Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

theamericanreader.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#61

Post by 6stringmerc »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #21
cgabios wrote: post #2

TED, I think, serves as a modern version of high-brow oration as the middle letter suggests: Entertainment. It's a double-ended marketplace platform of content providers (speakers) and content consumers (paid attendees and non-paid viewers). Since the cost is high to paid attendees, the content must be as good and fresh as humanly possible. From what I've seen as a non-paid viewer, I think TED accomplishes this reaso…

TED talks are predigested intellectual pablum that make the people hearing them feel smart. Seeing one is mildly entertaining. Seeing two is cloying. Seeing three makes you aware of how intolerably formulaic they are. In fairness I've only seen half of a few, because they bored me stupid by the time they were half way through and it had become apparent that the whole schtick was to make the audience feel special and…

"taking money from willing dupes is as old a humanity"

I love that line. Well put. Reminds me of how Mark Twain actually made far, far more money on the public speaking circuit than as a writer. Granted, the writing is what got his name and celebrity going, but from what I read about him and his thoughts, it kind of surprised him that people would be willing to pay as much as they did just to hear him get up on stage and do his thing. Genius!

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#62

Post by swsieber »

michaelochurch wrote: post #27

It isn't just "TED". TED is a symptom (and not all of the talks are bad; the format must be shallow because it reflects the short attention span and quick-to-dismiss mentality of the upper class). It's this horseshit faux-liberal self-congratulatory corporate house-slave culture. That's where this speaking tone of "pitching" rather than teaching or exhorting or enlightening (when needed) condemning comes from. I can'…

"You don't always make friends being right"

I hope that statement's true. I'd hope friendship would be based more off of showing respect than the rightness/wrongness of a position.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#63

Post by inflagranti »

visakanv wrote: post #50

The one thing I find more distasteful than TED is are smug commentaries writing about how distasteful TED is. It reminds me of of jazz musicians criticizing "watered down jazz-pop". > "What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they all sound the same?" Well, why do criticisms of "mainstream, middlebrow" works all sound the same? I personally have found TED talks to be useful introductions an…

Exactly! This sounds to me like way back when Galileo Galilei was criticized for writing in Italian instead of Latin...

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#64

Post by mr_luc »

kirsebaer wrote: post #51
mr_luc wrote: post #38

I absolutely loved one critique from the article: > middlebrow megachurch infotainment This hits the nail on the head on so many levels. (And maybe that's enough; maybe the college-educated need their megachurches as well). Like megachurches, TED offers highly-produced "public speaking as entertainment", but the purported content of the talks isn't entertainment, but $SERIOUS_ISSUE being told to you by $PERSON_WHO_KN…

TED speakers do take questions from the people in the audience and there is a comments section on the TED website, videos usually get lots of discussion. Some nice things about TED/TEDx: * They have made intellectual talks "cool". * Video equivalent of a Scientific American article. * Encourages people to give short entertaining talks instead of 40 min powerpoint "presentations". * With TEDx anyone has the opportunit…

Interesting.

I think, boiled down, that it's purely the exalted tone at TED talks that really grates on me (and it seems a good number of others). Intellectual talks may not have always been cool, but they rarely used to sound like preaching.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#65

Post by bitwize »

TED is like www.edge.org combined with the recent trend of presenting ideas only in videoed live "talks" you have to sit and watch and listen to, rather than as textual documents you can peruse silently at your leisure.

It's a perfect forum for R.U. Sirius and Jaron Lanier. Not people who get shit done.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#66

Post by mjcohen »

6stringmerc wrote: post #57

When Amanda Palmer delivered a TED talk about the "art of asking", I knew the platform was more interested in money and publicity than any sense of intellectual rigor. Mostly because they allowed a person a platform from which to spew anecdotal garbage, and secondly, because the platform presents itself as immune to criticism. It is, to me, an embodiment of the phony image that Amanda Palmer has based her entire care…

Aw. Amanda Palmer is fun. I liked her cover of "Making Whoopee."

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#67

Post by michaelochurch »

morgante wrote: post #42
michaelochurch wrote: post #27

It isn't just "TED". TED is a symptom (and not all of the talks are bad; the format must be shallow because it reflects the short attention span and quick-to-dismiss mentality of the upper class). It's this horseshit faux-liberal self-congratulatory corporate house-slave culture. That's where this speaking tone of "pitching" rather than teaching or exhorting or enlightening (when needed) condemning comes from. I can'…

You are, in the very best sense, a hater. And you have a karma of 24864. So it's hard for me to believe that HN is somehow TED-Junior.

There's definitely a "silent majority" (and not always that silent) of good people here. If you stick to the technical posts especially, there's a good crowd.

I got most of my karma before my account was "moderated", which is California Passive Aggressive for having your posts downplaced into obscurity (also called "rankban" by some) and guaranteeing that you never have the top post, no matter how many upvotes you get (and you won't get many, often, given that your posts are insta-buried). I also deal with a slowban (5-second load times when logged in) and will often get 4-5 downvotes within minutes of each other, for which I don't know who to blame, but it's annoying.

I've kept posting out of a sense of resistance more than anything else. I refuse to be run off the board. The passive-aggressive "moderation" to my account actually backfired and kept me on the board, even as my increasingly justified sense of indignation grew.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#68

Post by michaelochurch »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29
michaelochurch wrote: post #27

It isn't just "TED". TED is a symptom (and not all of the talks are bad; the format must be shallow because it reflects the short attention span and quick-to-dismiss mentality of the upper class). It's this horseshit faux-liberal self-congratulatory corporate house-slave culture. That's where this speaking tone of "pitching" rather than teaching or exhorting or enlightening (when needed) condemning comes from. I can'…

I totally agree. Dissenters/malcontents don't have an easy life, and they have to be absolutely freaking amazing (genius, good communication skills) to have any impact at all (or they are just written off as cranky, crackpots, or worse). Much easier to just join the echo chamber and go with the flow.

Even that top 1% that manages to break through gets written off as cranks and "crackpots" by most, at least early on. It's the fact that an elite and discerning few, whose opinions are the only ones that matter to us, can recognize our talents that keeps us going.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#69

Post by CPLX »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #29
michaelochurch wrote: post #27

It isn't just "TED". TED is a symptom (and not all of the talks are bad; the format must be shallow because it reflects the short attention span and quick-to-dismiss mentality of the upper class). It's this horseshit faux-liberal self-congratulatory corporate house-slave culture. That's where this speaking tone of "pitching" rather than teaching or exhorting or enlightening (when needed) condemning comes from. I can'…

I totally agree. Dissenters/malcontents don't have an easy life, and they have to be absolutely freaking amazing (genius, good communication skills) to have any impact at all (or they are just written off as cranky, crackpots, or worse). Much easier to just join the echo chamber and go with the flow.

Fair enough, but the ones that do have the ability to use language well (HL Mencken, David Simon, Carl Sandberg, Martin Luther King, et al) are some of the most valuable members of society, and I am certainly glad that such people exist.

Re: The Sound of TED: A Case for Distaste

#70

Post by solipsism »

6stringmerc wrote: post #57

When Amanda Palmer delivered a TED talk about the "art of asking", I knew the platform was more interested in money and publicity than any sense of intellectual rigor. Mostly because they allowed a person a platform from which to spew anecdotal garbage, and secondly, because the platform presents itself as immune to criticism. It is, to me, an embodiment of the phony image that Amanda Palmer has based her entire care…

I don't know anything about Amanda Palmer. Could you link me to something critical that expands upon your position?
Post reply on HN