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I don’t want to be an internet person

palladiummag.com

221–230 of 319 posts

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#221
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 sla…

"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.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neigh…

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…

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.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#223
post #109

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…

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?

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#224
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' anywher…

See also masking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masking_(personality)

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.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#225
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' anywher…

See also masking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masking_(personality)

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.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#226

"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 gi…

The state forced Elon Musk to name his kid X Æ A-12 Musk just to embarrass him. Poor kid is going to have a hell of time getting a drivers license:)

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they need help, encouragement and a true friend more than this kind of "gift"?

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.

They're horror shows because...they're boring/awkward/spend a lot of time online? I think you need a reality check.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#228

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 an…

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.

[deleted]

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#229
post #19

Is this journalism?

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.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#230
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 countr…

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 neit…

>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.

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