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The Internet Is One Big Grey Pill
- xbrjvjcjcj 11y agoSounds to me like the author is complaining people disagree with him on the internet.
- fokinsean 11y agoMeh, some of it rang with me. It brought me back to times when I was neck deep in a few conspiracies with some friends. When we were together it was an echo chamber. Eventually I did some more independent research and found not all we believed was entirely true. I guess I grey pilled myself?
- dang 11y agoPlease stop creating a new account for every comment or two that you post. HN threads are supposed to be conversations. People have conversations with other people, not random-access snippets. HN allows anonymity and trusts users to make good use of it. This is not a good use of it. If everyone used HN this way, we wouldn't have usernames at all—just comments without authors. That would be a completely different site.
- dbiebibeibe 11y agoMods regularly ban accounts which post comments they disagree with, they'll state it breaks guidelines but the truth is they just don't accept certain speech here.
- KirinDave 11y agoDead honest, I've been considering doing the same and just digitally signing the ones I want to preserve identity on. The current state of HN moderation and management is quite bad. I see no reason to treat them with dignity and respect (as an organization).
- nkurz 11y agoWhat are your complaints about moderation?
- dang 11y ago> The current state of HN moderation and management is quite bad. I see no reason to treat them with dignity and respect (as an organization). We must be missing something important if that's true. I have the same question nkurz posted. If you'd prefer to answer it privately, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.
- exolymph 11y agoHacker News allows pseudonymity which is a different thing. True anonymity would be using 4chan over Tor which, as you said, produces a different atmosphere.
- xbrjvjcjcj 11y agoI'll do that as soon as you stop censoring people that disagree with your and PG's agenda. In the mean time I'll continue to evade browser fingerprinting and post from new IP addresses. You can't keep this place as your personal echo chamber as much as you would like to.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoSee, the thing is, they don't censor based on "disagreeing with their agenda". They censor based on how you disagree. If you're going to be a jerk, you'll get censored. You won't get censored for not following the party line. Maybe you were crossing more lines than just "the party line" and didn't realize it...
- xbrjvjcjcj 11y agoI have repeatedly found that not to be the case. And of course, I have no way to prove moderator abuse/ overzealousness because of how opaque the moderation is on this site. To some extent you'll just have to trust me, unfortunately.
- dang 11y agoWhy don't you just post links to examples of moderator abuse? If it's so rampant as you say, that shouldn't be hard.
- xbrjvjcjcj 11y agoHow do you propose that I link to deleted posts, muted accounts, and threads that are removed from the main index? Those aren't things that I can just link to evidence of. Perhaps from your end, but not for the rest of us.
- dang 11y agoNothing is deleted from Hacker News unless the author deletes it themselves or asks us to. Everything else can be linked to. Hence my question. If a post is marked [dead], only users with 'showdead' turned on in their profile will see it, but that's trivial to turn on, so anyone who wants to read such comments easily can. And of course users are free to vouch for [dead] comments, which in most cases promotes them back to normal status. Since you've made many accounts on HN, presumably you know all this.
- JonnieCache 11y agoIs the numbering here just imitation of the form of propositional logic/philosophy or is there some other reason for it?
- to3m 11y agoI think each entry is supposed to be tweet-sized, and it's supposed to be read as a sequence of tweets (numbered so that Twitter's web site doesn't mess it up).
- fixermark 11y agoOh my God. That's quite possibly the worst reason to divide up a paragraph that I've ever heard.
- xlm1717 11y agoEven this is an understatement. I would really have loved to read it in paragraph format. As a numbered list it got tiring.
- rashkov 11y agoYep, you're right. From the about section: "A weekly dose of breaking-smart ideas for individuals and organizations based on ongoing research. In tweetstorm form."
- willlma 11y agoI thought so too, but I measured one of the paragraphs at 210 characters. Which can mean one of two things. Hopefully, it's unrelated to Twitter and there's another perfectly good explanation. Alternatively, it's inspired by Twitter, but was never actually Tweeted. It's a self-imposition of the twitter style, which feels both disingenuous and in poor taste.
- woodruffw 11y agoI got a very strong Wittgensteinian vibe from the structure, which I'm guessing was their goal.
- ForHackernews 11y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/im14andthisisdeep https://www.reddit.com/r/im14andthisisdeep
- hardwaresofton 11y agoTaking the article seriously, what if this grey pill revelation is just a big red pill that discourages other red pills in disguise?
- yarou 11y agoThis was very hard for me to read. The "tweet storm" form of writing actually made my eyes hurt. I'm sure the author has some interesting ideas, but the format was so painfully irritating for me to read, that it detracted from their overall message. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer essay-style long form content.
- 0n34n7 11y agoand while you are having fisty cuffs with content format, you are completely being what the content was urging everybody not to be.
- nikdaheratik 11y agoI agree, but I wonder if it is merely the format, or the lack of thought and/or editing of their writing that the format implies.
- ivoras 11y agoUmmm, does the style and the content of this e-mail / article remind anyone of the random philosophy essay generators? Just googled "random philosophy generator" and there's apparently like a dozen of them nowadays.
- xlm1717 11y agoAfter reading this, the motivation behind his Gervais Principle series makes more sense.
- dawnbreez 11y agoRe:the giant comment chain about moderation, it looks like transparency is something that HN's moderators desperately need right now.