Live data from Hacker News

Being Raised by the Internet

jimmyhmiller.github.io

161–170 of 331 posts

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#161
post #156

I was booting Linux while sleeping in a car, and in and out of motels, eating from food banks, with drug addicted parents, as a teenager. There was something to "the internet" back in the day as a way to cope when faced with that sort of situation. The author is not alone. We were blessed to have a computer through it all. I hope "kids these days" have the same opportunity with their phones.

Spoiler: They don't. The phones are hostile to experimentation and the social media apps they will use to kill time are designed to get them stuck in an infinite loop of watching pointless "content" and as many ads as possible.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that this man's past situation can reduce to "terrible parents" even as passing reference, is a better example than I could ever invent of why this conversation will end fruitlessly for you. It isn't that I don't see the obvious and honest effort you're putting into trying to have it. I respect that. The problem still is, though, that you don't see the entire world of social support structures that have been…

> That's why, for example, I know I'm probably coming off pretty harsh with this and am deliberately doing so anyway You're not coming off as "harsh" at all. You're hiding behind unfounded assertions about me personally in order to avoid providing anything concrete to back up your rather sweeping claims. Relying on ad-hominem attacks isn't harsh, it's what you do when you don't have anything better to support your po…

I don't know what to tell you. This isn't science we're doing; it's a conversation between strangers. Each of us only has what they see to go on.

It isn't going to help to say that nothing I've said is in any way critical of you as a person, but it's true. I'm not saying you're a bad person because you don't understand; I'm saying there are some things you need to have lived through or at least very near to understand what makes them matter, and the way you talk about them is the way I typically see people talk who have not done that. That's all.

I still don't understand what I said in the first place that you took so amiss. You came right in swinging from the start [1], and while I'm sure there was a reason, I don't think it has helped for me not to know what that was. Certainly being made to start from the back foot has not.

If it was about how I'd misread the other fellow, that's entirely fair; if so, that I have since apologized without reservation [2] might help get our own conversation closer to an even keel. Outside of that, though, as I said before, I can't imagine what it might have been.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41689716

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41692004

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always thought it was due to tipping I've been bothered far more by wait staff in Australia than I ever have in the US. Must be down to the location and the restaurant.

It's also interesting to think about it when you say bothered. I'm super american, born and raised and now living in the western Midwest. When the wait staff talk to me, I'm genuinely interested in hearing about them. I like meeting new people, even if those people are being paid to meet me. I legitimately enjoy learning about the lives of the people I meet, even briefly. Is that an American thing? Is that a bad thin…

I don't think it's a bad thing, but it is most strongly a Midwestern and Southeastern thing, and I'm from the South. Boston might give a different answer.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#164

https://xkcd.com/1311/ "The twenty-first century baby is destined to be rocked and cradled by electricty, warmed and coddled by electricity, perhaps fathered and mothered by electricity. Probably the only thing he will left to do unaidad will be to make love." Mrs. John Lane, The fortnightly 1905

She wasn't wrong at all though.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#165
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi has a small web thing too. But very few of those places are a community

kagi is explicitly not a community; it's a service you pay for. it's organized around a them/us distinction, and the users are the (atomized) outgroup, individually paying the ingroup for the service provided by that ingroup there is nothing wrong with that; it's a perfectly good way of organizing things. but it's important not to confuse it with the relationship between, for example, linux users, any of whom is free…

I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. Kagi is indeed a paid service and not a community. I was saying it has a way to find small web type sites, but lamenting the fact that part of what made those sites so useful in the past was a tiny community, is gone, and probably not coming back.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#166

its interesting that martin scorsese and chris rock both claim that they were essentially raised by television sets. i would say that i was co-parented by a television at least. i would say that it contributed to a blunted, unrealistic understanding of the real world and human relationships. my world view now is that children shouldnt watch television or movies and that they should be immersed in real human relations…

What's a growing kid to do when they start encountering situations outside the training distribution? At least with movies and novels they'll have a few synthetic data points instead of just nothing.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#169

As someone of the younger generation, I think "raised by the internet" these days is extremely toxic and non-productive not at all what the author here is talking about in this lovely post. When someone says "I was raised by the internet", I immediately think: social media addiction, 4chan and other online obscenities. But this is completely based on my own personal experience. My point here is not related to this lo…

In the long long ago before social media and amongst a certain type of people, the answer to “where are you from?” would be something like “the internet”, and the connotations were positive. It meant that you were from a small shitty place that nobody ever heard of, but you had transcended those humble origins to become a being of pure information, sharing thoughts, philosophy and maybe code with other similar beings…

I'm from the Internet :-)

I think the problem is that there is a huge number of people now whose only contact with the Internet has been social media. For them, that is where the Internet begins and where it ends. They'll use Reddit and not call it a "website" but an "app," because they have "installed" Reddit on their smartphones.

It doesn't help that most online forums have become subreddits, and that Google will show Reddit results over random forums. It makes sense because, understandably, Reddit can be assumed to be always safe, while a random forum might not be, but in the long run it it just gives Reddit an unfair advantage over smaller forums that could just as safe if not better than their subreddit equivalent, killing those forums in the process.

Now things are getting even worse as subreddits become Discord channels. That's why I root for things like Neocities and Tumblr to succeed.

Re: Being Raised by the Internet

#170

As someone of the younger generation, I think "raised by the internet" these days is extremely toxic and non-productive not at all what the author here is talking about in this lovely post. When someone says "I was raised by the internet", I immediately think: social media addiction, 4chan and other online obscenities. But this is completely based on my own personal experience. My point here is not related to this lo…

I hate that this comment is at the top of the page - that may be what you think but even if those exact sites, the chans, are the places a young person is spending their time that doesn't mean it's a problem necessarily.

I'm an adult and I spend about 80% of my time in front of screen and so do all of you.

I'm reminded of a Bible verse something about a log in your eye. That's what this is.

Post reply on HN