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Very Important People

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Re: Very Important People

#11

Post by fellowniusmonk »

Papazsazsa wrote: post #3
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #2

What is the point of this article? It rings incredibly false and superficial to me. How is this about tech? The headspace this person is in seems like pure misery.

It's social commentary about class, fame, and fate – all things very relevant to hackers and news.

It's just weird celebrity worship dressed up by arguing that celebrity is somehow this innate characteristic his specific friend Adam can spot. This is tabloid ontology.

I've worked in the celebrity space for a long time, there is no there there, the dehumanizing of celebrities (and oneself) via worship, para-socializing or unearned castigation is all brain rot.

This attempt to hide ungrounded "People Magazine" supermarket aisle foolishness behind pseudo gonzo journalism is such a lipstick on a pig move.

Re: Very Important People

#12

Post by advael »

I don't think I'm completely oblivious to social status, but I've never understood at a deep level the way most people seem to process concepts like "fame" and "celebrity". I have never had the experience of being awestruck by a person, or elevating them above personhood, though I admire plenty of people. With the few brushes with, maybe we can say "microcelebrity" I've had myself, the opportunities and status benefits, while nice, seemed not worth the bizarre distorting effect on social reality it has, like the thing where someone's heard of me and talks to me like they know me when we've never met is uncomfortable at best, and most people considered various degrees of famous I've met who I came to respect seemed to be similarly jaded with this awestruck or even worshipful reaction some people seem to have when they idolize someone. I really think this whole cluster of behaviors is unhealthy and weird, and the fact that mass-communication technologies and the massive societal resources bent toward persuasion (both commercial and political) have drastically amplified it is probably one of the major causal factors in the polycrisis of the modern world

Re: Very Important People

#13

Post by ibash »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #11
Papazsazsa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's social commentary about class, fame, and fate – all things very relevant to hackers and news.

It's just weird celebrity worship dressed up by arguing that celebrity is somehow this innate characteristic his specific friend Adam can spot. This is tabloid ontology. I've worked in the celebrity space for a long time, there is no there there, the dehumanizing of celebrities (and oneself) via worship, para-socializing or unearned castigation is all brain rot. This attempt to hide ungrounded "People Magazine" super…

It’s not celebrity worship, it’s trying to show the absurdity of celebrity worship.

Re: Very Important People

#14

Post by lurk2 »

> Before she started playing, she took a second to explain how love is in the air and in the trees and in the water. "And we're all, like, made out of water, you know!" she said. "And water is, like, you know, life!" It was one of the stupider things I'd heard recently, but it sounded familiar.

It’s one thing to be a blogger huffing his own farts, it’s another thing to be rude about it. The girl might not have been a philosopher, but when she was given a platform she said what she had to say; when the author of this article was given a platform he used it to publish a pointless, meandering essay operating under the erroneous belief that he was a good storyteller with insightful things to say.

Re: Very Important People

#15

Post by lurk2 »

Papazsazsa wrote: post #3
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #2

What is the point of this article? It rings incredibly false and superficial to me. How is this about tech? The headspace this person is in seems like pure misery.

It's social commentary about class, fame, and fate – all things very relevant to hackers and news.

Are you being sarcastic?

Re: Very Important People

#16

Post by fellowniusmonk »

ibash wrote: post #13
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just weird celebrity worship dressed up by arguing that celebrity is somehow this innate characteristic his specific friend Adam can spot. This is tabloid ontology. I've worked in the celebrity space for a long time, there is no there there, the dehumanizing of celebrities (and oneself) via worship, para-socializing or unearned castigation is all brain rot. This attempt to hide ungrounded "People Magazine" super…

It’s not celebrity worship, it’s trying to show the absurdity of celebrity worship.

It's in the frame and it's mid. There is enough ambiguity of interpretation (as is the nature of gonzo writing) and one instance of saying willow smith talks like a homeless person to trick people into missing the frame the article adopts, the mean spirited takedown and the worship are the same. This is literally textbook tabloid framing, the tabloid elevates, the tabloid destroys, the tabloid tells you have nothing better to do while you wait in a long line. This article is celebrity worship tabloid brain rot.

Re: Very Important People

#17

Post by Arainach »

lurk2 wrote: post #14

> Before she started playing, she took a second to explain how love is in the air and in the trees and in the water. "And we're all, like, made out of water, you know!" she said. "And water is, like, you know, life!" It was one of the stupider things I'd heard recently, but it sounded familiar. It’s one thing to be a blogger huffing his own farts, it’s another thing to be rude about it. The girl might not have been a…

By leaving out the following paragraph you're doing an injustice, framing a humorous anecdote as an attack:

>Then I remembered that I'd heard it before. A homeless guy had been saying this exact same thing down by the beach, although I had to admit the message benefited from the wireless microphone, the giant festival stage, and the thousands of screaming fans.

It's a poignant observation about how similarly inane arguments are perceived as evidence of mental illness or deep insights based on the social perception of the speaker.

The author of this article is a solid storyteller who brings in a number of human elements that make it compelling. Meandering storytelling is intentional - this isn't an article for a scientific journal.

Re: Very Important People

#18

Post by frankest »

wseqyrku wrote: post #10
frankest wrote: post #7

Envy is worth talking about. It seems to pull a lot of people, like one of the strings in string theory. They want to be envied so they live an exhibitionist life, or they were surpassed by someone they thought was their equal and now they hate the gap. Is it possible people who feel envy then decide to be more exhibitionist, so they can be envied in the future? I wonder what value envy provided to evolution? Did it…

> by-product of social status behaviors I think that's the one. There's entire rituals to show social status. For example, weddings. That's all it is for.

Weddings are also a social commitment exercise to the couple. Imagine if you had break a promise you made in front of everyone both of you know, after spending a whole lot of money. It’s loss aversion and social shame that possibly made a lot of couples stick together. Even so, posing with your best clothes, food, locations, entertainment and donning all of your jewelry (all of your wealth in gold in some country) does likely play the Envy string too.

Re: Very Important People

#20

Post by lurk2 »

Arainach wrote: post #17
lurk2 wrote: post #14

> Before she started playing, she took a second to explain how love is in the air and in the trees and in the water. "And we're all, like, made out of water, you know!" she said. "And water is, like, you know, life!" It was one of the stupider things I'd heard recently, but it sounded familiar. It’s one thing to be a blogger huffing his own farts, it’s another thing to be rude about it. The girl might not have been a…

By leaving out the following paragraph you're doing an injustice, framing a humorous anecdote as an attack: >Then I remembered that I'd heard it before. A homeless guy had been saying this exact same thing down by the beach, although I had to admit the message benefited from the wireless microphone, the giant festival stage, and the thousands of screaming fans. It's a poignant observation about how similarly inane ar…

> It's a poignant observation about how similarly inane arguments are perceived as evidence of mental illness or deep insights based on the social perception of the speaker.

It’s not a poignant observation. This is the issue I had with the entire article; it was an uninsightful, unoriginal tweet that the author dragged out into more than two dozen paragraphs.

> The author of this article is a solid storyteller

I disagree. He’s using formulaic creative writing methods and came across as pretentious.

> Meandering storytelling is intentional

The meandering added nothing to the story. You summarized the entire post in less than a paragraph.

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