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Dead Internet Theory
671–680 of 735 posts
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe take a look at how the Netherlands solved this problem. Hint: not with "AI" drivers. By the way, I don't bike but I walk about everywhere lately. So to hyperbolize as it's the custom on the internets, i live in constant fear not of cars, but of super holier than you eco cyclists running me over. (Yea, I'm not in NL.)
Why specifically be worried about cyclists in this weird and unusual mental state? Do holier than thou cyclists have more momentum or something? (I’ve never met one). Anyway, a fix that should work fine for both of you is to take a lane from cars and devote it to cyclists. Nobody actually wants to bike where people walk, some places just have bad infrastructure.
> Do holier than thou cyclists have more momentum or something?
They think they're martyrs or something. What am I then if i take a backpack and do my shopping on foot? I'm even more eco because I didn't spend manufacturing resources on a bike, and even more of a martyr because walking is slow.
> to take a lane from cars and devote it to cyclists. Nobody actually wants to bike where people walk
Yep, see my NL reference :)
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hot take, but a character that demands zero-space between the letters at the end and the beginning of 2 words - that ISN'T a hyphenated compound - is NOT nice typography. I don't care how prevalent it is, or once was.
That sounds like a strongly held opinion rather than a fact. I like em-dashes and will continue to use them.
That'll show em'.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#674Earlier quoted context omitted.
As they say, the demand for racism far outstrips the supply. It's hard to spend all day outraged if you rely on reality to supply enough fodder.
This is not the right thing to take away from this. This isn't about one group of people wanting to be angry. It's about creating engagement (for corporations) and creating division in general (for entities intent on harming liberal societies). In fact, your comment is part of the problem. You are one of the people who want to be outraged. In your case, outraged at people who think racism is a problem. So you attack…
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Re: Dead Internet Theory
#675Most of this is caused by incentives: YouTube and others pay for clicks/views, so obviously you can maximize this by producing lots of mediocre content. LinkedIn is a place to sell, either a service/product to companies or yourself to a future employer. Again, the incentive is to produce more content for less effort. Even HN has the incentive of promoting people's startups. Is it possible to create a social network (…
I’m actually happy with the way things are going. Content Mills, fake testimonials, and clandestine marketing aren’t anything new at all. But now it’s so painfully obvious that the only reason reasonable response is complete distrust of all these medium. We might actually just start taking what our neighbors more seriously than fake internet people.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#676Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most people have experienced relatives of theirs falling down these rabbit holes. They didn't seek out a reason to be angry; they watched one or two episodes of these shows because they were on Fox, or because a friend sent it, or because they saw it recommended on Facebook. Then they became angry, which made them go back because now it became a moral imperative to learn more about how the government is makin…
> "They didn't seek out a reason to be angry" A lot of people really do, and it predates any sort of media too. When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
> When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
But again in this situation the goal is not to be angry.
This sort of behaviour emerges as a consequence of unhealthy group dynamics (and to a lesser extent, plain boredom). By gossiping, a person expresses understanding of, and reinforces, their in-group’s values. This maintains their position in the in-group. By embellishing, the person attempts to actually increase their status within the group by being the holder of some “secret truth” which they feel makes them important, and therefore more essential, and therefore more secure in their position. The goal is not anger. The goal is security.
The emotion of anger is a high-intensity fear. So what you are perceiving as “seeking out a reason to be angry” is more a hypervigilant scanning for threats. Those threats may be to the dominance of the person’s in-group among wider society (Prohibition is a well-studied historical example), or the threats may be to the individual’s standing within the in-group.
In the latter case, the threat is frequently some forbidden internal desire, and so the would-be transgressor externalises that desire onto some out-group and then attacks them as a proxy for their own self-denial. But most often it is simply the threat of being wrong, and the subsequent perceived loss of safety, that leads people to feel angry, and then to double down. And in the world we live in today, that doubling down is more often than not rewarded with upvotes and algorithmic amplification.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#677Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing wrong with being a Luddite these days. It’s the only way to not have your mind assaulted.
