11 ms·

I am an object of internet ridicule, ask me anything (2013)

265 points by paublyrne 5y ago

mkaic 5y ago
This article was excellent! I feel sorry that the author had to go through all that. It's made me realize and regret some of the times I personally have negatively snap-judged a person on the Interwebz based on just one context-devoid picture with too many upvotes. Tribalism is a heck of a drug. Easy to get involved in, satisfies our primal instincts, and is frequently horribly destructive. I hope one day I can have enough discipline to not criticize every stranger on Twitter.
- moreira 5y ago
  I find it best to try never to say anything negative online, and certainly not attack anyone. I have my own opinions, and I can share them with those close to me. There’s nothing to be gained from saying anything negative in public, no matter how you feel.
pvaldes 5y ago
Anybody in this situation needs to hear Weezer's song "Pork and Beans".
notRobot 5y ago
(2013) One of my favourite articles on the internet
FerretFred 5y ago
Wow, that was a great read! Thanks for sharing!
jokethrowaway 5y ago
What a great read. I wish more people were aware of the value of anonymity. Exposing yourself to the world comes with its pros and cons. Attaining celebrity status may make you rich, but at what cost? Maybe many will turn into paying fans, what about the stalkers, the bullies? What about the mentally disturbed with a knife?
- moreira 5y ago
  This provides a bit of insight into what life as a celebrity might be like. And the more famous, the worse it would be. Imagine never knowing if you’re safe going anywhere. You could be fine, or you could come across a stalker fan or a disturbed person with a knife.
- ghoward 5y ago
  I agree with you about the value of anonymity. For me, though, I use my real name everywhere because I don't want to be able to hide behind an anonymous identity, and the reason for that is that it's easier to be like the jerks that were mean to this writer when you're anonymous. Not being anonymous means that I think more carefully about what I am going to say and try, in every instance, to be nice, even if I disagree.
  - esyir 5y ago
    I feel the opposite though. Anonymity is key, especially if you're not well protected. You can be the nicest guy in the world, but if you ever step out of line once and the wrong person decides that you're his target today, there you go.
    - ghoward 5y ago
      You are absolutely correct. To be honest, what I do does not work for the vast majority of people, and even though I do it, it does make me nervous. But one big reason I still do it is that the current culture thinks I am a terrible person anyway, so they are not going to think worse of me. I have already been the target of collective vitriol once, when I spoke against one particular Open Source project rewriting in Rust. So I have already weathered such a storm, which means I can do it again if I become someone's new target of the week. Can everyone do that? I don't think so. So yeah, you are absolutely 100% correct. (Side note: that experience with Rust has pushed me away from Rust, period. I don't want to be part of a community that does that. I know the Rust maintainers don't like that culture either, so I don't blame them. But it still exists, so Rust doesn't seem like a community that would want me in it.)
  - 5y ago
upofadown 5y ago
Social media is primarily a way for people to express their emotions. Hate is an emotion. This stuff is not any more complicated than that.
- nicaragua 5y ago
  I agree. Social media sucks. Zuckerberg, you here? Facebook sucks. Twitter boss? Twitter sucks. Haters hating on each other while people make money. Sort of how prisons work as well, just a different context. Prisons for the mind. Keep people locked in. Make money. Haters gonna hate.
wccrawford 5y ago
That's a great reminder that the internet is full of cowardly bullies. They don't actually want to understand things, they just want to tear other people down to make themselves feel better.
- helpfulclippy 5y ago
  Fucking bullies. I'm gonna go find someone who looks like a bully and beat him up!
  - zero_deg_kevin 5y ago
    You could always disrupt bullying when you see it. A lot of people would be grateful and you're less likely to go to jail.
- rchaud 5y ago
  A positive outcome of this was that these people dialed down their rage when the person in the photo commented. Before that however, they were still perfectly willing to expend a lot of angry energy trying to eviscerate the person they had created in their minds.
