[HN Gopher] Urban Dictionary on Hacker News
___________________________________________________________________
Urban Dictionary on Hacker News
Author : 5faulker
Score : 290 points
Date : 2021-08-21 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.urbandictionary.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.urbandictionary.com)
| asien wrote:
| I find funny because it's accurate !
|
| 99% of entrepreneur fail , that's literally why it's hard and why
| it's highly respected !
|
| Remember when Tesla almost went Bankrupt ? It's very like because
| it happens almost three times... and only now after 25+ years
| Tesla is making a profit by selling its cars without sorcery
| finances...
|
| Being an entrepreneur is hard , I love the Tesla example because
| even if Elon Musk had the vision and a superior engineering
| delivery , the company was technically a commercial failure for
| more than a decade.
|
| Being a better than average engineer ( probably a LOT of HN uses
| ) is unfortunately not enough to become a sucessfull entrepreneur
| !
| bob229 wrote:
| Tesla was founded 18 years ago...
| mypastself wrote:
| 2021 version would have to include:
|
| Upvote anything with Rust, Go, SQLite, or Haskell in the title;
| use the words "orthogonal" and "Pareto" as much as possible.
|
| Hate SPAs, Docker, crypto, and someone using the word "crypto"
| for cryptocurrency.
| jstx1 wrote:
| "Pareto" is so 2010.
| enlyth wrote:
| Javascript bad, peak UI was Windows 95, mention screen readers
| in every post about interfaces
| krapp wrote:
| Hacker News = everything that came after my adolescence is
| terrible and everyone needs to know that.
|
| Twitter: A rabid pack of shrieking, pitchfork wielding neo-
| Marxist SJWs ruining people's lives with impunity.
|
| Facebook: their boomer Neo-Nazi anti-vaxxer parents captured
| by CIA mind-control and agitprop.
|
| Youtube: nothing but low-effort monetized clickbait and also
| leftist propaganda, because Google.
|
| Instagram: also nothing but low-effort monetized clickbait,
| but also porn.
|
| Tiktok: CCP propaganda but also for some reason we really
| like it, at least until the novelty wears off.
|
| Reddit: just mouth-breathing imbeciles posting cat pictures
| and memes. Good thing we're better than them, and point out
| that fact to ourselves at every opportunity.
|
| The entire rest of the web: shit, except for 4chan.
|
| Movies: shit.
|
| TV: shit.
|
| Music: shit.
|
| TFA: never bothered reading it, but I'll assume this rant
| about cultural marxism is relevant.
|
| Books: Do they even still _make_ physical books? I thought
| paper went obsolete in 2019.
|
| Science: lies, damn lies and statistics.
|
| Media: lies, damn lies and more lies.
|
| Other people: hell.
|
| Emoji: BLIND RAGE
|
| Technology: What is with all these buttons and blinking
| lights, what does any of this even _do?_ Why would anyone
| need anything more than a Lisp REPL in a bare terminal?
|
| Code: JAVASCRIPT DELENDA EST. Everything but Rust and Lisp
| are shit and PHP literally gives you brain cancer.
|
| Society: Ted Kaczynski was right about everything. Burn it
| all down and return to monke.
|
| Your stupid project:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
|
| Hacker News itself: used to be good, but now it's turning
| into Reddit. Who let these people in here? I bet half of them
| have never even _written_ a compiler.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| Oof. A lot of truth here.
|
| At least we are self-aware and can have a laugh at
| ourselves.
| eplanit wrote:
| Krapp fully comprehends this world we're in.
| asien wrote:
| Or the the history of how oracle created a world wide
| conspiracy to impose Java has a standard , and if they hadn't
| done so Haskell/ Clojure / ( Anything that's not OOP) would
| be running everything from Operating System to Back End.
|
| That damn Oracle Conspiracy, and OOP !
| olingern wrote:
| Don't forget the ever important monthly note taking thread
| / post where every top comment starts with Roam/Obsidian,
| followed by org mode, and always ends with a single note
| text file.
| dennis_moore wrote:
| > Upvote anything with Rust, Go, SQLite, or Haskell in the
| title; use the words "orthogonal" and "Pareto" as much as
| possible.
|
| Don't forget Julia!
| goodpoint wrote:
| Hate docker? It's overhyped like Rust and Go in here.
| elipsey wrote:
| We're not _all_ unsuccessful entrepreneurs, I for one am an
| unemployed programmer!
