[pg]

When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves. Try this thought experiment: if Arrington seemed like the nicest, most self-deprecating guy in the world-- like Father Mulcahy, for anyone who remembers MASH-- would people be so angry about his supposed lack of journalistic scruples?

[philwelch]

I suspect many people would still have no idea what Arrington's personality is in person, and thus continue to judge him entirely based upon the behavior of TechCrunch. How he greets people in person probably has no real impact.

This can extend even further--from everything I've gathered, George W. Bush is a very easy person to like once you know him in person. Yet he was very recently one of the most widely despised people in the world. Your actual personality doesn't seem to matter once you start doing things people don't like, or otherwise become famous outside people who know you in person.

[pg]

I didn't say people only dislike him because of the way he seems in person. How could all the random people who complain about him in comment threads have met him in person?

[netsp]

I'm hope I don't appear to be trolling or taking things out of context, but it did sort of sound like that, especially if one is skimming:

I offend people by writing. And I do it the same way Michael offends people in person:

[pg]

Ok, I tweaked that bit to avoid confusing people.

[dfranke]

I'd still object to his publishing of the stolen Twitter memos under the pretense, contradicted by Ev, that he had permission, no matter how ingratiating he were about it. Other conduct, such as his baseless attack on Last.FM and his recent T-shirt gaffe, simply could not be formulated or carried out by the personality that you describe.

[gruseom]

his baseless attack on Last.FM

Other commenters have referred to this as well. I'm curious: how do you know it was baseless? All I remember is an unsatisfyingly ambiguous they-said-they-said dispute that was never resolved in my mind (and apparently not Google's as well, because a quick search doesn't reveal anything). IIRC, Techcrunch printed what they said was a leaked email substantiating the base of their claim. Was that email a forgery?

Just to spray some anti-troll foam on this, I mean my questions strictly literally. I don't have a preference for the truth to be one way or the other. I'm just curious (mildly; enough to post the question) what it actually is.

[run4yourlives]

When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves.

That's a bit of an logic leap though. Common sense suggests that if someone is disliked by a person, the reason is most likely evident and known. Most don't dislike as a default response.

Assertions not following Occam's Razor need citation.

[barry-cotter]

Common sense = conventional wisdom. They're both wrong reasonably often. Have you never taken an instant dislike to someone within seconds of meeting them? Or indeed, felt a connection with someone you haven't known long enough to have any real bond? These are mostly subconscious reactions to demeanour, tone and (much weaker) dress.

You've heard "First impressions last", right? So obviously we judge people outside of conscious, logical thought processes.

Person and Costume: Effects on the Formation of First Impressions http://fcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/1/32

First Impressions: Making Up Your Mind After a 100-Ms Exposure to a Face http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118597412/abstrac...

Confirming first impressions in the employment interview: a field study of interviewer behavior http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3296559

[tsally]

Well, if you're going to be a badass journalist, you have to do it all the time. Arrigton just does it when it serves his purpose and that's why he lacks journalistic integrity. Case in point: you were told you were being mean because your insightful questions made some startups look bad at TechCrunch50.

[ErrantX]

I think anger is unfair; I font like him much, I don't hold a lot of respect for him as an individual (though I respect his achievements) and I do think that recently he has started to get worse.

But Im not going to sit and rant angrily at him. Commentors on TechCrunch do plenty of that - but y'know every blog has that. TCC just reacts badly to it sometimes :)

Yes there are angry people - your right. Some probably dont like his abrasiveness (It's never worried me; my family are like that so Im used to it), some probably dont like his ethics and get cross (again, never understood that one). Sadly none of this is will change their minds :)

(Just look at Graywolf angrily hounding Matt Cutts day and night over any conspiracy he can formulate in Google blog posts / press release etc. he wont stop no matter how patient Cutts is with him)

[rw]

Maybe you are actually arrogant? How could you tell that you aren't just using your concise writing style as an excuse to offend people?

[pg]

How could you tell that you aren't just using your concise writing style as an excuse to offend people?

You ask friends you know are nice to read your drafts and warn you if you're being mean.

[thaumaturgy]

Angry? No, because anger isn't the appropriate emotional response to such a person.

