How to Talk to People on the Internet
push to talk #15 // a guide for founders, comms pros, and the curious
Talking to people on the internet can be pretty scary, right?
A lot can go sideways if you say the wrong thing. Screw up badly enough and you might even wipe a billion dollars off your company's market cap and get fired and then watch as people celebrate your downfall.
Okay, okay. So screwing up that bad is rare. But we all know somebody who got the axe because of a PR goof. It happens to the best of us.
But most of the time? It’s a skill issue.
Most Push to Talk readers already know my background, but for the rest of you: I’m Ryan. For the better part of a decade, I've led communications on games like Apex Legends, PUBG, and League of Legends. I've navigated tricky product change announcements, squashed international PR disasters, and killed some ugly memes.
Occasionally, I've even been able to turn around nasty narratives and win advocates for dev teams that deserved more love than they were getting.
For a couple of years now, I've wanted to write a post sharing what I learned during my time leading comms for these games. But, truth be told, I've struggled with whether to say anything. These sorts of "knowledge-dump” posts can come off as self-indulgent... and anyway, doesn't everybody talk to everybody else online all the time? What advice could I give that isn't going to sound totally obvious?
But then, every few months, I see some multi-billion-dollar company do something not unlike what Unity Technologies did last September. Total comms seppuku. Just whipping out a blade and falling on it for no reason.
It happens all the time. The world’s biggest companies put out these mealy-mouthed announcements or statements that confuse everybody and do serious, longterm damage to their reputations and their own internal cultures. It’s a vibe-killer.
If you've paid any sort of attention to tech or gaming over the last couple of years you can probably think of half a dozen true PR boondoggles that were basically self-inflicted by founders or leadership teams who, ultimately, don't know how to talk to people on the internet.
In the interest of keeping decorum, I’m not going to link any other recent examples here besides the Unity one—Riccitiello's Reckoning feels like a safe exception to the rule because, god bless him, everybody knows that was a goof. But there are plenty more examples out there, varying on the scale from mundane (“the founder did a whoopsie tweet”) to the catastrophic (“our blog post just cost us a billion dollars”).
Having helped companies avoid this sort of thing in the past, I increasingly feel an obligation to share my perspective. Maybe even some tips?
So, that brings us to this post.
Today's issue is the first in a three-part series called How to Talk to People on the Internet.
Part One is about a simple technique that'll help you avoid sounding like a corporate drone when making a formal announcement online.
Part Two is called On Pile-Ons and Haters: A Theory. This one’s spicy.
Part Three is 9 Rules for Talking to Players, a deep dive into the fundamentals of good online comms.
If I were a more serious writer I would probably start with the fundamentals and expand from there, but I don't want to bore you. So instead I'm gonna give you the juicy bits right up front by sharing a technique that anybody can use to write better first drafts immediately
My hope is that that anybody, not just my games industry peers, can get value from this series. And although my examples will be focused on "official" announcements and messaging—primarily from companies in tech and gaming—I believe these principles apply far beyond the realm of corporate gaming comms.
If you enjoy this post, take a minute to subscribe so you can get the next entries in the series.
Heads up: I'm trying something new this week by pushing the "Scuttlebutt and Slackery" section (spicy games industry news links) to the bottom of the post.
Please feel welcome to reply directly with any feedback on this change.
How to Talk to People on the Internet
A Guide for Founders, Comms Pros, and the Curious // Part 1 of 3
There are too many ways to talk to people on the internet.
You can shitpost on X, go on an unhinged 3:00am rant that’ll earn you a 7-day ban on Discord, or post terrible opinions on Reddit. I've done all of these. But that’s casual mode stuff, and it's outside today's focus.
This post is about public statements, announcements, and official responses—the kinds of high-stakes communications you might have to write on behalf of a company.
For truly complicated, high-stakes comms, it is true that you should probably follow a careful framework to determine what you’re saying and who you’re saying it too.
In (very) brief form, the step-by-step process for making a formal announcement on behalf of a large company usually looks something like this:
Info-gathering: Ask what’s happening, what needs to be said, and why?
List out key audiences for the message and how they’ll be impacted.
Determine your key messages (usually 2-3 bullet points) and main takeaways.
Write a draft, and share with one or two accountable stakeholders (usually a team lead, an executive, or founder) for comments and suggested changes.
Rewrite and validate the changes with your original stakeholders.
Pull in a couple more stakeholders for light notes and sanity-checking (You are going to refuse to allow any intense rewriting from this point forward unless it’s for a very good reason).
Finalize the draft including any associated assets and social copy.
Test the message on a few trusted, non-stakeholder people who might have additional insights. Make only minor tweaks if necessary.
Give a final heads up to your accountable stakeholders.
Run it through legal, financial compliance, and localization teams.
Post it.
