing video games, building computers, participating open-source software projects, working on cars, and some light electronics, knitting and sewing thrown into the mix. What has surprised me as an adult is that every single one of these communities has people who act the way you described in the video. (I thought for sure knitting would be different, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time on ravelry.com to find people having strong disagreements about the “right” way to do something.)

Eric, I think you were getting very close to my hypothesis about why things are this way when you were talking about people sounding like they are trying to convince themselves more than you. The way I like to think about it is these kinds of hobbies/pursuits have become a much larger part of many of our identities. I believe the people who jump to rudely correct you feel in some way that your perceived incompetence somehow damages or cheapens their identity. I suspect rapid advances in communications technology have played a large part in this, although I think you could make a good argument that the Western world has been moving in this direction for some time now with things like identity politics and identity advertising. (The Century of the Self documentary comes to mind.) I bet a real anthropologist could have a lot of fun doing a language sentiment analysis of enthusiast communities.

Not to stroke your ego too much but I think Eric The Car Guy is a great example of resource that gets it right. I knew very little about cars beyond the concept of the 4-stroke internal combustion engine before subscribing to your channel and I always felt that you approached your videos from a “I want you to feel the same joy I do when I fix something, and you can absolutely achieve that” (Eric is the Bob Ross of automotive repair!) perspective rather than “This is the One True Way, and you’ll never be as good as me.” Your attitude is one of the things that makes your videos a pleasure to watch.

The goal of more civilized discourse comes up quite often in open source software. I don’t think anyone quite has it figured out yet but a fair number of projects are starting to lay out written principles for civility in their guidelines. I don’t know if it will ever be a “solved” problem, but every little bit helps.

[Author]

Replies