[HN Gopher] I am an object of internet ridicule, ask me anything...
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I am an object of internet ridicule, ask me anything (2013)
Author : paublyrne
Score : 232 points
Date : 2021-06-10 06:47 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theawl.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theawl.com)
| nrp wrote:
| " After I posted, the message board thread's climate changed
| immediately. Not unlike real life, people were complimentary and
| kind. Many people deleted their mean comments -- one person was
| so embarrassed for threatening to smash my typewriter that he
| apologized to me, and then went through and started trying to
| make other haters apologize."
|
| This is deeply familiar to me and is amazing to see in action. I
| regularly reply to people on Reddit and HN who are crapping on a
| product I've made and witness both the person's position on the
| product and the thread's overall tone change almost instantly.
| For whatever reason, it works less well on Twitter.
| agumonkey wrote:
| maybe why in person life is radically different, people don't
| get the same level of raw unfiltered toxic reaction
|
| that said I really wonder how come our brain can be so
| destructively egotistical when behind a screen (or a car
| windshield)
| parafactual wrote:
| I think it works less well on Twitter because of the
| constrained length of the replies. With, say, a few paragraphs,
| you can explain yourself well enough to garner sympathy. One
| lone sentence is just something else to dunk on.
| freedomben wrote:
| It's truly amazing to me (in a bad way) how humans are on the
| internet. They don't seem to realize that other people are real
| people. There's something about a reply that snaps them out of
| it. I've seen it happen many times myself as well.
| munificent wrote:
| _> They don 't seem to realize that other people are real
| people._
|
| It is hypothesized that there is a rough upper limit to the
| number of people our brains can naturally conceive of:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
|
| Of course, with effort, we can be mindful that in fact we are
| surrounded by millions of strangers, but it's not an
| instinctual emotional reaction. When in environment like
| sitting at home staring at a screen, it's easy to forget to
| do that cognitive work.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Something similar sometimes happens in heavy road traffic too
| I think.
| inigojonesguy wrote:
| By writing this I'll contradict what I'm going to say, but,
| generally, not applying to this thread, I observed that many
| times people spend their precious time to write a reply
| instead of using it to better understand TFA.
| [deleted]
| pvaldes wrote:
| Anybody in this situation needs to hear Weezer's song "Pork and
| Beans".
| notRobot wrote:
| (2013)
|
| One of my favourite articles on the internet
| walrus01 wrote:
| Typewriter in a public park? How about a backpack with an old
| school rotary desk phone, an analog to SIP ATA that supports
| pulse dialing, a battery pack, and an opengear LTE network
| bridge/router? Set up a folding table somewhere and make and
| receive phone calls. Or pull the whole rig out on the countertop
| at a Starbucks and have an important business call.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/174796261408?hash=item28b2ab4820:g:...
| debo_ wrote:
| Years ago, I met a performer at an event who sat there and ground
| a key for you. The key wasn't for a lock, it was a unique
| artifact they made just for you. It took about 10-15 mins, and
| they just sat and spoke with you while they ground the key.
|
| It was a soothing experience, and I kept that key around for a
| very long time.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| tl;dr: people jumped to conclusions from a photo presenting
| someone out of context.
| upofadown wrote:
| Social media is primarily a way for people to express their
| emotions. Hate is an emotion. This stuff is not any more
| complicated than that.
| nicaragua wrote:
| I agree. Social media sucks. Zuckerberg, you here? Facebook
| sucks. Twitter boss? Twitter sucks. Haters hating on each other
| while people make money. Sort of how prisons work as well, just
| a different context. Prisons for the mind. Keep people locked
| in. Make money. Haters gonna hate.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Title says 2013. Wasn't it only in recent years that people were
| brining typewriters to Starbucks. Maybe it was never considered
| cool, but it wasn't treated like this person. Funny how time
| changes things.
|
| It's like the "nerds" that were treated so badly in the 80s for
| being into Starwars and dressing up in their favorite characters.
| Now Starwars is cool and dressing up garnishes respect based on
| how elaborate and how much work went into it.
|
| I guess none of the above is surprising. It happens with
| everything. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and other people that are
| later respected as pioneers.
| OJFord wrote:
| > dressing up garnishes respect based on how elaborate and how
| much work went into it.