Reading through this list, it probably jumps out at you that most of the steps are self-explanatory, except for #3 and #4. Determine key messages? Write a draft? How do you actually do that? It’s giving draw the rest of the damn owl.
This is what I wanna focus on today: How to discover your key messages and write a first draft that doesn’t sound like corporate baloney.
I have a trick for this, and I genuinely believe every truly high stakes message should include this technique as part of the writing process.
You’re going to think this trick is too simple to actually work. But it works.
The trick is this:
Find a smart, trusted co-worker and take them to a private space where you can talk.
Explain the situation to them, out loud and in detail, using the sort of language you only use in private. Do whatever you need to do to get it out. Pace around the room. Gesticulate wildly. Put your head in your hands. Whatever comes naturally. Just tell them the truth. Confront all the facts.
Write down what you just said, exactly how you said it.
What you just wrote down is your first draft.
What do you call this trick? Where I grew up in south Mississippi, we had something structurally similar called “come-to-Jesus meetings.” But those were saved for addressing petty crimes and misdemeanors, and they usually ended with some kid getting their ass paddled, not writing advice.
So instead, let’s call this trick the “coworker smoke test.” It’s not just for coworkers, of course—it works with wives and best friends too. Anyone you can really trust and be real with.
The reason for the coworker smoke test is that the single biggest mistake people make when they communicate online is bullshitting the audience. Not lying, necessarily, but bullshitting in the sense that philosopher Harry Frankfurt used the term: “the bullshitter aims to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true—it may be.”
This is the root of bad comms. If you just sit down and start writing with the intent of Crafting An Official Corporate Response™, very often it comes out as a bunch of nonsense corporate pablum because you’re too focused on the impression of yourself that your words convey. So you take refuge in safe, spineless language, on the theory that that’s just the way corporate communications sound. At the end of the process you’ll look at the page and see a bunch of pure dreck—most of it meaningless and some of it actually false.
So instead, start with the coworker smoke test: Explain the situation to a smart person you trust. Say what you’re going to do and why you’re going to do it. And then write down what you said.
And then—you’ll love this bit—there’s a next step.
Ask the person: does that make sense?
The point of doing this is not to see how your coworker thinks your message will be received by the public. Most people are bad judges of how any given message will play out in the wild. Rather, your goal is simply to figure out whether your trusted coworker understands what you're doing and why you're doing it. If they don’t get it, it will become clear that you need to clarify your message.
If the thing you’re communicating is relatively straightforward, and your coworker gets it, and doesn't have any followup concerns or questions, then you may be able to skip Go, collect $200, and use the exact message you just spoke out loud as your actual written message to your audience.
This is as close to a true comms cheatcode as you'll ever get: talk to people the way you would speak to a smart, trustworthy person in real life and 99 times out of 100 you'll do just fine.
But more often, if you're doing something complicated, a number of things will come up in the resulting conversation:
Your smart coworker will push back on weak arguments or slippery logic: e.g. “You say this change isn't solely about revenue, but even if that’s true, isn't driving up revenue the main reason?”
They'll suggest alternate solutions: e.g. “Maybe there's a less disruptive way to achieve your goals? Do you have to make the exact change you're proposing, or is there a better way?”
They'll ask you about edge cases: e.g. “If you change that, how does it impact this one weird use-case that a small segment of our users care about?”
All of this is useful, because within the wide world of your audience there is at least one person who is as smart (or smarter) than your coworker, and they're going to have all of these same questions, concerns, and reasons for pushing back.
Your goal is to craft a message that satisfies that person so well that they understand and maybe even—if you've earned their trust—advocate on your behalf. That means you're going to have to draft a message that uses strong arguments, addresses the merits or shortcomings of alternate solutions, and accounts for edge cases. So take note of any of these issues that come up in your coworker smoke tests and save them for later.
Common Comms Sins
Some of you reading this probably doubt that you can really use the “real talk” you said in private to a trusted person as your first draft of a message. “We can’t just say that we need to drive up revenues!” you protest. “We’ve got to soften it for the audience!”
This hesitancy is understandable, but wrongheaded. The reason the coworker smoke test works is that online audiences respond extremely well to straight talk, and they love being talked to as if they’re smart and trustworthy. You build enormous advocacy and trust when you talk to people this way.
And yet… I've often worked with leaders who—despite believing in themselves and their plan of action—worried that they couldn't say what they really thought in public, for fear that it'd be misunderstood.
For whatever reason, a lot of people imagine that with one ill-chosen word they'll cause an uproar, get canceled, and be haunted forever by shitty memes. In reality, it’s mostly pretty hard to screw up this badly when you're just representing yourself online, so long as you're not being intentionally incendiary or trying to pick a fight.
But it's different when you're representing a company—it is a lot easier to have your words taken the wrong way. And the consequences can be huge. I've seen people lose jobs for the things they posted when they thought they were representing themselves, but were actually representing their company.
