a lesson i learned about online feedback

Signed-off-by: Xe Iaso <me@christine.website>

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+---
+title: "You don't have to engage with people on the Internet"
+date: 2023-01-18
+---
+
+<xeblog-hero ai="Waifu Diffusion v1.3" file="seattle-onsen-coffee" prompt="zen, peaceful, onsen, shibuya, anime, coffee shop, colorful, manga, sunset, space needle, thick outlines, hyrule"></xeblog-hero>
+
+This is a lesson that was very hard for me to learn and I feel I should share
+this here for everyone to take a moment and consider. You don't have to engage
+with people on the internet. You don't need to hop into the comments section.
+You don't need to reply to that email.
+
+You can just sit back and let people be wrong. Especially when it's about your
+employer.
+
+Chances are, if you are reading this article you are on a development team or
+are in some position where you are not one of the primary spokespeople for your
+employer. You don't need to engage with the discourse if you don't want to. You
+don't need to reply to those comments. You can avoid it.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">There is no good way to add oxygen to a
+tire fire.</xeblog-conv>
+
+Sometimes people will engage in performative angst in comments about companies
+as a way to signal they are part of the "in-crowd" that totally hates everything
+corporations have "ruined". These views are not representative of the larger
+world. It is just them trying to get upvoted because they care about the
+internet point number.
+
+You really don't have to engage with such things. Even if you are a formal
+spokesperson for a company, you don't have to engage. Engaging can make people
+feel validated in their feelings and can sometimes make problems a lot worse
+than if you just said nothing.
+
+This has been a hard lesson for me to accept because in the moment it feels so
+_right_ to want to correct some person based on your lived experience. Those
+other people are coming from their lived experience and as such given the same
+inputs there will be drastically different outputs.
+
+You don't have to engage with people on the internet. It's okay to let people be
+wrong. It's not worth the psychic damage.