|
| That sounds very much like a 'within the community' sort of
| thing.
|
| Isn't it just that the internet's made it easier for groups
| with (varying degrees, of course, of) niche interests to
| congregate?
| playpause wrote:
| I think it's a bit of both. The internet has also made the
| niche groups more visible, probably making them grow in
| confidence/appeal/numbers. So people don't need to worry as
| much about being labelled weird by association. Being
| labelled too basic/boring is also probably more of a concern
| than before, so the social pressures are aligning more and
| more with taking part in niche interests, or at least not
| being seen as scornful of them. I don't have any numbers to
| back this up but that's how it seems to me. Compared to a few
| years ago anyway.
| jwdunne wrote:
| I remember reading this back in the day. I remember being shocked
| and dismayed at the way he was treated.
|
| I mean the idea is a bit insane but the guy needed to eat and
| he's a writer. I still think the idea of using a typewriter to
| become a writing busker was pretty clever in the end.
|
| I wonder how he's doing today.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Happy to see that he seems to be doing fine: writing a book,
| doing podcasts, and still available with his typewriter for
| personalized stories.
|
| https://cdhermelin.com/
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| A lot of internet communication platforms are just The Two
| Minutes Hate, only they run 24/7.
| dang wrote:
| Past threads:
|
| _I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412708 - Sept 2013 (378
| comments)
|
| _I Am an Object of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997902 - Aug 2015 (3
| comments)
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I remember seeing either the original Reddit post or a reference
| to it and thinking it was a really neat idea. I collect
| typewriters and had a slim portable Royal Hermes that would have
| been perfect for that kind of job, but I wasn't (and still am
| not) brave enough about my writing to share it in that way.
| Bodell wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand why people would violently react to a
| picture of a typewriter. If these same people saw a young kind
| with an original game boy would the urge be to punch them. Nor do
| I see how it's ironic. The only real irony being that people who
| are striving for online attention are enraged when perceiving
| someone else as trying to get attention. It's seems anytime I
| hear or read the word "ironic" it's used in some novel way and is
| impossible to get a read on what it means in any given context.
|
| "Hipster", "ironic" and "pretentious" seem all to be very
| slippery words that are really just a judgements of how "normal"
| or not something is. It smacks of assimilate or die. Which are
| typically a projection of how little that person values their own
| life and how easily shaken they are by someone not make if their
| same choices. It's no real wonder to me that a hyper-competitive
| culture would bring about this sort of behavior though.
| MarcScott wrote:
| I once had a blog post go a little bit viral on HN, Reddit,
| Twitter etc, years ago.
|
| At first I was really worried about the negative comments, and
| tried to justify myself or make corrections. After 24 hours I was
| so numbed to it all, that I began to find the negative comments
| amusing.
|
| One Reddit commenter called me a "Incompetent fuckbucket" and I
| enjoyed that phrase so much that I ended up screen capping it and
| using it in a couple of public talks.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| That's the most original insult I've seen in a while, drew a
| couple of chuckles...
| sjclemmy wrote:
| That chimes with my experience. Back in 2009 my (then) 9 year
| old son made a few stop frame lego movies and we posted them on
| YouTube. Some of the comments were really mean. I remember
| being surprised by the response but found it quite amusing. We
| still joke about our favourite comment: "You're an
| embarrassment to the stop motion community"
| wccrawford wrote:
| That's a great reminder that the internet is full of cowardly
| bullies. They don't actually want to understand things, they just
| want to tear other people down to make themselves feel better.
| rchaud wrote:
| A positive outcome of this was that these people dialed down
| their rage when the person in the photo commented. Before that
| however, they were still perfectly willing to expend a lot of
| angry energy trying to eviscerate the person they had created
| in their minds.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| Hmm... I like how you center on "don't want to understand
| things". It's a LOT harder to hate something you understand,
| especially when it comes to people.
|
| I'd quibble on the final part though: they do it not to make
| themselves feel better (that is simply not possible), but to
| justify feeling bad about themselves and not wanting to admit
| it. It's quite narcissistic.
| helpfulclippy wrote:
| Fucking bullies. I'm gonna go find someone who looks like a
| bully and beat him up!
| zero_deg_kevin wrote:
| You could always disrupt bullying when you see it. A lot of
| people would be grateful and you're less likely to go to
| jail.
