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Elite social media

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Re: Elite social media

#21

Post by dasil003 »

ben_jones wrote: post #13
kolbe wrote: post #9

Hacker News is the only elite organization I like hanging out at!! All things aside, HN always seems to be so serious in its discussion about content, and I never get the opportunity to say how much I appreciate this place.

Have you seen many of the discussions around tools like Javascript, Golang, Django, Docker? Quite often they devolve into tiny opinionated nuances and you have to pull your head out of your laptop and ask yourself "what year is it??"

What does the year have to do with it? Given any geeky subject there are going to be strong opinions, always has been that way and always will be, we just couldn't see the artifacts of it as easily before the internet.

Not all the discussion on HN will be useful, but it's the highest signal to noise I've found in 30 years of participating in internet fora, at least for a group of this size.

Re: Elite social media

#22

Post by koja86 »

ben_jones wrote: post #13
kolbe wrote: post #9

Hacker News is the only elite organization I like hanging out at!! All things aside, HN always seems to be so serious in its discussion about content, and I never get the opportunity to say how much I appreciate this place.

Have you seen many of the discussions around tools like Javascript, Golang, Django, Docker? Quite often they devolve into tiny opinionated nuances and you have to pull your head out of your laptop and ask yourself "what year is it??"

All things accounted I still find HN the best discussion venue. I force myself to avoid reading discussions I suspect might not be interesting and apart from well known controversial topics signal to noise ration is usually high.

Genuinely curious question - do you know about place where these controversial technologies would be discussed in a "better" way?

Re: Elite social media

#23

Post by [deleted] »

RichardHeart wrote: post #6

Articles subheadline: "On the internet, no one can see your Rolex" Perhaps they're on a different internet where pictures and video aren't popular. I met some pretty cool people at the last ASMallWorld event I went to in Gstaad. Like any social event, some people will be interesting, some will be pompous, some both. You need to sort the wheat from the chaff on your own. I'd much rather associate with great minds behi…

[deleted]

Re: Elite social media

#24

Post by closeparen »

tjalfi wrote: post #14
aphextron wrote: post #3

Reminds me of the 'I Am Rich' app launched back in '08. It was just an app that says 'I am Rich' and cost $999.99 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich ) Moral of the story: rich people will always want to show off that they are rich.

The book the Miliionaire Next Door[0] is full of counterexamples. ( http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.htm... ) Edited to add the following paragraph. The child post accurately points out that these families are not in the 1%.

The Millionaire Next Door isn't about the elite, it's about responsible late-career middle class families who have followed entirely standard middle class practices like going to college, saving for their children's college funds, owning their primary residences, and saving ~15% for retirement every year.

A family at median household income ($51k) that mortgaged a median-priced home ($180k) and saved 15% for retirement starting from age 25 will have $856k in a 401k and the better part of their house's value in home equity around age ~57.

If they don't at least have the 401k balance, they're going to be in serious trouble before before they're dead (unless Social Security is still around).

The Millionaire Next Door describes the minimum behavior required to avoid falling out of the middle class over a lifetime.

It's about the kind of people who might buy tickets to the symphony once or twice in a lifetime. Not the kind of people who attend its fundraiser galas. 40%-ers, not 1%-ers.

Re: Elite social media

#25

Post by Geekette »

I belong to some of the services listed, including ASW and BOAW and haven't logged on in forever because they're boring. Despite all the hype, these services are ultimately no different from other social clubs and most people have sufficient avenues for socializing with and keeping in touch with people on diverse bases (interest/activity, work, school, family, etc).

They proclaim exclusivity but are often trying to grow their user base (including stealth advertising via article mentions/placement) and monetize. When they focus on the latter is when they realize that their service isn't that useful because their members clearly aren't interested in paying. Exclusivity or not, a network is useless without X critical mass of users and Y minimum activity level.

Re: Elite social media

#26

Post by ThomPete »

dingaling wrote: post #20

It's not quite 'elite' but The Well is a fairly exclusive and well-connected social network, which has been running online for over 30 years now: https://www.well.com/join.html I dabbled in it a couple of decades ago when there was a special-offer for a month's membership, it was certainly highbrow compared to Usenet at the time. $150 is a fair chunk of cash for a year's membership, but does keep the rabble out whils…

Yeah I used to be a member there too, was an amazing community. Jaron Lanier used to hang out there plus a bunch of other cool people.

It had a very interesting commenting system which was non threaded. Instead you referenced the number of the post you were responding to.

It gave some very interesting dynamics in the conversation, something I have never experienced since and I have often thought about doing some exploration around the non-threaded discussion forum.

Re: Elite social media

#27

Post by ThomPete »

kolbe wrote: post #9

Hacker News is the only elite organization I like hanging out at!! All things aside, HN always seems to be so serious in its discussion about content, and I never get the opportunity to say how much I appreciate this place.

I agree. In fact I realized how good a community HN is when I did a Ask HN a while back. I even ended up writing an essay about it:

https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-4...

Compared to the responses at Reddit, Quora and other places the diversity of HN is astounding.

Re: Elite social media

#28

Post by krapp »

kolbe wrote: post #9

Hacker News is the only elite organization I like hanging out at!! All things aside, HN always seems to be so serious in its discussion about content, and I never get the opportunity to say how much I appreciate this place.

Hacker News can be elitist, but I think it's more niche than elite. No site with an open membership policy can really be considered elite.

Re: Elite social media

#29

Post by closeparen »

aswanson wrote: post #19
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moral of the story: rich people will always want to show off that they are rich. Selection bias in your sample. The richest person I've met used to drive a small twenty year old car. Could afford at least a few Bugattis or so.

Exactly. Rich people tend to have rich people habits and are more concerned with putting capital to work for them rather than impressing people with expensive purchases. That's more of a 'new' money, financially illiterate habit. There's a reason pro athletes and lottery winners go broke more often than not.

Someone is out there owning those old-money waterfront mansions and $2m Central Park condos, vacationing at private clubs outsiders will rarely hear about, flying first-class around the world, writing six-figure checks at each $charity_gala_of_the_month, etc.

The mansions and condos tend to be private and secluded. The vacations and galas won't necessarily appear on Instagram. But the truly rich are absolutely out their living large.

I'd argue they are less driven by a need to hoard more money (they already have more than they know what to do with), and more driven by a need to shape world affairs in business and politics while fulfilling noblesse oblige social expectations like philanthropy for the poor, the arts, etc.

They might drive around town in a Toyota, but their family name is in big bold letters on a building somewhere.

Re: Elite social media

#30

Post by SamReidHughes »

ThomPete wrote: post #26
dingaling wrote: post #20

It's not quite 'elite' but The Well is a fairly exclusive and well-connected social network, which has been running online for over 30 years now: https://www.well.com/join.html I dabbled in it a couple of decades ago when there was a special-offer for a month's membership, it was certainly highbrow compared to Usenet at the time. $150 is a fair chunk of cash for a year's membership, but does keep the rabble out whils…

Yeah I used to be a member there too, was an amazing community. Jaron Lanier used to hang out there plus a bunch of other cool people. It had a very interesting commenting system which was non threaded. Instead you referenced the number of the post you were responding to. It gave some very interesting dynamics in the conversation, something I have never experienced since and I have often thought about doing some expl…

Non-threaded as in there being exactly one global stream of comments? Or were there separate threads, each of which was a linear stream within which comments reference each other by number? 4chan and such have the latter.
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