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| I like hacker news for tech news and career subjects, but indie
| hackers is where the founders seem to hang out. If I need to talk
| to somebody about bootstrapping, ih is great. A lot fewer
| technical people though, lots of site builders and no code
| setups. Hn users can write a bst in their sleep but ih users can
| make a landing and validate an idea while building a mailing list
| in their sleep
| black_13 wrote:
| An accurate definition
| adventured wrote:
| > Hey Mr. Cuban, did you see that post on Hacker News?
|
| It's amusing that's the supporting point line, because whoever
| wrote the entry is placing their self in the category they're
| trying to peg HN with. I was in business with Mark across a bunch
| of years, he has always had an interest in news, news aggregation
| sites, information acquisition and delivery in general. He was
| familiar with Hacker News, including understanding its
| association with Y Combinator, and he always liked it when
| BlogMaverick posts hit the front page. He understood its
| relevance in the tech ecosystem.
|
| For years after Mark set up his venture capital business, he (his
| team) used Y Combinator's various public docs as the foundation
| for the investment agreements.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| The first thing I thought was Mark Cuban was the wrong guy to use
| as an example.
|
| (Always felt Cuban got lucky during the early days of the gold
| rush. I feel that way about most financially successful people
| though?)
|
| I think that definition missed a few HN personality types.
|
| It forgot unsuccessful, lonely, egotistical, disenfranchised,
| shut-in's---like myself.
| preommr wrote:
| The first thing I thought was Mark Cuban was the perfect guy to
| use as an example.
|
| It made me trigger even more for the exact reason you
| mentioned.
| blastonico wrote:
| Perfectly described, now I'll search for WallStreetBets, that I
| visit very frequently.
| EMRZ wrote:
| One thing i noticed is that most of the conversation here feels
| alien to me.
|
| I think this is because most of the people here are living in
| California and they seem to have a very particular world view not
| always compatible or even undertandable for anyone from any other
| place.
|
| I used to enjoy this website in like, 2015/16 i think, now the
| topics are not even tech related anymore.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Algorithms governing large amounts of information exchange in
| the world are all developed in California (Twitter/FB/Google)
| as well.
|
| SV's political culture (and largely America's culture) is being
| exported to the world at an ever increasing pace:
| https://www.economist.com/international/2021/06/12/social-me...
| javajosh wrote:
| This is a reflection of how engineers have become aware of the
| ethical and political effects of their work. To HN's credit the
| non-technical discussions are of high quality, in general.
|
| From a purely technical standpoint, HN remains the best forum
| for discovery of new projects and giving feedback to FAANG. (M
| not so much).
| halgir wrote:
| Reminds me of when 4chan pretended to be Hacker News.
|
| Thread archive: https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/48696148
|
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9788317
| hjek wrote:
| That 4chan link is full of the vilest antisemtism, racism, etc.
| natchy wrote:
| The vilest? Not even. That was a mild 4chan thread.
| ng12 wrote:
| Yep, it's their way of gatekeeping.
| 0x737368 wrote:
| 4chan often had(maybe still has, dunno haven't checked up on
| anons for a while) a fantastic feel for irony, satire and
| parody(including of themselves). People unfairly disregard the
| true internet comedy gold that 4chan has gifted to society.
| kbenson wrote:
| I bet a lot of those 4chan commenters we're HN users or
| lurkers. The best criticism comes from those closest.
| User23 wrote:
| It's amusing that 4chan is the something awful forum's fault.
| I was reminded of this by the phrase "comedy gold."
| brailsafe wrote:
| It's not too bad, but I'd only go up to comedy silver.
| [deleted]
| weimerica wrote:
| It's often a better place to have real, open discussion than
| HN.
| [deleted]
| brailsafe wrote:
| Not half bad
| tyingq wrote:
| >[420 points] Show HN: I ripped off an existing product and
| added Bootstrap to it
|
| That page is actually pretty funny.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| That's hilarious, it's healthy to be able to laugh at yourself.
| Thanks for sharing!
