[HN Gopher] I don't want to be an internet person
___________________________________________________________________
I don't want to be an internet person
Author : chippy
Score : 360 points
Date : 2022-12-07 10:22 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.palladiummag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.palladiummag.com)
| d_sem wrote:
| Other commenters have already articulated how internet
| subcultures are comparable to other historical examples social
| subcultures. I think the first order bit is to ask the question
| if being an internet person produces a imminent threat to human
| civilization. Personally I perceive physical decay in our well
| being, happiness, and an overall reduction in the quality of
| live. I often am reminded how people use to spend their time in
| the physical space and wonder if we just spent 5% of the time on
| the internet supporting our local communities we would have a
| objectively better human experience. It's not that I perceive the
| internet inherently bad. However, as a tool for psychological
| distraction, it is incredibly effective and often used against
| our personal best interests.
| fleddr wrote:
| A great way to test the difference between the online and offline
| world is to boast about something you accomplished in a family
| gathering, say thanksgiving.
|
| "I scored 3 goals in last weekend's game".
|
| That's wonderful! (nobody truly cares, but it's still recognized
| and celebrated.)
|
| "I got 40 likes on my last tweet"
|
| ???
|
| "Wait, it gets better: 20 people watched me play a game. Had to
| stay up until 4AM but still, worth it."
|
| ???
|
| Truly, nobody gives a shit. It means so little that people will
| not even pretend to recognize it. It's more like a negative
| accomplishment that gets people worried that you have poor
| judgement in life.
| endorphine wrote:
| Pretty sure the reactions you'll get in these occasions depend
| wildly on the people you are with at the time.
| [deleted]
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I have a few streamers and Twitter personalities in my friend
| and family groups and so we do actually recognize these things.
| I grew up with a more "traditional" low-brow blue-collar
| upbringing and find it frustrating that my friends aren't
| following more of the World Cup, basketball, American football,
| etc etc. Funny how niches work right?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > A great way to test the difference between the online and
| offline world
|
| Nitpick: this is great way to test the _hypocrisy in how people
| treat /view_ the online and offline world. It's not a inherent
| difference between them.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Agree. This has nothing to do with online vs offline. The
| distinction here works just as well between sharing two
| offline events. Some people care about some things, but not
| others, with seemingly no reason other than because some
| things are more culturally accepted as being important.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| This has nothing to do with online vs offline, it's entirely
| down to what the audience values.
|
| "I kicked a ball against a wall 10 times in a row yesterday".
|
| Nobody cares.
| GreenChairS33 wrote:
| We have long since moved from notion that the internet is an opt
| in tool. I fondly remember when Mac OS 9 would prompt you about
| the internet on first boot and you could pick "my computer does
| not connect to the internet". Looking at you Windows 11.
| clnq wrote:
| Looking at you, social fabric of society.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| I don't really think this is a new or interesting phenomenon just
| because it involves the internet; since the first subculture
| existed, people have sought them out and/or molded them in order
| to be a big fish in an incredibly tiny pond. This guy doesn't
| represent "online" or "the internet" any more than Bob Smith, who
| rules the entire North Boise Yu-Gi-Oh community (all seven
| members of it) with an iron fist, represents the physical world
| and human interaction in it.
|
| As other commenters have noted, the subject of the article is
| apparently also a terrible person and possibly a psychopath.
| Which again, runs true to type; he's found the largest possible
| community where he capable of being enough of a Big Deal to abuse
| people with impunity. Which, as it turns out, is pretty small and
| esoteric.
| bowsamic wrote:
| This is possibly the most cyberpunk thing I've ever read
| greenhearth wrote:
| Jeez, really? Please read some Phillip K. Dick at least.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| TL;DR: Sounds like the title of a Ramones song!
| cxf12 wrote:
| I now know that giving my 10 yo daughter a phone for Christmas 3
| years ago was a huge mistake for the exact reasons this article
| sites.
| jacooper wrote:
| I was given unfiltered access to the internet at an early age,
| yet I found my self avoiding almost every pitfall in it
|
| I still don't why or how to direct kids towards having this
| "internal compass" to avoid weird or dangerous stuff.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I was also (I got online at the age of 4 in 1993) and I think
| a lot of avoiding the pitfalls was being around adults in
| real life who understood how the internet worked. Not just my
| parents, but other adults as well. For example, I understood
| very young that there was a lot of overlap between people I
| talked to online and the awkward adult men I met at computer
| shows. I also got to listen to my mom's complaints about
| existing as a female geek in IRL geek spaces. It prevented me
| from putting internet people on a pedestal. I always knew we
| were all weirdos.
| joemazerino wrote:
| But when? The internet is much more dangerous now than it was
| in the late 90s.
| lilboiluvr69 wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure I agree. I mean, maybe I do. I think
| one could argue that the internet is a lot more moderated
| in this day and age, but maybe you were referring more to
| the addictive and destructive effects of social media.
|
| Do you care to elaborate?
| clnq wrote:
| Moderation seems to be best at getting rid of low-hanging
| fruit. There is much less easily accessible gore, shock
| and radical content online these days. But thanks to the
| very large scope of the internet, there's plenty of more
| insidious threats of the cultural (unsavory, doomer),
| physiological (dopamine-bombing scroll media, attention-
| grabbing content, personalized emotional manipulation by
| ads), and societal (dating/friendships moving online,
| echo-chambers, etc) nature.
|
| Probably like the author of the comment you are
| responding to, I also grew up with the early pre-y2k
| internet. As a kid, I've seen some extremely disturbing
| thigns online that are burned into my memory until today.
| And yet they do not have as much impact on my life today
| as the terminally online society does.
|
| It's hard to exactly quantify how our lives would be
| different if the internet never developed past it's 1990s
| state. But I feel strongly that they would be very
| different. Would my life be much different if I didn't
| see one or two unsavory images as a kid online? Probably
| not. Even when I was young, I had functional
| mental/emotional boundaries for that. On the other hand,
| as an adult, I still have to consciously stay away from
| doomscrolling because I know my brain has never evolved
| for that kind of abuse.
|
| To sum up, moderation doesn't seem to target threats
| online that are actually dangerous. And they seem to have
| impacted our society tremendously from my perspective.
| cpif wrote:
| I'm a bit perplexed by the title. The article distinguishes
| between an early, anonymous, unregulated internet culture --
| which the NFT club seems to resemble -- and contemporary internet
| people who "decided to make the internet boring."
|
| As cartoonish as it is, I buy that distinction. But usually, when
| people make it, they're making a plea for the old internet. The
| writer of this article, however, doesn't seem to be doing that.
| The milady community feels, "a little bit, like that internet
| from 1995"; it is unlike social media communities where you are
| "constantly performing your personality" and "Liking is a
| personal endorsement." Again, when people make that distinction,
| they're usually writing against likes, personality, and "iPhone
| photography of yourself."
|
| So regarding the title: does she not want to be _either_ type of
| internet person? Or is "normie" social media engagement ok?
| gabesullice wrote:
| My understanding is that she feels like the pseudonymous
| internet is a black hole from which we can't escape and we've
| already passed the event horizon.
|
| - Some people don't know it yet. - Some people choose to
| pretend it hasn't happened. - Some people, like her, wish that
| it hadn't happened and are peering into the void, struggling to
| come to terms with it. - And the people she's writing about
| have realized it has happened and are running toward the
| singularity.
|
| She feels that our culture is defined by those going the
| fastest, long before the rest of society catches up to it. But
| we'll all get there eventually, and the avant garde will be
| further away from the unaware than ever before.
|
| I don't think she's making an argument about whether we should
| fall in any particular bucket. She doesn't want to be in the
| avant garde though. Maybe she's sad about that, because she
| pictured herself as being an avant garde kind of person.
| mahathu wrote:
| This was an interesting article, but I also kinda wish I hadn't
| read it. Knowing people like this exist just made me a little
| sad.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I went in not expecting much. I ended up enthralled.
|
| A fascinating article.
| aliqot wrote:
| I know of a few people who will be receiving this link as a gift
| from me today :)
| swader999 wrote:
| Maybe they need help, encouragement and a true friend more than
| this kind of "gift"?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I really, really think that negative feedback needs to make a
| comeback. Anything besides a hugbox counts as bullying now,
| even when _people desperately need to change_. The people in
| this article are horror shows who need introspection, not
| encouragement.
| missingrib wrote:
| They're horror shows because...they're boring/awkward/spend
| a lot of time online? I think you need a reality check.
| swader999 wrote:
| Well it's fair to debate the best way to bring about change
| that I agree they need. I certainly don't mean to encourage
| them to continue on this path. Everyone needs a kick in the
| ass now and then but I would bet money that kind of
| approach here would just push them further into their
| shells.