| david422 wrote:
| I think it's also just a product of the hivemind and people not
| thinking. Not realizing that there is a real person in that
| picture. Causes normal people to be asses without thinking. As
| evidenced by the fact that the tone of the conversation changed
| when he responded.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I don't know if there's a named maxim for this phenomenon, but
| something I learned on Twitter is that everything you say can be
| interpreted in bad faith.
|
| This can be done on purpose, or it just happens because there's
| not enough shared context to connect how you read something to
| what the other person was trying to say.
|
| (Also, while a picture still says 1000 words, I've never had less
| faith in the veracity of those words.)
|
| I've tried to be earnest on social media, for reasons like this.
| You see a photo of a guy with a typewriter, try to paint it in a
| good light for yourself.
|
| I'm not sure how I would have reacted, but I had a short phase in
| college where I dredged up an old typewriter from a friend's
| garage and used it to type love letters to girls. So maybe I
| could have related a bit better!
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| It seems like an extension of the actor-observer bias /
| fundamental attribution error.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmet...
| munificent wrote:
| One of the best changes I made during the pandemic for my
| mental health was realizing that _I_ was starting to fall into
| that mental trap too and deliberately deciding not too.
|
| I'm not always great at it, but since then, I have started to
| try to interpret most things I read online as charitably as
| possible, especially when I choose to respond to someone.
|
| As if by magic, once I did, I started seeing that the world was
| a more positive place than I had realized. So much of my
| perception of negativity was something _I_ was creating in the
| process of interpretation. It wasn 't in the data itself.
|
| Giving people more of the benefit of the doubt does set me up
| to occasionally be suckered. I accept that as a worthwhile
| price to pay to give kindness towards the majority of other
| people who are acting in good faith.
|
| Sort of like the value of money, society is what we believe it
| to be.
| chias wrote:
| "Men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the
| purpose of the things themselves." -- Bill S. (1599)
| dalbasal wrote:
| >>everything you say can be interpreted in bad faith.
|
| You're only saying that to absolve yourself from understanding
| that people's criticism of whatever stupid or evil thing you're
| into is valid.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Well done, I think.
|
| Now I'm reminded of Poe's Law...
| dalbasal wrote:
| No, no. That was serious. ;)
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Not only CAN it be interpreted in bad faith, but users are
| ENCOURAGED to do so, because that makes people angry, and
| people stay on the site and keep clicking longer if they're
| angry.
| frankosaurus wrote:
| Intentional misunderstanding is a time-honored technique for
| getting people to talk. If the target is an engineer, it's a
| form of nerd sniping. https://xkcd.com/356/
|
| PUA "gurus" sometimes suggest this as a flirting technique.
| vadansky wrote:
| "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most
| honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang
| him."
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If I saw what the picture purports to show, a hipster in the park
| typing on a typewriter, I might smirk or roll my eyes or
| something if I did anything at all. However, if you want
| attention commenting on a post on reddit, or anywhere, you can't
| just say "There's a chance I'd subtly roll my eyes at this" - you
| have to go more extreme. In the same way that BuzzFeed described
| the picture as one that would make you "Black out with rage"
| you've got to go from "10% chance of smirk" to "I will smash this
| hipster-doofus's typewriter."
|
| A lot of stuff in internet comments is stuff that would
| absolutely never happen in real life. If you saw a hipster on a
| typewriter and a crowd of people bullying him in real life, it
| would be absolutely clear which behavior was worse. Plus, none of
| those people in real life would actually do any of the extreme
| things they write about in internet comments.
|
| The whole thing makes me imagine a forum of the future. Maybe
| it's more like a physical forum or park in virtual reality.
| There's a story at the center and radiating out from it are
| avatars that have been left behind by commenters. The avatars
| would be run by an AI that has been briefed on what point the
| commenter wanted to make. Other users, using the forum live,
| could wander through the park and interact with the deposited
| avatars or one another. Bringing some elements of reality to the
| forum experience - i.e. making it look like you are in a public
| space and interacting with people, may also bring in some
| elements of civility that we enjoy in reality and not online.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| IE the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory (https://www.penny-
| arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19). The bitter irony is that
| originally, mods and admins on forums did what they could to
| contain this kind of behavior. Now it's actively encouraged
| because rage means engagement, and engagement means more ad
| revenue.
