bots are everywhere and Ai bots making this theory very true.
Dead Internet Theory
161–170 of 735 posts
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#162>which is not a social network, but I’m tired of arguing with people online about it I know this was a throwaway parenthetical, but I agree 100%. I don't know when the meaning of "social media" went from "internet based medium for socializing with people you know IRL" to a catchall for any online forum like reddit, but one result of this semantic shift is that it takes attention away from the fact that the former typ…
> the former type is all but obliterated now. Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it. While it stinks that it is controlled by one big company, it's quite nice that its communities are invite-only by default and largely moderated by…
> Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it.
The "former type" had to do with online socializing with people you know IRL.
I have never seen anything on Discord that matches this description.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#163Think the notion that ‘no one’ uses em dashes is a bit misguided. I’ve personally used them in text for as long as I can remember. Also on the phrase “you’re absolute right”, it’s definitely a phrase my friends and I use a lot, albeit in a sorta of sarcastic manner when one of us says something which is obvious but, nonetheless, we use it. We also tend to use “Well, you’re not wrong” again in a sarcastic manner for s…
I would add that a lot of us who were born or grew up in the UK are quite comfortable saying stuff like "you're right, but...", or even "I agree with you, but...". The British politeness thing, presumably.
0-24 in the UK, 24-62 in the USA, am now comfortable saying "I could be wrong, but I doubt it" quite a lot of the time :)
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#164Sunday evening musings regarding bot comments and HN... I'm sure it's happening, but I don't know how much. Surely some people are running bots on HN to establish sockpuppets for use later, and to manipulate sentiment now, just like on any other influential social media. And some people are probably running bots on HN just for amusement, with no application in mind. And some others, who were advised to have an HN pre…
HN has survived many things but I dont think it will survive the LLMs.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#165So interesting this is right next to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673809 on the HN homepage. Really demonstrates how polarizing AI is.
Article adjacency on HN typically lasts less than 10 minutes ... you did include an actual link though, so thanks for that.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#166In one hand, we are past the Turing Test definition if we can't distinguish if we are talking with an AI or a real human or more things that were rampant on internet previously, like spam and scam campaigns, targeted opinion manipulation, or a lot of other things that weren't, let's say, an honest opinion of the single person that could be identified with an account. In the other hand, that we can't tell don't speak…
Recently I’ve been thinking about the text form of communication, and how it plays with our psychology. In no particular order here’s what I think: 1. Text is a very compressed / low information method of communication. 2. Text inherently has some “authority” and “validity”, because: 3. We’ve grown up to internalize that text is written by a human. Someone spend the effort to think and write down their thoughts, and…
This is absolutely why LLMs are so disruptive. It used to be that a long, written paper was like a proof-of-work that the author thought about the problem. Now that connection is broken.
One consequence, IMHO, is that we won't value long papers anymore. Instead, we will want very dense, high-bandwidth writing that the author stakes consequences (monetary, reputational, etc.) on its validity.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#167The problem is not the Internet but the author and those like them, acting like social network participants in following the herd - embracing despair and hopelessness, and victimhood - they don't realize they're the problem, not the victims. Another problem is their ignorance and their post-truth attitude, not caring whether their words are actually accurate: > What if people DO USE em-dashes in real life? They do an…
On a typewriter, you'd be able to just adjust the carriage position to make a continuous dash or underline or what have you. Typically I see XXXX over words instead of strike-throughs for typewritten text meanwhile.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#168My parents were tricked the other day by a fake youtube video of "racist cop" doing something bad and getting outraged by it. I watch part of the video and even though it felt off I couldn't immediately tell for sure if it was fake or not. Nevertheless I googled the names and details and found nothing but repostings of the video. Then I looked at the youtube channel info and there it said it uses AI for "some" of the…
I find the sound is a dead giveaway for most AI videos — the voices all sound like a low bitrate MP3. Which will eventually get worked around and can easily be masked by just having a backing track.
that sounds like one of the worst heuristics I've ever heard, worse than "em-dash=ai" (em-dash equals ai to the illiterate class, who don't know what they are talking about on any subject and who also don't use em-dashes, but literate people do use em-dashes and also know what they are talking about. this is called the Dunning-Em-Dash Effect, where "dunning" refers to the payback of intellectual deficit whereas the illiterate think it's a name)
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
First time I’m hearing about a shortcut for this. I always use 2 hyphens. Is that not considered an em-dash ?
No it's not the same. Note there are medium and long as well. That said I always use -- myself. I don't think about pressing some keyboard combo to emphasise a point.
The long --- if you're that way minded --- is just 3 hyphens :)
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#170[dead]