- david422 5y ago
  I think it's also just a product of the hivemind and people not thinking. Not realizing that there is a real person in that picture. Causes normal people to be asses without thinking. As evidenced by the fact that the tone of the conversation changed when he responded.
- mr-wendel 5y ago
  Hmm... I like how you center on "don't want to understand things". It's a LOT harder to hate something you understand, especially when it comes to people. I'd quibble on the final part though: they do it not to make themselves feel better (that is simply not possible), but to justify feeling bad about themselves and not wanting to admit it. It's quite narcissistic.
jwdunne 5y ago
I remember reading this back in the day. I remember being shocked and dismayed at the way he was treated. I mean the idea is a bit insane but the guy needed to eat and he’s a writer. I still think the idea of using a typewriter to become a writing busker was pretty clever in the end. I wonder how he’s doing today.
- MikeDelta 5y ago
  Happy to see that he seems to be doing fine: writing a book, doing podcasts, and still available with his typewriter for personalized stories. https://cdhermelin.com/ https://cdhermelin.com/
cko 5y ago
I'm glad I saw this. While reading and feeling bad for him, I wondered what I would have done if I saw that reddit pic without context, and then read the mob of comments. Perhaps I would have upvoted some mean comments, or laughed at them, or maybe shared the link with a friend, hoping to invite more ridicule. I wish I could say I'd be some of the people defending it, or even better, someone who doesn't click on such posts.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
A lot of internet communication platforms are just The Two Minutes Hate, only they run 24/7.
Brendinooo 5y ago
I don't know if there's a named maxim for this phenomenon, but something I learned on Twitter is that everything you say can be interpreted in bad faith. This can be done on purpose, or it just happens because there's not enough shared context to connect how you read something to what the other person was trying to say. (Also, while a picture still says 1000 words, I've never had less faith in the veracity of those words.) I've tried to be earnest on social media, for reasons like this. You see a photo of a guy with a typewriter, try to paint it in a good light for yourself. I'm not sure how I would have reacted, but I had a short phase in college where I dredged up an old typewriter from a friend's garage and used it to type love letters to girls. So maybe I could have related a bit better!
- vadansky 5y ago
  “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  It seems like an extension of the actor-observer bias / fundamental attribution error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmetry?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmet...
- chias 5y ago
  "Men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves." -- Bill S. (1599)
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  Not only CAN it be interpreted in bad faith, but users are ENCOURAGED to do so, because that makes people angry, and people stay on the site and keep clicking longer if they're angry.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  >>everything you say can be interpreted in bad faith. You're only saying that to absolve yourself from understanding that people's criticism of whatever stupid or evil thing you're into is valid.
rchaud 5y ago
Well-written article. I believe I actually saw that image a long time ago. This kind of context-free Reddit post often leads to cascading levels of verbal abuse. All that these kinds of post do, and all it is intended to do, is to incite a hail of abusive comments with a lot of self-righteous sanctimony thrown in. This was the raison d'etre of now-banned subs like r/fatpeoplehate. People had their photos posted without their permission, for no other reason than for posters to abuse them for all their perceived personality failings (lack of willpower, laziness, entitlement) --- all on the basis of one photo, of a person they've never met.
heywherelogingo 5y ago
tl;dr: people jumped to conclusions from a photo presenting someone out of context.
iJohnDoe 5y ago
Title says 2013. Wasn’t it only in recent years that people were brining typewriters to Starbucks. Maybe it was never considered cool, but it wasn’t treated like this person. Funny how time changes things. It’s like the “nerds” that were treated so badly in the 80s for being into Starwars and dressing up in their favorite characters. Now Starwars is cool and dressing up garnishes respect based on how elaborate and how much work went into it. I guess none of the above is surprising. It happens with everything. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and other people that are later respected as pioneers.
- OJFord 5y ago
  > dressing up garnishes respect based on how elaborate and how much work went into it. That sounds very much like a 'within the community' sort of thing. Isn't it just that the internet's made it easier for groups with (varying degrees, of course, of) niche interests to congregate?
