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

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

#191

Post by naravara »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #169
throwawaymath wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is as much of a difference as you're saying. I agree most actors we see on TV and movies are outliers (even within the total population of actors). I don't agree they are consequently better than most other people at acting. I think they're marginally better, somewhat practiced, but really "into it" as a career. Likewise, I think you're underestimating how "good" someone is at a thing if they do i…

regarding actors, I actually disagree. Sometimes I will watch a movie made with second rate actors and they tend to be so much worse than first rate actors at acting, that often those movies are unwatchable.

>regarding actors, I actually disagree. Sometimes I will watch a movie made with second rate actors and they tend to be so much worse than first rate actors at acting, that often those movies are unwatchable.

Part of this is also just the options that first-rate actors open up for you as a writer or director that less capable ones cannot. If you think of the performer's talent as kind of a box that you can fit your narrative and emotional depth in, you just wouldn't try to ship something unless you have a box big enough to hold it.

If you have someone like Anthony Hopkins or Ian McKellan on hand you can give them long, baroque speeches and they will nail it. With a less capable actor you would be forced to keep it simpler because most of that stuff might sound corny as hell in less capable hands.

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

#192

Post by rossdavidh »

While there is an interesting and relevant point in this article, I feel compelled to point out another possibility: you only comment if you have a POV or opinion not yet represented. If I'm seeing somebody else make the point I thought of making, I upvote it and move on, only spending the time to comment when I don't see it already there.

It would be odd if, after viewing/reading the exact same content, we all had unique opinions of what we just saw or read. It would be pretty bizarre, and probably imply that our communication system wasn't working. It's good to see more than one POV, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ever have agreement either, and if I see someone has already made the same point, why should I type it in?

Admission: I didn't read absolutely every comment here before typing this; just the top dozen or so. :)

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

#193

Post by chillacy »

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…

You have to be obsessive but you also have to produce content that is useful to the community at some level, otherwise other superhumanly obsessive people will reject your edits and IP ban you.

On reddit you can submit posts all day but you only see the light if others upvote you.

In short I think you have to be both obsessive and skilled, which is something like the real world.

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

#194

Post by clairity »

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.

> "It's tough to get lurkers (like me) to speak up and shift the discussion when the emotional cost of doing so..."

the 98% works in that case too: there are many people who might benefit from your comments but don't interact in any way, so you sometimes may deem the costs worth it (like now).

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

#195

Post by teddyh »

Sargos wrote: post #188
teddyh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> It takes effort to dig up some random edit from years ago

Yes, but a simple link to which article it was would be enough. What also might be useful is a user name and/or a rough estimate of what the time period was, but without even an article name, there is nothing anybody can do about fixing these things.

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

#196

Post by cableshaft »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #140
teddyh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have a story like this, but I did the work (that was backed out) over a decade ago. The domain was not especially political (something related to history of music notation). It sticks with you because when you are already an expert in an area, and spend days contributing high quality content with good references only to have it vaporized without comment/reason, it is deeply demoralizing and creates long standing re…

Yep. I made an attempt to get into it over a decade ago, and it didn't help that I was heavy in the Flash game/animation scene and felt that was the best way to contribute. I say it didn't help, because so few of those pass the ridiculously restrictive 'Notability Test' of Wikipedia.

The animation could have 50 million views and be known across the internet, but because no 'reputable news organization' wrote about it, i.e. no CNN or BBC article or whatever, they would routinely be brought up for deletion and quickly killed.

Which always seemed strange to me, that this new fangled technology that took advantage of the power of the Internet wouldn't find anything on the Internet itself worthy of gracing its virtual pages. Especially since, as Wikipedia itself states, "Wikipedia is not Paper", and doesn't have a physical limit to what it can talk about or include.

It always annoyed me that these things wouldn't get passed the notability filter, but the most obscure Star Trek episode would have a dedicated page with a full synopsis and details and Easter Eggs, despite the fact that there couldn't have been a news article about that specific episode anywhere out there and the author had to be drawing from the episode... I mean, primary source, itself in order to get that information, which is something that gets squashed elsewhere (No primary sources!)

The hypocrisy just got to me big time. And then when I'd fix spelling or grammar issues on other random pages and see every single one of those get reverted without comment, it was clear that doing anything on Wikipedia was just a big waste of my fucking time. While I still read it to get a really rough handle on topics sometimes, I will never 'contribute' to it again, including every time that giant "We Desperately Need Your Financial Support" message from Jimmy Wales comes up on the site once a year.

I'd love for there to be an alternative where the admins aren't such deletionist zealots, but alternatives just don't exist.

I should also state that I had such a negative experience trying to contribute to Wikipedia that it still riles me up thinking about it to this day. And there's not a whole lot out there that riles me up.

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

#197

Post by imjustsaying »

pelagic_sky wrote: post #172
mr_spothawk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this argument does resonate. i started getting downvoted a lot. since then, i've become much more of a lurker and have remained logged-out. to me it's obvious, and necessarily the case, that the conversation happening is not representative of my views because i'm not sharing them. it's not worth it to me to contribute to the conversation, and get embroiled in an accidental dispute. my views are my own, and i don't ne…

I've gone from being an admin and owner of popular forums back in the early 2000's to just a lurker who 98% of the time will write a response but just delete it before it's posted because I don't need or want the hassle of an internet argument. I'm proud of even posting this. Maybe this is my one post for 2019. :)

I also have 100,000 posts scattered about forums from the early 2000's, but very few (less than 1,000) since after 2010. The trend towards downvote groupthink is not an insignificant part of the reason I've dropped content generation.

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

#198

Post by clairity »

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…

also, the 0.002% don't represent all of the outlier positions, and even less so, all of the interesting ones.

some people (1) have a compulsion to speak, (2) don't feel as much cost from (online) admonishment, and (3) have enough wherewithal to experiment with ideas and presentational approaches. (i'm sure there are other qualities, but these are some).

on another tangent, social cohesion requires that a certain number of people incur the social costs of calling out bad behavior. that seemingly tends to be power law too, since the number of people who don't mind the social costs are quite low. even many law enforcement officers (whose very job it is) care a lot about what other people think and won't always act against self interests when necessary.

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

#199

Post by airstrike »

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 related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse.

In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.

In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said we only ever tell young people about the good parts of marriage. We hardly ever explain to them that it has its ups and downs, that it isn't "broken" if suddenly the lust isn't there like it was in the beginning. She presented the argument in a much more cogent manner, but in any case, if you believe her to be right, then this seems like a specific (important!) example of this broader trend.

There are countless others out there who go on to live perfectly happy lives with perhaps much more useful advice to us, and who would arguably be a better influence overall – you just don't hear about them.

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

#200

Post by schoen »

airstrike wrote: post #199
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 related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defence_of_Poetry ("poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world").
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