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| They don't need shit from an HN user, that's for sure.
| dinobones wrote:
| What a boring article. Let people live how they want to live.
| Just because you don't like their lifestyle/personality/way of
| living doesn't mean you get to act like you're better than them.
| rideontime wrote:
| It's a boring article because it's about boring people, who try
| to pretend they aren't boring.
| [deleted]
| accountforgot wrote:
| >his orthopedic sneakers couldn't touch the floor...
|
| >his tiny frame perched a few feet away on an oversized leather
| chair...
|
| >a crooked smile that reveals a row of nubby teeth
|
| >disappointing to meet the "worst person on the internet" and
| find that they are _nothing at all_
|
| I think the author has missed the point about why Charlie is the
| way he is, why he has spent so much of his social life online,
| she did apparently reveal how this Charlie is looked upon by
| "normal" people in real life through no fault of his own.
| fullshark wrote:
| I can't escape the belief that the Internet is now a place for
| junk food media consumption and fake (not IRL) friends.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| then don't write an internet article
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Never heard of the guy he's talking about, but started getting
| strong "weirdo" vibes wrt the author after the third paragraph of
| character assassination, largely based around this persons
| appearance.
|
| For anyone who read all the way through - does it get anywhere
| close to making a point or is it mostly about how ugly people the
| author doesn't like are?
| spongebobism wrote:
| I stopped reading for the same reason.
| [deleted]
| blue039 wrote:
| In the past being an "internet person" brought you into
| interesting sub-cultures. You had shibboleths (like quoting
| bash.org) that would identify you. Since the internet was small
| you would meet genuine often interesting people. I still have
| friends from the "wild west" days of the internet. The time
| period, I think, was the absolute best time to be alive and on
| the internet (though terminally online lamers and cry bullies
| demanding censorship may disagree).
|
| Now, the apt term for people who are "too online" is "terminally
| online". The terminally online are more like a cancer than an
| interesting sub-culture. Since social media has allowed them to
| gain some semblance of following in a hyper-niche subgroup they
| think they can take their absurd opinions, styles, ideas, etc
| into the real world and expect it to work. These people are
| easily identified. When placed in an uncomfortable situation they
| become cry bullies. You might know many of them as your current
| HR department.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Your description is very accurate, but I would suggest that
| they are often the types to complain most fiercely about HR
| departments in general, not specific organizations per se but
| rather about the existence of HR as a social class that sets
| cultural norms. Terminally online folks dwell on both sides of
| the pro- and counter-establishment cultural divide.
| brycewray wrote:
| After reading this, I was reminded of the phrase "That way
| madness lies." But I Am Old.(tm)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| nice. here is my idea....
|
| i was online from my pre teens time. i actually had to wait a
| 'few' years to get my own email address. back then, there was no
| "social media", no algorithm and you were taught to not give your
| real "A/S/L" because people could track you down and hurt you and
| all that. oh the days.
|
| i adopted this randomuser handle, not linking my accounts from
| one service with another, not reusing handles, not having
| google/FB/apple accounts, it takes time and energy.
|
| anonymity on the internet is a wonderful thing really. forget the
| abusers and stuff, moderation is for that. when you consider the
| real problem of doxing, you appreciate the benefits of using
| anoymous handles.
|
| >Everyone knows, abstractly, that the internet is not real life.
| But you can't picture it, not really, until you sit across from
| the real people behind the screen. Even the darkest online
| personalities are just people on their phones. It is oddly
| disappointing to meet the "worst person on the internet" and find
| that they are nothing at all.
|
| we call if "AFK" and not "IRL"
| FeistySkink wrote:
| How do you avoid being doxxed based on your writing style?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Wow. Interesting question.
|
| I don't have a second account so I checked stylometry and it
| gave me bunch of names that I know are not me. Maybe I will
| try with a new second account and confirm.
|
| Second, stylometry can dox me how? My current handle is not
| attached to anywhere else on internet and even if someone did
| HN/reddit/twitter stylometry analysis, how will that reach my
| home and or identity of my passport? Its not like I post
| anything online in my own name. Haven't in actual years.
|
| So assuming an adversary was trying to find me and did see my
| reddit or active twitter account, so... What? Short of
| breaking into it and checking the 2fa number (which I avoid
| at all costs) how ? Maybe amazon but I don't write reviews so
| ..... How would you go about this?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << stylometry can dox me how?
|
| By themselves, none of the things we discuss are inherently
| bad. They are just tools. I open with this, because it is
| important to understand that stylometry by itself uncovers
| only a small facet of your online persona, by possibly
| identifying your footprint and allowing for ingestion and
| analysis for OTHER identifying information.
|
| Using your example your passport may not be online, but
| lets say you link self-hosted project, your website may be
| registered to your company and, depending on how you set it
| up, your information may be relatively trivial to run
| against information broker database ( LX, TR ).
|
| It is surprisingly easy to slip even if you are privacy
| conscious of it and it really only takes one time since
| internet does remember ( and it is saved somewhere ). I
| guess what I am saying is I would not dismiss it outright,
| but at the very least I would check the link parent added;
| it actually is kinda amazing.
| causi wrote:
| Someone could use my writing style to link my online
| identities together. How does that help them doxx me when
| there is nothing written under my real name?
| throwaway32433 wrote:
| https://stylometry.net/user?username=causi
|
| You don't need to give out your name and address to be
| doxxed, there's enough information from your comments
| across your accounts to reasonably identify you if someone
| wanted.
|
| MIT did a study on 'anonymised' data and found out it only
| took something like 2 data points to identify someone.
| dbspin wrote:
| Perhaps, but the site above doesn't seem particularly
| effective. I have an alt for reasons of convenience I use
| about equally regularly to my main. It's not even listed
| on the set of likely candidates. Meanwhile I've five
| spurious correlations above .6.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Stylometry does not identify any of my alternate
| accounts. I ain't skeered.
| costco wrote:
| It might have if I had used an algorithm that wasn't the
| easiest to implement on stylometry.net. Unless you are
| varying your writing style across accounts a more
| sophisticated algorithm could very likely figure out your
| alts given enough comments. Which is not to say that you
| should give up everything and stop posting on HN but just
| something to consider depending on who your adversaries
| are.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Yeah, my question too
| pixl97 wrote:
| See, here's the problem with the internet, you have to
| assume your data is out there forever. You may have
| fastidiously ensured that your personal information has
| been posted as of today, but it doesn't matter, one mistake
| tomorrow and the entire house of cards collapses.
|
| Lets say you borrow your dads computer to post and it's
| logged in under his name. You log into a site with an
| incognito browser and post a message in Chrome and then
| close it out.
|
| Well due to a bug in that version of Chrome the full path
| of user folder Chrome was in was added to the request logs
| on the server 'C:\users\ronald.t.devito\appdata\\....'.
| This gets put in the servers logs with your username. That
| server had bad security and the logs leaked to everyone on
| the internet. A hacker realizes that 'belli' is also use
| 'causi', and a few other profiles. They see that username
| is pretty unique to a 54 year old male from the west coast,
| but the writing style is of a much younger, likely male,
| person which points at Ronald's son Jonny.
|
| You are at risk of being disclosed/doxx on the internet
| because of security issues everywhere in the stack and its
| exceptionally difficult to cover all the bases.
| sverona wrote:
| That's at least two mistakes and a shocking number of
| inferences which are all but impossible without prior
| knowledge.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I have a terminal application that i wrote that rewrites all
| text that i plan to write to have a neutral tone. so i type
| the comment, put it into the terminal application, it
| rewrites the comment, and then i post that instead.
| jacooper wrote:
| Is it open source?
| askiiart wrote:
| How did you do that? GPT-3?
| boppo1 wrote:
| They made it up
| eu wrote:
| Do tell more, please.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Use different slang on different accounts. Don't bother with
| capitalisation on some. Use British English on some. Etc. The
| speaking style aligns with the username.
| jzellis wrote:
| The worst thing about these people isn't that they're shitty
| edgelords spouting nonsensical gobbledygook about NFTs like
| they've discovered fire. The worst thing about them is that
| they're uniformly boring in every conceivable way. Great, some
| submillennial has made his own version of ZooTV on a dying social
| network. That must be terribly exciting if you've never seen any
| media ever that came out before Gossip Girl. Yaaaaaawwwwwn.
| zmxz wrote:
| > they're uniformly boring in every conceivable way
|
| This is such concise and brutally accurate way to sum it up, I
| salute you for this brilliant description. I could not agree
| more, such a spot-on assertion!
| kwyjibo1230 wrote:
| Your comment sounds almost Seuss-like somehow. Partly that
| description and assertion is a slant rhyme, but it also feels
| like there's some kind of (un)intentional pentameter going on
| notpachet wrote:
| "I am the very model of a modern Major General!"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXf0o2d-W5w
| [deleted]
| pdntspa wrote:
| I'm just sick of seeing everyone have these obxious, stupid
| "extra" personalities. Nobody can be calm or cool, nobody ever
| wants to channel any kind of zen, everything has to have the
| energy of an episode Pee-Wee's Playhouse. It's like we never
| advanced past 3 years old.
| H8crilA wrote:
| FWIW it's a normal part of growing up (teenage angst). Looked
| different but not really when I was younger.
|
| The key question is "so what?", for example "so what they all
| have these fake personalities", which somehow takes years to
| understand.
| pdntspa wrote:
| It's not the fake personalities that's so bothersome, it's
| the energy level. I hated it then and I still hate it now.
| People need to chill the fuck out.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| As a Millennial who spends a decent chunk of time on the
| internet, but not on social media sites, your words are
| incomprehensible to me and I'm not sure why.
| clnq wrote:
| Summary:
|
| It's bad enough that some people have anxious, provocative,
| and attention seeking personality that comes out as fringe
| tech elitism. Yet it's even worse that this is nothing new.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I was very active in my local dial-up BBS scene in the mid-late
| 1990s, when I was a teenager. I even ran a dial-up BBS. Outside
| of school, I estimate that I probably spent more time online than
| socializing with my friends IRL. (In real life.)
|
| BUT: I have much more vivid memories, and better bonds, with my
| friends. This is partially because we spent a lot of time
| together in school, and because we actually bonded.
|
| Although I had online friends, and I took the time to meet some
| other BBS people IRL, I never developed any real bonds with them.
| One of my very active BBS users attended the same college as me.
| We met a few times, but never rekindled our online bond.
