[psychoslave]

One should go for it if they enjoy it, yes. On the other hand, life and work is not meant to be spent in full time worldwide interaction either.

If someone want to interact with people like Linus Torvalds, they should be aware that in his case he publicly admitted the way he interacted with other was toxic[1]. To be clear, it’s no personal attack against him, it’s about the kind of interaction that can and does occur with largely celebrated figures in general. If anything at least in that case there is some recognition of the issue, though fair credit should probably given also to all people beyond the scene who certainly made tremendous effort for this to happen.

And things like popular micro-blogging platforms are notoriously known to cause interaction going toxic[2].

Just because something is possible doesn’t mean its a nice path to thrive for everybody.

To each their own judgment, but at least consider the tradeoffs.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-ab...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07229-y

[jlundberg]

Yeah, it’s not about spamming people but overcoming the imposter syndrome.

Learning to find this balance of not being annoying is probably easiest by trying to make relevant comments on someones tweet. And the response back will give you an energy boost! :)

These people are much more approachable than people generally believe.

[rramadass]

I am not sure why people keep picking on Linus Torvalds. If anything Linus has been extremely patient and accommodating of the thousands of people who do no homework w.r.t. technical subjects before contacting him, or if experienced, make inexcusable (at their level) blunders.

If you approach an expert, you need to be clear in your communication, know the subject you are talking about and in general be aware that experts find trivialities aggravating and are not obliged to suffer your ignorance.