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30 minutes with a stranger

pudding.cool

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Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#91

Post by saberience »

qnpnp wrote: post #74
saberience wrote: post #68

I know it's supposed to be fancy and cool looking but this sort of website design where you have to scroll and then the whole screen animates really bothers me. It actually gives me a headache to try and follow it versus normal scrolling behaviour and text. As soon as I start scrolling down and I can't scroll normally and images and text start flying around I feel a disturbing feeling in my head and lose concentratio…

Sometimes this is indeed merely "fancy" and vacuous, but other times it is a meaningful and more engaging way to present the content. I feel like this is an example of the latter. Even if you're not a fan and would have done it differently, it seems a bit hard to understand what could be so bothersome that you have to close it in 10s...

Well, it literally makes me feel almost nauseous, i.e. I felt physically unwell from the images and text moving around the screen.

Note: this doesnt happen from a regular video, or normal scrolling text behaviour. Just sites like this that combine overriding the scroll bar with moving text and images.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#92

Post by frou_dh »

Miraltar wrote: post #60

I see a lot of people complaining about the scrolling thing but I don't get why, can someone explain?

Many HN users are always looking for an excuse to complain about the format or appearance of the linked sites. So much so that the following had to be added to the guidelines (but doesn't seem to be enforced that much):

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#93

Post by K0balt »

Aardwolf wrote: post #58
alex-moon wrote: post #39

I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com…

I just saw a class of kids on a train and they were interacting and yelling just like we did 30 years ago. I think there's hope, they're not all zombies staring at a phone yet

There’s still product-market fit frontiers waiting to be found out there! (/s)

It’s depressing how whenever I see people doing people stuff without a screen in their face I both smile internally and reflexively wonder how we could better infiltrate their demographic.

We have become the disease at this point, and now we work diligently to replace humans from any economic activity except consumption, so that the value extraction cycle can be optimized even as it collapses upon itself in a singularity of greed.

Soon, humans, the last obstacle standing between the uninterrupted flow of energy and resources into the event horizon of capital, will be eliminated from the process altogether with the removal of wages and eventually money itself through the wonders of automation.

Only then will the crystalline purity of technocapitalism truly shine: power as the new capital.

The power to convert resources and energy directly into the will and whim of the capital class, harnessing recursive automation in a macroscopic grey-goo scenario that sidesteps both workers and customers. An ever-tightening loop of resource concentration, building from a throbbing rhythm into a deafening turbine whine of conspicuous consumption. A hollow promise of “Progress” that leaves the 99 percent outside the gilded walls, merely insects at the pointy end of excavators.

I’m going to take tomorrow off and hug my grandchildren.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#94

Post by Ukv »

qcnguy wrote: post #80
koliber wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with 99.9% of what you wrote. It’s presented very clearly. We are social animals even if we don’t like to admit it. A while ago I would say I agree 100%, but more recently I learned that ads have value. Therefore i can’t agree with the final sentence in this post. It’s not easy to recognize but I’d like to try to share how I see it now. Any time you think or say one of these things, it means that someone did…

This is a common problem with "your job is bullshit" rhetoric. It says a lot more about the speaker than the people whose jobs they're criticizing. The most famous example is David Graeber, an academic who wrote a whole book on what he called "bullshit jobs". He claimed over half of all jobs were bullshit. But of the jobs he identified as such, most of them were actually valuable (receptionist, lawyers, programmers d…

> People are pretty rational. When you find a lot of people doing something that looks irrational and there isn't a clear link to ideology or coercion, then it probably makes sense given information you don't have.

It can be in people's/companies' rational self-interest to act in a way that is detrimental to society as a whole.

We can recognize harmful behaviour and legislate such that it's no longer profitable, but it can take a while to get to that point if there's a lack of awareness or powerful interests pushing against it.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#95

Post by immibis »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #54
rkagerer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this is due to social media sites and how the choice to interact that way (where the medium is geared to show off shallow facets of our achievements or amplify polarized opinions) is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together.

> is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together. The assumption that social-media applications are really social is robbing us of traditional ways of maintaining actual society.

There used to be social networks. You'd tell the computer who you knew in real life and you could talk to them through the computer.

Then it was social media. People could publish things and their friends would see what they did in a single feed. Like TV or radio media, it pushes info to you, about your friends.