|
| This made me realize that my online bonds are more like a hobby
| than a real lifelong friendship; much like at-work friendships
| that fizzle out after a job change.
|
| Needless to say, a few years ago I generally dropped out of
| Facebook; the hobby (Facebook) was getting in the way of my
| relationships. The people I care about either don't post on
| Facebook, or Facebook seems to make me angry at them.
| Lammy wrote:
| > As Miya's infamy grew, the proliferation of helpers--as well as
| copycat accounts
|
| That's funny considering BPD_GOD already sounds like bootleg
| CHOBITCOIN. There is nothing new under the sun (and here's why
| that's a GOOD thing!!)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It is rather reassuring to laugh at a devil for being a
| knockoff imp rather than the great dragon. OLD!!!!!!
| PixelForg wrote:
| This article has been eye opening for me, I too spent a lot of my
| time on the internet but thankfully never came across the deep
| end. Made me realize that there's no point in keeping up with
| memes and stuff and made me think about what actually matters
| pixl97 wrote:
| Eh, this article really touches on nothing new and if I
| bothered I could find many others like in in the past X00 years
| based on people that dive head first into things and make it
| their lives. "I don't want to be 'religious fanatic group'
| person" , "I don't want to be 'music trend people", ad
| infinitum. It turns out that people that tend to focus on one
| subsection of culture are not well rounded and generally boring
| superficial people. Nothing about this has to do with the
| 'internet', it's just that HN is eating it up because the word
| internet is in it and many of us have a strange magical
| reverence to it.
| [deleted]
| buildsjets wrote:
| "All my friends are online. Will people forget about me if I am
| not on the internet?"
|
| Yes. But they really weren't your friends to begin with, so it
| doesn't matter.
| jacooper wrote:
| I see this a lot, but is it actually true?
|
| Friendships are built on a shared interest / shared activities,
| and frequent contact.
|
| When you stop using the communication medium your friends use,
| then you just added friction to reach you, which stops frequent
| contact.
|
| you slowly go from a friend to an old friend or a distant old
| friend.
|
| There is a reason that when you move, its a lot harder to keep
| up with your old neighbors.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| There's a difference between a real friend and someone you
| have some affinity with and currently happen to share a
| community of some sort. It's fairly common to meet a friend
| while attending a particular elementary school, going to a
| church, playing a sport, but when you finish school, stop
| going to that church, stop playing the sport, you remain
| friends. It's obviously common to lose touch with a bunch of
| people and never talk to them again, either. Those were not
| your true friends.
|
| Which raises an interesting question. Is it possible at all
| to have a relationship that purely takes place on a web
| platform that will continue after you leave the platform?
|
| "The" communication medium your friends use seemingly
| shouldn't matter. A person you only interact with when there
| is no friction involved isn't much of a friend.
| clnq wrote:
| Jack Shafer in their book "The Like Switch" says that there
| are 4 elements in building a friendship: proximity,
| intensity, frequency and duration of interaction.
|
| Similarly to work and school friends who are very proximal
| and spend a bit of time with us, online friends tend to be
| very distant physically but the interactions we have with
| them can be intense (like gaming) and frequent. So these
| pseudo-friendships can have some elements of a strong
| (substitute for the word "real") friendships, but don't
| have all of them.
| izzydata wrote:
| I think it is more implying that friends that you have
| exclusively online are more of psuedo-friends than real
| friends. Especially if they make no effort to continue
| communication after you stop using whatever form of social
| media you were using before.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I don't really have friends anymore. The random strangers on HN
| and other boards are the closest thing I have to friends now. I
| have a handful of on-off DMs with strangers on instagram.
|
| I'm not an 'internet person', but the social selection near me
| just doesn't gel with who I grew up to be.
| Interests/hobbies/politics etc. Hopefully I can get money
| together to move soon and find people with whom I fit.
| [deleted]
| clnq wrote:
| What qualifies as "a friend" to you?
|
| I find it's much easier to make friends online. But we seem to
| have different definitions for friendship.
| vaidhy wrote:
| So, who are "real" friends? Only people who you interact in
| face to face? Does the same thing also extend to family? If I
| move countries and can only meet my extended family over the
| web, they become "not my real" family?
| slothtrop wrote:
| This weirdly ignores that no one wants or expects to interact
| with their family solely virtually indefinitely owing to
| distance, and that long-distance friendships made also
| entailed having met face-to-face before keeping in touch.
|
| A friend online can still be friendship, but more limited in
| what it can offer. There's no replacement for being with
| people, it's a fundamental human need. I've been in close-
| knit online communities in the past and never once did it
| fulfill social needs. At best it was entertaining.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| The irony here is that bloggers _were_ a big part of internet
| counterculture not so long ago, and now we 've got these long
| screeds written on blogs that exude a sort of boomer-ish "back in
| _my_ day (6 years ago)... ".
|
| The take would be a lot more interesting if the targets weren't
| so utterly, predicably, boringly safe to criticize either. I
| guess dissecting a counterculture that isn't predominantly young
| white men into NFT's would take a bit more courage. though.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| "I Don't Want to Be an Internet Person"
|
| "Ginevra Davis studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford and now works
| in art and design. She writes about technology and youth
| culture."
|
| One step would be to stop using your state-issued name on the
| internet. "Cr4zyBoy4eva" is a bit better than the
| Facebook/LinkedIn-mandated "real name", but rather childish,
| hence why an arbitrary UUID string might be a better fit. "There
| are no girls on the internet" and "on the internet men are men,
| women are also men, and children are FBI agents" point to a
| deeper truth, which will only be amplified by the post-Turing
| test chatbots, beyond ChatGPT: the internet is not for humans,
| there are no humans on the internet, don't be a human on the
| internet.
| strangattractor wrote:
| The state forced Elon Musk to name his kid X AE A-12 Musk just
| to embarrass him. Poor kid is going to have a hell of time
| getting a drivers license:)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _stop using your state-given name on the internet._
|
| I'm what country does the state decide what your name is?
|
| I thought that was always the province of someone's parents.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| And how did your parents became Mr. and Mrs. Smith? In all
| the countries the "family" name for the hoi polloi was
| mandated once the state consolidated. Before, your father's
| grand^x-father, who was a blacksmith, was simply known, for
| the Dunbar's number of people who knew him, as 'John, the
| blacksmith', maybe 'John, Mary's son' if there were two Johns
| around. Look at how most of the Scandinavian "family" names
| end in "sen" or "datter" meaning, well, son and daughter.
| tsukikage wrote:
| This may come as a surprise, but in most western countries,
| to a first approximation, people can change the name they
| use when interacting with the state to whatever they want,
| whenever they want. The process does involve a small bit of
| tedium, but really isn't particularly onerous or expensive.
|
| I've had multiple names over the course of my life (and
| notes linking them together in various documents should I
| ever need to prove to someone that the person with name A
| is the same as the person with name B; to date, I never
| have). It's pretty common.
|
| Moreover, people can use whatever name they want in
| whatever places they want on the internet, and don't have
| to be obvious about it when it's not the same name they use
| in other places online or offline. If I tell someone my
| name is John Smith, 99.9% of the time all they need that
| information for is to know that I am the same person they
| interacted with previously; they don't need to know or care
| what my bank or my family call me, nor is there any reason
| for me to tell them.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| There's an amusing anecdote that does the rounds about
| Napoleon mandating a national register in the Netherlands,
| and the Dutch not taking kindly to that by registering
| using all kinds of silly names. Unfortunately for them the
| register stuck and centuries later there's people going
| through life being called "John Big Buttocks" and such.
|
| Amusing but alas, from when I looked into it it seemed like
| it was made up.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Not amusing, but true, is the story of Willem Arondeus
| [1], who in 1943 destroyed 800,000 identity cards from
| the Municipal Office for Population Registration in Nazi-
| occupied Netherlands in order to increase the efficiency
| of forged documents. The state power, murderous or not,
| is the sole beneficiary of the "family" name.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Arondeus
| shanebellone wrote:
| It's a phrase describing the name found on your state
| identification.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| While you're technically correct that the state does not pick
| the specific name you are given, in many cases they restrict
| which names you can register. Germany has restrictions on
| both given names and surnames. State-given name is a misnomer
| for the concept though, they should have said state-
| registered name.
|
| https://www.germany.info/us-
| en/service/04-FamilyMatters/name...
