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I don’t want to be an internet person

palladiummag.com

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

#261

Post by gabesullice »

cpif wrote: post #176

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 d…

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.

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

#262

Post by spongebobism »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #240

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?

I stopped reading for the same reason.

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

#263

Post by to1y »

georgeburdell wrote: post #29
jzellis wrote: post #12

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.…

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.

Probably before your time and social media. More akin to forum/BBS days.

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

#264

Post by wizzwizz4 »

jacooper wrote: post #170
hooverd wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do find it funny when people go out of their way to use the wrong pronouns.

And I find it funny that people get offended if I dont break language rules for them.

There's a fun game I like to play with people who talk about Language Rules: they tell me the construction they think is "ungrammatical", and I show them a well-respected author who uses that construction.

Starting sentences with conjunctions, splitting infinitives, and the Oxford Comma Debate are easy mode; I can normally find an example in any given book. It's a bit harder with pronoun use – that's a per-work thing, not a per-paragraph one; and it's single words, so I can't cheat with a search engine – but I haven't lost yet. Want to play?

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

#265

Post by throwayyy479087 »

missingrib wrote: post #227
throwayyy479087 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main character in this is a prolific antisemite and has Nazi leanings. That’s a horror show.

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

#266

Post by to1y »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #240

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?

Kind of ironic the author is doing the pretty much the same thing as the main character of her article.

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

#267

Post by lilsoso »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #16

> 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…

David Foster Wallace, whom some might sneer at, had a number of observations on the phenomenon you've described. For example, from the book "Conversations with David Foster Wallace":

'Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That's what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? "Sure." Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff’s mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? Irony’s useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady’s bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do? All we seem to want to do is keep ridiculing the stuff. Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.'

Similar observations can be found in the following essay https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf.

Literary types occasionally called this New Sincerity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity).

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

#268

Post by fleddr »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #257
a1369209993 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

The difference I was aiming at is that the offline events are widely understood, relatable and recognized.

When you do well in a sport, I may not care one bit about this sport myself, but I understand what a sport is, that it's played in the real world, is competitive, and that you had success in it. Hence, every possible demographic recognizes your accomplishment without question.

This is not the same thing as streaming a game nobody ever heard of and having 20 spectators nobody knows. It's not or poorly understood, not seen as a relatable achievement, also not in an absolute sense, and at times may even be seen as an anti-accomplishment: do something useful with your life.

You can try to intellectually smudge these two things together as being the same, but that's nothing but semantics. My point stands that online accomplishments are not accomplishments unless they are extreme (I made a 100K from Youtube).

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

#269

Post by jamestimmins »

amatecha wrote: post #256

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

I'd argue that this is a misuse of flagging. This isn't spam or an endorsement of their worldview in any way. In fact, it goes out of their way to make the person seem somewhat pathetic. The dialogue taking place about the Internet People is fairly robust, indicating there's value in the content to the HN community.

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

#270

Post by amatecha »

jamestimmins wrote: post #269
amatecha wrote: post #256

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

I'd argue that this is a misuse of flagging. This isn't spam or an endorsement of their worldview in any way. In fact, it goes out of their way to make the person seem somewhat pathetic. The dialogue taking place about the Internet People is fairly robust, indicating there's value in the content to the HN community.

It's up to the mods to decide whether they think it's acceptable content or not - flagging simply brings it to their attention. I don't think the HN audience needs to spend their time adding such a horribly-acting person to their consciousness. There could be any number of other, non-problematic "internet people" to focus on in an article, and I would welcome such an article being written and/or linked to in place of this one.
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