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| > How we moved from MongoDB to a thousand Chinese children
| memorizing numbers and you should too! [medium.com]
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > MongoDB
|
| Snapchat for your production data.
| enbugger wrote:
| >Chinese children considered harmful
| cucumb3rrelish wrote:
| not even 5 messages in and there is the first nazi carricature.
| certified 4chan moment
| willis936 wrote:
| I'm surprised there is no Encyclopedia Dramatica entry on Hacker
| News.
| azangru wrote:
| Entrepreneurs? Dang, I thought this was a forum for programmers.
| longtom wrote:
| > hacker news
|
| Where opinion is being manipulated by the U.S. security/military
| complex.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| > A place unknown to financially successful entrepreneurs.
|
| That's because YC founders fled to Bookface many years ago, YC's
| internal Hacker News.
|
| A YC founder once saw me browsing HN and said "Huh, are you on
| Bookface?"
|
| I realized later that he'd never been to HN.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Indeed. There is missing representation in conversations here
| that make those absences conspicuous. You can see a similar
| effect on, for example, a company Slack channel, and figure out
| which groups of employees are having the same conversation on a
| private channel. Nothing wrong with it unless the members of
| the side group are obliged to participate in general
| conversation, and they aren't here.
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| That's sad, I wish they were still active here.
| jimhi wrote:
| We are. Most threads have at least one. I find the longer
| they have been out of yc the less they are here though
| eddieh wrote:
| That, perhaps, explains the sometimes unexpected anti-
| business/capitalist comments and sentiment here.
| novok wrote:
| So by bookface you mean a facebook group
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I really want to say "yes" and see where the conversation
| leads.
|
| No, I meant Bookface, YC's internal clone of Hacker News.
| xupybd wrote:
| Does Dang moderate Bookface as well?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I assume facebook will sue for trademark infringement them
| if they use that name in public
| topicseed wrote:
| > _A website where unsuccessful entrepreneurs with egos waste
| time browsing articles and websites, created by wanna-be
| entrepreneurs with even bigger egos who are trying to build a
| following._
|
| > _A place unknown to financially successful entrepreneurs._
|
| I always thought the bulk of HN was _not_ entrepreneurs but
| employed engineers, curious minds, etc. Have I been deluded all
| this time?
| wayeq wrote:
| I always thought the bulk of HN was tech folks that got too old
| and grumpy for reddit.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| HN is part of Y Combinator (obvious from the URL) so there has
| always been a bias toward entrepreneurship and startups.
|
| In practice it tends to be mostly content from bored engineers.
| Any social website like HN is inherently biased toward people
| with the most time to burn, because they have the most time to
| post. It turns out a lot of modern engineering jobs have _a
| lot_ of free time at your desk in front of a computer, so those
| are the people who post here most.
|
| The actual entrepreneurs are usually too busy to post too much
| on HN so they aren't heavily represented. Not absent, of
| course, but it's hard to compete with the people who seem to
| have infinite free time for social discussions.
|
| HN can be interesting, but it's really difficult at times to
| separate the signal from the noise. There's a lot of noise.
| kortilla wrote:
| It has nothing to do with free time. It's just a numbers
| game. There are a lot more employees than there are
| entrepreneurs.
| Causality1 wrote:
| A browser extension with some custom filtering rules could be
| handy. I'd love to never open another blog post from someone
| who thinks finding out that becoming internet famous for two
| days is bad for you is some kind of revolutionary insight and
| that everyone needs to hear about how stressful it was to be
| tweeted at a lot.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| The original core audience was Paul Graham fans as far as I
| know. I think I found HN because it was the thing Arc was used
| for.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| judging from the upvoted topics there are probably more
| marketing/hr/managerial people now than engineers/scientists
| praptak wrote:
| Count me in that group. I am a refugee from Slashdot, after I
| had found out I hated their new threading UI.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Well, Im a shameless imposter masquerading as an employed
| software engineer. Thats one. Or two maybe assuming you are?