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Yes, corrected to "state-issued".
| hardnose wrote:
| I don't want to be a Stanford art major who describes people they
| meet in passive-aggressive terms like, "clear skin and dead,
| vacant eyes".
| thundergolfer wrote:
| That comment is not passive-aggression, the second part of the
| description is an overt denigration.
| glasss wrote:
| That was my biggest takeaway. I didn't realize I was reading a
| hit piece, but maybe that's my fault.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this generalizes to everything. People who
| cultivate a persona in any sub-culture or domain seem to be a
| fish out of water when confronted in a different context. Take
| someone from the rave scene and plop them down in a microbrewery
| bar and everyone will gawk at the brightly colored fidgety person
| that has no idea what to order. Take a polished SV entrepreneur
| and deposit them in an Idaho roadhouse and observe as they
| struggle to communicate with patrons that don't speak pitch-deck.
| Extremely online people generally don't practice the skills
| necessary to communicate well in person like eye contact,
| conversation, or manners so you'll get predictable results when
| gathering them in meat-space.
|
| I'm pretty sure a bit of googling will turn up a long history of
| articles of this nature dating all the way back to the BBS days.
| Having attended BBS meetups I know that the vibe of these
| gatherings hasn't changed.
| drummojg wrote:
| I agree, it's an old notion, and reads somewhat Gibson-ish. I
| am enjoying the article. In a way the narrative matters less to
| me than the fact that it _feels_ like the old days, and I 'm
| glad this kind of zeitgeist is still clacking around the tubes.
| ipaddr wrote:
| BBS meetups weren't really like that. You had young/old
| mismatched people who could communicate because life wasn't
| online back then.
| toast0 wrote:
| BBS meetups are filled with BBS people who may seem
| mismatched to outsiders, but their community is the BBS, and
| for some, their life is online _on the BBS_
| bradneuberg wrote:
| I remember being a young 14 year old going to BBS meetups
| full of big bearded Unix and radio wizards, was definitely
| awkward AF.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I remember the family type bbses with different people of
| all ages male/female but I also remember my hacker group
| meetup where 4 of us shared a 6 pack. Each bbs was it's own
| scene
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Our BBS meetups ("bashes" in our lingo) were a wide range
| of outside the mainstream people.
|
| Teenagers with nerdish interests (me and my crowd), hippie
| physicists from the local university, BDSM people, swingers
| (a lot of swingers, probably party people by nature), a few
| Hitler-was-right Nazis here and there, some pagan types,
| conspiracy theorists, gay & lesbian folks, and on and on.
| There was a some overlap in the crowds, and at the bashes
| everyone mixed and matched just fine. Fun was had by all.
|
| I later dated someone from those bashes for a few years,
| and a couple of people from back then are good friends to
| this day. Still in touch with a few more, all of whom are
| doing interesting things.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| I'm an internet person who would do well in all scenarios you
| mentioned, but those are likely exceptions to the rule.
|
| I can imagine places I would stand out - but it's within other
| niche subcultures like a Biker Bar or homeless encampment.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah, this is the kind of article that should be written by an
| open-minded anthropologist, not a Stanford grad intent on being
| opinionated. Unfortunately, every time a "hit piece" like this
| gets published, it makes the Internet just a little bit less
| weird and amenable to interesting subcultures.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| It is a magazine and not a journal of anthropology.
| maxbond wrote:
| I don't think they were necessarily being literal, I think
| they meant more, "with the mindset of an anthropologist".
| You don't have to be an anthropologist or write for a
| journal to approach a situation with an open mind and the
| goal of understanding without passing judgement. But if
| you're looking to understand what makes a culture tick,
| they're probably the people to look to for techniques and
| inspiration.
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| tbh it seems like the author herself is the one that's the fish
| out of water. I doubt the people in question are remotely as
| interesting, avant-garde or important online as the gushing
| intro suggests, but the rest of it seems to mostly be a story
| of how a clique were nonplussed by the complete stranger (a
| female one too!) turning up to their party asking lots of
| questions about online stuff. Sounds like half the people
| attending _weren 't_ "very online" (the attendees that don't
| know what the NFT is but are here because a friend invited
| them, and the scantily-clad girls that aren't normally seen at
| such events but seem very much to the tastes of the people
| organizing this one) and the ones that _do_ know about the NFT
| apparently weren 't interested in talking to strangers who
| aren't buying...
|
| I'm also not sure the world of multiple anime-girl edgelord
| personas with NFTs necessarily generalises that well to the
| "very online". She could probably have had a quite different
| experience at a party of gushingly earnest activists or the
| sort of nerds who _stop_ being shy and awkward when someone
| asks them about their favourite MMORPG or open source project.
| emptyfile wrote:
| I'm sorry, are you making some sort of offensive joke or do you
| really think the world works in such stereotypes and
| prejudices?
|
| Rave people are "brightly colored and fidgety" ?? A polished
| entrepreneur is incapable of ordering in a low class bar?
|
| Jesus F Christ.
| reneherse wrote:
| I think you need to get in more. These types of characters
| certainly exist, and incongruous juxtapositions are often
| entertaining and sometimes enlightening.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| people are also prismatic in identity and adaptation.
| though, playing against type is also commonly performative.
| you're both suggesting a kind of simplistic human form
| waboremo wrote:
| You're right, instead of using hyperbole to emphasize
| their point they should have just highlighted how every
| human being is complex and nuanced instead. Surely that
| would have done it.
| uoaei wrote:
| The point as it stands is inappropriate and ultimately
| wrong. Or are you saying rationalization of poorly-
| thought-out lines of argument trumps respecting people in
| all their complexity?
| reneherse wrote:
| Nothing I've said precludes the possibility of a
| prismatic and adaptive identity, nor surprising your
| audience.
|
| Nor did I say having a deep, single or inflexible
| identity or persona is necessarily a bad thing.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site
| guidelines. If it were just one comment, I'd post a warning
| instead, but you've been doing it a lot, and it seems to have
| been a problem for years:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20753535 (Aug 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20330020 (July 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18621993 (Dec 2018)
|
| That's not cool.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| mway wrote:
| You're missing the point; the hyperbole is used to illustrate
| how "person of Domain A" and "person of Domain B" may not
| have even basic levels of overlap within a given domain.
| uoaei wrote:
| No, that point is clear, it's just callous and
| disrespectful.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| I'm intentionally using extreme examples of people who are
| highly committed to the scene they have embedded themselves
| in just like TFA interviewed the most extreme members of
| "internet people" they could find. Take a minute to think
| before immediately reacting with your anti-bias bias.
| projectazorian wrote:
| Most ravers I know are perfectly capable of ordering a
| beer. If they're getting stared at in that scenario it's
| purely due to their appearance and mannerisms, not their
| inability to interact socially.
|
| Raves are social events by definition. So someone who goes
| to them is likely to have at least some capacity for in-
| person interaction.
|
| (Beer is often sold at raves btw - although many really
| serious raver types won't touch alcohol at a rave.)
| smbullet wrote:
| I enjoy how you jump to the defense of ravers and
| entrepreneurs and in the same sentence call a roadhouse
| located in Idaho "low class". There's something very poetic
| about this cognitive dissonance.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| It's funny how the most "holier than thou" people are
| usually the biggest hypocrites as well.
| bnralt wrote:
| > People who cultivate a persona in any sub-culture or domain
| seem to be a fish out of water when confronted in a different
| context.
|
| It's possible to generalize too much:
|
| 1. The size of the different context and the extent to which
| someone feels like a fish out of water matters. It's one thing
| to say that someone might feel a bit out of place if they were
| suddenly dropped into an unfamiliar festival in another
| country. It's another to say that many people in a particular
| subculture are almost incapable of having normal human
| interactions in any offline context.
|
| 2. Sub-cultures aren't all equal, and it's possible for certain
| subcultures to encourage behavior that most people would
| consider anti-social or unhealthy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| There are sub-cultures and there are insular sub-cultures
| that form someone's entire identity. These Internet people
| would be a fish out of water anywhere, whereas the Silicon
| Valley entrepreneur might just be able to blend in,
| socialize, and find some common ground in that Idaho
| roadhouse. You need to have at least some kind of personality
| and be capable of a little flexibility. The subjects of the
| article were neither.
|
| I'm fully a raging California leftie now, but whenever I go
| back East to my rural hick home town full of rifle ranges,
| defunct coal mines, and Trump flags, I can still pass as a
| local and somehow manage to not irritate everyone around me.
| You have to read the room and be adaptable. You have to set
| aside differences and find / focus on the commonalities. This
| is not dark wizardry, it's just part of being a N-dimensional
| human being. I didn't see N-dimensional humans in the
| article.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| >I didn't see N-dimensional humans in the article.
|
| I heavily suspect there's a reason for that: the author
| didn't write them that way.
| rhacker wrote:
| Head higher up North. There's still some right leaning
| stuff, which for some reason SF newspapers like to call
| Far-right extremism. But when you're actually here, it's
| probably exactly like your rural rifle-range town.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Then again, some of the leadership of those towns are so
| far gone that they take obviously nonsense Facebook
| posts, have their sheriff hold press conferences lying
| that they've verified the posts, and then expend a ton of
| time/money/energy looking for "antifa busses" while
| passing around far-right newsletters encouraging the
| police to prepare for attacks on officers by these same
| mythical antifa adherents. Also going so far as to
| express support for the Washington militia that
| terrorized the random family of campers who made the
| mistake of visiting their shitty little town.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/revealed-
| cal...
| [deleted]
| satokema wrote:
| It's fine whether or not you want to be "online" or "offline" -
| you just need to understand that the basic currency is different.
|
| If you think being an online person is some horrible thing or a
| marker of being a bad person, you just value different things.
| The kinds of people in TFA are selected for by merit of not
| living up to your offline standards in one way or another.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Internet culture used to be something you engaged with in
| private. You have your public self, your real self, and then the
| part of your brain that scrolls mindlessly at the end of the day.
|
| Funny, for me the internet was always where I'd let down the
| barriers and drop the facade, the place where you could actually
| find the "real me". Then again I don't think I'm the type of
| person described by "scrolls mindlessly"...
| efishnc wrote:
| I actually find that I'm more awkward online/in chats than IRL.
|
| The fact that you have longer to think about your messages and
| modify them before publishing, that you have to think carefully
| so as not to multi-text (which seems desperate), that you don't
| have access to non-verbal cues for context, can't smile etc. all
| contribute to this.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > I don't want to be anything like these people. I don't want to
| be an internet person.
|
| I love this. I got a similar vibe from people who were "too good
| at IRC," way back in the day. They had a constant, sarcastic,
| tired energy about them. They had difficulty being genuine about
| anything. They knew so much and yet they were so stuck in their
| life somehow. And that sucked the life out of them.
