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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#711

Post by shaftoe »

cdogl wrote: post #699
fingerlocks wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradoxically, if you have an undergraduate degree but don’t have a high school degree, it can be even stronger signal than having both. “I actually dropped out of high school and went straight to college.”, sounds impressive. Of course you have to omit the part about taking a gap year and being a community college transfer student.

I can’t even imagine being asked about this part of my life in a career context. I’m 35 and for the better part of a decade I’ve just been asked about my previous roles. Seems like most organisations simply couldn’t care less where I’ve come from. Maybe it’s an Australian cultural thing.

No, this is pretty typical (I'm American).

The only time people who are more than a few years into their career are asked about degrees (and grades) in an interview is at very bureaucratic organizations or when being interviewed by someone themselves barely out of school who lacks awareness.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#712

Post by dredmorbius »

bluGill wrote: post #687
dredmorbius wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect smartphones affect this in two ways. One is that they put the Internet in everybody's hands, literally. The other, though, is that by virtue of the interface, both display (tiny) and input (shitty, to put it mildly), the effective IQ of those participating, regardless of whatever it was initially , is severely penalised. When I'm typing at a keyboard, I can look at the words I'm typing, or the source I'm ty…

I write much longer comments on my laptop and desktop computers than on my phone. The pains you mention make me write less even when I want to write more. Do not confuse this with “I have made this longer than usual because I have not time to make it shorter.” (Pascal, 1657, though others have said something similar and folklore attributes the idea to many more) - I do often revise long comments on my computer to be…

Dittos ;-)

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#713

Post by kshahkshah »

sirspacey wrote: post #417
wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

A somewhat natural conclusion is that mobile killed the thoughtful internet. Ouch.

Adding to this, the thought I've heard is that mobile/pad devices are great for consumption but terrible for contribution.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#714

Post by harpiaharpyja »

This really seems to give words to a feeling that I've had, which is that technology has been steadily getting worse - i.e. less useful and more user-hostile - over the past decade or so.

It's too bad, because there was some amazing product creativity going on in the past, and the future really did seem bright. But I feel not that we missed out on an imagined future, but that we are actually going backwards - thanks to enshittification and this perverse incentive structure.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#715

Post by phkahler »

wbobeirne wrote: post #349

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

>> The focus towards acquiring more mobile users meant stripping down and simplifying a product that previously demanded hundreds of words of essay writing, and answering hundreds of questions. The essay prompts became simpler, multiple choice asymmetric questions got deprioritized over reciprocal yes / no questions.

A voice interface might help. By default in the app of course, not a phone feature the user has to use to TTS into the app.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#716

Post by Workaccount2 »

opsimist wrote: post #668
gwd wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, just make something that has a barrier to entry that will filter out non-nerds. From what I can tell Ham radio is basically just a chatroom with an entrance exam, for instance. Anything done in a constructed language like Esperanto would be another filter. There's nothing stopping anyone from making a website duplicating the original OKCupid method. It's just that it requires someone willing to say "no" to the…

Can we use separate root DNS server as technical barrier to entry? Or NNTP protocol. Or client side SSL certificate, which must be won in a complex game. There are plenty of options to separate smart people from regular crowd. IMHO, a separate DNS server, which unlocks alternative Internet, is the easiest way to move away from regular people, because it's a bit complicated to switch DNS on a mobile device.

Someone will quickly monetize the idiots with a simple ad-ridden subscription based app that "Unlocks the Alternet!"

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#717

Post by opsimist »

gwd wrote: post #709
opsimist wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we use separate root DNS server as technical barrier to entry? Or NNTP protocol. Or client side SSL certificate, which must be won in a complex game. There are plenty of options to separate smart people from regular crowd. IMHO, a separate DNS server, which unlocks alternative Internet, is the easiest way to move away from regular people, because it's a bit complicated to switch DNS on a mobile device.

The thing is, that won't duplicate the original Internet, because the Internet exists. This new filtered internet won't contain all the smart tech people; it will contain all the smart tech people who wanted to join an alternate internet of smart tech people . Those are different sets of people.

Early Internet was place for people with similar background, which were small part of all smart people.

IMHO, we need a bait. Something, that will bring in smart people, and only smart people. HN detracts regular people, because it looks boring and doesn't help to continue discussions. This is good for HN, but bad for discussions (and spamers).

I'm thinking about mix of a court and wikipedia. Something, where we can play our game (who is right? who is the smarter?) on steroids, something where we can layout our arguments, facts, ideas, and then discuss them (flame all night long), until someone else, an arbiter, will read all that and declare a winner. IMHO, a topic and number of win/lost/unfinished discussions will be a good indication of smartiness and expertise in a domain.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#718

Post by red-iron-pine »

johntiger1 wrote: post #537
sneak wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big thing to consider is the fact that everyone got online all the time during the enshittification phase of OKC - it wasn't just OKC's userbase, but it was the median of the whole internet that got dumber and less sophisticated/more basic. When OKC was great, the random median many-hours-on-the-internet-every-day user was a lot better than it is today. Now that's just a median member of the general public, thanks…

The internet really took a turn for the worse once they let people like me on to it. /s

to paraphrase a director: "any club that would let me be in it is a club that I probably shouldn't be in"

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#719

Post by seabass-labrax »

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #714

This really seems to give words to a feeling that I've had, which is that technology has been steadily getting worse - i.e. less useful and more user-hostile - over the past decade or so. It's too bad, because there was some amazing product creativity going on in the past, and the future really did seem bright. But I feel not that we missed out on an imagined future, but that we are actually going backwards - thanks…

There's a hidden optimism even in this. If some technology (often open source and hobbyist-developed) is getting better despite a fraction of the funding of mainstream commercial technology products, think what we could do if somehow there was an enlightenment either of software users or developers to eliminate the 'Marl' state.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#720

Post by Fripplebubby »

crazygringo wrote: post #464
lr4444lr wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met my wife on OkCupid. The original format attracted a much smarter and more worldly crowd of women, to put it bluntly, than the other services. I exited the dating game before Tinder, but if OkCupid lost that quirky, artsy, college educated crowd in the chase to compete, that's a real shame.

Yup. It basically started as a dating site by Brooklyn grad students, for Brooklyn grad students. Grad students love writing essays. But if you want to expand, you have to face the fact that most people aren't grad students and don't love writing (or reading) essays. The trajectory to "just another dating app" was inevitable.

Look at us here on HN - we're discussing an essay we read about the decline of online dating. We're a self-selecting group too. Tonight's top story: a group of people who like reading essays decry that online dating no longer involves reading essays.

I was nodding my head very hard at this essay, but this has given me something to chew on.

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