| meristohm wrote:
| My primary work title is Dad/Homemaker, and I have an
| interest in software development for improving learning, for
| one.
| leephillips wrote:
| Fair or not, but more and more lately, when searching the web for
| a useful take on a framework, library, language, or anything else
| related to computers, I put in a "site:news.ycombinator.com".
| This way I skip past the multiple pages of blogspam, advertising
| (disguised or otherwise), and people copying each other's top-ten
| lists, and might actually see a thoughtful comment or someone's
| real experience.
| FabHK wrote:
| In DuckDuckGo, you could use the !hn bang (which takes you to
| hn's Algolia search page).
| leephillips wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. Can also use the search box at
| the bottom of HN pages.
| jstx1 wrote:
| There is also https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitHNSays/. It's not that
| active but it has quite a few gems.
| midwestemo wrote:
| Probably my favorite one on there.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25791306
| smoldesu wrote:
| Seems about right to me.
| beeboop wrote:
| I think we all make the mistake sometimes of attaching too much
| weight to the opinions we read online. For some reason I attach
| more weight to HN opinions but after meeting a few frequent HN
| posters in real life and seeing recent discussions about
| vaccines, I no longer do this.
|
| I realize this is a really shitty post and I wish I had the time
| to rework it to sound less prissy.
| bob229 wrote:
| Sounds accurate to me. I come here because the MSM is garbage but
| most of the commenters are narcissists with egos the size of
| planets
| neals wrote:
| can confirm, am unsuccesful
| kirykl wrote:
| There's also a critical HN parody site
| http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ Copy paste url as it apparently
| intercepts the HN referer
| goodpoint wrote:
| n-gate is my favorite read. It restores my sanity.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Seems relatively accurate
| api wrote:
| HN is a lot of /r/iamverysmart except some people actually know
| something.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| Interesting (also funny), I never thought of HN from that angle.
| Does this feel true to HN users or is it more a joke?
|
| While I was transitioning to a software job I found myself
| checking HN a lot because it seemed like a raw discussion forum
| for what software engineers were thinking / talking about. Seemed
| better than Reddit. Still haven't found a better alternative.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think for some of us remote workers ...
|
| [... Ha, my entire career! So we call it "remote" now? And its
| considered a progressive perk? Awesome! For decades I just
| thought I was "working in bed" and it wasn't something to talk
| about ...]
|
| ... really do need a facsimile for interesting and stimulating
| water cooler conversation. Until I find that place, Hacker News
| will do!
| yoz-y wrote:
| At least the part about wasting time does. Luckily there is the
| noprocrast option.
| t-writescode wrote:
| I'm sure we've all seen posts here from people that make us
| think very unkindly of the HN culture.
| psyc wrote:
| Such a missed opportunity. There are so many funnier tropes
| about HN to mock. Personally, I think of HN as a place for
| software developers to pontificate and nerd-snipe about
| constitutional law, public health, economics, and more.
| smoe wrote:
| From my perspective HN is big enough that you can shape your
| own experience by what links you are clicking. E.g. I feel I
| haven't seen that much of the "entrepreneur" aspect, because I
| don't frequent the typical startup topics much. Instead I'm
| interested in the more timeless "philosophical" discussions
| about software engineering in general where I always feel I get
| something out of it or encounter further readings. Nothing live
| changing so far, but interesting nonetheless.
| based2 wrote:
| everything2 used to be more like that.
| blululu wrote:
| This was from 2013. The general climate here has turned pretty
| hostile to startups since then. The prevailing advice here is now
| to land a FAAMG job and slack off with a high standard of living,
| rather than slaving away at a startup to boost someone else's
| capital. What remains is people sharing their side projects,
| going off-topic and wasting their time one way or another.
