From time to time it is suggested that Gittip is fatally flawed because it fosters resentment.

From time to time it is suggested that Gittip is fatally flawed because it fosters resentment. David Heinemeier Hansson posted yesterday about “[t]he perils of mixing open source and money,” in which he pointed out problems with crowdfunding open-source. “We plant the seeds of discontent by selective monetary rewards,” he wrote, and in follow-on conversation, he said of Gittip specifically, “I think that’s exactly the shit I find devaluing and dangerous about mixing market and social. Yuck.”

Gittip wants an economy characterized by collaboration and trust and love, so for Gittip to foster unresolved resentment is a problem. In this post I’d like to address the problem head-on. I’ll start with a discussion of resentment in general and my own approach to it, which is based on “radical honesty.” Then I’ll look at resentment on Gittip and what we’re trying to do about it.

Approaching Resentment

Resentment is a negative emotion, an internalized anger at a wrong done to me. The wrong can be direct: I resent a person because they humiliated me in front of others. The wrong can be a systemic injustice: I resent a person or group because they discriminated against me. The wrong can be a lesser injustice: I resent a person because they make more money than I do, or they have more power. The point is that, with resentment, I internalize my anger at a wrong done to me.

Feeling resentment is a sign that something is wrong: with a social system, with a relationship, or with myself. How can I channel my resentment into constructive change? I find Brad Blanton’s “radical honesty” approach helpful: I try to communicate my resentment directly to the person (or company, etc.) from whom I perceive the wrong, sometimes even using a sentence of the form “I resent you for ….” Ideally this leads to a constructive conversation that surfaces truths that weren’t otherwise apparent, and may result in apologies and behavior change for one or both of us. Radical honesty can lead to a deeper unity between people and a more humane society.

This is so close to but so far from standard Internet vitriol. By now we’re used to people saying whatever they want, to whomever, without regard for the other person’s feelings. This could be seen as a way of expressing resentment. Somehow radical honesty is different (at least as I try to practice it): I try to really care about the other person, even while I’m saying something that might hurt their feelings. And when I’m on the receiving end of expressions of resentment, no matter how vitriolic, I try to truly listen to the other person, to engage in a constructive conversation.

A Short History of Resentment on Gittip

For the first few weeks after launching Gittip, I was playing up competition for the homepage leaderboard with tweets like this:

Playing up the leaderboard like this led to resentment by making Gittip a zero sum game for who gets the most money. Alex Gaynor and others pushed back, and I stopped using this kind of language.

A couple months later, we kicked off a conversation about Gittip as a popularity contest under the title “make Gittip work for behind-the-sceners,” with a related ticket specifically addressing issues of privilege, “every person on the front page is male, and all with photos are white.” These conversations led eventually to the Teams feature, the idea being that Teams can provide a way for anyone to benefit from Gittip, regardless of the strength of their personal brand.

However, the leaderboards on the homepage continue to make a bad first impression on some:

I see David’s comments today as a continuation of this theme:

In his post, David refers to a chapter in Predictably Irrational, which sounds like it’s related to a paper, “Effort for Payment,” that Brian Luft pointed out a couple months ago in the conversation with Luke Jones. The point of the paper is that introducing money into a relationship changes how we approach the relationship. I’ll work as hard for a candy bar as for a box of chocolates, until you tell me that the candy bar is worth 50¢ and the chocolates $5. Then I’ll resent you for wanting me to work so hard for so little, and I’ll slack off.

So what?

In some ways Brian and David are right: because it deals with money, Gittip is playing with fire. What can we do to address the resentment that naturally arises whenever money is involved? I’d like to offer four suggestions:

1. David’s critique has it backwards with regard to Gittip.
2. Gittip should emphasize “the first gift.”
3. My resentment is my problem.
4. Gittip’s Teams feature is our answer to resentment.