  - playpause 5y ago
    I think it’s a bit of both. The internet has also made the niche groups more visible, probably making them grow in confidence/appeal/numbers. So people don’t need to worry as much about being labelled weird by association. Being labelled too basic/boring is also probably more of a concern than before, so the social pressures are aligning more and more with taking part in niche interests, or at least not being seen as scornful of them. I don’t have any numbers to back this up but that’s how it seems to me. Compared to a few years ago anyway.
dang 5y ago
Past threads: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412708 - Sept 2013 (378 comments) I Am an Object of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997902 - Aug 2015 (3 comments)
alex_young 5y ago
I remember this. This article convinced me that the word "Hipster" is just another random insult directed at the generic other. A completely useless descriptor.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I never liked the word. It isn't even clever.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  It's not random. Someone in stereotypical metalhead attire is unlikely to be called a hipster for it, neither is someone dressed in punk fashion, nor a goth or a jock, etc... well, they won't by a anyone with half a clue as to what the identifying features of these subcultures are. The negativity comes from people assuming that hipsters think they're cool, but (according to their critics) they're not... it's kind of a rejection of a holier-than-thou attitude, but in fact the critic is engaging in the same snobbery by picking on the hipsters (or whatever subculture they're targeting). The insult slingers are trying to act as a fashion police, as if there's something special about them that let's them see what's "really cool" that hipsters are blind to. But every sense of fashion is just as arbitrary and ridiculous as any other, and no one's so cool that they can't be looked down on and sneered at by someone else.
  - strken 5y ago
    It's not exactly because they "think they're cool", it's because hipsters reject cheap mass-market consumer goods and embrace expensive one-off artsy goods, while simultaneously adopting poverty aesthetics like wearing old second hand clothes and recycling everything. They're seen, perhaps unfairly, as rich gentrifiers.
    - cosmicglee 5y ago
      Well said. It's the perceived hypocrisy in hipsterdom that is seemingly so eyeroll-worthy, but to roll one's eyes, one needs to pointedly ignore the fact that we're all hypocrites about something. I blame this on the deification of schadenfreude in popular culture. The advent of reality TV, and the prurient interest in other people's pain exemplified by the afternoon talk shows that predated it, gives us all not only the opportunity, but the permission and encouragement to feel like we're superior to others because of some dehumanizing glimpse into an uncontextualized portion of their private lives. What a different world we might have if society cultivated a sense of humility, a 'hey, none of us are perfect and we're all out here struggling and I wish us all the best' mentality. But then, fostering divisions and appealing to our baser, more ignoble instincts is more beneficial, both in terms of profit and also 'divide and conquer' social control.
ta2162 5y ago
Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared. Most of the people who would have fallen in one of the aforementioned groups a decade ago are now non-binary, gender fluid, etc. They found a way to tie their identity to their humanity so now it's bigoted to scoff and laugh at them. Have any social psychologists studied this phenomenon? It's a great defense mechanism that seems to be working quite well.
- handrous 5y ago
  The topic's getting you downvoted, but this perspective suddenly makes a lot of what my wife's observed among middle-schoolers in the last 3-4 years make a ton more sense.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  It's no longer as socially-acceptable to bully strangers for being “weirdos”. Is that it? > Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared. Have you not noticed what's replaced these? We have hundreds of subcultures: weebs, dank memers, bronies, demoscene, lifehackers, outside, Bitcoin, competitive Pokémon… What you're seeing is a change in who you're bullying, not a change in reality.
  - ta2162 5y ago
    >It's no longer as socially-acceptable to bully strangers for being “weirdos”. Is that it? Not at all. People/children still bully each other, always have, always will. Now they can easily bully each other through social media, relentlessly. >Have you not noticed what's replaced these? We have hundreds of subcultures: weebs, dank memers, bronies, demoscene, lifehackers, outside, Bitcoin, competitive Pokémon… What you're seeing is a change in who you're bullying, not a change in reality. You may have missed the "etc." part of my original post. Weebs, bronies, Pokemon/gamers, etc. were all alive and well during the scene/emo/etc. times, they weren't "replaced", they live concurrently. Something else is going on, but it's definitely not "bullying is no longer socially-acceptable". It hasn't been "socially-acceptable" for decades at this point.