| cortesoft wrote:
| When did FAANG become FAAMG?
| StreamBright wrote:
| When Microsoft started to take Javascript seriously.
| sxp wrote:
| Personally, I still use FAANG and assume the N stands for
| N\icrosoft.
| Bayart wrote:
| When Microsoft resurrected from the dumpster of tech and
| became proactive again.
| kartoshechka wrote:
| it's the comment from the recent post "who else would put M
| in FAANG besides a Microsoft employee?"
| jstx1 wrote:
| It makes some sense - if you replace Netflix with MS, the
| list will be the 5 largest tech companies. Netflix is only
| there because of how the term was coined in the first place
| - FANG (originally without Apple) was a list of stocks that
| Jim Cramer liked around 2013 and the acronym caught on and
| evolved from there.
| rdiddly wrote:
| I always wondered why the hell Netflix was even on the
| list, so thanks.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's like the BRICs countries - Brazil doesn't really
| fit.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| Curious, is Jim Cramer generally respected by the crowd
| that frequents HN?
| [deleted]
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Doubtful, but sometimes a good acronym is worth a
| thousand words.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I had not come across FAAMG but I like it, even if I have
| trouble saying it. ("MAGAF"? Hmmm. "GAAMF"?)
|
| Netflix has never been an aspirational overlord type company
| like the others.
|
| Even though Microsoft is no longer at its peak, its dual
| presence via OS and cloud keep it in sustainable wannabe
| overlord position.
| [deleted]
| dTal wrote:
| Only wannabe? Aside from the niche and premium Apple
| products, you can't walk into a brick and mortar store and
| walk out with a PC that doesn't run Microsoft Windows. You
| also can't run almost _any_ industrial software without
| Windows. Good luck with any slightly unusual hardware
| either. Gaming is still mainly Windows based.
|
| They still have a tight stranglehold on desktop computing.
| blueblisters wrote:
| Most open-source projects exist on Github. VSCode is the
| best and the most-used IDE. A good amount of code in the
| future will likely be written using Copilot. Microsoft is
| a software development productivity behemoth.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| VSCode is not an IDE, it's a text editor.
| mattl wrote:
| Chromebooks?
| croes wrote:
| I thought it's G-MAFIA.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Ah, Intel? Neat.
| natchy wrote:
| Facebook/Instagram?
| jstx1 wrote:
| Give Microsoft some credit - they're the second largest
| company in the world with over $2 trillion market cap. Sure
| we're not in the 90s anymore and their image, position in
| the markets and in the zeitgest is a bit different but "not
| at its peak" is a bit harsh.
|
| As far as acronyms, I like FAAAM (replace Google with
| Alphabet).
| franky47 wrote:
| We call them GAFAM in France.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| FAGMAN
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| NAGFAM
| ThrowawayB7 wrote:
| When the people who had been laughing at Microsoft for years
| as being a washed up has-been came to the realization that it
| currently has a valuation of over $2 trillion and is still
| growing.
| kbenson wrote:
| This is my favorite online place to waste time, after all. And
| yes, I've given up any dreams of starting my own thing. You
| pretty much just described me, except not FAAMG (but I am happy
| where I'm at).
|
| I don't mind this description at all (there's a freedom in
| giving up even just the dream of the hustle).
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The general climate here has turned pretty hostile to
| startups since then. The prevailing advice here is now to land
| a FAAMG job and slack off with a high standard of living
|
| Some times I stumble upon really old HN threads in Google
| searches and end up missing the quality of old HN discourse. It
| was never perfect, of course. Nor is the modern version without
| upsides, as there are often good pieces of wisdom if you sift
| through enough noise in the comments.
|
| However, modern HN just feels so deeply cynical, angry, and
| negative with much less of the entrepreneurial tech optimism of
| the older posts. It's also starting to feel weirdly
| disconnected from reality in the way that the extremes of
| Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook have become echo chambers after
| consuming non-stop bad news. It's like people read so many
| outrage tech stories here that they forget there is an upside
| to the tech industry.
