Also, the Just Don’t Look strategy works on giant advertisements come to life, a common problem in this work-a-day world.
This only works online, and only sometimes. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Do you know why Wikipedia is so successful, even though any idiot can add to it? It’s because other people can remove spam. Ignoring spam is simply not enough - you must be active in removing it. This is even more true in meatspace, where resources are more limited and there is less to waste on stupidity.
I definitely find that silence is the most irritating response from readers. At least with polite, but negative criticism you have some type of a chance for dialog and possibly learning something interesting. The nasty comments are just sad.
The problem with blogging, is that like Joel, everybody wants ‘the real stuff’ not the manufactured version. But (and it’s a huge but), the real stuff is messy, incomplete, badly written and hard to understand, so instead the readers get drawn towards the pretty, shiny, fancy writing. That stuff inevitably turns out to be shallow, mostly because the writers spend a great deal of time learning to write, and not digging into their topics. If you’re going to focus on building software, you’re not going to focus on writing. It’s a trade-off that everyone has to make, every time.
In the end, people prefer entertainment to knowledge. The most popular blogs are the best written ones …
On the “Susan Boyle” point: No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle, even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say “Susan Boyle”.
" "
Did you see what I did there?
I have fond memories of the Great Brain books. I’d love to find copies for my kids…
Your brain’s shallow logic is using a boolean where an int or double would work better.
A lot of ideas in the world, and perceptions of solutions are not bad/good. They are like 0.1 bad, and 0.3 good, and so on. What you perceive as a good choice, may not be what I would perceive as a good choice. You have lived with different input data.
I suggest that you expand your mind and experiences, and recognize that many of your conclusions are shallow, just as most of the world is. Find the root of the problems. Most problems have several causes that lead to an effect, and those causes may be deep. Your mind is like a tree, and your roots may benefit from some reshaping, if you can learn where they are, and what made them.
Learn from the mistakes, if you can. Learn from the constructive criticism. Learn from your tears, or pains, or happiness, or whatever it may be. Live and learn. Avoid the blame, and hurt, if you can. If you reach a certain depth of thought, you may understand why.
She’s some stuff, is Susan Boyle.
George Bush changed the world by ignoring everyone telling him there were no WMDs in IRAQ.
@Jeff: Your post seems kinda contradictory to me; on the one hand, you argue that criticism of a blog doesn’t work. On the other hand, you claim that ignoring something does work.
But as you proved with your own example, it doesn’t. Susan Boyle is still “everywhere”, and “everyone” is still talking about her. So it seems to me that your silent treatment of her did absolutely nothing.
That leaves you with criticism, which doesn’t work, and ignoring, which (on a personal level) doesn’t work. But that misses one of the central reasons why people critique: to try and get others to do some ignoring as well.
Now, in general that doesn’t work particularly well either (as you pointed out). But it doesn’t work any worse than ignoring the blog and arguably, if you can convince even one other person to do some ignoring, it’s actually more effective.
Do you see what I’m getting at? Or are you just going to ignore my criticism of your argument 
(NOTE: I’m just being a smart ass for rhetorical flair there; I’m not actually trying to call you out flame war-style.)
I think you meant Dialup modem and not dualup.
Who is Susan Boyle?
Just a little advice it sounds like you probably don’t need… Take this to heart when raising your new little one. Coupled with telling my two-year old what behavior I expect of him and what will happen when he does not meet that expecation has made the terrible-two’s not quites so terrible.
You know I think you’re right about some people just wake up hating the world, and they happen upon your blog or something and leave a nasty comment. I try to ignore those. I post a lot of fun and informative videos on Youtube, and I don’t think there is a single one where nobody has left a nasty comment - and it’s usually completely irrelevant, like I’ll be showing how to use a power meter and someone will comment on my fashion choices. I just ignore those, but I do approve them, so that others can see what an ass they are. I’m a big fan of the “give a person a shovel and let them dig their own grave” concept. I occasionally get into flame wars just for sport though 
lmao hilarious…
Don’t talk about not talking about someone you don’t want to be talked about… Cos then you join the ranks of those talking about her and she doesn’t disappear.
Write some code which prints to screen “I must think before I blog” 1000000 times and then read it out loud to yourself.
“I am absolutely sick to death of hearing about Susan Boyle, both in the traditional media and online. […]I just ignore Susan Boyle. […] And if we could convince enough people to ignore her, she … disappears.”
unfortunately, convincing other people to ignore Susan Boyle involves talking about Susan Boyle.
This is old, old, old. Remember kill-files? Without an audience, trolls die… It’s a shame there is no kill-file equivalent for comments.
This is one of the best blog posts I’ve read in a while !
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Ghandi
Well. The knowledge of “the silent treatment” is somewhat old… English has a word for it, in fact: Ostracism, derived from a 510 BCE Greek law.
And if it was LAW in 510 BCE, you can bet it had been informally used before that.