|
| It's like they were too tied to this vague idea of being online
| that they weren't willing to sacrifice it to have a better life.
|
| The Internet is a tool, not an endpoint.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >The Internet is a tool, not an endpoint.
|
| Not to be pedant about such things, but there may be a reason
| it's a common scifi trope that people are hooked to machines
| and live in virtual worlds. It is not out of question that the
| internet eventually becomes an endpoint in itself.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| That's not pedantic at all. I've consciously decided I will
| favor Real Life over the Internet as much as possible. I
| really believe the meme that Nothing Happens On The Internet;
| it's a projection of the Real World and as people we are very
| susceptible to confusing the map for the territory.
|
| From the article:
|
| > You can close the computer, but the world will go on
| without you.
|
| Even if culture decides that the Internet is tantamount to
| real life, I'm happy to keep the Internet at arm's length. It
| is profoundly weird to me that the private online life I led
| in the 90s was something shameful and to be hidden and now
| it's okay to be so addicted you become awkward in real life,
| constantly on your phone, and that I should give a fuck about
| my follower count.
|
| Besides, accepting that the world will go on without you is
| part of adulthood.
| gowld wrote:
| https://www.quotesoup.com/quotes/movie_tv/tpb_afk_the_pirat
| e...
|
| One of the lawyers: How did you meet Fredrik and Gottfrid?
|
| Peter Sunde: I don't remember, but I assume it was in a
| chat room on the internet.
|
| One of the lawyers: When was the first time you met IRL?
|
| Peter Sunde: We don't use the expression IRL. We say AFK.
| But that's another issue. But, I don't remember that
| either.
|
| Tomas Norstrom - District Court Judge: Got to know each
| other IRL? What is that?
|
| One of the lawyers: In Real Life.
|
| Peter Sunde: We don't like that expression. We say AFK -
| Away From Keyboard. We think that the internet is for real.
| vsareto wrote:
| There's some real value in social circles around games.
| Even if accomplishing things in game might be seen as a
| nothing, those social ties can be real.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yes. Because the game is the medium for connection, and
| overcoming challenges in a group of people who want to do
| that is pretty magical. GitHub is similar in the sense
| that people have a shared, common goal. I love stuff like
| that.
|
| Most traditional social media doesn't work as well for
| me. I need an underlying common goal.
| waboremo wrote:
| The bigger impact here when it comes to internet/real life
| schism is the fact that employers will utilize any digital
| footprint to make judgments about you, and subsequently
| fire you or refuse to hire you because of it. At the same
| time, having a follower count beyond a certain threshold
| also gives you access to a lot of real life resources. Both
| of these have tremendous impact on people in many ways, as
| an example one of the careers kids have most wanted to
| become in several decades now has been internet-focused
| (youtubers, tiktokers, influencers, etc).
|
| That's the issue with the qualifier "as much as possible".
| That will always be sliding towards increasing levels of
| digitalization that the qualifier becomes meaningless.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It certainly has an influence on one's life, but I refuse
| to make it the center point. I also refuse to be anxious
| about the fire/no-hire potential it can pose.
|
| It is a useful medium for sharing things and I'm always
| open to contributing more good content online. But being
| Extremely Online? No thank you.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Why not reverse it, I push a button on the computer and
| something falls out of the sky IRL. Your smart electric
| meter turns off. The water company shuts off your service.
| The internet is real life as much as you cannot tow a
| leaking oil tanker 'out of the environment'.
|
| People don't need the internet to be narcissistic, they've
| done that fine for thousands of years without it.
| rhacker wrote:
| no, when you meet many grounded people they're helpful,
| want to help fix your tire, see if you're ok. Things have
| changed towards narcissism and unless you're older than
| 35 you probably can't see that.
|
| pressing a button to have something fall into reality is
| another thing that creates narcissism. You don't see any
| of the people involved in getting that thing to you. You
| can start seeing the world as your personal slave at your
| bidding. Now for centuries, yes, there have been rich
| people that can do that. If we make that accessible to a
| LOT more people - everyone has a butler that they don't
| need to even talk to.
|
| I don't know what I'm saying right now other than - the
| world is vastly different than it was pre-internet. It
| can't go back. Things are forever changed for the worst
| in some (most?) categories.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > everyone has a butler that they don't need to even talk
| to.
|
| Aristocracy in some parts of the world didn't talk _to_
| staff, they would just announce in the presence of the
| servant that something was needed and expect that it be
| provided.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners,
| contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders
| and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now
| tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no
| longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict
| their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
| at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their
| teachers." -- Socrates
|
| Cultures, people, and attitudes change. They've been
| changing for millenia and they'll continue to change.
| lqet wrote:
| > They had a constant, sarcastic, tired energy about them. They
| had difficulty being genuine about anything.
|
| I knew such a guy on IRC back in 2003. We all kind of looked up
| to him on the channel. He was quite eloquent and had (what
| seemed to us) an enormous knowledge of history and philosophy.
| His sarcasm bordered on sophisticated nihilism. He spoke to us
| like Colonel Kurtz from _Apocalypse Now_. His occupation was
| nebulous.
|
| Now, 20 years later, a former channel member and I (both in our
| mid-30ies now, with families and jobs) exchange a few nostalgic
| mails every 1-2 months in the typical lingo of our channel. We
| still make fun of this guy as the personification of nihilistic
| evil, a kind of mythical uber-mephisto of the internet. But in
| reality, we all realized _decades_ ago that he was just this
| strange, bitter, unemployed guy in his late 30ies or early
| 40ies (older than we are now), who spent his entire life in
| front of mIRC. His history knowledge and nihilism boiled down
| to repeated Nazi jokes, and his philosophy knowledge was based
| on a few Nietzsche texts he must have read. We were a bunch of
| pubertal school kids on some Quakenet channel, and he, more
| than twice our age, was a kind of tribal god to us. He clearly
| enjoyed it. It was pathetic.
|
| Some of the people described in this (excellent) article very
| strongly reminded me of him.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's pathetic. People try and get
| power/control/ a sense of meaning anywhere they can. This man
| probably didn't have a great life and found his only refuge
| and belonging to be in IRC. The alternative may have been to
| confront harsh reality and realize you're nobody to noone.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| >This man probably didn't have a great life and found his
| only refuge and belonging to be in IRC. The alternative may
| have been to confront harsh reality and realize you're
| nobody to noone.
|
| That sounds quite pathetic to me.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| "pathetic" means pitiable, from the greek "pathos"
|
| > This man probably didn't have a great life and found his
| only refuge and belonging to be in IRC. The alternative may
| have been to confront harsh reality and realize you're
| nobody to noone
|
| I think this fits the bill
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| > The alternative may have been to confront harsh reality
| and realize you're nobody to noone.
|
| God I wish more would.
| Loughla wrote:
| Why? I don't understand what you're getting at.
| clnq wrote:
| Most people are much too self-important. If you think at
| the global scale, each of our existence (except those in
| position of extraordinary decision-making power) is
| pretty unimportant/inconsequential outside of the realm
| of chaos theory.
|
| I think that understanding this is the first step of
| putting yourself in a position of power. Self-importance
| is very blinding.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's exactly like Reddit power mods, or that one guy that
| edits half of wikipedia or whatever the statistic is. It's
| pathetic to some people, sure, but if it isn't hurting
| anyone and the person chooses that life, not simply falls
| into it for lack of options, what's the harm?
|
| It's power in a place they are comfortable with. The issue
| is when that impacts actual human relationships, or is
| turned for purposes that are (for lack of a better way to
| quantify it) bad.
|
| Power mods using their influence to make sure the
| subreddits follow the individual sub rules, and ensuring
| that nothing nefarious slips into the general
| consciousness- it gives that person a sense of worth and
| meaning. Great!
|
| Power mods using their influence to sell products, market
| products surreptitiously, squash stories they don't
| personally agree with, or otherwise abuse said power - bad
| bad bad. Not Great!
| clnq wrote:
| > It's pathetic to some people, sure, but ... what's the
| harm?
|
| Hmm, pathetic doesn't mean harmful. It's closer by
| meaning to "feeble", which I agree with in the case of
| Reddit moderators. I don't think they are very
| influential at all.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I thought this sounded familiar, and sure enough[1].
|
| Edit: To make it explicit, which Palladium notably fails to do:
| this person is a reactionary and has a history of encouraging
| young girls to commit suicide.
|
| [1]: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=founder-of-milady-nft-
| proje...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Here's some anti-Palladium then :
|
| https://mcrumps.substack.com/
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| <deleted>
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| CharlotteFang literally admitted to being Miya on their own
| Twitter, the link is right in the page linked by GP.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| <deleted>
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| >Miya is an egregore. CharlotteFang was status-jacking
| here.
|
| Uh-huh. Fascinating. Do go on.
| alduin32 wrote:
| Are internal posts by CharlotteFang asking to "search &
| remove any occurrences do kaliacc" status-jacking as well
| ?
| sugersvoltet wrote:
| >While CharlotteFang may be termed something close to
| reactionary (if your IQ is low and you can only think of 3 or
| 4 political archetypes)
|
| I would put them more in the neo-Nazi / pseudo-Esoteric
| Hitlerist archetype (https://archive.ph/qlYqD):
|
| >How to save a nation in 5 steps:
|
| >First, you kill the Jews, who always seek to ruin and
| exploit other nations.
|
| >Then, you remove any peoples who are not native to the
| country in question*.
|
| >Then, you remove any vestigial influence left by the Jews,
| either by re-education, physical removal or otherwise. This
| includes everything under the cultural marxist platform:
| feminism, homosexuality, "sexual revolution," etc.