| naravara wrote:
| Honestly, with Twitter and Facebook actually being more
| noxious than anonymous forums like Reddit or HN, I'm not so
| sure that anonymity is the driver.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I agree with you and I'd take it a step further: I think
| there's considerable evidence that anonymity is not the
| driver.
|
| Being out of range of immediate physical violence is
| probably a big factor, though. We have the "fighting words"
| doctrine for good reason.
| alex_young wrote:
| I remember this. This article convinced me that the word
| "Hipster" is just another random insult directed at the generic
| other. A completely useless descriptor.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Language evolves based on usage and what speakers need to
| describe. The word wouldn't have evolved if there wasn't a use
| for it. Maybe you mean to say that you dislike how people use
| the word?
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I never liked the word. It isn't even clever.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It's not random.
|
| Someone in stereotypical metalhead attire is unlikely to be
| called a hipster for it, neither is someone dressed in punk
| fashion, nor a goth or a jock, etc... well, they won't by a
| anyone with half a clue as to what the identifying features of
| these subcultures are.
|
| The negativity comes from people assuming that hipsters think
| they're cool, but (according to their critics) they're not...
| it's kind of a rejection of a holier-than-thou attitude, but in
| fact the critic is engaging in the same snobbery by picking on
| the hipsters (or whatever subculture they're targeting).
|
| The insult slingers are trying to act as a fashion police, as
| if there's something special about them that let's them see
| what's "really cool" that hipsters are blind to. But every
| sense of fashion is just as arbitrary and ridiculous as any
| other, and no one's so cool that they can't be looked down on
| and sneered at by someone else.
| strken wrote:
| It's not exactly because they "think they're cool", it's
| because hipsters reject cheap mass-market consumer goods and
| embrace expensive one-off artsy goods, while _simultaneously_
| adopting poverty aesthetics like wearing old second hand
| clothes and recycling everything. They 're seen, perhaps
| unfairly, as rich gentrifiers.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I don't see the contradiction between rejecting those mass-
| market items and wearing second-hand clothes. Everyone has
| different priorities of where to spend their money.
|
| It could even be a matter of principles. Anything produced
| at scale, especially clothing, exploits cheap labor. That's
| something these people may want to avoid. It's also bad for
| the environment to buy cheaper items that will likely fail
| quickly, and if old clothes are still usable then why waste
| resources on new ones?
|
| The holier-than-thou attitude that the other commenter
| mentioned is still what I believe is the reason for hipster
| hate. And it's not always unwarranted. If someone becomes a
| hipster because they want to feel superior, then that
| certainly does make them annoying.
| cosmicglee wrote:
| Well said. It's the perceived hypocrisy in hipsterdom that
| is seemingly so eyeroll-worthy, but to roll one's eyes, one
| needs to pointedly ignore the fact that we're all
| hypocrites about something.
|
| I blame this on the deification of schadenfreude in popular
| culture. The advent of reality TV, and the prurient
| interest in other people's pain exemplified by the
| afternoon talk shows that predated it, gives us all not
| only the opportunity, but the permission and encouragement
| to feel like we're superior to others because of some
| dehumanizing glimpse into an uncontextualized portion of
| their private lives.
|
| What a different world we might have if society cultivated
| a sense of humility, a 'hey, none of us are perfect and
| we're all out here struggling and I wish us all the best'
| mentality.
|
| But then, fostering divisions and appealing to our baser,
| more ignoble instincts is more beneficial, both in terms of
| profit and also 'divide and conquer' social control.
| FerretFred wrote:
| Wow, that was a great read! Thanks for sharing!
| locallost wrote:
| I guess it's a label that will be applied if you're doing
| something you want, just for the hell of it, without making it
| look cool. the people that are super conscious about themselves
| and how they present themselves cannot accept it.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| What a great read.
|
| I wish more people were aware of the value of anonymity.
|
| Exposing yourself to the world comes with its pros and cons.
|
| Attaining celebrity status may make you rich, but at what cost?
|
| Maybe many will turn into paying fans, what about the stalkers,
| the bullies? What about the mentally disturbed with a knife?
| silicon2401 wrote:
| This is why I prize anonymity over almost anything else and why
| I'm very grateful that the tech community tends to value and
| teach privacy as well. My dream in life is to be filthy rich
| and disappear my identity to live in isolation somewhere.