|
| Big Tech hangs in a weird balance where we're simultaneously
| supposed to hate and distrust FAANG companies but also at the
| same time we're told to seek out FAANG jobs where we can
| maximize compensation.
|
| The key to enjoying HN is to ignore any thread remotely related
| to politics, FAANG, social media, economics (where the comments
| are actually just about politics), drugs, or open-source drama.
|
| Sadly, the most interesting content links (great blog posts,
| writings, knowledge, new projects, and so on) generally get
| fewer upvotes than outrage topics. I try to make a point of
| actively upvoting the content I want to see here every time I
| visit.
| 6510 wrote:
| Politics should be interesting to a programmer if one can
| write a program or use data to do something useful. (or talk
| about doing that) You have to force the conversation in that
| direction. Like for a chemist everything is about chemistry.
| They know its not but pretending sure makes things a lot more
| interesting.
| ethelward wrote:
| > However, modern HN just feels so deeply cynical, angry, and
| negative with much less of the entrepreneurial tech optimism
| of the older posts
|
| Isn't that a direct reflection of the current state of the
| tech world? Since the 00's, it has morphed from a rather
| hacker-friendly, digital far-west into a locked-down
| plutocracy dominated by a handful of gigantic corporations,
| whose end-goal are quite often to squeeze every single last
| bit of personal information or other valuable commodity they
| can out of, typically, misinformed users.
|
| E.g., despite all the folklore, I feel much better toward
| 00's ``Linux is cancer'' MS and their Windows 2000 than
| toward 2020's ``We <3 Linux'' MS that just spy on me through
| Windows 10 and put ads in my start menu.
|
| Similarly, I prefer the 90's ``we're making expensive and
| original computers'' Apple to the 2020's ``we will scan all
| the photos on your device'' Apple.
|
| And it's not to single these two out, they're just the first
| examples I'm thinking of. All in all, I just believe the
| whole digital world is much more hostile now than it used to
| be, which would, at least partially, account for the growing
| apathy, cynicism and defiance in the community - it's hard to
| feel any different when every other week brings a new
| personal data leak, spyware scandal or privacy-infringement
| affair, be it corporate- or state-sponsored.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Not everyone is the same as you. I enjoy immensely reading HN
| posts and comments related to politics, FAANG, social media,
| economics (where the comments are actually just about
| politics), drugs, or open-source drama. I also like
| interesting content links (great blog posts, writings,
| knowledge, new projects, and so on). I don't get this mix
| elsewhere and it's why I come here. Are you in the right
| community?
| N1H1L wrote:
| I think we are all older now?
| donaldihunter wrote:
| Evergreen comment.
| [deleted]
| teatree wrote:
| So, is there another place on Internet which is better than
| HN?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| My account is now older than a decade so I guess I'm an OG
| here. (crazy) There's definitely been a big shift over the
| years. But, I feel like this is just the general state of the
| world right now.
|
| The entire industry back then was so much more optimistic.
|
| Personally, I only browser:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
| na85 wrote:
| >However, modern HN just feels so deeply cynical, angry, and
| negative with much less of the entrepreneurial tech optimism
| of the older posts. It's also starting to feel weirdly
| disconnected from reality in the way that the extremes of
| Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook have become echo chambers after
| consuming non-stop bad news. It's like people read so many
| outrage tech stories here that they forget there is an upside
| to the tech industry.
|
| I dunno, I think the current atmosphere is more closely
| aligned with the zeitgeist of society writ large than it was
| previously.
|
| That famed entrepreneurial optimism was born of a belief that
| technology is inherently good, and that startups can change
| the world.
|
| The veil has been lifted and we see that most startups,
| internet startups in particular, exist to provide lucrative
| exits for the owners while abusing their users by harvesting
| data and selling ads.
|
| The promise of a tech-led utopia is a hollow farce. It's a
| facade for the surveillance dystopia that big Internet
| companies are creating.