|
| >Then, you will work to re-coup and re-discover any heritage
| that may have been lost due to Jewish influence. You will
| work to carefully modernize your country based on the
| principles traditional to its native culture.
|
| >Now you may allow non-natives into the country but with
| limited rights on a temporary basis. Other peoples and
| countries will not be discriminated against, they will each
| be considered meritable under their own culture; but nothing
| will be done to draw their influence into the country's own
| identity.
|
| And before one argues this was edgy rusing and meming and
| LARPing and all that, CharlotteFang/Miya was an active, long-
| time moderator and owner of several 8chan /pol/ offshoot
| imageboard websites and boards, as well as a heavy poster on
| the original 8chan /pol/, all of which have connections to
| neo-Nazi mass shootings, including one attempted mass
| shooting of a synagogue (who Miya and friends affectionately
| refer to as "doorcuck" because he failed to breach the door
| of the synagogue and resigned himself to murdering some
| nearby civilians instead).
|
| Plus a perusal of their old Twitter makes it very obvious
| exactly where their sympathies lie. It's all Savitri Devi
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi) type stuff.
| [deleted]
| alduin32 wrote:
| This person admitted[1] to being the same person behind the
| Miya account. The posts made by that Miya account (they are
| public record, and has been archived since a long time by
| different accounts, see [2]) include :
|
| - calls for the extermination of Jews
|
| - calling homosexuality an "epidemic" and perversion
|
| - saying that "since we gave vote to *** we should give to
| gorillas too"
|
| - things like "a husband is to his wife what a parent is to
| their child"
|
| - asking counsel for "mind controlling an egirl slave harem"
|
| - boasting about bullying persons about their weight
|
| How is that "close to reactionary" ? This is extremely grave
| behavior. I have friends that have suffered a lot from this
| community, have witnessed their posts myself at the time they
| were made, and I cannot even begin to comprehend how could
| someone call that "close to reactionary if your IQ is low
| [...]" and end that with "DYOR". It hurts a lot to see that
| comment, and it makes me feel extremely uneasy to see these
| posts, especially one on "I don't want to be an Internet
| person" upvoted to the front page of HN. I don't know how to
| describe it, but there's something really nasty going on
| here.
|
| [1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/CharlotteFang77/status/152798
| 7970... [2]: https://github.com/0xngmi/milady
| thorncorona wrote:
| There was a (now deleted) tweet of a photo of a teen girl
| who they pushed into carving a swastika into her belly. He
| boasted about this as well.
|
| Another thread, describing how Yuga Cali pushed kids into
| committing suicide, as well as other NSFL activities.
|
| https://twitter.com/0xngmi/status/1528572556894142464
| ahoy wrote:
| Palladium is a Thiel-backed rightwing propaganda outlet that
| insists it's "non partisan". It's a shame to see t shared here
| batman-farts wrote:
| I did not know, but am not surprised, that Palladium takes
| Thiel funding. That greatly clarifies this article's purpose
| for me. It seemed odd to see another think piece about the
| NFT trend when it has already largely burned itself out, but
| Davis here is acting as something of a "party whip" for
| Thiel's nascent political movement. The message of the
| article is much more aimed at the people being described in
| the article than it is at you or I: be less like these
| insipid Twitter personalities, be more like JD Vance and
| Blake Masters.
| s5300 wrote:
| Sorry if I've misinterpreted something you've stated - but
| as somebody from the "area", I just wanted to mention JD
| Vance is an astroturfed loser in the most major way &
| absolutely nobody should aspire to be like him.
|
| Like, I'm pretty sure I'm from _the_ poorest district in
| the state /area.
|
| Vance is a fucking loser any of the even mildly intelligent
| around despise.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I disagree. I also think there is more value in debating the
| message rather than the outlet.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| There's nothing lost knowing more about a source of
| information. In most disciplines it's actually a necessary
| step in interpreting text.
| [deleted]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Thiel-backed
|
| I think that's in fact a reason why, and even the article
| itself is aware of this, these subcultures and the commentary
| on it seem so banal in real life. In reality it's more or
| less an economic grift to get funded by ideologically
| motivated venture capitalists, and everything centers around
| this. In Germany we call it "Hofberichterstattung". something
| like royal court reporting.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Exactly. It's also particularly concerning to see them
| increasingly adopt the esoteric, syncretic style of
| reactionary writing.
| ImaCake wrote:
| As someone who has recently discovered my neurodivergence, the
| first few paragraphs strike me as being very cruel towards
| people who are different. The internet, and niche social
| spaces, have given those who can't fit in a means to build
| community.
| AStellersSeaCow wrote:
| And yet, here you are.
| hacym wrote:
| Being online and making it your entire personality and reality
| are two very different things.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Like most online culture, it all feels so profound until you
| realize that he hasn't said anything at all._
|
| So pretty much like TFA... Which is basically a virtue signalling
| hit piece (the target even asks "if they're planning to write a
| hit piece").
|
| "The content of his work would repel, or simply confuse, a
| traditional viewer"
|
| ... and then the author points to a screenshot of a tweet (the
| "drop out of college, default on your student loans" etc (of
| which the most controversial part is about not getting the covid
| vaccine) that would seem totally quaint under lots of pretty tame
| contexts (from 60s counter-culture and 70s punk fanzines all the
| way to modern leftists), as if the average Joe is the standard
| after which anything becomes scary...
|
| > _To 99.9 percent of the population, Charlie is nobody_
|
| So just like the author?
| LastTrain wrote:
| So clearly all you did was get angry about a couple of lines in
| the article that were disparaging to Charlie. Did you not read
| the whole thing and understand the larger point? That Charlie
| is likely in the small group of people today who are setting
| the norms for tomorrow?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So clearly all you did was get angry about a couple of
| lines in the article that were disparaging to Charlie._
|
| Rather, I read the whole thing, and grasped its tone,
| intention, and structure.
|
| > _That Charlie is likely in the small group of people today
| who are setting the norms for tomorrow?_
|
| Charlie and his "influence" is insignificant to the "norms of
| tomorrow", and if you take away the jabs at "weirdos" like
| Charlie from the article, the only thing that remains is a
| tired old "online vs offline" diatribe, the kind of which has
| been written 200 times a day since 1997 or so.
| hacym wrote:
| You're weirdly trying to attack the author. Why is that?
| coldtea wrote:
| Because I don't like reading shallow hit jobs, and I think
| it's not just sloppy writing, but reflects to their authors
| too.
| hacym wrote:
| How is an opinion piece a shallow hit job? If you're
| reading this as some credible news... stop?
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| Picture this article being written a vi/vim user; about
| all of those "freaks who use emacs".
|
| At some point you realise the writer is doing the same
| kind of thing as the people described, their criticisms
| make a low effort to understand and declare the "other
| side" wrong, for reasons that are basically "I didnt like
| it".
|
| From other comments here, I've since learned there is
| plenty to criticise about the speech, actions, behaviour
| of this individual, which is trivial to discover.
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| The author did exactly what the subject of the critical
| opinion piece did, but did a worse job of it and was entirely
| unself critical.
| shanebellone wrote:
| Good morning, Charlie.
| rideontime wrote:
| Unlike Charlie, the author isn't pretending not to be a nobody.
| che_shirecat wrote:
| milady
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If HN will permit a bit of old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud I think
| the internet was better before we went and let so many _people_
| on it. It was small and poorly organized and weird and mostly
| authentic. The hyperactive and over-exaggerated always-on
| 'youtube personality' wasn't a thing and people talked about
| interesting things from time to time.
| boredumb wrote:
| The pattern here is not the internet but these people being
| severely autistic and so they are probably forced to thrive
| online where they aren't having to deal with eye contact or other
| social queues that they can't really process. Not even sure what
| this was meant to be, but it should probably be rewritten to "I
| don't want to be an autistic person" and it would have read the
| exact same way. Even down to the preferred drug use being a
| straight up dissociative...
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| boppo1 wrote:
| The only real way out is solitude.
| jacooper wrote:
| > lack of bothering to ask about pronouns
|
| Because no body actually cares, no body will use your made up
| pronouns.
|
| > use of the words "normal people" and infiltrating a group
| only to neg them to be more problematic than anything.
|
| Isn't it obvious that the people in this group are clearly
| not normal?, they even admit themselves!
| bitwize wrote:
| > Because no body actually cares, no body will use your
| made up pronouns.
|
| This is why some transgender and nonbinary people have
| stopped trying to reason with their friends and family
| about their gender identity, and have resorted to clicker-
| training them like dogs to use the appropriate pronouns and
| pay them basic human respect and dignity.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| See also: How to get tossed from family gatherings in
| three easy steps.
| jacooper wrote:
| An example of the "My way or the highway" strategy
| failing miserably.
| jacooper wrote:
| Yeah sure, made up or broken pronouns = human dignity.
|
| > have resorted to clicker-training them like dogs...
|
| I doubt thats going to help with the human dignity of
| your family either.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Refusing to play ridiculous pronoun games is not hurting
| your respect and dignity. It is not anybody else's
| problem or responsibility to participate in this.
| suslik wrote:
| There is a difference between the usage of 'xer' by an
| edgy teenager who identifies as something
| incomprehensible vs, for instance, using 'she/her' to
| refer to a biological male that made a conscious, adult
| decision to transition to female.
|
| If one decides to change their first name, they have
| every right for their friends and family to respect that.
| If I wanted to be called, for instance, Vladimir instead
| of Richard, it would be really bloody rich if my mom
| insisted on the name _she_ thinks fits me better. Same
| with sex/gender transition (I am not up to date on
| terminology here, but you know what I mean) - there is
| nothing more than showing basic respect for choices an
| individual does for themselves.
