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Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

theatlantic.com

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Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#171

Post by smeagull »

cbozeman wrote: post #44
segasaturn wrote: post #4

Maybe that's a good thing? I remember a few years ago when journalists were outsourcing their reporting to Twitter and we had headlines like "The Internet is Freaking Out About X" when it was really a dozen nobodies on Twitter. The death of Twitter and the re-fragmentation of the internet sounds like a breath of fresh air compared to the purple haze of the last decade's centralized web.

X isn't dead, nor is it dying. Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark. That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it…

Okay, let's go visit X to see how alive it is.

Oh, a login screen.

Yeah they're dead.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#173

Post by jjtheblunt »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #168
mbb70 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme personalization of the internet/modern life can lead to a feeling of isolation. I recently was on a plane with broken inflight entertainment, so all you could watch was a single movie in lock step with everyone else. When the movie ended, there was a weird sense of camaraderie; "we are all stuck in this tube and we all just sat through that mediocre movie".

I'm not sure the official name for that is but I call it the "shared experience." Obviously something that pulls us together, but recently with less and less of it we're becoming islands in a sea of nothingness.

The old Scheme programmer in me calls it a closure!

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#175

Post by janalsncm »

Note that this is the exact opposite thesis of this article[1], which I remember seeing on HN a while ago. Rather than having no counterculture, it seems the mainstream is being eaten by a thousand countercultures.

We now have maybe millions of content creators jostling for views, rather than three letter TV stations showing the same templates shows. What gets you an audience isn’t uniformity, but being different in an interesting way.

[1] https://www.honest-broker.com/p/14-warning-signs-that-you-ar...

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#176

Post by nuker »

cbozeman wrote: post #44
segasaturn wrote: post #4

Maybe that's a good thing? I remember a few years ago when journalists were outsourcing their reporting to Twitter and we had headlines like "The Internet is Freaking Out About X" when it was really a dozen nobodies on Twitter. The death of Twitter and the re-fragmentation of the internet sounds like a breath of fresh air compared to the purple haze of the last decade's centralized web.

X isn't dead, nor is it dying. Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark. That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it…

[flagged]

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#178

Post by rnd0 »

gglitch wrote: post #71
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #29

> "Consider TikTok....Try to imagine which posts might have been most popular on the site this year. Perhaps a dispatch from the Middle East....Or maybe something lighter, like a Gen Z dance trend....Well, no: According to TikTok’s year-end report, the most popular videos in the U.S.—clips...aren’t topical at all. They include makeup tutorials, food ASMR, a woman showing off a huge house cat, and a guy spray-painting…

>> makeup tutorials, food ASMR, a woman showing off a huge house cat, and a guy spray-painting his ceiling to look like Iron Man > so the normies finally won. I think I get your general point and I think I agree with it; but I have to point out that when I compare "food ASMR" and "a guy spray-painting his ceiling to look like Iron Man," to what was broadcast back when we only had three channels, it makes me think the…

"normie" is another way of saying "joe sixpack" -a derisive term for the average person.

I'm not sure if that effects your point or not, but thought it was worth pointing out.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#180

Post by woooooo »

JohnFen wrote: post #160
woooooo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when people say this, they're using "elite" to signal a mentality rather a wealth level. Consider a wealthy, business-owning tradesman and a broke ivy league post-doc. Who sounds more "elite" in their mannerisms? "Professional/managerial class conformist" might be more precise but it's pretty clunky.

> they're using "elite" to signal a mentality Given the nonsensical things I've seen declared "elite" and "nonelite", I'm certain that "elite" is just used as a synonym for "whoever I currently hate".

There's that too, plus the fact that using the word "elite" is itself something that mostly the elite do.
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