|
| With every iteration, user experience takes a back seat to
| developer convenience, and devices are more powerful yet feel
| sluggish because of the mountains of shitty abstraction
| layers piled on. The companies that wield inordinate power
| are giant faceless corporations acting with impunity and
| whose decisions have no recourse.
|
| Being a tech _user_ is an exercise in frustration. The world
| sucks and Tech is making it worse.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Zeitgeist is caused by the pandemic x social media outrage
| x hardships due to lost jobs. Everyone is glued to the
| internet and we've started to form factions.
|
| It's hard to conjecture this, let alone prove it, but a
| strawman take I feel like is adversarial foreign powers
| have influenced the social media outrage narratives to
| destroy the western spirit from inside out. HN is
| reflecting larger trends. Western spirit was about putting
| behind differences and doubling down on cooperation.
| Looking back, from post-WWII to now, I get goosebumps and
| feel sad that this is what we've become.
|
| Nothing has changed in terms of good vs. evil of
| technology. Fundamentals are still the same. Not even space
| exploration has escaped HN's cynicism. It's time for me to
| move onto some other place.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| The zeitgeist of society writ large sucks. This has been
| true in almost every society in almost every era. It's not
| a happy thing to align oneself with.
|
| The bubbles of optimistic outliers are the places that
| affect society writ large. That's where to be.
| eropple wrote:
| And when those optimistic outliers are intended to
| validate and glorify the folks who are out to sell ads or
| your data?
| kortilla wrote:
| What a boring trope. electric car companies, hardware
| companies in general, b2b companies, eink, pinephone,
| etc, etc.
|
| These companies come across here every day. If you think
| everything is about selling user data you aren't paying
| attention.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| The reduction in optimism may be related to the increased
| experience with the topics discussed? For example the
| internet boom of 2000 was caused by hyper-optimism, then
| people learned to be more moderate and Internet really took
| off. By comparison, the generation of 2003-2005 was less
| optimistic, but not in a bad way.
| Iamadog19782364 wrote:
| I don't think it was learning to be more moderate, I think
| niche communities were pervaded with new users, which in
| turn caused a shift in culture and therefore later
| developed into new moderation policy. It's also been
| heavily corporatized as well, there are far less distal
| independent entities being a "big deal" and more
| centralization. But I haven't studied the patterns
| extensively and this is just collective anecdotal
| assessments of the shifts experienced from 2004 to present.
| schmorptron wrote:
| I haven't been browsing this site for more than like a year,
| but have found it one of the places on the internet where
| political discourse seems to be relatively tame and good-
| faith for the most part. I've also learned a lot from the
| blog posts you mentioned and really knowledgeable comments on
| them. Is it really worse now?
| nickff wrote:
| Yes, it used to be much more optimistic and less cynical.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| As someone who was here since day two of the public
| launch, I'm not sure how true this is. It's true the
| conversation has changed, but less cynical? More
| optimistic?
|
| The cynicism and optimism seems to have stayed more or
| less constant. The quality of conversation is the
| problem.
|
| Luckily, quality tends to bubble to the top, barring
| manual intervention that occasionally makes a few (few)
| mistakes. So far.
|
| The extremes are true: I've increasingly felt that people
| here are disconnected from reality in a way not seen in
| previous years. I'm not quite sure how to put it into
| words, and it deserves a substantive eloquence beyond my
| capabilities at the moment.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| "I think we're more cynical"
|
| "I think we're less"
|
| "I'd say it's the same"
|
| It should be pretty straightforward to actually figure
| this out by sampling posts from different HN "eras" and
| doing sentiment analysis.
|
| What's the standard practice for sentiment analysis these
| days?
| Isamu wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| > I've increasingly felt that people here are
| disconnected from reality in a way not seen in previous
| years.
|
| Well, I don't think that is surprising given the rise of
| popularity of HN. The early days had people interested in
| startups, and hence their virtues, and later came a large
| crowd that had some interest in tech but had random
| alignments.
|
| I feel that human beliefs form a distribution where
| almost anything will believed by someone, and if you
| gather a large enough crowd you can find a large cohort
| that will earnestly believe various nonsense things.