| jacooper wrote:
| > xer' by an edgy teenager who identifies as something
| incomprehensible vs, for instance, using 'she/her' to
| refer to a biological male that made a conscious, adult
| decision to transition to female.
|
| They are both the same.
|
| Also not transitioning, but pretending to be a women, and
| becoming a profit machine for medical companies in the
| process.
| tetrep wrote:
| How are peoples' names less made up than their pronouns? It
| seems just as rude to refuse to use someone's preferred
| name as you would their preferred pronouns.
| bloak wrote:
| I mostly agree with that: if someone is a participant or
| a potential participant in the conversation then we
| should refer to them in a way they find acceptable,
| provided their demands are reasonable and in good faith.
| On the other hand, if someone is speaking or writing
| about me in a language I don't understand then it's
| hardly my job to tell them what pronouns to use and I
| can't even reasonably tell them how to pronounce, and
| perhaps decline, my name. (Try looking up some
| internationally famous people in the Latvian or
| Lithuanian Wikipedias. Obviously I'm not famous enough to
| be in there, but if I were, would I have any right to be
| treated differently from Risi Suneks?)
|
| A journalist writing about someone they've interviewed
| ... as part of doing the best they can for the people
| they serve, the readers, perhaps in some cases it's
| reasonable for them to ignore the preferences of the
| interviewee?
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| My problem is the author deliberately states they didnt
| bother to ask, and does so in a way that is almost
| bragging about it.
|
| Through the article, this happens in various forms.
|
| If the point of the article is to criticise someone's
| behaviour for being an "internet cool person"; opening by
| your opinion piece by stating _you were too cool to
| bother to do something_ ; and later stating that _you as
| the writer are a normal person_ , and that _you feel sick
| after infilitrating a group_ , there is a level of
| hypocrisy there.
|
| I agree with you there are legitimate cases for ignoring
| someone's preferences to improve the quality of
| information imparted. However, the author doesnt state
| any apart from "didnt bother".
| rhino369 wrote:
| Customized personal pronouns are just another name. They
| lose all value if they are high customizable.
|
| I get why people don't want to misgendered. But making up
| a new pronoun comes across as aggressive attention
| seeking.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Outside of a small set of Twitter/Tumblr/TikTok bubbles
| (which overlap in userbase), pronouns are fixed:
| he/she/they (rarely they). Xe/Xir is not something
| average people will honor or use.
| fleddr wrote:
| Outside a college campus in California, nowhere else in the
| world do people ask for pronouns when they meet a person.
| It's not a normal human interaction.
| throwaway346434 wrote:
| People who use different pronouns are about 5% of
| americans:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2022/06/07/about-5-of-...
|
| Similar rates in other countries:
|
| https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_depar
| t...
|
| You might not do it when you meet someone. But think about
| the sheer number of web forms, systems or standards that
| are about to have to go down a rabbit hole of whether they
| are modeling biological sex (medical systems), terms of
| address (people focused systems), etc.
|
| Would you turn away 5% of your customer base because you
| didnt add a third option (ie: i prefer another term) when
| capturing someone's details?
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Unfortunately this is not longer true. This pronoun garbage
| is infiltrating real life now.
| jacooper wrote:
| Push back.
| hooverd wrote:
| I do find it funny when people go out of their way to use
| the wrong pronouns.
| jacooper wrote:
| And I find it funny that people get offended if I dont
| break language rules for them.
| clnq wrote:
| Not sure if it's autism or edgy angst.
| chippy wrote:
| I went down the rabbit hole after reading this, as I love sub
| cultures and yearn to see some new ones. Some learnings:
|
| Now there is a certain avant garde playing with the narrative
| thing going on, which is part of it, so the story that you can
| find out about the thing is changed at the time its going on and
| after its happened. The lore is recorded by people within the
| culture and they are in on it. Certain of the interactions with
| the author and the characters she met were on the whole staged,
| or intentional trolling of the author. "some young writer is
| coming so let's tease her".
|
| The trolling, anti-cancel culture, the pro-autism always-online
| which may have come from the chans is almost 100% opposite from
| the "white pilled", positive, almost over the top caring messages
| that the subculture is putting out. But it's not the same as the
| we are all going to make it greed-optimism of crypto.
|
| As we see in these fellow comments, most people who have
| encountered internet people have found them to be nihilistic,
| anti-social, maladjusted and negative. This sub culture is trying
| to be the opposite of it, but it exists along side a kind of
| schizoid-side - it's very odd.
|
| Compared to other NFT young people meet ups (the author
| previously wrote a popular article about the Bored Yacht Club
| parties) - this subculture appears to have more women.
|
| Compared to other NFT projects, this art project does not
| prioritize holding or purchasing an actual NFT image, and seems
| to value a kind of plagiarism, "just download the png" or anti
| ownership in a way. It reminds of of plunderphonics/vaporwave
| from last decade.
|
| The traditional and social politics of the founders seem at odds
| with a rave and taking drugs. puzzling to me! Someone here says
| that the drug - Ketamine is apparently chosen as reduced social
| anxiety?
| syntheweave wrote:
| I found XOXO conference to be much the same way. The attendees
| were capable of some basic social grace, but having manifested
| from the context of "internet people," they lacked substance in
| person.
|
| It's not hard to not be an internet person. You just have to
| decide to actually study something, anything, and to a deep
| level. Once you do that the grounding manifests itself and then
| you have more important priorities that preclude drifting around
| like that.
| neilk wrote:
| I suspect this is an attempt to troll us all into fighting, by
| bringing up a beloved conference that some might classify as
| "woke".
|
| But anyway, there's something to what you say but I think that
| analogy doesn't go very far.
|
| Every year the hosts have, in their intro keynote, urged
| attendees to be more outgoing than normal. So yeah there are
| lots of introverts.
|
| But the promise is that being more outgoing will pay off -
| because XOXO is curated to be entirely nice nerds. And it's
| very anti-grifting. The scene the OP portrayed of e-girls and
| NFT guys seems like a polar opposite of their vibe. It's more
| literature nerds showing off their board game about Pride &
| Prejudice, or an indie game about a mischievous goose. The
| whole point of XOXO, I think, was to find people who were doing
| internet stuff for the love of it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Back in the day, I went and attended a "Fark Party". Remember
| Fark? Well, they actually had meatspace events, and they were
| as pasty and awkward as you could possibly imagine! Mostly a
| bunch of 20-year-olds who were much less interesting than they
| thought they were. Fortunately, the one I went to was in Vegas,
| so it was easy to ditch the edgelords and go have fun.
|
| A few people mentioned the article's subject matter being
| Gibsonish, but if I recall (haven't read him in a while),
| Gibson's cyber-characters were not just online-cool, but were
| generally backed by richly complex humans. The influencers and
| Twitterati the author describes have barely any human
| personality behind them--they're all boring, vacuous,
| superficial.
|
| "You're really not that interesting."[1]
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZTksDoH6w
| trentnix wrote:
| It's Vampire: The Masquerade for the modern rebel.
| toyg wrote:
| Being socially-challenged enough that you can only work hidden
| behind a screen hardly makes you a "rebel".
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think another one of the themes of that setting was that
| the Sabbat or the Anarchs were themselves LARPing as rebels
| against the Camarilla while creating their own petty kingdoms
| to control. A rebel today is a warlord tomorrow. Perhaps the
| same could be said of keyboard warriors.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'm not sure if the sociological experiment that the author
| conducted was really immersive enough to produce a good take on
| the subculture. It's fairly obvious this was intended along the
| lines of Hunter S. Thompson's "Hell's Angels" - which may have
| spawned an entire genre of sub-culture literature (I don't know
| if Thompson really originated it or not, there may be earlier
| examples, perhaps Zora Neale Hurston). The theme is pretty
| consistent: a writer inserts self into subculture, gets the full
| experience, writes magazine articles/books that others can gawk
| at.
|
| Maybe this particular subculture is just fairly boring and
| shallow, mostly fabricated by moneyed interests (NFTs...) and
| there's just not much to say about it? Kind of sad, has the USA
| turned into a cultural wasteland?
| greenhearth wrote:
| Raymond Williams has theorized the nature of subcultures
| (residual and emergent), which are almost always incorporated
| into the mainstream in one form or another. I'm afraid that
| because this culture is so incredibly toxic that the effects of
| this incorporation will be like a collective poisoning. This
| can already be seen in the resulting superstructure (art,
| politics, finance) and mainstream social relations, all of
| which are deteriorated and confused more than ever it seems.
|
| In any case, I noticed the Thompson similarities as well. This
| kind of reportage flicks the light switch in a dark room, in
| which then the cockroaches run for the corners.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Yeah, I can't really blame the author for not wanting to go
| any further down that particular rabbit hole. From what I've
| read, it also sounds unpleasantly similar to conditions in
| the FTX/Alameda warren.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This seems quite silly. Adolescent nihilism and alienation,
| scatter-shot irrationality, and calculated transgressions for
| attention are ancient. As is cynical opportunism. They've been
| part of (mostly) youth movements for centuries.
|
| The only thing changed by the Internet is accessibility.
| Previously people tended to know each other personally. Now they
| can mix it up online. This makes their presence a little more
| obvious and a little harder to ignore.
|
| But there must be hundreds of these micro-scenes with their nano-
| gurus and micro-leaders, and most people will still never come
| across them.