| Filthy rich is a stretch, but thankfully it shouldn't be too
| hard to live frugally and retire somewhere isolated and remote.
| moreira wrote:
| This provides a bit of insight into what life as a celebrity
| might be like. And the more famous, the worse it would be.
| Imagine never knowing if you're safe going anywhere. You could
| be fine, or you could come across a stalker fan or a disturbed
| person with a knife.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Attaining celebrity status may make you rich, but at what
| cost?
|
| "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous:
| 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it".
| -- Bill Murray
| ghoward wrote:
| I agree with you about the value of anonymity.
|
| For me, though, I use my real name everywhere because I don't
| want to be able to hide behind an anonymous identity, and the
| reason for that is that it's easier to be like the jerks that
| were mean to this writer when you're anonymous.
|
| Not being anonymous means that I think more carefully about
| what I am going to say and try, in every instance, to be nice,
| even if I disagree.
| ta2162 wrote:
| Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared. Most of the
| people who would have fallen in one of the aforementioned groups
| a decade ago are now non-binary, gender fluid, etc. They found a
| way to tie their identity to their humanity so now it's bigoted
| to scoff and laugh at them.
|
| Have any social psychologists studied this phenomenon? It's a
| great defense mechanism that seems to be working quite well.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's no longer as socially-acceptable to bully strangers for
| being "weirdos". Is that it?
|
| > _Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared._
|
| Have you not noticed what's replaced these? We have hundreds of
| subcultures: weebs, dank memers, bronies, demoscene,
| lifehackers, outside, Bitcoin, competitive Pokemon... What
| you're seeing is a change in who you're bullying, not a change
| in reality.
| ta2162 wrote:
| >It's no longer as socially-acceptable to bully strangers for
| being "weirdos". Is that it?
|
| Not at all. People/children still bully each other, always
| have, always will. Now they can easily bully each other
| through social media, relentlessly.
|
| >Have you not noticed what's replaced these? We have hundreds
| of subcultures: weebs, dank memers, bronies, demoscene,
| lifehackers, outside, Bitcoin, competitive Pokemon... What
| you're seeing is a change in who you're bullying, not a
| change in reality.
|
| You may have missed the "etc." part of my original post.
| Weebs, bronies, Pokemon/gamers, etc. were all alive and well
| during the scene/emo/etc. times, they weren't "replaced",
| they live concurrently.
|
| Something else is going on, but it's definitely not "bullying
| is no longer socially-acceptable". It hasn't been "socially-
| acceptable" for decades at this point.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Something else is going on,_
|
| Large groups have broken into smaller groups because people
| are less required to be a part of a large group to be
| accepted.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _Something else is going on_
|
| Scenes require supporting media. In the age of print and
| broadcast, access to media was comparably limited.
| Consequently, the number of scenes was comparably limited.
| The "something" that happened was the general public
| learning how the internet could be used to easily publish
| media for as many scenes as people could think of. It's now
| feasible for individuals to globally publish media
| regardless of how many other people are interested in it.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I've changed my mind in favour of this explanation. I
| knew "the internet" had something to do with it, but I
| thought it was about socialisation; the cultural
| artefacts explanation neatly explains internet memes,
| too, so it's probably more right.
| bob_roberts wrote:
| I don't know if the connection is that direct or causal, but
| I'm NB and went through a punk/goth phase in high school, and
| part of the appeal was that it's an "acceptable" way to be
| gender non-conforming. (At least within that particular
| subculture.)
|
| Having a name for something can be powerful.
| filoleg wrote:
| >Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared.
|
| I don't know where you have been for over the past 5 years, but
| not only did some of those not disappear, they had a massive
| resurgence (in the US/Canada, at least).
|
| "Emo rap" has been all the hotness over the past 5 years, just
| look at artists like Lil Uzi Vert or Frank Ocean. Skrillex, one
| of the most successful producers and artists of our time, went
| back to his original emo rock band and recorded a single with
| them to a wide applause. Goth-related discussions have seen
| continuous increase in numbers on social media.
|
| >Most of the people who would have fallen in one of the
| aforementioned groups a decade ago are now non-binary, gender
| fluid, etc.
