I feel an underappreciated problem with being a person who mostly just rants about the things they hate is that you surround yourself with the opposite of the people you apparently want to talk to
@grimalkina You're not wrong about the sentiment, but there are exceptions. Ranting about no climate action for example feels not just justified, but also redemptive. Your mileage may vary, ofc.
@ftranschel probably if it leads to action it isn't really ranting about things you hate vs marshalling real action toward things you love?
@ftranschel and still, I think it matters who you are speaking and toward what end. Ranting at extremely uncaring people who are the hardest people to move is probably less effective than marshalling coalitions among the climate-conscious and creating structural barriers to prevent the damage done by those powerful few, etc
I'm somewhat surprised. I thought that I'm pretty typical in this regard and I hate ranting to people who don't care, and find ranting to/with people who care both helpful for my mood (probably because this reconfirms that people care) and sometimes productive (because we find something productive to do about the problem, or because we end up figuring out some part of what makes people not care about this formulation of the problem). Is it common that people rant to ones who don't care without hating the activity so much that they don't do it ever again?
@robryk @ftranschel in my original post I was thinking more about people who make it their main business to do angry thought leadership kind of lecture posting and honestly they often seem to be embroiled in the places they don't like (eg, on LinkedIn trying to lecture executives, in business venues but ranting about all managers being evil)
So yeah, I think it probably doesn't match your experience!
Was just thinking out loud about how we can get captivated by the things we're bothered by
@grimalkina @robryk My take is that it might be trying to deal with a type of depression response: I can relate to the need for a pressure valve for things I (seemingly) cannot change, but also cannot escape from.
@ftranschel @robryk oh I completely agree, in a different thread of replies on this post I said much the same thing!
@robryk @grimalkina I think it's worth pointing out that audiences are not necessarily always self-determined. I regularly have students who didn't exactly sign up for, say, Math 101, but still insist to make the experience bad for everyone. While it's true that it isn't really productive (and truth be told, certainly isn't becoming for a university professor), some intermingled ranting will at least cheer up the rest of the crowd, which might be the compromise to root for.