|
| They only become dangerous when they grow - or are grown - to the
| point where the groups stop being small and insignificant, and
| where the messaging is carefully and deliberately tailored to
| trigger irrationality and self-harm in mass audiences.
|
| That's not a good thing. But it's no worse - and often less
| effective and less toxic - than some of the nonsense pumped out
| by supposedly respectable mainstream media.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Is this journalism?
| helios_invictus wrote:
| Does it matter?
| LastTrain wrote:
| Why do you ask?
| flyingfences wrote:
| yes
| greenhearth wrote:
| Yes, it's gonzo, in tradition of Hunter S. Thompson
| pksebben wrote:
| editorial. it's not making any bones about being an opinion
| piece
| hacym wrote:
| It's an editorial piece, closer to opinion than news.
| buildsjets wrote:
| There is no requirement for HN submissions to be journalistic,
| so I don't know why you were expecting that.
|
| What to Submit
|
| On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
| That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
| double_ee wrote:
| BWStearns wrote:
| I like the piece. The tone kinda gives me the same vibes as Neil
| Strauss' The Game (vibe heavy anthropology trip into the
| distasteful, or at least unnerving, subculture).
|
| The part at the very end about the internet people winning is the
| part that freaks me out (and drives my own middlingly unhealthy
| doom-scrolling). Just the other day I saw Curtis Yarvin is now
| some minor Rasputin figure for Peter Thiel, and I couldn't help
| but think "that lunatic monarchist edgelord from years ago is now
| influencing where real real political money gets spent?" I don't
| want to be an internet person, or even pay as much attention as I
| do, but it feels kind of like even if you don't believe in the
| internet, it believes in you and it'll eventually show up
| anyways.
| mkeeter wrote:
| Ironically, Palladium magazine (which published this article)
| itself is backed by Peter Thiel, and is... not unsympathetic to
| that worldview.
|
| For example, "Science Needs Sovereigns":
| https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/10/03/science-needs-sovere...
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| It reads a lot like Neal Stephenson to me, both the tone and
| the topic.
|
| Anyway, if you like that sort of dives into a weird subculture
| let me recommend Sam Fussell's Muscle. Here's an interview with
| the author that got me to read the book:
| http://www.drmichaeljoyner.com/sam-fussell-an-interview-with...
| BWStearns wrote:
| I didn't consider that because it's nonfiction but I can see
| that now. Thanks for the recommendation!
| nootropicat wrote:
| Online reality is as much real as the physical one, and as
| technology for io to the human body advances it's going to
| increasingly dominate.
|
| She feels noticeably superior to people that prefer the online
| reality for unclear reasons.
| jacooper wrote:
| > You hear it all the time--"the internet is horrible, but." But
| I can learn so much. I need it for work. All my friends are
| online
|
| But these are not the Internet's problem, rather edge
| forums/social media problems, however I recognize that for many
| people, the internet is just social media at this point.
|
| A true internet person should be one who uses it frequently, that
| would probably be a software developer, yet most of the time they
| aren't as crazy as these people.
|
| > He slouched in his chair and told me, unprompted, that he
| doesn't have many friends
|
| Wow.
|
| These people are just mentally ill at this point, its impressive
| that they were able to attract girls to this shitshow.
|
| Also how do they make money? Do they all just sell NFTs ?
|
| > I don't want to be anything like these people. I don't want to
| be an internet person.
|
| Amen.
| sugersvoltet wrote:
| >Also how do they make money? Do they all just sell NFTs ?
|
| Correct, they sell NFTs of mass-generated cartoon art.
| joemazerino wrote:
| I appreciate this article. First, it is well written. Second, it
| is well-versed.
|
| I know many, many people who have fallen into this trap of being
| an Internet "coolguy" and are absolute boring, anxious and
| insecure nerds in meatspace. Ironically they often yearn to
| connect their irl popularity with their internet personality.
| It's as if they realize the Internet moves fast with or without
| them.
| warinukraine wrote:
| Off-topic. Does it bother anyone else this style of writing which
| starts by describing the physical traits of the characters? At
| this stage I just skip when an article starts like that.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Behind "Creepy is the new cool" lies ambivalence [1]. Author
| Ginevra Davis writes a voluminous 4300 words that revel in,
| celebrate and exalt a culture which, in her parting sentence, she
| reveals to be the sum of all her fears.
|
| [1]
| https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/4415/current-...
| amatecha wrote:
| Flagged the post as I don't think a person engaging in the
| behaviour discussed in this[0] thread needs a greater audience or
| needs to be paid any attention whatsoever.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33893781
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I grew up a geek in a rural area, learning how to filter
| conversations for your audience was a critical skill.
|
| Topics and conversational style amongst my D&D group was very
| different than amongst my other high school classmates and very
| different than when at my summer jobs.
|
| This is just an article about people who never learned that
| skill.
|
| I'm reminded of a few moments in my life that drove this home ...
|
| A coworker (60 year old railway worker) who said "You shouldn't
| use ten dollar words in a twenty-five cent conversation."
|
| A girlfriend who described the difference as "Weird is when you
| know you're weird and compensate when needed, strange is when you
| don't know you're strange."
| Loughla wrote:
| I grew up very geek in a VERY rural area. I knew that there
| were places that I could be me, where I could be "country" me,
| and where I could be me "for adults". I learned that the me
| what I was, was also super unacceptable once I entered the
| world of higher education. I had to be "smart" me.
|
| Then in my undergraduate degree, I learned about code switching
| in the context of Mexican-American children of immigrants. And
| it hit hard.
|
| I was code-switching, but within dialects inside of one
| language instead of within languages. I also learned in that
| class that EVERY student who grew up rural, poor, minority, or
| anything other than middle- to upper-middle class white had
| extremely similar experiences. It was absolutely shocking to 20
| year old me.
|
| To your point - this article absolutely reads like people who
| just never learned how to navigate different groups.
| clnq wrote:
| Code switching is completely natural to me, I would not know
| how to express myself with just one language to some people.
| What did you learn about it that impacted you the most?
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly, just that it existed and was a common feature of
| some peoples' lives.
|
| I grew up feeling very outcast. I grew up in a town of less
| than 50, in a super poor, rural part of the US. My
| interests were outdoors related, but not guns and god like
| everyone around me. I was more interested in learning about
| natural systems and the interplay of wild plants and
| animals and humans in the world. I never 'fit in' anywhere.
| None of the school clubs, none of the classes, everywhere I
| went I felt that I had to 'be someone else'.
|
| Then I went to college and learned that, for many people,
| they literally get to do that every day, and that there was
| a name for it! It felt validating that someone else in the
| world experienced what I experienced (even if it was whole-
| language based instead of just dialect/cultural norm
| based).
| clnq wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for sharing.
| segh wrote:
| See also masking
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masking_(personality)
| clnq wrote:
| Masking seems to have a negative connotation. Usually,
| and indeed in the Wikipedia article above, it's presented
| as a boundary or defence mechanism against societal
| pressures. But interestingly, etiquette involves a lot of
| masking and the aim is to make interactions more pleasant
| for all parties.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is similar to masking but also very different. I
| just don't talk about geek stuff with family and friends
| back home because they are not interested. They do,
| however, know I'm a geek so I'm not "hiding" that from
| them.
|
| Nor did I suffer abuse or humiliation from classmates or
| coworkers that made me change my behaviour.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _This is just an article about people who never learned that
| skill._
|
| Is it? I read part and skimmed part, admittedly, but I got the
| impression this was just an article portraying a particular
| subculture, one the author wasn't not at all fond of. The
| author seems to actually take the opposite of your tolerant
| view that people naturally can use multiple "topics and
| conversation styles" in multiple social context. I would agree
| with you but it seems For the author, the topics and
| conversation styles of the people at this event are the primary
| evidence that they couldn't be normal in any other context.
| That and one guy having "shifty eyes".
| macNchz wrote:
| We were introduced to the concept of "self monitoring"^ in
| social psychology classes in college, which attempts to
| describe this phenomenon.
|
| Reading about it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me, as it
| offered some explanation for why I'd always made friends with
| people from varying social circles, who often seemed to not get
| along with each other, while finding it relatively easy myself
| to get along with most any social group.
|
| ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-monitoring
| vitaflo wrote:
| Yup, also a nerd that grew up in a poor rural area. Some of my
| friends struggled with this but for me it really taught me how
| to be a chameleon. It also taught me to keep an open mind.
| While I wasn't into sports (like most nerds) I did find I
| really liked bowling and was on a league with many of the other
| redneck kids I wouldn't normally hang out with. I learned I had
| more in common with people than I thought, even if I really
| only opened up with my small nerdy crew of friends.
|
| It's paid dividends as an adult because in most situations I
| can guess there's at least something I have in common with
| others even if it doesn't seem obvious at first. I can go most
| places and feel (or at least look) like I fit in. It's also
| allowed me to have a broad range of interests as an adult that
| I may not have had had I stayed more insular.
| nullstyle wrote:
| Damn, palladium has really fallen off, quality-wise, since their
| launch.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Author seems a little too close? For me, the big takeaway is how
| it represents the superficiality that happens here? Like, this
| whole thing _wants_ to be genuinely cool /Gibson-ish, but I can't
| get over the banality of it all.
|
| I was poking around some of the content and it's just so blah, in
| terms of how they're just taking a laundry list of _every_ hot
| button issue and then asking, "okay, how can I troll it?" --
| revealing no core underneath.
| rideontime wrote:
| IDK, it's even more damning that someone who wanted to believe
| couldn't bring herself to do so.
| rideontime wrote:
| These people are exactly as pathetic as I imagined them to be.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-07 23:00 UTC)