|
| I don't see how those things are mutually exclusive. Plenty of
| non-binary/genderfluid/etc. people would count themselves as a
| part of those groups, just like cis/straight people would.
|
| I will give it to you with scene and hipsters disappearing, but
| "hipster" as a term has been used almost always with negative
| connotations (as others in this thread have pointed out already
| the specifics of why people scoffed at "hipsters" as used the
| term as an insult). Even at the peak of popularity of that
| term, I don't recall almost anyone using it to refer to
| themselves, though this point is entirely subjective and
| anecdotal on my end.
|
| The point you were trying to make would have been indeed
| interesting to look into, if the reality matched a bit closer
| with what you were claiming was happening to those
| emo/goth/etc. groups.
| handrous wrote:
| The topic's getting you downvoted, but this perspective
| suddenly makes a lot of what my wife's observed among middle-
| schoolers in the last 3-4 years make a _ton_ more sense.
| [deleted]
| bingidingi wrote:
| There are plenty of new ones all the time; egirls, fuckboys,
| vsco girls, streamers, influencers, incels, you can also be
| "basic", "based", etc... it's possible you're not seeing it as
| much because you're getting older and these are adolescent
| tribes
| sambroner wrote:
| I remember seeing this in person when walking around the highline
| around this time. I was with my SO and we thought it was cute,
| hipster-y, and fun.
|
| What's interesting to me is that we had some of the same
| sentiments that were expressed so negatively on reddit, but in a
| very positive light? Crazy how the anonymity and lack of context
| can easily influence folks to be so negative.
| lewsid wrote:
| My friend's roommate dated him and I used to hang out at their
| place a lot in Brooklyn. Super nice guy! It was in the years
| after this happened, and he was still typing stories for
| strangers. I respected that then, and I continue to now.
| mkaic wrote:
| This article was excellent! I feel sorry that the author had to
| go through all that. It's made me realize and regret some of the
| times I personally have negatively snap-judged a person on the
| Interwebz based on just one context-devoid picture with too many
| upvotes.
|
| Tribalism is a heck of a drug. Easy to get involved in, satisfies
| our primal instincts, and is frequently horribly destructive. I
| hope one day I can have enough discipline to not criticize every
| stranger on Twitter.
| moreira wrote:
| I find it best to try never to say anything negative online,
| and certainly not attack anyone. I have my own opinions, and I
| can share them with those close to me. There's nothing to be
| gained from saying anything negative in public, no matter how
| you feel.
| rchaud wrote:
| Well-written article. I believe I actually saw that image a long
| time ago.
|
| This kind of context-free Reddit post often leads to cascading
| levels of verbal abuse. All that these kinds of post do, and all
| it is intended to do, is to incite a hail of abusive comments
| with a lot of self-righteous sanctimony thrown in.
|
| This was the raison d'etre of now-banned subs like
| r/fatpeoplehate. People had their photos posted without their
| permission, for no other reason than for posters to abuse them
| for all their perceived personality failings (lack of willpower,
| laziness, entitlement) --- all on the basis of one photo, of a
| person they've never met.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Ohboyohboyohboy, it seems I dodged bullet with an idea that I had
| 5-6 years ago that was very similar to this guy's: My idea was to
| sit beside a sign that said something along the lines of
| "Celebrate yourself Through Poetry" in the morning in downtown
| Chicago in front of a large office building. People going in
| would commission a poem in the morning, I would finish it and
| write it in calligraphy on a nice piece of paper by 4pm for a
| fixed cost, say $20. They would either buy or not buy the poem
| after I show it to them. A poor person's Francois Villon, if you
| will.
|
| I've never mentioned this to anyone other than my wife (who used
| to work in that building) and she laughed her head off. Now that
| I write it, I feel like I _might_ do this in the future. What do
| you think, would you buy such a thing for $20-$30 a piece? OTOH,
| I 've gotta admit: I think most of the customers would be young
| women, so that would make me seem _more_ of an object of ridicule
| / creep than this guy. Still ...
|
| EDIT: OK, now that I've read my entry I feel like I have to admit
| something that makes the above proposition more insane or
| interesting, depending on your POV: I cannot write poetry, like
| _not at all_! My proposed strategy was to lean in to my NLP
| skills and get software help to find interesting ideas, rhymes,
| etc. Sort of auto poem creation with human tweaking.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| You might get some takers if you did it in a college town, but
| as you probably know poetry is not exactly the hottest selling
| genre of literature... and finding people that read at all is
| hard enough.
