20 ms·
It's a troll! An infamous Slashdot/Usenet one at that, which in the day raised the hackles of many a * nix folk: Adequacy first gained widespread Internet noto
by nicklaf 6y ago
It's a troll! An infamous Slashdot/Usenet one at that, which in the day raised the hackles of many a * nix folk:
Adequacy first gained widespread Internet notoriety after the December 2, 2001 publication of a story entitled "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" The story was engineered to raise the hackles of as wide a swath of the Internet geek community as possible; it lampooned such topics as the Linux operating system, processors from Advanced Micro Devices, online gaming, and rave culture. Furor over the story spread quickly through technology / gaming blogs and Usenet newsgroups [1], and visitors came to the site in droves to express their opinions. The story received an official count of 5,913 individual comments, not including several thousand more that were hidden by the Adequacy editors. This figure even exceeds the record of the much more heavily visited Slashdot, which (as of November 21, 2006) stands at 5,687 replies to the story "Kerry Concedes Election to Bush".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequacy.org#Notable_stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequacy.org#Notable_stories
My view is that Hacker News is, or ought to be, the spiritual successor to Slashdot. Sometimes (unfortunately) it seems, though, without the humor.
- klyrs 6y agoShitposting / copypasta made Slashdot suck. Let's strive to follow the site guidelines which are geared at making HN better than Slashdot ever was.
- nicklaf 6y agoI dunno. You might be right, but another thing about that is whereas Slashdot had a moderation system that enabled voting along a dimension such as "funny", "interesting", or "insightful", I believe that a +1 Funny rating didn't actually boost your karma. So in theory you get something that is less inundated by sarcastic circle jerks of in-jokes than Reddit but less sterile and devoid of humor than hacker news. The no-nonsense attitude of frowning upon humorous mischief and misdirection is one of the first things that I noticed about this site, and, which while superficially appears to raise the level of discourse, I think is a sign of weakness, since a community that can't tolerate jokes isn't really a community at all. In fact at very least it goes against the ethos of computing, which always had an element of mischief and clever pranks. Look at the culture of the MIT AI lab or, well, Slashdot and its ilk to see the contrast.
- klyrs 6y agoCopypasta isn't a clever prank, though, it's banal and derivative. Trolling sucks, please quit it. I say funny stuff on HN all the time. I aim to keep it 100% original, and mixed in with relevant and topical discussion, and I rarely get downvoted for making jokes in that context.
- nicklaf 6y agoI dunno. What I posted was a reference to a 20 year old in-joke that poked fun at GP for (in the eyes of his father) conforming to a humorously incorrect cliche of a "computer hacker", that anyone who frequented Slashdot would have been amused to come across again. It's more of a reference than derivative "copypasta". That all said, I totally get that this kind of thing doesn't mesh with what Hacker News seems to strive for, although in my personal opinion it's worse for it.
- klyrs 6y ago"His" father? Nooope, try again. Or, don't? You don't seem to fit the culture.
- nicklaf 6y agoHm. I've still had trouble integrated gender-neutral pronouns into my brain (for years and years I had been taught that "their" was strictly plural). Believe me when I say I meant nothing by inserting a default gender. If nothing else I was projecting myself into your situation. I honestly am sorry for the mistake.