It’s cool to be trendy and it’s cool to bash other people and products. Wait, what? It isn’t cool to harass people, it isn’t cool to fight with other persons. We need to be smarter in the ways we communicate with each other. Today showed it again.

Addendum / Note: I’m not on either side in the following example. It just shows a hopefully neutral view on how different persons deal with others.

Ind.ie is a company that wants to re-invent how internet platforms nowadays work. They want such platforms to be de-centralized, user-focused, privacy-aware and still sustainable. This is an acknowledgeable goal and while I always thought it will be a challenge to achieve this with just a team of four people I wanted to support this goal.

In my opinion they haven‘t done everything the way I think they should’ve but no company does so. And every human fails at some things as well. So when they launched their crowd-funding campaign (which gladly exceeded their minimum goal) I didn’t thought it was the right way to ask people for money. Especially as I never got what I expected and every time at least half a year later than promised from similar campaigns I wanted to support their goals.

I want the independent, privacy aware web to succeed. I want to support people who are in search of new ways to make money on the internet without selling its users’ data to other companies. I want the web as it was thought to win.

It was confusing to read, that indie will re-focus their goals and will drop every product but their social network and will focus on get this running on Mac OS X.

I thought it was wrong to focus on the small portion of Mac users, leaving out all the normal PC users and not using the web’s full potential instead.

That’s why I asked them via email what the long-term goals are and if they’ll really drop the other things promised during the crowd-funding campaign.

But what I saw on Twitter really disgusted me: Suddenly, people started fights against indie, against the founder, Aral Balkan. People even took his letter introduction as offensive, inappropriate. In that he mentioned the cruelties that happened in Paris last week and how sad that was. Of course this is an unrelated event to their re-focus, of course he knows that. But he wanted to let people know how sad he’s about that day in the history and how important it is to do the best you can to make the world a better place.

It’s sad that people pick unrelated things up to fight against people who want to make the world a little better. It’s sad that people fight against something good.

It may not have been the most clever type of communication by indie. It may not be the best decision to disappoint their very own supporters. It may not even have been their intent though. And bear in mind, they’re just four people, most of them developers who want to create something. They’re not marketing people, they’re not big companies. For me, exactly this makes them personable. For me, this was the reason to support them. And for me this is the reason why I didn’t invest in four products but in these four people to let them do whatever they think is best with my $100.

You might not think the same (and that’s good). But is this a reason to personally attack and harass people in public? I wonder why nobody sees this as harassment. Especially people who are against harassment in general. And of course an offensive reply doesn’t help in such a context but if you try to be smarter than the one who’s talking with you, you will be heard and you will be the one who has better chances to succeed.

Wouldn’t it be better to suggest a helpful debate about the problems you feel? Wouldn’t it be better to write to the people that can help you with the problem you face directly? Maybe you have ideas that nobody else considered yet? I think it would.

Be smart and don’t fight. Peace is best done by being and behaving peaceful and showing respect to other people.

Have a good day, Anselm