Cunningham’s Law

The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question. It’s to post the wrong answer.

Coined by programmer Ward Cunningham, it’s familiar to anyone with an active social media account.

People like to fight online more than they like to help. They’re quicker to point out flaws than to become a friendly resource. I don’t want that to be true, but experience tells me it is.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote:

If you constantly express anger in your private conversations, your friends will likely find you tiresome, but when there’s an audience, the payoffs are different—outrage can boost your status. A 2017 study by William J. Brady and other researchers at NYU measured the reach of half a million tweets and found that each moral or emotional word used in a tweet increased its virality by 20 percent, on average. Another 2017 study, by the Pew Research Center, showed that posts exhibiting “indignant disagreement” received nearly twice as much engagement—including likes and shares—as other types of content on Facebook.

The internet promotes the same dynamic as road rage: once you’re arguing with a computer (or vehicle) rather than a person, social norms vanish.

Words:  Morgan Housel
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0
Original Source: Collaborative Fund