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It's an interesting find. The difference between these sites and spam sites is that they are mostly self-contained comment boards. You have to actually go do th

It's an interesting find. The difference between these sites and spam sites is that they are mostly self-contained comment boards. You have to actually go do them to interact with them, where spammers were breaking the internet. What clicked for me in this article is asking why I ever thought the internet was about ideas, what it might have meant pre-internet for people to be free of a "mainstream" in the old music and style subcultures, and what the consequences of "eternal september," really were. When we say mainstream, I think we mean aligned to the dominant power, and the culture that comes with a mainstream is based on litigating rules for incremental advantage. Internet trolls use the higher bar for entry of tech focused platforms to harass people who are competing in the desperate political struggle for approval that is mainstream social media. Conversely, this mainstream culture is also the source of the visceral disgust some people have for lawyers, journalists, activists, and other people who affect being underdogs so they aren't held to the standards of honest people, and then antagonize others using those dominant rules as a cover. The same can be said for trolls. What it comes down to is this calculus of self permission to act like a piece of shit because you identify as the underdog. It's not the platforms, it's the single idea that identifying as an outsider, resister, pariah, defender, or challenger, justifies cruelty because being "good," is defined by your chosen bugbear. The reality is the mainstream is not "good," the public sphere is an open sewer, and the only things that float in it are turds. It's not a right/left thing, it's a conflict between people competing for mainstream power and people trying to find freedom from that mainstream's domain, with some of each self-identifying as beneath decency. The conspiracy-sphere of alternative internet platforms isn't the problem. I would defend the necessity of their existence because trying and failing and building new things requires real privacy away from the mindless predation of both the mainstream and the pariah net. Sure, take them down as a forcing function to make the new private sphere stronger with a higher bar to entry that is cryptographically enabled, but it's not solving the problem they think.

