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Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#61

Post by millennia »

kevinpet wrote: post #29
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #21

What a thoughtful essay. "But it uses a silly writing device to illustrate a point it could have just made plainly!" Whoa there, critical-thinking-by-the-numbers guy, maybe the article is also about fashion. As a child, I considered style choices a silly and inconsequential distraction from the beautiful truths of the universe: e^(ipi) + 1 doesn't care what I'm wearing, so neither should I, therefore it doesn't matte…

"everyone can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic." You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic. I certainly have no clue whether something is fashionable. I'd be hard pressed to tell you if two colors go together. I do no know if I dress more or less formally than my coworkers, or if my normal clothes present any sort of image. My style is not a conscious rejec…

You've just described how fashion works, and how most people experience it. People who don't care so much follow the lead of those who do, so that they don't stand out from the crowd.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#62

Post by corporalagumbo »

This isn't wholly bad writing, but what he's published is really just an early draft: ~version 0.3 in the writing process, the point where you've meandered your way through your early thoughts, lost direction and momentum, then squished all the loose ends and odd thoughts into a limp pseudo-conclusion, because you generally don't have anything clear to say in your mind the first time round. At this point I would be stepping back, taking some time to think about and deconstruct what and why I was exactly interested in in the first place, looking for the seeds of what really interests me. Then I'd strip it down to its fundamentals, generate a potential argument, do some more research, and start a new draft cycle. Usually I'm only getting to something I would consider publishing around 3.0 or 4.0. Or I've realised that the ideas didn't pan out and I've shelved the project - another very important skill for writers! Anyway putting in this extra effort is hard work but worth it, because otherwise your thoughts always come out like this: pretty, suggestive, but directionless. Basically people need to learn to be patient and not rush their ideas - a hard but necessary lesson in our times.

(I usually edit most of my comments here multiple times: written and posted hastily, then subjected to extended consideration.)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#63

Post by alanctgardner2 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #18
argonaut wrote: post #13

>People who know they’re being watched change their behaviour. In a world awash in surveillance devices, hoodies are an element of fashion driven by an architectural condition. They are a response to the constant presence of cameras overhead. People who don’t want to be watched wear them. People who want to be the kind of people who don’t want to be watched wear them. People who want to look like the kind of people w…

It also struck me as written by someone on the East Coast, which appears to be the case (the writer lives in Toronto). Here in Seattle nobody would spend so many words writing about the hoodie. People wear them. Business professionals wear them. Sometimes even CEOs. It's not a symbol, it's just clothing.

I have no idea what geographic location has to do with writing quality; I live near Toronto, I thought it was overwrought and pointless too. You're kind of reinforcing my negative stereotypes of West Coast people.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#64

Post by millennia »

vidarh wrote: post #39
michael_miller wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most purposes, it is de-anonymizing. There might be several famous people who share your name, but is there more than one person with your name who is currently an undergrad at Caltech studying CS? In most cases, a name combined with a little bit of context will identify an individual.

The difference, for me at least, is effort. There's a vast difference from if people can do a search for your name, and get page up and page down of stuff from every forum you might post on, vs. if people need to track down your nym's. In my case, my HN id is trivially easy to connect to my full name, but unless you go to the effort, these comments won't show up. My Reddit comments are still easy to connect to my ful…

At some point of course, people are going to start using data analysis of all your posts and even writing style to build up an entire history of you from all these public posts, this will happen, indeed it's already happening precisely because it is so valuable. So your curation of your online life is really the illusion of control, in fact the culture of google, like that of Facebook, leads me to believe these things will appear at the top of a google search as you fear at some point in your lifetime.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#65

Post by [deleted] »

argonaut wrote: post #13

>People who know they’re being watched change their behaviour. In a world awash in surveillance devices, hoodies are an element of fashion driven by an architectural condition. They are a response to the constant presence of cameras overhead. People who don’t want to be watched wear them. People who want to be the kind of people who don’t want to be watched wear them. People who want to look like the kind of people w…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#66

Post by graue »

argonaut wrote: post #30
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #21

What a thoughtful essay. "But it uses a silly writing device to illustrate a point it could have just made plainly!" Whoa there, critical-thinking-by-the-numbers guy, maybe the article is also about fashion. As a child, I considered style choices a silly and inconsequential distraction from the beautiful truths of the universe: e^(ipi) + 1 doesn't care what I'm wearing, so neither should I, therefore it doesn't matte…

The problem is that, in addition to what I've already said, the essay itself does not do a good job at making a point. Sure, it gesticulates at some points. Sure, you could assume the author is trying to say X, but I think that is one's own projection of the essay's vague intent. In fact, we have two comments here which potentially illustrate what I mean. You argue that the article is about fashion. Someone else argu…

I view an essay like this as a conversation starter. It's asking questions, not answering them. It's stimulating thought, not trying to end it by giving us The Real Truth™.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#67

Post by gnaritas »

Karunamon wrote: post #56
chanux wrote: post #49

Off topic but I've heard that Zuck has a cupboard full of same hoodie (or t-shirt) so he doesn't have to worry about what he is going to wear in the morning.

That's a pretty common trope - supposedly Steve Jobs was the same way. I wonder how true it is.

Probably true; lots of people do this, myself included. I don't want to think about what I wear every day. I find a set of clothes I like, a shirt, shorts, or pants, and buy a bunch of them so I wear essentially the same outfit every day with the only variation being the color as I buy that thing in many colors if possible.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#68

Post by graue »

icebraining wrote: post #44
philwelch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an easy solution to that, personally: I don't share my deepest darkest secrets on social networking sites. I can't imagine anything I've posted to Facebook being a problem if it was all printed in tomorrow's New York Times. Maybe other people should take the same approach.

Let's hope other people don't post them for you. At least when email was the main social network, the effects of indiscreet friends and acquaintances didn't usually appear on Google.

This. You can choose not to have a profile on Facebook, but you can't choose to live in a world where Facebook doesn't exist.

I was an FB refuser for the longest time but would still get friends telling me about photos they saw of me on there. Those photos might be 100% public and I would have no control.

We're all affected, unless we literally have zero friends, friends of friends, colleagues or family members who use Facebook — good luck with that.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#69

Post by sopooneo »

vidarh wrote: post #42
petercooper wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic. I couldn't blame anyone for this stereotype but I don't think it's true. I suspect quite a lot of people here are into or have a nose for fashion (though not necessarily in the haute couture/catwalk sense).

If nothing else, anyone who visits e.g. Silicon Valley and hangs out with geeks there, will quickly start picking out the "geek uniform". I find it funny when fellow geeks thinks they're clueless about fashion, and still manage to dress in very specific ways that makes them recognisable as a group. That is fashion, even if they're not following mainstream fashion. The first time I visited the Bay Area, I stood out li…

For my own clarification, do you mean that, in London, if a developer comes into the office in a dress shirt they stand out as overly formal? Or do you mean if they come in with only a shirt (ie no tie and jacket) they stand out as under-dressed?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

#70

Post by philwelch »

icebraining wrote: post #44
philwelch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an easy solution to that, personally: I don't share my deepest darkest secrets on social networking sites. I can't imagine anything I've posted to Facebook being a problem if it was all printed in tomorrow's New York Times. Maybe other people should take the same approach.

Let's hope other people don't post them for you. At least when email was the main social network, the effects of indiscreet friends and acquaintances didn't usually appear on Google.

Maybe it's to my advantage that I'm not in any kind of closet, but I also don't share my deepest darkest secrets with people I don't trust implicitly.
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