5 ms·

Hell is Other People: an experiment in anti-social media

91 points by donohoe 7y ago

cryptoquick 7y ago
Them: "Hell is Other People" Me: Why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave?
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  A much more correct translation of the Sartre quote would be, "Hell is the Other", where "the Other" is a term of art in philosophy with a great deal of nuance, but it's funnier to translate it as "Hell is other people", so we do.
  - nfrankel 7y ago
    The original is: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" As a French native speaker, "Hell is other people" is indeed how I'd have translated it myself.
    - blondin 7y ago
      i knew i heard it before! that's my wasted youth :) iam. 1997. l'ecole du micro d'argent. hugely recommended for true hip hop fans. the best from france.
      - severine 7y ago
        Not the best, because this is the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbcXNBMnVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbcXNBMnVg La Cliqua! ;)
  - donmatito 7y ago
    "L'enfer, c'est les autres". I don't know what "the Other" you're referring to, "the other people" seems correct to me in meaning. IANAPhilosopher tho
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    That's not what Sartre intended to mean and Huis Clos doesn't support that interpretation.
- cook7926 7y ago
  Sartre - https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people
WilTimSon 7y ago
I really don't quite get this nihilistic look at social media. Yeah, it can be very annoying and it has plenty of downsides. But it also provides plenty of information sources, often good ones, lets you connect to people easier. And no, I don't mean the superficial connection, I mean getting to know someone, exploring their interests and hobbies, meeting up in real life, etc. While I don't get the appeal of sites like Foursquare or apps like Snapchat, I think the real problem with social media is data harvesting. The rest - the social aspects which many find vapid - are totally fine in moderation. It's just that people, as always, took an idea to the extreme and corrupted it. Even Hacker News has the bones of social media but, thanks to proper moderation and good etiquette, it's not as divisive as most sites.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > I mean getting to know someone, exploring their interests and hobbies That might have been true of the first decade of the new millennium, when Last.fm was in its heyday, Goodreads was more popular, and Facebook had a very different algorithm for its feed. But today, Facebook's interface does not really highlight that kind of depth in your peers, and much of the younger generation has moved to Instagram which is centered around the uploaded photo and so misses out on those interests in life that are not so photographable.
  - WilTimSon 7y ago
    Facebook and Instagram are just the two most popular examples but stuff like forums, group chats, reddit, Twitter, tumblr, they're all social media (or social media-adjacent, I guess) and people make friends there all the time. I do think Facebook might be beyond the point of no return but even Instagram has these huge communities of people posting book photos or pets, which is vapid but innocuous and harmless, at the very least.
    - Ntrails 7y ago
      Every single stranger I developed an online based friendship with was a small community. I don't understand how you can do anything meaningful in a conversation with 2000 people - but 20 people in a chatroom/forum/etc mucking about? Sure.
rchaud 7y ago
Who still has Foursquare installed on their phone?
Der_Einzige 7y ago
Hey! That's my GitHub name! I'm down to work on this project for a bit to make it better if you'd like.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
Not to be pedantic or anything but that's an incorrect use of the word "anti-social". anti-social = disruptive or destructive to society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour) asocial = lack of desire to be social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality)
- optimuspaul 7y ago
  Thank you.
- cassiet 7y ago
  I’m not a fan of asocial, it sounds passive, ambivalent. I’ll keep using anti-social for this, since anti-societal would be more apt for that concept.
  - toomanybeersies 7y ago
    Maybe it's a US vs British English thing, but I definitely associate "anti-social" with meaning disruptive to society (e.g. Anti-social behaviour orders in the UK [1]) Upon saying that, "asocial" doesn't really sound right to me. I'd probably go with "non-social" or maybe more poetically use "misanthropic". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order
  - matt_j 7y ago
    There's nuance to each of the terms. Asocial is what I would say an introvert often is; avoids social interaction without necessarily wishing ill, perhaps dislikes being in the company of others. Anti-social behaviour is disruptive to others, perhaps violent.
- gbrown 7y ago
  There's more than one definition of antisocial. The second definition from Oxford is "Not sociable; not wanting the company of others". This usage is colloquially extremely common. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/antisocial https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/antisocial
matthberg 7y ago
This could use a (2013) tag. There's a writeup here [0], basically he's creating a voronoi diagram from friends' locations, as queried by FourSquare. With the voronoi diagram the intersections of the lines map out points equidistant from the nearest neighbors, which is what I'm guessing he's visiting in the video clips. 0: http://scottmadethis.net/interactive/hellisotherpeople/ http://scottmadethis.net/interactive/hellisotherpeople/

91 points by donohoe 7y ago

cryptoquick 7y ago

Them: "Hell is Other People" Me: Why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave?

