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I don’t want to be an internet person

palladiummag.com

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Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#121

Post by neilk »

syntheweave wrote: post #18

I found XOXO conference to be much the same way. The attendees were capable of some basic social grace, but having manifested from the context of "internet people," they lacked substance in person. It's not hard to not be an internet person. You just have to decide to actually study something, anything, and to a deep level. Once you do that the grounding manifests itself and then you have more important priorities th…

I suspect this is an attempt to troll us all into fighting, by bringing up a beloved conference that some might classify as “woke”.

But anyway, there’s something to what you say but I think that analogy doesn’t go very far.

Every year the hosts have, in their intro keynote, urged attendees to be more outgoing than normal. So yeah there are lots of introverts.

But the promise is that being more outgoing will pay off - because XOXO is curated to be entirely nice nerds. And it’s very anti-grifting. The scene the OP portrayed of e-girls and NFT guys seems like a polar opposite of their vibe. It’s more literature nerds showing off their board game about Pride & Prejudice, or an indie game about a mischievous goose. The whole point of XOXO, I think, was to find people who were doing internet stuff for the love of it.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#122

Post by bloak »

tetrep wrote: post #99
jacooper wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of bothering to ask about pronouns Because no body actually cares, no body will use your made up pronouns. > use of the words "normal people" and infiltrating a group only to neg them to be more problematic than anything. Isn't it obvious that the people in this group are clearly not normal?, they even admit themselves!

How are peoples' names less made up than their pronouns? It seems just as rude to refuse to use someone's preferred name as you would their preferred pronouns.

I mostly agree with that: if someone is a participant or a potential participant in the conversation then we should refer to them in a way they find acceptable, provided their demands are reasonable and in good faith. On the other hand, if someone is speaking or writing about me in a language I don't understand then it's hardly my job to tell them what pronouns to use and I can't even reasonably tell them how to pronounce, and perhaps decline, my name. (Try looking up some internationally famous people in the Latvian or Lithuanian Wikipedias. Obviously I'm not famous enough to be in there, but if I were, would I have any right to be treated differently from Rišī Sūneks?)

A journalist writing about someone they've interviewed ... as part of doing the best they can for the people they serve, the readers, perhaps in some cases it's reasonable for them to ignore the preferences of the interviewee?

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#124

Post by woodruffw »

ahoy wrote: post #116
woodruffw wrote: post #10

I thought this sounded familiar, and sure enough[1]. Edit: To make it explicit, which Palladium notably fails to do: this person is a reactionary and has a history of encouraging young girls to commit suicide. [1]: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=founder-of-milady-nft-proje...

Palladium is a Thiel-backed rightwing propaganda outlet that insists it's "non partisan". It's a shame to see t shared here

Exactly. It's also particularly concerning to see them increasingly adopt the esoteric, syncretic style of reactionary writing.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#125

Post by BWStearns »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #117
BWStearns wrote: post #71

I like the piece. The tone kinda gives me the same vibes as Neil Strauss' The Game (vibe heavy anthropology trip into the distasteful, or at least unnerving, subculture). The part at the very end about the internet people winning is the part that freaks me out (and drives my own middlingly unhealthy doom-scrolling). Just the other day I saw Curtis Yarvin is now some minor Rasputin figure for Peter Thiel, and I couldn…

It reads a lot like Neal Stephenson to me, both the tone and the topic. Anyway, if you like that sort of dives into a weird subculture let me recommend Sam Fussell's Muscle. Here's an interview with the author that got me to read the book: http://www.drmichaeljoyner.com/sam-fussell-an-interview-with...

I didn't consider that because it's nonfiction but I can see that now. Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#126

Post by tsukikage »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #51
reaperducer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop using your state-given name on the internet. I'm what country does the state decide what your name is? I thought that was always the province of someone's parents.

And how did your parents became Mr. and Mrs. Smith? In all the countries the "family" name for the hoi polloi was mandated once the state consolidated. Before, your father's grand^x-father, who was a blacksmith, was simply known, for the Dunbar's number of people who knew him, as 'John, the blacksmith', maybe 'John, Mary's son' if there were two Johns around. Look at how most of the Scandinavian "family" names end in…

This may come as a surprise, but in most western countries, to a first approximation, people can change the name they use when interacting with the state to whatever they want, whenever they want. The process does involve a small bit of tedium, but really isn't particularly onerous or expensive.

I've had multiple names over the course of my life (and notes linking them together in various documents should I ever need to prove to someone that the person with name A is the same as the person with name B; to date, I never have). It's pretty common.

Moreover, people can use whatever name they want in whatever places they want on the internet, and don't have to be obvious about it when it's not the same name they use in other places online or offline. If I tell someone my name is John Smith, 99.9% of the time all they need that information for is to know that I am the same person they interacted with previously; they don't need to know or care what my bank or my family call me, nor is there any reason for me to tell them.

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#127

Post by ryandrake »

syntheweave wrote: post #18

I found XOXO conference to be much the same way. The attendees were capable of some basic social grace, but having manifested from the context of "internet people," they lacked substance in person. It's not hard to not be an internet person. You just have to decide to actually study something, anything, and to a deep level. Once you do that the grounding manifests itself and then you have more important priorities th…

Back in the day, I went and attended a "Fark Party". Remember Fark? Well, they actually had meatspace events, and they were as pasty and awkward as you could possibly imagine! Mostly a bunch of 20-year-olds who were much less interesting than they thought they were. Fortunately, the one I went to was in Vegas, so it was easy to ditch the edgelords and go have fun.

A few people mentioned the article's subject matter being Gibsonish, but if I recall (haven't read him in a while), Gibson's cyber-characters were not just online-cool, but were generally backed by richly complex humans. The influencers and Twitterati the author describes have barely any human personality behind them--they're all boring, vacuous, superficial.

"You're really not that interesting."[1]

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZTksDoH6w

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#128

Post by toast0 »

ipaddr wrote: post #115
throwaway4aday wrote: post #38

I'm pretty sure this generalizes to everything. People who cultivate a persona in any sub-culture or domain seem to be a fish out of water when confronted in a different context. Take someone from the rave scene and plop them down in a microbrewery bar and everyone will gawk at the brightly colored fidgety person that has no idea what to order. Take a polished SV entrepreneur and deposit them in an Idaho roadhouse an…

BBS meetups weren't really like that. You had young/old mismatched people who could communicate because life wasn't online back then.

BBS meetups are filled with BBS people who may seem mismatched to outsiders, but their community is the BBS, and for some, their life is online on the BBS

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#129

Post by [deleted] »

fleddr wrote: post #109

A great way to test the difference between the online and offline world is to boast about something you accomplished in a family gathering, say thanksgiving. "I scored 3 goals in last weekend's game". That's wonderful! (nobody truly cares, but it's still recognized and celebrated.) "I got 40 likes on my last tweet" ??? "Wait, it gets better: 20 people watched me play a game. Had to stay up until 4AM but still, worth…

[deleted]

Re: I don’t want to be an internet person

#130

Post by mechanical_bear »

ahoy wrote: post #116
woodruffw wrote: post #10

I thought this sounded familiar, and sure enough[1]. Edit: To make it explicit, which Palladium notably fails to do: this person is a reactionary and has a history of encouraging young girls to commit suicide. [1]: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=founder-of-milady-nft-proje...

Palladium is a Thiel-backed rightwing propaganda outlet that insists it's "non partisan". It's a shame to see t shared here

I disagree. I also think there is more value in debating the message rather than the outlet.
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