But that doesn't mean that people would react positively, either. The response would simply be altered: people would likely try to work with him, try to correct his behavior as they saw fit, or dismiss him altogether.

> When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves.

This is stunningly arrogant, and I'm speaking as someone that's constantly accused of arrogance. If you're going to tell people that you understand their motivations or behaviors better than they do, you should trot out some better evidence than mere conjecture.

[gruseom]

<< When people dislike something intensely, the reason is not always what they claim, or even believe themselves. >>

This is stunningly arrogant

No it's not. It's an obvious fact of human nature. One way to know this is by self-observation. That may seem oxymoronic (how can I observe something I am denying?) but with a bit of honesty it works well.

One tell-tale sign is when the emotional charge around something is incommensurate with the reason someone is giving. I think this may be going on here. The most common stated criticism of Arrington is that his journalistic standards are poor. But is everyone who says that really so passionate about journalistic standards in general? I kind of doubt it.

[billswift]

Yeah, "journalistic standards" is rather like "legal ethics" and politicians' honesty, good for bashing the opposition, but not much in view otherwise. Does anyone actually trust anything they see in the NYT or WaPo? Really?

[thaumaturgy]

Coincidentally, I happened to pick up an issue of "Psychology Today" while in line at the store tonight. Most of the magazine disappointingly turned out to be completely un-cited guesswork and bunkum, but it did have a headline article that applies exactly to this situation.

They claim that in human behavior, other people can be better judges of certain traits related to behavior -- like whether we come across as friendly, aloof, curt, etc. -- but the individual is more aware of things like motivations than anyone else can be. In any situation where an individual is unaware of their motivations, the best that anyone else can do is make wild guesses. The article called these "dark areas".

I can't say whether there's any actual support in research for the content of that article, but it does agree with most of the other pop-psychology garbage I've read, like "Blink".

Regardless, you and I have absolutely zero information about other people when it comes to guessing their motivations. We don't know their backgrounds, and we usually don't know them well enough to understand their personality. We certainly don't know an entire class of people well enough to tell them what their motivations are.

The best we can do is conclude that their stated motivations don't make sense given some other information about them.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but using yours and pg's justifications for this, I could tell you right now that you're defending pg out of a hidden desire to win recognition from him, since he has influence and resources. (If I were an actual real-life psychologist, I would probably also trot out some lame garbage incorporating "evolutionary psychology", and would conclude that you're behaving this way because ancient peoples who behaved this way had some kind of evolutionary advantage in the imaginary environment I've invented for them.)

You would probably object to that, and then I would grin and say, "Ah, but you don't understand your motivations as well as I do! If only you were more honest in your self-observation, you would see that I was right."

So, yes, while I agree that in some cases the stated motivations don't make sense, I disagree that we can assume that we know what the actual motivations really are -- especially without a shred of supporting evidence.

Hell, why not assume that Arrington draws fire because he's the founder and figurehead for TechCrunch, and people dislike TechCrunch because it sometimes picks on their buddies' startups? That conclusion has exactly as much supporting evidence as the one that pg drew. (None.)

Wait, I know! People actually dislike Arrington because he said he would debut a really awesome tablet PC by now, and where is it? We're all disappointed, and that's why we hate him. That conclusion, too, has exactly as much supporting evidence as yours or pg's. (...None.)

I don't dislike Arrington individually, and I don't even have a very strong opinion of TechCrunch, so I can't explain any motivation for actual hatred on my part. But, I also shouldn't think that I can explain any actual hatred on anyone else's part.

[pg]

What sort of evidence do you think would be appropriate?

[thaumaturgy]

The kind that requires more than a day to put together.

At the very least, let's see some studies of controversial figures, the traits those figures have in common, and the most common reactions to them. Let's see if there's a correlation between mere abruptness in an individual, and widespread long-term dislike of that person.

Or do some social experiments, with actual control and experiment groups.

The point though was less about coming up with the right kind of experiments -- although that could be kind of fun -- and more that it's extremely arrogant to tell people that you understand them better than they do, especially when it's completely unjustified, as it is here.

Whether you consider that kind of arrogance to be a negative trait or not is up to you.