Thanking random internet people
As one of my weekly experiments, I’ve been thanking people on the internet. Usually they wrote a blog post that I liked or posted some code on Stack Overflow that I copied. I’ve been tracking down their Twitter handle or email address and sending them a little note.
About half of them have responded back so far. Here are some of the responses I’ve gotten:
When I posted that I was thinking about doing this, someone read it and emailed me this:
I can confirm for you in advance that making a habit of thank you’s will boost your reputation for good-naturedness… precisely by transforming you into someone who notices opportunities for gratitude.
So far, I have not found that to be true. I’ve had to set a daily reminder at 4pm to thank someone, otherwise I’d forget. I haven’t been noticing opportunities for gratitude any more than before. But it might be too soon; I only started too weeks ago.
I’m going to keep this going a while longer and see if I notice any changes. In the meantime, at least it feels good when they reply so I know they got my note and felt appreciated for a bit.
Originally published at http://critter.blog on October 9, 2020.
