(2016-06-08, 11:44 am)mattimus Wrote: The primary reason behind the huge amounts of drama in language acquisition communities in general is that they are hugely populated by shut-ins, outcasts, emotionally fragile types, and people just going through a hard time in life. When I dig deeper than "tips and tools" posts what I usually find is people looking for a way to stay busy to detract from dealing with the real causes of sadness in their lives. When your L2 progress is all you have to hang on to, a challenge to your methods can feel extremely personal.
I'm speaking from experience here, my first couple of years of L2 acquisition started when a 5 year LTR blew up and a during a full year of unemployment. Feeling like I was progressing through RTK gave me a feeling of order and progress when my life had objectively turned to complete utter shit. Go to the gym in the morning, go the library and do my Anki reps, half-assedly "look for a job", sit alone in my apartment watching L2 dramas- this was my life for a an entire year. Eventually I had to admit to myself I was just staying busy and didn't even really give a shit about Japanese, and finally I broke out of the rut and now it's like looking back on someone else's life, it's hard to believe it was me. Back then any method I was using was objectively right and those I rejected were garbage and everyone needed to know it.
Now when I see posts screaming about how "method X is crap" I just see "my life is crap right now." Lashing out keeps us busy so we don't lash ourselves.
Good thought. Not only, but as a consequence of what you said, those individuals tend to have the necessity to prove they are superior in that field, so they bash the others in order to feel better.
I've seen this much in the programming and the linux community, most of the time the more arrogants are the ones more mediocre, but they act so much as experts that they seems expert, to other and to themselves.
Especially in the IRC era when there was the "op" thing, and the "kick/ban" power. All those adult individuals self-proclaimed as upmost experts on a field, and all this on the internet.
This is why YouTube is my favorite platform. In order to give suggestions and judgements, you must first show your skills and gain your credibility. All those poliglots with a lot of videos where they show their speaking ability.
And the thing I see is that they do mostly the same things, in order to improve. They put the time, first of all. And they don't spend all the time speaking "about" how to learn the language, but they actually study the language. Obviusly as enthusiasts of language learning they speak a lot of the "how", too. But mostly after they already did it, and they speak by experience.
On the other hands all those blogs tend to overtink it, techniques, secrets, and so on. It remembers me some forums where all those Jimi Hendrix-wannabe spend hours talking about how to be faster on solos and so on, which is not bad by itself. But then they don't improve and they begin to criticize tecniques, exercises, practice, and became to think there is a sort of magic secret knowledge which will make you good at guitar. This while other guitarists are away from the computer practicisig with the guitar hours a day.
Edited: 2016-06-08, 2:43 pm