I believe these types of mistakes mostly result from common root causes, and it’s rarely due to a spokesperson being too honest. Instead, it usually because they said something that the audience thinks is not just wrong, but wrong in a way that requires correction. The most outraged mobs online tend to get inflamed by a desire to punish a real "comms sin” in these situations.
Some of the comms sins that I most often see driving this sort of behavior:
Demonstrating a weak understanding of the issue and why it matters
Acting flippant or condescending about a legitimate concern shared by the audience
Failing to think through edge-cases or unintended consequences of plans
Being wishy-washy or sending mixed signals. You must speak with clarity and conviction, and your words must logically connect with your next steps.
Failing to anticipate reactions, particularly from important segments of your audience
For all of the above, doing a coworker smoke test and getting their honest feedback on your plans will drastically mitigate the risk of committing one of these sins.
The Gut Check
There's one other thing to keep in mind during the coworker smoke test.
As you're explaining the situation to your coworker, pay attention to how you feel. Ask yourself, in full sincerity, do I feel like an asshole right now?
This might sound like a joke, but I'm serious. If you have good, clear-headed reasons for doing whatever it is you're doing, you should be able to explain your plan to a coworker and feel good about it. Even if you aren't certain about the words you're using, you should still feel confident that the actions you're taking are, at root, good and right and would be seen to be so by others, if only the right words to explain them could be found.
Sometimes I've seen leaders getting ready to announce changes that even they thought sucked. In those cases, your gut (or heart, or whatever you want to call it—C.S. Lewis called it "the chest") has ways of letting you know that what you're doing is wrong. And if you know that you're doing something that sucks, you can bet that your audience is going to think it sucks too.
That gut feeling is a sign that you aren't ready to announce anything. You probably need to go back to the drawing board and figure out a different plan—one you can ultimately feel better about.
This advice won't work for everybody. It requires discernment, wisdom, and self-knowledge—things that can't be taught and which many people never acquire.
Some otherwise smart people, including very successful leaders at large companies, never feel like they're being an asshole, even when they definitely are. We've all worked for people like this.
If you're one of these people, what matters is whether you understand your audience well enough to make product or leadership decisions that are going to resonate with them.
If you can't do that, you've got bigger issues than the challenges posed by any given comms beat, and I can’t help you.
But for the rest of us, the prescription for writing solid first drafts is simple:
Say it out loud to a smart, trusted coworker, and ask them if it make sense.
Tell the truth using ordinary language, then write down what you said.
Listen to your gut, and believe it when it says you’re doing the wrong thing.
That’s it for Part One of How to Talk to People on the Internet.
You can now read Part Two: On Pile-Ons and Haters: A Theory.
Scuttlebutt and Slackery
The week’s most-shared, oft-Slacked, and spiciest games industry news links.
Devolver Catches Some Strays - Games publisher Devolver Digital defended itself this week after a viral X post lamented the underperformance of its most recent game, Children of the Sun. One dev blamed the game’s reception on a “seismic shift in how game visibility works.” My take: the real issue is the number of games hitting the market daily. Nobody has the bandwidth to stay of top of all of these releases. (PCGamesN)
The Indies Strike Back With a Showcase - The indie-dev organized Triple-i Initiative promised “30+ announcements in 45 minutes” with “no ads, no extra fluff.” And it actually really delivered! Standout game reveals included hype indie sequels like Slay the Spire 2 and Streets of Rogue 2, as well as a gorgeous new Prince of Persia game. Watch the showcase on (YouTube)
Call of Duty Charges $80 for an In-Game King Kong Glove - 18 years after The Elder Scrolls IV enraged gamers with $6 horse armor DLC, we still occasionally get a fun controversy about gaming microtransactions. This week’s blowup centered around a CoD melee weapon that can only be acquired by purchasing $80 worth of Godzilla x Kong themed bundles. My counter-intuitive suspicion is that the more outrageously priced you make these cosmetics, the more appealing they become for certain segments of the audience. (Eurogamer)
French Man Defeats the Machines - This week’s feel-good story is the conclusion of an epic saga involving the Super Mario Maker community. To summarize: Seven years ago, gamers set out to “clear” all 85,000 unbeaten user-made levels in the Wii U game. Just weeks ago it was revealed that one of the last unbeaten levels was likely impossible to clear, as it was created using cheats. Undaunted, one gigachad French SMM player said “screw that” and beat the level anyway after tens of thousands of attempts. The hacker who uploaded the level has since come forward to confess how he did it, and his technique—involving sophisticated hardware mods—is pretty cool and interesting! (Ars Technica)
That’s it for this week. I’m gonna go sell my car so I can afford to dress up like a monkey in Call of Duty.
See you next Friday.
Love this post, Ryan!