Nobody knows what's happening online anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#201

Post by Geisterde » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:44 AM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #193

autoexec wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like every decade of the 1900's had pretty distinct cultural trends and identity, and even subcultures and counter cultures of the past were more public, but now it's all balkanized. I have no idea if that is a bad thing, but it is certainly different. I like it. Instead of sitting around talking about whatever the big media gatekeepers shoved down our throats we can get together and share what we've found a…

I think that's a little too cynical about culture in the past decades and also underestimating how much curated stuff is being shoved down our throats now. It's not really discovering, it's consuming what ever some ml model from one of the few big tech companies decides you should see.

I have become immunized to algorithmic content curation, I dont know exactly why that happened, but understanding how it works at a surface level I think helped. Im curious if thats a widespread phenomena or not, I suspect it is.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#202

Post by broscillator » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

DougEiffel wrote: post #194

Don't worry guys, I teach 8th grade. You're not missing much. A student recently introduced me to BLP Kosher. That was... an experience. https://youtu.be/xUqDb-p-Ksw?si=kOLnSXlXgfc6wad_

So that one episode of Atlanta with Yodel Kid was pretty much reality.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#203

Post by plagiarist » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:49 AM UTC

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.

If it was an airplane movie the better phrase might be "trauma bonding" :)

I agree, though, it is very easy to isolate nowadays. And fewer and fewer third spaces exist if one were looking to interact.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#204

Post by peter_l_downs » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

DougEiffel wrote: post #194

Don't worry guys, I teach 8th grade. You're not missing much. A student recently introduced me to BLP Kosher. That was... an experience. https://youtu.be/xUqDb-p-Ksw?si=kOLnSXlXgfc6wad_

BLP Kosher dings in the whip, no cap

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#205

Post by balder1991 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

vGPU wrote: post #69

Retr0id wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Twitter Has Complied With Almost Every Government Request For Censorship Since Musk Took Over, Report Finds" - https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/tw...

> Forbes reached out to Twitter for comment, and received an automated poop emoji, which the company has been using to respond to press requests for at least a month. You gotta admit, the kind of shenanigans Musk pulls are hilarious. The definition of F-U money.

To me this sort of thing makes it feel like a high school kid took over Twitter.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#206

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #198

aliasxneo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found this story so fascinating. The amount they get targeted is insane for being a satire website, regardless of if you think it's funny or not.

[flagged]

The person writing satire decides if it is satire regardless of how a reader's brain maps the words into thoughts.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#207

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 1:56 AM UTC

mbb70 wrote: post #161

pavon wrote: post #124

Recently I was thinking about how I am completely out of touch with the culture of younger generations, and was about to laugh it off cause that's how it is with every generation, but then I realized that I don't even know how I would know. In the past if you wanted to know what kids were listening to, you change the radio station to that new loud one you normally skip, or watch that new TV show that people are going…

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".

You mean .. like going to the cinema?

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#208

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:00 AM UTC

pavon wrote: post #124

Recently I was thinking about how I am completely out of touch with the culture of younger generations, and was about to laugh it off cause that's how it is with every generation, but then I realized that I don't even know how I would know. In the past if you wanted to know what kids were listening to, you change the radio station to that new loud one you normally skip, or watch that new TV show that people are going…

I was talking to my younger sister (college student) the other day, and she mentioned that she and her friends are very reluctant to post their opinions online, especially under their real names. This was a bit of a surprise to me, because she volunteers for the Democrats and is openly lesbian, so I would have thought her opinions are generally a great match for the current cultural milieu.

I think maybe part of the puzzle is described well by Bryan Caplan:

>Who fears the left? Strangely, the main answer seems to be: leftists. I talk to a wide range of people in academia about left-wing anger and the fear it sustains. As you’d expect, the people who are most outraged by the climate of fear are non-leftists. But the people who personally experience the most fear are leftists themselves. In my private conversations, some of the most boring milquetoast technocratic leftist scholars have grimly foretold that somehow, someday, a mob of their own ideological persuasion will come for them.

https://betonit.substack.com/p/leave-anger-behind

In any case, she told me about one or two of her HS classmates who were actually serious in their use of social media, and how they were weird and almost maybe even poorly adjusted relative to the rest of the class.

Point being that even the youth culture you see online could just be the tip of the iceberg. (Or maybe my sister's peer group is unusual! Hard to say.)

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#209

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:00 AM UTC

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…

Voting for one of the elites does not really make you get one over on the elites. For all Trump's yapping about draining the swamp, his swamp was a lot smellier.

And guess how billionaires become billionaires? By screwing over poorer people as much they can.

They just fell for the trap, that's all.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#210

Post by superfrank » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

> The internet destroyed any idea of a monoculture long ago, but new complications cloud the online ecosystem today: TikTok’s opaque “For You” recommendation system, the ascension of paywalls that limit access to websites such as this one, the collapse of Twitter—now X—under Elon Musk, the waning relevance of news across most social-media sites. The broad effect is an online experience that feels unique to every individual, depending on their ideologies and browsing habits. The very idea of popularity is up for debate

I can't remember where I read it, but something I read made the claim that this is the reason why TV and Hollywood seem to be stuck in a cycle of remakes, spin offs, and extending already loved franchises for the last 5 or so years. The fact that there is no longer a monoculture means it's harder and harder to guess what media will be popular across a broad spectrum of people. You can make small budget things for a single niche, but it doesn't make sense to spend $100 million on a niche movie. It's riskier than ever to do something novel because our culture is so fragmented, so they're falling back on things that succeeded when we did have more of a monoculture, since they know that has broad appeal (or at least it did at one point).