Lastly it was just media. It was the same feed pushing stuff to you, but it isn't your friends any more. It's unknown micro-celebrities, ads, whatever keeps audiences hooked and makes profit for the company. Tiktok exemplifies this but they've all done it now.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#96

Post by energy123 »

alex-moon wrote: post #39

I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com…

> loneliness is a perceptual phenomenon that represents a paradoxical component; it is not mitigated through proximity to others

It might be better described as alienation. Then we can fit it into Hannah Arendt's theory of fascism being caused by alienation.

In the modern world, that alienation is accelerated by social media and cost of living for those without assets, who pay the cost of inflation without benefiting from asset price inflation.

Everything is more hostile, more sectarian, and you also can't even afford anything, and also you are a bad person because you are a creepy 45 year old white man with a small dick, and you better stop looking at me like that.

Is it any surprise?

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#98

Post by api »

immibis wrote: post #95
heresie-dabord wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together. The assumption that social-media applications are really social is robbing us of traditional ways of maintaining actual society.

There used to be social networks . You'd tell the computer who you knew in real life and you could talk to them through the computer. Then it was social media . People could publish things and their friends would see what they did in a single feed. Like TV or radio media, it pushes info to you, about your friends. Lastly it was just media. It was the same feed pushing stuff to you, but it isn't your friends any more.…

The next step will be removing humans from the loop entirely, a feed of personalized AI generated slop engineered to keep you staring at it.

YouTube and Facebook are almost turning into this organically. YouTube seems to be trying to fight it. Zuck seems to just not care anymore, generally. Eventually one will fully embrace it.

Are there even any social networks anymore? Oddly enough as weird and cringe as it is I think LinkedIn kind of qualifies. It’s business but that’s a form of social interaction that involves real people doing stuff.

I think most social interaction has moved onto messengers, Discord, Slack, etc.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#99

Post by koliber »

myrmidon wrote: post #81
koliber wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with 99.9% of what you wrote. It’s presented very clearly. We are social animals even if we don’t like to admit it. A while ago I would say I agree 100%, but more recently I learned that ads have value. Therefore i can’t agree with the final sentence in this post. It’s not easy to recognize but I’d like to try to share how I see it now. Any time you think or say one of these things, it means that someone did…

I do not disagree with you entirely, but I feel this almost borders on self-delusion. The sole purpose of ads is to (probabilistically) shift the targets spending behavior in favor of the one buying the ads, nothing more, nothing less. While ads can have utility from the victims point of view (contain relevant information), this is entirely incidental. If you want product updates or information, getting that from ded…

I disagree that this is the sole purpose of ads. I can see how people arrive at that opinion, but I feel it is narrow and incomplete. With a little restrospection and introspection, anyone can see examples in their own life where marketing had another purpose.

Marketing can take many forms. Many people narrowly define it as "spam emails" or "unsolicited phone calls." Those are also marketing, but there is so much more. Marketing first and foremost informs. It can inform you that the problem that you have has even has a ready solution. It can inform you about the name of the product that solves your problem. It can inform you about alternative products that also solve your problem. Or it can reinforce and expand your existing opinions and believes. What you call the sole purpose is only one of these broad purposes of advertising.

Remember the time you learned of a particular programming library that does the thing that you wanted to do? Without marketing, you would not have learned about it.

Have you ever gone on a trip to a new place? How did you decide how you will spend your time? It was either because you researched things online and found websites that told you about those things. Or you saw a brochure at your hotel. Or an ad at the airport.

Think about how you learned about your favorite web framework. It was likely through word-of-mouth advertising.

Why do you drink (coke / pepsi / fav. brand of tea / fav. brand of coffee)? What formed your opinion was some kind of marketing, either directly, or indirectly.

Many things we do and believes we hold are because of one form of marketing or another.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#100

Post by koliber »

narmiouh wrote: post #82
koliber wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with 99.9% of what you wrote. It’s presented very clearly. We are social animals even if we don’t like to admit it. A while ago I would say I agree 100%, but more recently I learned that ads have value. Therefore i can’t agree with the final sentence in this post. It’s not easy to recognize but I’d like to try to share how I see it now. Any time you think or say one of these things, it means that someone did…

The way ads are run these days is almost completely wrong! - Lies are ok - Thrusting your product in a users face, doesn't care if the user cares, Just because I like golfing, doesn't mean every new golf ball brand needs to hit me up all the time. - Product with Money wins, not necessarily the right product - Most people are oblivious to their psychological drivers, Ad makers have learnt to exploit those to drive sal…

A lot of marketing is done badly. These bad ways are the most glaring and people sometimes think that all marketing is like that.

In reality, there is a lot of marketing that is completely unnoticeable. Some people would not even consider those things marketing. That is marketing done well (or at least better).

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