I feel like you people are intentionally misconstruing what "Luddite" means. It doesn't mean "avoids specific new tech." It means "avoiding ALL new tech because new things are bad." A luddite would refuse the covid vaccine. They'd refuse improved trains. They'd refuse EVs. etc. This is because ludditism is the blanket opposition to technological improvements.
> I feel like you people are intentionally misconstruing what "Luddite" means.
That’s a very unfair accusation to throw at someone off the cuff. Anyway, what you wrote is not what a Luddite is at all, especially not the anti-vaccine accusation. I don’t think you’re being deliberately deceptive here, I think you just don’t know what a Luddite is (was).
For starters: They were not anti-science/medicine/all technology. They did not have “blanket opposition to all technological improvement.” You’re expressing a common and simplistic misunderstanding of the movement and likely conflating it with (an also flawed understanding of) the Amish.
They were, at their core, a response against industrialization that didn’t account for the human cost. This was at the start of the 19th century. They wanted better working conditions and more thoughtful consideration as industrialization took place. They were not anti-technology and certainly not anti-vaccine.
The technology they were talking about was mostly related to automation in factories which, coupled with anti-collective bargaining initiatives, led to further dehumanization of the workforce as well as all sorts novel and horrific workplace accidents for adults and children alike. Their call for “common sense laws” and “guardrails” are echoed today with how many of us talk about AI/LLM’s.
Great comic on this: https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the former type is all but obliterated now. Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it. While it stinks that it is controlled by one big company, it's quite nice that its communities are invite-only by default and largely moderated by…
> Discord is the 9,000lb gorilla of this form of social media, and it's actually quietly one of the largest social platforms on the internet. There's clearly a desire for these kinds of spaces, and Discord seems to be filling it. The "former type" had to do with online socializing with people you know IRL. I have never seen anything on Discord that matches this description.
I'm sorry but what?! 'Socializing with people you know IRL' is almost exclusively what I've seen Discord used for, and almost solely what I personally use it for. There are vastly more Discord servers set up among IRL friend groups (or among classmates, as another popular use case) than there are Discord servers for fandoms of people who have never met IRL.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#679Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "They didn't seek out a reason to be angry" A lot of people really do, and it predates any sort of media too. When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about.
> When they don't have outrage media they form gossip networks so they can tell each other embellished stories about mundane matters to be outraged and scandalized about. But again in this situation the goal is not to be angry. This sort of behaviour emerges as a consequence of unhealthy group dynamics (and to a lesser extent, plain boredom). By gossiping, a person expresses understanding of, and reinforces, their in…
I disagree. In these gossip circles they brush off anything that doesn't make them upset, eager to get to the outrageously stuff. They really do seek to be upset. It's a pattern of behavior which old people in particular commonly fall into, even in absence of commercialized media dynamics.
Re: Dead Internet Theory
#680Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Oxford style guide page 18 https://www.ox.ac.uk/public-affairs/style-guide > m-dash (—) > Do not use; use an n-dash instead. > n-dash (–) > Use in a pair in place of round brackets or commas, surrounded by spaces. Remember I'm specifically speaking about british english.
HMRC style guide: "Avoid the shorter en dash as they are treated differently by different screen readers" [0]. But I see what you mean. There used to be a distinction between a shorter dash that is used for numerical ranges, or for things named after multiple people, and a longer dash used to connect independent clauses in a sentence [1]. I am shocked to hear that this distinction is being eroded. [0] https://design.…
That guy's style guide seems to conflict with the Cambridge editorial services guidelines - though that is for books rather than papers:
> Spaced en rules (or ‘en dashes’) must be used for parenthetical dashes. Hyphens or em rules (‘em dashes’) will not be accepted for either UK or US style books. En rules (–) are longer than hyphens (-) but shorter than em rules (—).
Section 2.1, "Editorial services style guide for academic books" https://www.cambridge.org/authorhub/resources/publishing-gui...