8 ms·
This is the kind of deep investigation of a super specific issue I always enjoy reading. This is what I thought the internet would be, 20 years ago.
by CJefferson 9y ago
This is the kind of deep investigation of a super specific issue I always enjoy reading. This is what I thought the internet would be, 20 years ago.
- morninj 9y agoYou were right!
- nothis 9y agoPretty sure we had stuff like that in 1997!
- jpcosta 9y agoI would love to see a deep investigation proving/disproving this point
- collinmanderson 9y agoSomewhat related: USENET's culture was destroyed as early at 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- KGIII 9y agopours one out for my homies More seriously, I sometimes sorta miss USENET. However, my ISP actually still provisions it. It has been a while, but I have gone back to check it out. It's nothing like I remember, so I don't end up making it a point to check the groups regularly and I leave it alone for a few more years.
- thearn4 9y agoIt's a shame that the internet devolved into cat pictures, pervasive advertisements, and political shouting matches. On the other hand, there are still some great communities out there for great discussion. I consider HN to be one of them.
- coldpie 9y agoPerhaps unintuitively, the Something Awful forums are another relatively small, intelligent community.
- therobotking 9y agoI genuinely worry about the day the SA forums get shut down for whatever reason. I've been posting there since 2003 and it's my first stop on the 'daily internet check' ritual.
- Latty 9y agoIt didn't devolve - it expanded. There is still plenty of great content out there, it's just mixed with a lot of other content of varying quality.
- Double_a_92 9y agoMaybe "diluted" is a fitting word.
- ryandrake 9y agoNot really, "dilution" implies that when the Internet grows to include another crappy site everything else in the "solution" is slightly crappier. If a new web site for cat pictures or political shouting matches opens up tomorrow, it does not affect the quality and usefulness of HN.
- chongli 9y agoNo, but I've seen plenty of good subreddits go bad after a flood of new users!
- auserperson 9y agoIt is not a shame the internet devolved into cat pictures, the rest it is.
- paulgb 9y agoThe smaller stack exchanges are a really wonderful source of content I never thought I needed to know. I always check out the "hot network questions" side panel when I land on stack overflow and almost always find something interesting.
- nsxwolf 9y agoI always thought they were about "networking" as in IT so they'd really confuse me.
- pkamb 9y agoI always get sucked in to the addicting Hot Network Questions as well when I land on Stack Overflow, which is why I need to block the entire sidebar so that I can get some work done! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-hot-network-question/jommfgnflipjalbpbgcfghdpoeijpoab?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-hot-network-q...
- dufferzafar 9y agoI do this too! Firefox - uBlock's "Block Element" feature.
- Anthony-G 9y agoI also block the Hot Network Questions on Stack Exchange sites while at work – though not when using my home profile. As a Firefox user, I simply added the following lines to my `userContent.css`: @-moz-document domain("stackoverflow.com"), domain("superuser.com"), domain("serverfault.com"), domain("askubuntu.com"), domain("stackexchange.com") { #hot-network-questions { display: none; } }
- sp332 9y agoIt's a sign of a "cognitive surplus", because we have more educated people now than we have jobs for them to do. Also it's a sign of how these sites get people to work for them for free, and concentrate huge amounts of other people's work for their own benefit. This poster got nothing for all that work, but SE still gets advertising revenue driven by interest in the content.
- logicallee 9y agoanother example that there is not enough work to go around is that if you go into any downtown anywhere in the world at 7 pm to 8 p.m. you will see people drinking beer in bars. These same people could still be working, since there is no reason they shouldn't be in an office, factory, etc, for a full 14-hour workday. Clearly there is just not enough work to go around, which manifests itself as people sitting around drinking or going on fun Internet sleuthing that nobody would mistake for work. (well, except that one guy.)
- YesThatTom2 9y agoChildren are the same way. All that time they spend playing could be spent in a factory making sneakers.
- mcphage 9y agoI don't know about your kids, but mine would make some shitty sneakers :-)
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoThey'll be fine after a few days of training.
- sp332 9y agoI'm not arguing from first principles here. Workforce participation is down. This is just a symptom. I'm not against having free time, but against companies who ask you to work for them for free. If people had the ability to make money with their time and effort, that guy would be more likely to be paid for his post.
- ryanx435 9y agoyou should read some of /pol/'s analysis of the email leaks from last year: it was truly a wonder of crowd-sourced investigation. They even set up meta investigators (managers?) to help guide the anonymous users' investigations to make sure that all of the emails got read and categorized. it was quite fun to be a part of, actually.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoOnce you strip out the racist and homophobic filler was it actually good analysis?
- ryanx435 9y agoIt was. Very professional, considering it was all anonymous. But there were high standards and major findings had to be verified before being disseminated.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- johan_larson 9y agoI'm happy to report there is a website specifically for investigations like this: http://nounsstarting.com http://nounsstarting.com Oh internet, never change.
- oblio 9y agoIsn't the internet just a reflection of humanity, at this point?
- amrrs 9y agoA Point. We seem to make a lot of cost-benefit analyses for every decision make instead of just doing something because it's good to do. We living in the age of matured internet seemed to be only interested in contents that could help us make a point (Read: ROI) during a discussion or debate unlike people earlier just wanted to know something with no reason. Hence triviality didn't come as a filter.
- asciimo 9y agoExactly. I started skimming the article like I do most these days, scrolling to the punch line while collecting the gist. When I got to the part about the ball being a knock-off, I was struck with excitement because I knew I wanted to read this whole thing, word for word. Almost as good as the story about the missing German family (http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/ http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...)!
- drworm 9y agoWhat an interesting story! Thanks for sharing. The way it's written, and the theme, remind me of: http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html
- octalmage 9y agoI've always loved this kind of stuff from Quora, for example: https://www.quora.com/Suppose-I-just-stole-2-billion-dollars-from-a-bank-How-should-I-use-this-money-without-being-traced/answer/Seth-Neal?share=a28bebd2&srid=hHDK https://www.quora.com/Suppose-I-just-stole-2-billion-dollars...