Too many people have peed in the pool • Hacker News Board

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#101

Post by danharaj » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

justifier wrote: post #93

jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

i consider emojis as the tonal element missing from text think of it as visual intonation (o) (o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_(linguistics)

I like your interpretation which ascribes intelligence and meaning to other peoples' behavior instead of the grandparent which seems to imply that the kids these days are just stupid and don't have any interesting thoughts to convey.

You can't find the meaning in other peoples' behavior if you just assume it's meaningless from the get-go.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#102

Post by AJ007 » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago.

Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a relative one. I saw it happen to very small online communities in the 90s. In some respects, I watched it occur on a community I ran nearly 10 years ago.

Facebook's aggressive censorship along with non-public networks give each user a white washed micro-community. Public forums, such as Twitter and Instagram, do not.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#103

Post by gedy » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

seren wrote: post #23

carsongross wrote: post #15

I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and so on. It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we will end up with a totalit…

I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to last in the long run. Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat confined and not always spilling in the common public space. Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but it seems you can not ha…

> Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources

Agreed. Seems like what happened is people could find their own opinion bubble to live it and feel empowered without having to deal with other opinions.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#104

Post by baltar » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

jonstokes wrote: post #38

I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing on it that people would loo…

"there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many-xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us-vs.-them thing "

This sort of dreck was as despicable then as it is now, off- or online. If people posting such things now leave Twitter, I'm all for it. They can go back to the stone age where they belong - oh wait, even then most people were likely better than that: http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/geschlechterrollen-fors... (in German).

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#105

Post by danharaj » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #79

jonstokes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A long time ago, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources." Heh, same here. I think that so many of us simply underestimated the immense power of capitalism to co-opt and commodify everything it touches.

Your dig on capitalism is ironic, given that the original post was about the power of activism to politicize everything it touches.

The status quo is always political. There is no apolitical center.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#106

Post by sixQuarks » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

Everything is evolving all the time, and future iterations are based on, a reaction to, or rejection of what came before.

There are going to be cycles of products, some you love, some you hate, but what won't change is that there are still like-minded people out there, no matter what your tastes or opinions. We will learn from this generation of social media , and future products will solve some of these problems to a large degree, only to evolve into something we detest again - but each time it should get a little better.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#107

Post by danharaj » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

maker1138 wrote: post #92

jonstokes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A long time ago, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources." Heh, same here. I think that so many of us simply underestimated the immense power of capitalism to co-opt and commodify everything it touches.

voluntary exchange is not the problem with society. involuntary exchange on the other hand...

Property rights are involuntary for the have-nots. The basis of capitalism isn't 'voluntary exchange', but property rights and the accumulation of capital.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#108

Post by alextgordon » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

hnlogics wrote: post #90

It is never acceptable to attack and use violence against other individuals. The fact that you perceive them as making money from their marginalization does not make it acceptable for you and others to attack them to send death threats, and to engage in other horrific and violent behavior. It is reprehensible and disgusting that you think your hatred and bigotry is acceptable... because somebody might've made money.…

It's never acceptable to use violence, but the world does contain a lot of violent people, and most of them are on the internet. Welcome to Earth.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#109

Post by nine_k » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #28

malsun wrote: post #17

I left Twitter last year when it looked like the 'professionally offended' were becoming too influential. They didn't affect me as I keep a low profile, but it was like seeing an omen and noticing friends were buying into their hype. The way Twitter is now pandering to this lot with the recently announced Orwellian-style group, and other odd behaviour suggests that they approve of the current momentum. I'm just glad…

By "professionally offended", I assume you mean mostly marginalized people who are the recipients of torrents of abuse/death threats/rape threats/sexual harrassment/etc nearly every day they are active on twitter.

Three letters: SJW.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#110

Post by Swizec » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

zkhalique wrote: post #81

jgrahamc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the way that millennials communicate with emoji I'm GenX and not a millennial. I don't see anything wrong with using some emoji as part of my language. I already speak a language (English) which is some bastard child of French, German, Dutch, Arabic, etc. I'm happy to add a (poo emoji) when it's appropriate.

Emojis are fine. But I remember the first times I started seeing "LOL" and "ROTFLMAO". And I realized that the person wasn't really laughing, but they were quietly typing that on the keyboard. If you think about it, before AIM and online chat (way before texting), people hardly ever faked their emotions so much. I mean, you could fake a small laugh, but you didn't outright say that you're rolling on the floor laughin…

I often say "lol" in real life to denote "I appreciate your attempt at being funny and agree that it was indeed humorous, but it wasn't funny enough to laugh laugh"

Because, like, what do you do when someone puts effort into a joke and you want to give them positive reinforcement, but you're just not in a laughing mood? Or it was funny in the abstract, but you're the wrong audience?

Another approach I've seen was "Heh, that's funny." ... but I'm not sure if that's better or worse than "lol"