Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People • Hacker News Board

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#181

Post by chippy » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

Kaveren wrote: post #20

sigttou wrote: post #10

Am here for over 2 years now, rarely upvote something, haven't submitted anything and this is just my 2nd comment... Pretty sure this rule holds for close to all kind of forums.

I don't know if you're willing to make a 3rd comment, but I'm trying to understand the lurker mindset from the perspective of someone who posts quite actively. Is is just that you don't care enough to reply, feel like your opinions are unpopular, don't feel like you have anything to say, or something else?

I lurk and post.

Sometimes I won't add a comment because of the chilling effect of a future employer or online mob finding it and reading something into my words. It's not worth being contrarian on the internet, or there's no space for devils advocate anymore. Most of the time I will comment and it's fine though.

Sometimes, unrelated, I will write a comment and then when my thoughts are formulated, I delete it because I have benefited from the conversation and there wouldn't be any additional benefit or use from me posting it.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#182

Post by Sargos » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

maldusiecle wrote: post #155

XCabbage wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given your point about the donald, you'll despair at https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/117289/86725 . Check out the history and the comments-moved-to-chat. Answerer suggests creating lots of social media accounts as a way to drive bad search results about you off the first page of Google, and lists a bunch of possible sites to sign up to, including Gab. The mention of Gab gets censored by a moderator, but not befo…

I'd encourage anyone convinced by this comment to do some research into the antisemitic and white supremacist comments which representatives of Gab have openly, publicly made.

I'm not sure that the contents of the censored site really matters to the point he's making.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#183

Post by gniv » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

cholmon wrote: post #176

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

This parallels civic/political engagement in real life. It's tough to get lurkers (like me) to speak up and shift the discussion when the emotional cost of doing so - arguing, being downvoted, getting defensive, being ridiculed - seems to make the effort simply not worthwhile for the individual. Not only on the web, but also in the office, at Thanksgiving dinner, at a cookout, etc.

> This parallels civic/political engagement in real life.

Indeed it does. And the "insane" label to the engaged is even more apt there.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#184

Post by isoskeles » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

> a lack of diversity in general -- discussions are driven by the worldview of a few

Are you saying that internet commenters have a monolith "worldview" that could be referred to as "the worldview of a few"? I'm not saying you're saying this, but that's what I read.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#185

Post by gniv » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

kbuchanan wrote: post #178

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

Another possibility is that diversity is simply represented by extremes; that individuals sitting on the polar sides of issues are shaping the conversation. In other words, it's the boring, moderate, stable, center who remains silent.

That's probably true, but it might be the end result of a vicious cycle: you don't engage, you don't sharpen the skills required for it, you fall into the easy role.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#186

Post by naravara » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #142

keithwhor wrote: post #4

Yes. Most of the content you watch on TV was written and acted by outliers. The products you use and consume were crafted, marketed and even distributed by outliers. First, when zoomed out, outliers in all possible tasks become more common — internet commenting is just a subset for silly folks like me. Secondly, the emergent human social fabric is built to recognize and amplify outspoken and / or talented outliers, v…

The difference between outlier actors and outlier Wikipedia editors are that outlier actors are better than everyone else at acting, but outlier Wikipedia editors need only be superhumanly obsessive. It used to be that the way in which you were an outlier had to be somewhat related to being good at the task you were competing for the honor of completing, but on social networks the only qualification is that you spend…

>but outlier Wikipedia editors need only be superhumanly obsessive.

Yup. The way the internet works is it privileges the perspectives and opinions of people who have an abundance of time to spend on the internet (either because their jobs are online or because they just have a lot of free time). So you wind up seeing the perspectives of bored office workers overrepresented and manual laborers underrepresented, you see a lot from students but not as much from working parents, etc.

This might be why online discourse is especially toxic around any subject that actually has to overlap with people out in the real world: The people least in touch with it are best positioned to dominate the conversation. And any system that relies on majoritarianism to do curation just amplifies these defects. One of the problems with this has been that it's actually impossible to get a real understanding of what motivates people who disagree with you. Even if you go looking, all you will ever find are the worst representatives of that worldview.

It's definitely true of subjects like politics, but it's also kind of true about things like dating or relationship advice or even restaurant reviews. Even job advice can be spotty. The conversation is always amplifying the voices of people who have strong, poorly thought out opinions. And in cases like politics people aren't even really interested in discussion. John Scalzi characterizes it as "gamified rhetoric" (https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1025372965754621953) where the whole rhetorical strategy is to frustrate and exhaust you by nitpicking everything you say. The goal isn't to clarify, synthesize, or understand so much as to "disqualify" you and your perspective from consideration.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#187

Post by inequalitysir » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

Then people talk about inequality. Even in free thing like Reddit only 1% people create value because they get high from it.

Inequality comes from nature, wether it's wealth or contribution on Reddit like sites.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#188

Post by Sargos » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #116

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through an almost identical process with English Wikipedia many years ago. Added to a sorely incomplete entry with carefully written and sourced info, to find it gone a few days later. Tried a few tiny updates in case new users were restricted somehow (this was never made obvious), so simply corrected some obvious grammar and spelling mistakes. Nearly all of those were backed out too. At which point there's on…

Nobody with stories such as yours seem to actually give a link to the article in question.

That's because we don't have the (as the OP puts it, insane) temperament to fight some battle for days on end for something we really don't care that much about. It takes effort to dig up some random edit from years ago that wasn't important enough to fight about then and certainly isn't worth the stress to fight about now. It's a lot easier to just bitch about this obviously real problem instead of having to make the same kind of effort we didn't even do the first time to somehow justify and defend our anecdote.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#189

Post by r0m4n0 » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #133

commoner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely cite the official documentation, and it's considered a reliable source for your article. However, it isn't considered an independent source, since it was written by a company with a vested interest in the topic. To prove that the file type is notable, you'll need at least different 2 sources that meet all 3 requirements: they must provide significant coverage of the topic, be reliable, and be indep…

So does this mean I could write a Wikipedia article about my grandmother if I can dig up articles on her from two different newspapers?

Interesting... and along the same lines as the parent comment, if two independent blogs had written about the file format in detail, I wonder if that’s enough.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#190

Post by wolco » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #185

kbuchanan wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility is that diversity is simply represented by extremes; that individuals sitting on the polar sides of issues are shaping the conversation. In other words, it's the boring, moderate, stable, center who remains silent.

That's probably true, but it might be the end result of a vicious cycle: you don't engage, you don't sharpen the skills required for it, you fall into the easy role.

But when you fall in the middle there is less of a need to comment