leftyted 6y ago
> Internet trolls use the higher bar for entry of tech focused platforms to harass people who are competing in the desperate political struggle for approval that is mainstream social media. Conversely, this mainstream culture is also the source of the visceral disgust some people have for lawyers, journalists, activists, and other people who affect being underdogs so they aren't held to the standards of honest people, and then antagonize others using those dominant rules as a cover. The same can be said for trolls. What it comes down to is this calculus of self permission to act like a piece of shit because you identify as the underdog. > It's not the platforms, it's the single idea that identifying as an outsider, resister, pariah, defender, or challenger, justifies cruelty because being "good," is defined by your chosen bugbear. The reality is the mainstream is not "good," the public sphere is an open sewer, and the only things that float in it are turds. It's not a right/left thing, it's a conflict between people competing for mainstream power and people trying to find freedom from that mainstream's domain, with some of each self-identifying as beneath decency. What a great insight. My opinion is that this comes down to the fact that we cannot be good in public. The more "in public" we are, the more dishonest we are. The private sphere -- family, close friends, personal intimacy, etc -- is where people are at their best. We can be honest there. We can show weakness, we can apologize, we can compromise and we can forgive. The internet has made lots of things public that used to be private. It is also taking things that were public and making them more public. This is making the world worse. Since I know you've read Hannah Arendt, this matches up well with her assertion that "in politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy" and "hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in the private". She insisted on glory -- not goodness or justice or love -- as the sole criterion for political action.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  Thanks, her whole thing on private/public is something I'd like to read next, as I have a hypothesis that there is a thread of continuity between the collapse of the Private and the scale of cruelty in the 20th century. These conflicts about chans and censorship and conspiracy theories are artifacts of categories I think we've all seen before. I'd agree that truth in public is as welcome as truth to power, perhaps because they are related. The point of a separate public is to keep the ball in the air so we can coexist under conventions and merciful pretenses, whereas when it becomes overpowering and breaches the private sphere, it's just Hobbes' war of all against all. Feminist critiques I read at school back in the day about the Private sphere as the origin of patriarchy bring the division into a modern context. If we imagine the current trend in global internet culture as an extension of that revolt against the private sphere, it yields some uncomfortable questions about what the endgame looks like if that animus swings out of balance. Hence, I see a lot of the crazy online stuff as people expressing their instincts for what's going on and what they fear is going to happen to them, but they don't have the critical tools or the privacy to develop and articulate them. HN provides the closest thing we have to an elevated semi-private discourse to raise this stuff.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    there is nothing elevated about HN, that is your brain playing tricks on you. Privacy is an illusion, self is an illusion. smart people are manipulated just as easily as dumb people, by people who have been studying how to do it, and now with mass social media, have the tools to do it.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      Well, I would say here on HN at least the general bar is higher. And sure, anybody can be manipulated, but also, with different amount of effort. Tricking my young family teenage members into buying something shiny they don't really need? Not too hard, show a cool ad or pay some influencer to feature the product in a way. Getting people of the HN crowd to buy somehing shiny they don't need? Lets say, the new KI assistance? I would say, that is a lot harder, as most people here understand how (political) marketing works. And once you understand, you don't fall for it so easily.
kodah 6y ago
> The conspiracy-sphere of alternative internet platforms isn't the problem This phrasing doesn't really make sense to me. I've never seen anything conspiracy-esque said about platforms and centralization, generally it's just that people have found legitimate problems with them and their effects.
megameter 6y ago
I subscribe to the ideas of permeable and fractal boundaries. The former is one I attribute to Heather Marsh's writing - the idea of being able to move across a boundary fluidly and express different selves at different times and places. The latter is an original variant, using a fractal as the specific metaphor of self, and where you define your boundary is always "true until you look at the details" - then you find the exceptions, and exceptions to those exceptions. In this light, societal boundaries like public/private tend to act as hard cuts to the fractal of self, pruning it into a perhaps uncomfortable shape. In both mine and Marsh's framing, power structures represent a human health issue in that they channel the self into an element of the system, depriving it of a natural development pattern. But even so, this model allows a criticism of fringe conspiracy groups in that they represent an inflammatory response: an "anti" to the body politic. In this they differ from epistemic study groups, because the study goes nowhere, employing all the facts towards question-begging conclusions. Their collision with the "mainstream" acts to throw both into greater doubt. You want some of this inflammation, but as with inflammation in the human body, not continuously or at high levels. All of that said, I do believe that on the whole, power structures are loosening these days, because the angles of attack on them are so varied, like a horde of descending insects. Control exercised in one place causes inflammation in another. The "social media meltdown" - the typical result of an actor who has lost their place in the power structure - has grown so common as to be unremarkable. Meanwhile, people who work in between the boundaries, finding those cracks through which they can slip, seem to thrive.
- troughway 6y ago
  This is lucid as fuck and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Will read up more on Heather Marsh.
tt433 6y ago
"When we say mainstream, I think we mean aligned to the dominant power" hegemon/hegemonic is the word I use to describe this. Others have written about the Internet and "counter hegemonic discourses" which I encourage the curious to look into.
heresie-dabord 6y ago
> why I ever thought the internet was about ideas There was a time when the exchange of knowledge fostered education. I say this ironically, because that is what education is. Human civilisation exercises language to exchange ideas. It records this knowledge to extend education. The Internet was/is a medium for exchange. In the historical view, the Internet is a sophisticated medium without precedent. > When we say mainstream, I think we mean aligned to the dominant power The word means prevailing discourse, or some perception of the prevailing discourse. It is healthy to question prevailing discourse -- or any discourse. But it is not healthy to abandon reason and the tests (and self-tests) of validity. Wild assertions and unfounded accusations may divert weak minds, but they also seem to thrill fanatics. > the desperate political struggle for approval that is mainstream social media. People who favour their vanity over reason and truth are in deep trouble intellectually. Anti-intellectualism, if it becomes the prevailing discourse, will destroy a society. > The reality is the mainstream is not "good," the public sphere is an open sewer This is a sign of societal decline. "Social media" is vulgar business. It is not about education, intelligent discourse, or even civilisation.

leftyted 6y ago

> Internet trolls use the higher bar for entry of tech focused platforms to harass people who are competing in the desperate political struggle for approval that is mainstream social media. Conversely, this mainstream culture is also the source of the visceral disgust some people have for lawyers, journalists, activists, and other people who affect being underdogs so they aren't held to the standards of honest people, and then antagonize others using those dominant rules as a cover. The same can be said for trolls. What it comes down to is this calculus of self permission to act like a piece of shit because you identify as the underdog. > It's not the platforms, it's the single idea that identifying as an outsider, resister, pariah, defender, or challenger, justifies cruelty because being "good," is defined by your chosen bugbear. The reality is the mainstream is not "good," the public sphere is an open sewer, and the only things that float in it are turds. It's not a right/left thing, it's a conflict between people competing for mainstream power and people trying to find freedom from that mainstream's domain, with some of each self-identifying as beneath decency. What a great insight. My opinion is that this comes down to the fact that we cannot be good in public. The more "in public" we are, the more dishonest we are. The private sphere -- family, close friends, personal intimacy, etc -- is where people are at their best. We can be honest there. We can show weakness, we can apologize, we can compromise and we can forgive. The internet has made lots of things public that used to be private. It is also taking things that were public and making them more public. This is making the world worse. Since I know you've read Hannah Arendt, this matches up well with her assertion that "in politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy" and "hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in the private". She insisted on glory -- not goodness or justice or love -- as the sole criterion for political action.

