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> 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 th

> 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.
    - jeromenerf 6y ago
      > 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. Maybe easier actually, but different. Bigger flats, Apple products, travels, cloud services ... The arguments used may appeal to meaning, sense, evolution, progress ... instead of comfort, fear, luxury ... just as easily and probably more profitably.
vonwoodson 6y ago
The idea that we are “good in private” is a cultural statement. In fact, I’d have argued against it only a few months ago before I became aware that this is the norm for most of the world. In my world, all the dirty lies and secrets are kept private. We “put our best foot forward” and “manage our personal brand”. I think that this idea alone is worth discussing more, especially as it relates to justice. In my world, if you act out in public the police get involved. The police carry guns here, and they use them. On the internet, if you act out... ... ...honestly, I can’t finish that. It’s liberating to those of us who have suppressed ourselves, but it’s also culturally devastating to be so viciously attacked openly by people in public. It makes me want to shut down the offenders, with a violent righteousness of a public super-hero. Yet, I’m as helpless ever.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I assume 'your part of the world' is America. I can flip somebody the bird for obeying the speed limit and nobody calls cops with guns to stop me from being a shithead. I think it's generally true that people are more willing to be assholes to strangers than their close acquaintances. This has certainly been my observation of American culture at least. People are ruder to people the further removed from those people they are and are very rarely ever ruder than they are in public. I've heard similar sentiments from people who work in public facing jobs, particularly retail.
  - megameter 6y ago
    There is a longstanding acknowledgement of the "rude tourist" effect where people behave less respectfully when outside of their hometown, even if it's one town over. It just becomes more of a caricature when it's an entirely different language and culture and tourist is like, "well, that's not how we do things where I come from".
watwut 6y ago
The private sphere is where the most severe abuse happens.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- motohagiography 6y ago
  There's a fair bit of back and forth on it, here's wiki to start it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sphere Most of the criticisms of the ideas of the public/private sphere root back to Aristotle, and unfortunately, Google has elevated more recent, post Marx criticisms of it (imo) since setting it up as an evil is the basis of popular current cultural theory, but it's a foundational concept that predates the view of history as progress. The idea of the private has more relevance today now that it's so rare.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I was responding to this: > 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. It family where publicly charizmatic people stop trying to be charizmatic and start being abusive. Also, it is not rare, both private part and abuse part went up during lockdowns. Aristotle and Marx have zero to do with it and the way people on HN bring super old classics in completely unrelated context is getting obnoxious.
    - leftyted 6y ago
      > Aristotle and Marx have zero to do with it and the way people on HN bring super old classics in completely unrelated context is getting obnoxious. The Greeks are the source for a lot of our language and a lot of how we think about the world. Marx turned much of that upside down. It's fine if you don't agree with the idea of "intellectual heritage" (or the influence of that heritage). But I (and others) do, so clearly we're going to talk about it. It seems, uh, strange to fail to notice Marx's influence in particular given what happened in the 20th century and what continues to happen in China. Furthermore, the idea of the government as an instrument of violence used by the ruling class (which is so common these days, on HN too) is clearly straight out of Marx. > The private sphere is where the most severe abuse happens. Certainly plenty of abuse happens in the private sphere. My original post was hasty. My opinion is more complicated than "everyone is good in private". It's more like, at a certain point, "publicness" becomes a problem. And things that we can do in private (like goodness, love, and hatred) do not work in public. And yet we seem to be reaching for them anyway.

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.
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    > 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. Maybe easier actually, but different. Bigger flats, Apple products, travels, cloud services ... The arguments used may appeal to meaning, sense, evolution, progress ... instead of comfort, fear, luxury ... just as easily and probably more profitably.

vonwoodson 6y ago

The idea that we are “good in private” is a cultural statement. In fact, I’d have argued against it only a few months ago before I became aware that this is the norm for most of the world. In my world, all the dirty lies and secrets are kept private. We “put our best foot forward” and “manage our personal brand”. I think that this idea alone is worth discussing more, especially as it relates to justice. In my world, if you act out in public the police get involved. The police carry guns here, and they use them. On the internet, if you act out... ... ...honestly, I can’t finish that. It’s liberating to those of us who have suppressed ourselves, but it’s also culturally devastating to be so viciously attacked openly by people in public. It makes me want to shut down the offenders, with a violent righteousness of a public super-hero. Yet, I’m as helpless ever.

bigbubba 6y ago
I assume 'your part of the world' is America. I can flip somebody the bird for obeying the speed limit and nobody calls cops with guns to stop me from being a shithead. I think it's generally true that people are more willing to be assholes to strangers than their close acquaintances. This has certainly been my observation of American culture at least. People are ruder to people the further removed from those people they are and are very rarely ever ruder than they are in public. I've heard similar sentiments from people who work in public facing jobs, particularly retail.
- megameter 6y ago
  There is a longstanding acknowledgement of the "rude tourist" effect where people behave less respectfully when outside of their hometown, even if it's one town over. It just becomes more of a caricature when it's an entirely different language and culture and tourist is like, "well, that's not how we do things where I come from".

watwut 6y ago

The private sphere is where the most severe abuse happens.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 6y ago
There's a fair bit of back and forth on it, here's wiki to start it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_sphere Most of the criticisms of the ideas of the public/private sphere root back to Aristotle, and unfortunately, Google has elevated more recent, post Marx criticisms of it (imo) since setting it up as an evil is the basis of popular current cultural theory, but it's a foundational concept that predates the view of history as progress. The idea of the private has more relevance today now that it's so rare.
- watwut 6y ago
  I was responding to this: > 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. It family where publicly charizmatic people stop trying to be charizmatic and start being abusive. Also, it is not rare, both private part and abuse part went up during lockdowns. Aristotle and Marx have zero to do with it and the way people on HN bring super old classics in completely unrelated context is getting obnoxious.
  - leftyted 6y ago
    > Aristotle and Marx have zero to do with it and the way people on HN bring super old classics in completely unrelated context is getting obnoxious. The Greeks are the source for a lot of our language and a lot of how we think about the world. Marx turned much of that upside down. It's fine if you don't agree with the idea of "intellectual heritage" (or the influence of that heritage). But I (and others) do, so clearly we're going to talk about it. It seems, uh, strange to fail to notice Marx's influence in particular given what happened in the 20th century and what continues to happen in China. Furthermore, the idea of the government as an instrument of violence used by the ruling class (which is so common these days, on HN too) is clearly straight out of Marx. > The private sphere is where the most severe abuse happens. Certainly plenty of abuse happens in the private sphere. My original post was hasty. My opinion is more complicated than "everyone is good in private". It's more like, at a certain point, "publicness" becomes a problem. And things that we can do in private (like goodness, love, and hatred) do not work in public. And yet we seem to be reaching for them anyway.