Analemma_ 7y ago
A much more correct translation of the Sartre quote would be, "Hell is the Other", where "the Other" is a term of art in philosophy with a great deal of nuance, but it's funnier to translate it as "Hell is other people", so we do.
- nfrankel 7y ago
  The original is: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" As a French native speaker, "Hell is other people" is indeed how I'd have translated it myself.
  - blondin 7y ago
    i knew i heard it before! that's my wasted youth :) iam. 1997. l'ecole du micro d'argent. hugely recommended for true hip hop fans. the best from france.
    - severine 7y ago
      Not the best, because this is the best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbcXNBMnVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbcXNBMnVg La Cliqua! ;)
- donmatito 7y ago
  "L'enfer, c'est les autres". I don't know what "the Other" you're referring to, "the other people" seems correct to me in meaning. IANAPhilosopher tho
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  That's not what Sartre intended to mean and Huis Clos doesn't support that interpretation.
cook7926 7y ago
Sartre - https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people https://www.the-philosophy.com/sartre-hell-is-other-people

WilTimSon 7y ago

I really don't quite get this nihilistic look at social media. Yeah, it can be very annoying and it has plenty of downsides. But it also provides plenty of information sources, often good ones, lets you connect to people easier. And no, I don't mean the superficial connection, I mean getting to know someone, exploring their interests and hobbies, meeting up in real life, etc. While I don't get the appeal of sites like Foursquare or apps like Snapchat, I think the real problem with social media is data harvesting. The rest - the social aspects which many find vapid - are totally fine in moderation. It's just that people, as always, took an idea to the extreme and corrupted it. Even Hacker News has the bones of social media but, thanks to proper moderation and good etiquette, it's not as divisive as most sites.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> I mean getting to know someone, exploring their interests and hobbies That might have been true of the first decade of the new millennium, when Last.fm was in its heyday, Goodreads was more popular, and Facebook had a very different algorithm for its feed. But today, Facebook's interface does not really highlight that kind of depth in your peers, and much of the younger generation has moved to Instagram which is centered around the uploaded photo and so misses out on those interests in life that are not so photographable.
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  Facebook and Instagram are just the two most popular examples but stuff like forums, group chats, reddit, Twitter, tumblr, they're all social media (or social media-adjacent, I guess) and people make friends there all the time. I do think Facebook might be beyond the point of no return but even Instagram has these huge communities of people posting book photos or pets, which is vapid but innocuous and harmless, at the very least.
  - Ntrails 7y ago
    Every single stranger I developed an online based friendship with was a small community. I don't understand how you can do anything meaningful in a conversation with 2000 people - but 20 people in a chatroom/forum/etc mucking about? Sure.

rchaud 7y ago

Who still has Foursquare installed on their phone?

Der_Einzige 7y ago

Hey! That's my GitHub name! I'm down to work on this project for a bit to make it better if you'd like.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

Not to be pedantic or anything but that's an incorrect use of the word "anti-social". anti-social = disruptive or destructive to society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour) asocial = lack of desire to be social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality)

optimuspaul 7y ago
Thank you.
cassiet 7y ago
I’m not a fan of asocial, it sounds passive, ambivalent. I’ll keep using anti-social for this, since anti-societal would be more apt for that concept.
- toomanybeersies 7y ago
  Maybe it's a US vs British English thing, but I definitely associate "anti-social" with meaning disruptive to society (e.g. Anti-social behaviour orders in the UK [1]) Upon saying that, "asocial" doesn't really sound right to me. I'd probably go with "non-social" or maybe more poetically use "misanthropic". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order
- matt_j 7y ago
  There's nuance to each of the terms. Asocial is what I would say an introvert often is; avoids social interaction without necessarily wishing ill, perhaps dislikes being in the company of others. Anti-social behaviour is disruptive to others, perhaps violent.
gbrown 7y ago
There's more than one definition of antisocial. The second definition from Oxford is "Not sociable; not wanting the company of others". This usage is colloquially extremely common. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/antisocial https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/antisocial

matthberg 7y ago

This could use a (2013) tag. There's a writeup here [0], basically he's creating a voronoi diagram from friends' locations, as queried by FourSquare. With the voronoi diagram the intersections of the lines map out points equidistant from the nearest neighbors, which is what I'm guessing he's visiting in the video clips. 0: http://scottmadethis.net/interactive/hellisotherpeople/ http://scottmadethis.net/interactive/hellisotherpeople/