I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything • Hacker News Board

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#221

Post by Torgo » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:10 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #153

Torgo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but feel that a large portion of the current "geek culture" is a collection of appropriations from a different group, selected for "authenticity", similar to criticisms of the wider hipster culture. I wore thick-rim glasses because 1. I didn't/couldn't care about fashion 2. my parents didn't have the money for nicer frames and 3. I actually could not see without glasses. So yeah, when I see thick rim gla…

> Because I got treated like dog shit by the exact same class of person who now dresses in a parody of my life What suggests to you that these are the same people? Like, if I wore lensless glasses for kicks, would that put me into the "high school bully" class? You're doing what TFA complains about: making assumptions about people & speaking ill of them because of how they dress. Why make assumptions? Why get mad bec…

Because it's not arbitrary. I didn't get punched in the guts when I was a kid because I was wearing tight pants driving a pennyfarthing. I was punched in the guts because I was a "nerd" which meant "not cool." So when someone copies the cartoon version of me to be "cool" I'm entitled to be annoyed. I was who I was, I wasn't trying to fit an "image." Unlike hipsters, which are a real thing, I didn't get the privilege of being made fun of for trying so desperately hard to look a certain way; I was made fun of for being who I really was.

It's "cool" to be a nerd now, only in the sense that you can generally like whatever you want and be accepted for it. And I think that's great. Wish it was like that when I was a kid. Hipsters tried to make being a "nerd" "cool" in their usual exclusionary fashion, by ironically appropriating what they thought was ugly and awkward. Unsurprisingly us ugly, awkward folks didn't like that.

EDIT: I have nothing against the guy in the article, to make that clear.

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#222

Post by bolder88 » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:12 PM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #206

bolder88 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make several generalisations about reddit users though. They're likely anti-government, anti-corporation, ant-advertising, anti-mainstream. They're likely left of centre politically. They're not busy - that's why they spend time commenting on Reddit. More likely unemployed / students / etc. They absolutely love to be outraged by something. By definition, they are the sort of person who would comment on Reddit…

These are not special reddit features, you can make generalizations about any group of people that isn't randomly chosen. That doesn't mean that "the group of people in your office building" or "the group of people in your neighborhood / town / state / country" or "the group of people that you bowl with" or "the group of people in your extended family" are "hiveminds" though. That is like accusing this piece of grani…

The problem with any collection of people though, is popular opinion is rewarded, unpopular opinion is shot down.

That means people tend to go with the crowd - hivemind.

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#223

Post by vacri » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:14 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #7

Hipster-hate strikes me as just another thinly veiled form of bullying, and it's interesting to see how readily internet nerds - the people who are disproportionately to have been bullied in the past - engage in it. Look! He's different! Let's make assumptions about his motivations and get him! It's also interesting to see how many times Reddit (and other communities) fly into a rage-fest because of lack of context,…

Hipsterism itself is thinly-veiled bullying - it's essentially "I'm cool and you're not". It's like before Apple became really popular, some users exhibited a 'smug field', where they considered themselves better people for using this elite product, being part of those 'in the know', and were just better than you. I have an aunt who was like that, who would mock me for not using Apple... yet she couldn't articulate why. It was just 'better', and she'd backed it.

Hipsterism is like that, putting on airs without having the substance, and that annoys people.

Above all other things, internet communities is what makes me cynical about humanity.

Pre-internet communities were far from unicorns and rainbows. Conformity was much more strongly required.

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#224

Post by gcanyon » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:20 PM UTC

adambard wrote: post #82

sharkweek wrote: post #49

The front page of reddit can be a cruel mistress My wife and I had one of our wedding pictures take the number one spot on /r/all one day -- There was some rather embarrassing text super-imposed on it that said "Oh you think married women still give BJs" (google Condescending Wife to find it). Despite some of the comments in the thread being pretty mean, my wife and I took it in stride, we're both internet people, we…

I shaved half of my hair and half of my beard so that I'd have an interesting driver's license, and posted the photos on Reddit. So I can't really complain about someone else appropriating my image. But it did get big in a way I didn't expect. My mother found out when she went to yahoo.com to log into her email and I was on the front page. My father-in-law was watching the local news and saw me giving an interview. T…

The eyebrows show a lack of commitment, my friend ;-)

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#225

Post by gcanyon » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:21 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #49

The front page of reddit can be a cruel mistress My wife and I had one of our wedding pictures take the number one spot on /r/all one day -- There was some rather embarrassing text super-imposed on it that said "Oh you think married women still give BJs" (google Condescending Wife to find it). Despite some of the comments in the thread being pretty mean, my wife and I took it in stride, we're both internet people, we…

I have to say, if you can make her laugh that hard, you will have a long and happy marriage.

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#226

Post by gadders » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:27 PM UTC

I think this is a pretty good summary of why hipsters are such an object of ridicule: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-...

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#227

Post by jes5199 » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:28 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #99

jlgreco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the obsession with t-shirts?

T-shirt obsession is really a universal techie thing. Everything from the latest hip startup to the most stodgy of conventions give out t-shirts, often sizes far too large for most people to wear.

I swore I wouldn't wear startup shirts anymore, but then a shirts.io guy handed me one at a conference and it was so absurdly meta (print your startup shirt using our cloud API!) that I want to wear it all the time

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#228

Post by bencollier49 » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:34 PM UTC

roc wrote: post #147

josefresco wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author summarizes the rage quite well: "The reaction, then, had nothing to do with hipsters. It was a hatred of people that need to stand out for standing-out's sake. That realization was at once positive and negative—people didn't hate me because I was a hipster, they hated me because I looked like I was nakedly desperate for attention, and had gone about that attention-grabbing by glomming on to marginalized trends…

Typically, celebrities acquire accolades for having done things of note, other than attention-seeking. [1] The ones that deliberately seek attention for its own sake get as much scorn as anyone else; they're essentially tabloid heels. And they exist for the same reason cable news is in such a state: There just isn't enough 'news' to justify 24x7 coverage, so programming must be invented that is, by definition, not th…

Pretty sure they already do that. Fictionalised by Martin Amis in Yellow Dog, if I remember correctly.

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#229

Post by moutarde » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:34 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #157

homosaur wrote: post #44

It seems like the hipster-as-a-pejorative thing started around the total collapse of the music industry in the mid-2000's and unfortunately was driven by indie scenesters who resented the influx of popularity when say, Modest Mouse had a song appear on say, One Tree Hill. The primary aesthetic religion of the indie scene from punk onward, no matter what the genre or style, was D.I.Y. so suburbanites who went to Hot T…

>Do I even need to mention the "geek girl" bullshit? The thing is, the 'geek girl' stereotype is something that almost never happens, but as far as I understand it the stereotypical hipster is not uncommon. It is possible to 'like' something the wrong way: namely where you do not actually like it. Hipster hate isn't about being different, it's about a perception of dishonest attention-seeking.

> Hipster hate isn't about being different, it's about a perception of dishonest attention-seeking.

Isn't this the same justification that's used to shame the "pseudo" geek girls?

Re: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

#230

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 19, 2013, 10:41 PM UTC

darylgab wrote: post #182

Yhippa wrote: post #140

> I often wear tight jeans, big plastic-frame glasses, shirts bought at thrift stores. ... and then later ... > And that my wardrobe was more a function of my budget than hipster assimilation. To me his style comes off as hipster assimilation. Am I missing something?

You can get jeans for $30, glasses for $50, and shirts for $10, at Costco. If this guy's concern is really about a budget, he is bad at budgeting.

[deleted]