motohagiography 6y ago
Thanks, her whole thing on private/public is something I'd like to read next, as I have a hypothesis that there is a thread of continuity between the collapse of the Private and the scale of cruelty in the 20th century. These conflicts about chans and censorship and conspiracy theories are artifacts of categories I think we've all seen before. I'd agree that truth in public is as welcome as truth to power, perhaps because they are related. The point of a separate public is to keep the ball in the air so we can coexist under conventions and merciful pretenses, whereas when it becomes overpowering and breaches the private sphere, it's just Hobbes' war of all against all. Feminist critiques I read at school back in the day about the Private sphere as the origin of patriarchy bring the division into a modern context. If we imagine the current trend in global internet culture as an extension of that revolt against the private sphere, it yields some uncomfortable questions about what the endgame looks like if that animus swings out of balance. Hence, I see a lot of the crazy online stuff as people expressing their instincts for what's going on and what they fear is going to happen to them, but they don't have the critical tools or the privacy to develop and articulate them. HN provides the closest thing we have to an elevated semi-private discourse to raise this stuff.
- MrMan 6y ago
  there is nothing elevated about HN, that is your brain playing tricks on you. Privacy is an illusion, self is an illusion. smart people are manipulated just as easily as dumb people, by people who have been studying how to do it, and now with mass social media, have the tools to do it.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    Well, I would say here on HN at least the general bar is higher. And sure, anybody can be manipulated, but also, with different amount of effort. Tricking my young family teenage members into buying something shiny they don't really need? Not too hard, show a cool ad or pay some influencer to feature the product in a way. Getting people of the HN crowd to buy somehing shiny they don't need? Lets say, the new KI assistance? I would say, that is a lot harder, as most people here understand how (political) marketing works. And once you understand, you don't fall for it so easily.

kodah 6y ago

> The conspiracy-sphere of alternative internet platforms isn't the problem This phrasing doesn't really make sense to me. I've never seen anything conspiracy-esque said about platforms and centralization, generally it's just that people have found legitimate problems with them and their effects.

megameter 6y ago

I subscribe to the ideas of permeable and fractal boundaries. The former is one I attribute to Heather Marsh's writing - the idea of being able to move across a boundary fluidly and express different selves at different times and places. The latter is an original variant, using a fractal as the specific metaphor of self, and where you define your boundary is always "true until you look at the details" - then you find the exceptions, and exceptions to those exceptions. In this light, societal boundaries like public/private tend to act as hard cuts to the fractal of self, pruning it into a perhaps uncomfortable shape. In both mine and Marsh's framing, power structures represent a human health issue in that they channel the self into an element of the system, depriving it of a natural development pattern. But even so, this model allows a criticism of fringe conspiracy groups in that they represent an inflammatory response: an "anti" to the body politic. In this they differ from epistemic study groups, because the study goes nowhere, employing all the facts towards question-begging conclusions. Their collision with the "mainstream" acts to throw both into greater doubt. You want some of this inflammation, but as with inflammation in the human body, not continuously or at high levels. All of that said, I do believe that on the whole, power structures are loosening these days, because the angles of attack on them are so varied, like a horde of descending insects. Control exercised in one place causes inflammation in another. The "social media meltdown" - the typical result of an actor who has lost their place in the power structure - has grown so common as to be unremarkable. Meanwhile, people who work in between the boundaries, finding those cracks through which they can slip, seem to thrive.

troughway 6y ago
This is lucid as fuck and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Will read up more on Heather Marsh.

tt433 6y ago

"When we say mainstream, I think we mean aligned to the dominant power" hegemon/hegemonic is the word I use to describe this. Others have written about the Internet and "counter hegemonic discourses" which I encourage the curious to look into.

heresie-dabord 6y ago

> why I ever thought the internet was about ideas There was a time when the exchange of knowledge fostered education. I say this ironically, because that is what education is. Human civilisation exercises language to exchange ideas. It records this knowledge to extend education. The Internet was/is a medium for exchange. In the historical view, the Internet is a sophisticated medium without precedent. > When we say mainstream, I think we mean aligned to the dominant power The word means prevailing discourse, or some perception of the prevailing discourse. It is healthy to question prevailing discourse -- or any discourse. But it is not healthy to abandon reason and the tests (and self-tests) of validity. Wild assertions and unfounded accusations may divert weak minds, but they also seem to thrill fanatics. > the desperate political struggle for approval that is mainstream social media. People who favour their vanity over reason and truth are in deep trouble intellectually. Anti-intellectualism, if it becomes the prevailing discourse, will destroy a society. > The reality is the mainstream is not "good," the public sphere is an open sewer This is a sign of societal decline. "Social media" is vulgar business. It is not about education, intelligent discourse, or even civilisation.