|
| You'd probably have a much easier time offering to write dirty
| jokes.. or juggling.
|
| What people want on the streets is a spectacle... the louder
| and more garish the better.
| Jun8 wrote:
| I hear you; however, one rarely gets a literary piece, let
| alone poetry, created specifically for them. _To His Coy
| Mistress_ may sound formulaic and drab, but what if you are
| Mary Villiers, who Marvell was tutoring at the time and
| probably addressed in the poem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Mary_Villiers,_Duchess_of_Buck...)? You probably would view
| it differently.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Give it a try, and please report back. It'll be interesting
| to hear what your experience is.
| cosmicglee wrote:
| This is a sadly accurate comment. Please pass the hemlock.
| [deleted]
| filoleg wrote:
| I would totally be willing to pay $20-30 for this, and not in a
| sense of "object of ridicule". And I would be willing to pay
| for this on more than one occasion, even.
|
| The service you would be providing has been, in a way, so
| normalized over the past 5+ years in the digital form (people
| doing poems/paintings/various other art-related things on
| commission on public streams; entire successful companies built
| around a similar premise, just look at Cameo), that your
| proposition starts sounding more and more "normal" as the time
| goes.
|
| And I don't care if the poetry is not good, as you claim you
| have no skills. Authenticity is what matters here. And you are
| being absolutely self-aware about your skills, which only adds
| to authenticity. Especially given the more
| minimalistic/industrial/lo-fi (not related to "lo-fi hiphop"
| type of stuff) direction that popular art has been moving in
| for the past few years.
|
| Plus, I am willing to bet that after you do it for a month,
| even if you did it only for a few days each week, your poetry
| writing skill would shoot up massively. You use software to
| assist you? Even cooler, as long as there is still a
| significant human element in the process, and it ain't just
| some publicly available software doing 100% of the work for you
| (because at this point, I could use it myself; there is a
| reason people pay for concerts instead of listening to
| perfectly recorded and mastered music replayed on speakers at
| concert venues).
|
| I will say this, though. Given it is a physical version of that
| successful digital approach i've mentioned, you got additional
| pros and cons. The pro is that the physical element makes it
| feel more "real", thus people are willing to pay more and more
| often. The con is that your success and viability, at least at
| first, will very very heavily depend on the location of choice
| where you are thinking of doing that.
| mechanicum wrote:
| There's a guy on London's South Bank calls himself the "poetry
| busker". Types them up on a vintage Remington, wears a top hat.
| Been there for years.
|
| Right location and nobody will blink.
| david422 wrote:
| > They would either buy or not buy the poem
|
| Why not just allow them to set their price?
| [deleted]
| scoot wrote:
| Or... you could read the linked article? It seems that you've
| completely missed what was being ridiculed, and why.
| Jun8 wrote:
| I did (I thought my subtle reference of dodging the bullet to
| a comment to the piece his ex wrote was clever ;-), I was
| just going on tangentially about an idea similar to the one
| that he had, which, in retrospect, is more ridicule-worthy.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I wouldn't pay for it because I don't like most modern poetry
| or poets and calligraphy's not worth much to me unless the
| words it captures are worth it. Maybe if you did calligraphy
| requests.
|
| However one should be adventurous, especially where there's so
| little to lose. The subject of the OP is easy to ridicule
| because he looks conventionally nerdy/dweeby and has a flipping
| typewriter at a park. Just dress normally and be friendly and
| you'll just be a street artist doing calligraphy instead of
| caricatures, nothing to laugh at
| MrLeap wrote:
| I'm making a game around the pretense that people would enjoy
| watching someone do this online. It's cool that people are into
| it in person.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1537490/Tentacle_Typer/
| cko wrote:
| I'm glad I saw this. While reading and feeling bad for him, I
| wondered what I would have done if I saw that reddit pic without
| context, and then read the mob of comments.
|
| Perhaps I would have upvoted some mean comments, or laughed at
| them, or maybe shared the link with a friend, hoping to invite
| more ridicule. I wish I could say I'd be some of the people
| defending it, or even better, someone who doesn't click on such
| posts.
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