| teatree wrote:
| Are there any places similar to HN on the internet where
| one can find high quality, non political, non religious,
| non news conversations?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Head over to lobste.rs, not much activity but it fits
| your description.
|
| HN's political discourse has been quite unpleasant since
| last couple of years. Used to be quite a gamut of
| perspectives, now it is completely lopsided.
| nickff wrote:
| The political downvoting has also increased dramatically.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Worth noting you have to be invited to join Lobste.rs (by
| a current member). I'm not one, but the discussions there
| are often interesting - IME about half the stories I've
| seen here first and on those stories in general the
| Lobsters threads are a bit more technical and a bit more
| focused.
|
| I quite like the 'what are you doing this weekend
| threads' it feels very small-community-like. [But that
| might just be that I've often felt a lack of tech
| community - as an example, I've used Linux for >20 years
| and don't have anyone in my life I could have a
| conversation about it with like you might chat to a
| neighbour/friend about pruning a tree or fixing your
| car.]
| dageshi wrote:
| Yeah, it is. To put it bluntly, it's a lot of internet
| boomers venting about how everything is terrible.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| It's tame in that people will opine that women are too
| stupid for IT, but they will do so very politely.
|
| HN moderators are very proud of being accused at roughly
| equal rates from both of the US political tribes. That's
| the sort of triangulation leading to _false balance_ even
| local journalists have managed to pick up over the last
| decade, where they still exist.
|
| I'd really prefer if they flipped a coin and grew a spine.
| Is George Soros eating babies or not? Answering that
| question with a shrug isn't _neutrality_. For anyone in a
| position of even minor power over the discourse, it 's
| dereliction of duty.
|
| Practically, it means that any even barely political
| question on HN is discussed on a level where I could write
| both sides of the discourse in my sleep. If it's SF housing
| it's going to be "you don't want homeless people around
| where you life if you have children" vs. "you do know not
| all homeless people are violent, right?".
|
| In the process, everyone retreats to their corners. The
| "virus lab leak" idea, in its first incarnation, was not
| something I'd be willing to explore, because allowing any
| possibility of it would immediately be weaponised by people
| pushing the idea that it was an _intentional_ release of a
| _biological weapon_ , an idea with completely different
| ramifications that was, nonetheless, superficially similar
| and closely linked.
|
| Any tread on COVID is 90% fighting over "it's just the flu"
| (very beginning), then hydroxywhatever, and lately
| ivermectinopleasedont. In that regard, I truly doubt the
| comments are representative of even the readership of HN,
| let alone the US public, and even less the world's public.
|
| Opinion on "mainstream media" is probably the most out-of-
| wack compared to opinions generally voiced in polite
| company. It's enough for a story to be published by the NYT
| to get a dozen comments often not even arguing that, but
| assuming everyone agrees with, the idea that everything
| they write is a lie. This may be an outcrop of the single
| uniting characteristic of commenters: they love to be
| contrarian. So much so, on this issue they all agree.
| "Actually", they tell each other with the mannerisms of a
| big truth being revealed, "I am much too smart to believe
| what everyone is believing". And if that means water isn't
| wet, so be it.
| conradfr wrote:
| I would have been more interested in the Encyclopedia Dramatica
| page about HN ;)
| self_buddliea wrote:
| I'm aware of the philosophy behind HN and the dictionary entry
| alludes to this. From my experience it's more focussed on
| technology and a liking of knowledge in general.
|
| On the other hand, I still find this amusing.
| Nevermark wrote:
| It is good humor.
|
| An Onion article would be even greater praise.
|
| On a more serious note, I for one plan on continuing to lurk and
| comment here until I achieve the unprecedented entrepreneurial
| financial success that I know my lurking and commenting here more
| than qualify me for!
| weare138 wrote:
| https://www.theolognion.com/ai-solves-all-political-economic...
| donaldihunter wrote:
| This thread! Talking about ourselves in an ironic / un-ironic /
| post-ironic way. There is room for more meta hacker news.
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