Backwards

I don’t think Gittip falls under the “Effort for Payment” critique that underlies David’s piece. In a transactional system like “Effort for Payment” describes, the promise of the reward comes first, and the effort comes in response to the promise of the reward. On Gittip, the effort comes first. First, I release the software. First, I quit my job. First, I jump. Then the net appears.

The point of Gittip is that I’m going to write free software whether you care or not. I’m going to make music whether you care or not. Gittip is designed to reward people who act out of intrinsic motivation, not out of extrinsic motivation. You can try to use Gittip as a transactional platform if you like, but I’m not going to make it easy for you.

Emphasize the First Gift

Here’s why Gittip has leaderboards: Gittip has to be more than a game, or it’s a failure. People have to be able to depend on it to pay their bills. I looked at Flattr and I couldn’t tell if anyone was actually making a living off it. I wanted anyone looking at Gittip to be able to tell at a glance whether or not people were actually making a living on it.

That said, I can see where Luke, Andrew, Shelley, David, and others are coming from at being turned off by the emphasis on money. There are two gifts on Gittip, and the first gift is my free labor. The money on Gittip is a second gift, a reciprocal gift, given in view of the first. Tegan Mulholland was right to call Gittip “the opposite/complement of a gift economy.”

Right now Gittip emphasizes the second gift, and we should bring out the first gift more.

My Resentment, My Problem

Looking at an individual through the lens of a number attached to their identity makes me forget that the number is an abstraction of the individual, and I actually do love the individual and wish only the best for them.

When Jack Conte first launched Patreon, he and I had a call with Linus Olsson (Flattr) and Len Kendall (CentUp). At about 38:47 on that call you can watch me expressing resentment toward Jack for making so much more money through Patreon than I make through Gittip. When I go back and watch that now, the thing that jumps out at me is how much I actually love Jack. I was looking at Jack through the lens of a number, and wasn’t seeing him as a whole person who had worked hard for years to get to the point he was at when he launched Patreon. I wish I talked less on that video and listened more. :-(

I also felt a lot of resentment when Hank Green launched Subbable. I had tried really hard to get into a conversation with him, because I thought he should love Gittip. But you know what? Gittip is tiny now and was tinier then. We weren’t what he wanted, and what does Hank Green owe me?

Heck, I can feel resentful of David, if I want to. I was also working on project management software and a web framework in 2004. Why does he have 95,000 Twitter followers and I don’t? Why is he filthy rich and I’m not?

But my point is that my resentment of David (or Subbable, or Patreon, or …) is my problem. Why let it distract me from building Gittip? Instead, I try to channel my resentments into making Gittip better. I see this as a form of healthy competition, which exists for me within an underlying framework of collaboration, because everything I’m working so hard to build, I’m giving away for free as my own “first gift.”

Join a Team

The Teams feature on Gittip is where we’re seeing resentment worked out in starkest relief. The way the feature works is that individuals get added to a group account, and then each takes a share of the money given to the group each week. Takes are public, but only you can set your take, not even the owner of the group can do that for you (they can only add or remove you). What’s been fascinating to observe is how a person’s take turns out to be the expression of the balance point between their resentment for not making enough, and their guilt at taking too much. The social structure of the group emerges from the self-determination of the individual in a set of monetary numbers, rather than being imposed externally on the individual.

We’ve already gone through one mildly heated conversation about money within the Gittip team, and the system worked: resentments were aired and addressed, and the money readjusted to reflect the new social balance we achieved together. It was a team-strengthening exercise. The Team take system works for Gittip because the Gittip team is healthy and full of trust. In the case of a healthy team, the take system actually reinforces trust: it’s a virtuous cycle.

In addition to showing the power of personal relationships to resolve resentment, the Teams feature is Gittip’s best answer to anyone who feels that Gittip is just a popularity contest. If you resent someone for making more money than you do on Gittip, then get to work! Find your own intrinsic motivation, give your own “first gift” to society. And if you’re not the type to build a personal brand, then join a Gittip Team! Teams are open to all! If you resent others on Gittip, then jump, and see if the net doesn’t appear.