[Nathanael]

Hello HN, I've been working on these badges and other simple ways to spread kindness in my spare time. My main motivation is counterbalancing the large amount of covert unkind speech we are subjected to through advertising and various media. I hope you enjoy these and have a nice day. :)

[codetrotter]

What kind of covert unkind speech do you see in advertising and in media?

I’ve not seen that. The unkind speech I see is people in the comments sections on various websites mostly.

[adhoc_slime]

https://kindspeech.org/

Their website somewhat defines it.

I feel it leans into advertising being about convincing one what one has is bad, not good enough or embarrasing, such that a product is bought. I think I agree that could be considered covert unkind speech in media and advertising. The barrage of things telling people they aren't good enough or preying on insecurities would have detremental effects. Personally, I enjoy the kind-spirited effort behind this, I'll be putting this in the header of my running notes .md file.

[Nathanael]

Yay, I'm glad you like it!

[Razengan]

> The unkind speech I see is people in the comments sections on various websites mostly.

"Media" may include social media.

But yeah, there's definitely a global climate of people not really feeling spiffy in general, with few happy places left to escape to.

[Nathanael]

I agree, it's present in comment sections as well, and probably a lot of other places too unfortunately.

I think the best explanation I can offer for how advertising does it in my view is the manifesto I wrote for the website's homepage: https://kindspeech.org/

tldr: creating a desire or a need for people, which is what advertising usually attempt to do, implies that they are lacking in some way. That's not a good feeling. And it's often simply false or vastly exaggerated. Imo, making people feel bad in order to sell is unkind.

[ravivyas]

Is this available on GitHub?

[Nathanael]

Yes, in part, the API is but not the underlying data (at this time): https://github.com/kindspeech/api