    - 5y ago
Jun8 5y ago
Ohboyohboyohboy, it seems I dodged bullet with an idea that I had 5-6 years ago that was very similar to this guy's: My idea was to sit beside a sign that said something along the lines of "Celebrate yourself Through Poetry" in the morning in downtown Chicago in front of a large office building. People going in would commission a poem in the morning, I would finish it and write it in calligraphy on a nice piece of paper by 4pm for a fixed cost, say $20. They would either buy or not buy the poem after I show it to them. A poor person's Francois Villon, if you will. I've never mentioned this to anyone other than my wife (who used to work in that building) and she laughed her head off. Now that I write it, I feel like I might do this in the future. What do you think, would you buy such a thing for $20-$30 a piece? OTOH, I've gotta admit: I think most of the customers would be young women, so that would make me seem more of an object of ridicule / creep than this guy. Still ... EDIT: OK, now that I've read my entry I feel like I have to admit something that makes the above proposition more insane or interesting, depending on your POV: I cannot write poetry, like not at all! My proposed strategy was to lean in to my NLP skills and get software help to find interesting ideas, rhymes, etc. Sort of auto poem creation with human tweaking.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- scoot 5y ago
  Or... you could read the linked article? It seems that you've completely missed what was being ridiculed, and why.
  - Jun8 5y ago
    I did (I thought my subtle reference of dodging the bullet to a comment to the piece his ex wrote was clever ;-), I was just going on tangentially about an idea similar to the one that he had, which, in retrospect, is more ridicule-worthy.
    - scoot 5y ago
      > an idea similar to the one that he had, which, in retrospect, is more ridicule-worthy Like I said, that isn't what was being ridiculed, nor why. What was being ridiculed was a photo of him in the park with his typewriter, because the image was posted without context. Your story is in no way comparable, because in your case it's the idea of writing poetry that your girlfriend found derisible, not the idea of you sitting on a bench with pen and paper in hand.
nrp 5y ago
“ After I posted, the message board thread’s climate changed immediately. Not unlike real life, people were complimentary and kind. Many people deleted their mean comments — one person was so embarrassed for threatening to smash my typewriter that he apologized to me, and then went through and started trying to make other haters apologize.” This is deeply familiar to me and is amazing to see in action. I regularly reply to people on Reddit and HN who are crapping on a product I’ve made and witness both the person’s position on the product and the thread’s overall tone change almost instantly. For whatever reason, it works less well on Twitter.
- freedomben 5y ago
  It's truly amazing to me (in a bad way) how humans are on the internet. They don't seem to realize that other people are real people. There's something about a reply that snaps them out of it. I've seen it happen many times myself as well.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Something similar sometimes happens in heavy road traffic too I think.
  - munificent 5y ago
    > They don't seem to realize that other people are real people. It is hypothesized that there is a rough upper limit to the number of people our brains can naturally conceive of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Of course, with effort, we can be mindful that in fact we are surrounded by millions of strangers, but it's not an instinctual emotional reaction. When in environment like sitting at home staring at a screen, it's easy to forget to do that cognitive work.
  - inigojonesguy 5y ago
    By writing this I'll contradict what I'm going to say, but, generally, not applying to this thread, I observed that many times people spend their precious time to write a reply instead of using it to better understand TFA.
drewzero1 5y ago
I remember seeing either the original Reddit post or a reference to it and thinking it was a really neat idea. I collect typewriters and had a slim portable Royal Hermes that would have been perfect for that kind of job, but I wasn't (and still am not) brave enough about my writing to share it in that way.
sambroner 5y ago
I remember seeing this in person when walking around the highline around this time. I was with my SO and we thought it was cute, hipster-y, and fun. What's interesting to me is that we had some of the same sentiments that were expressed so negatively on reddit, but in a very positive light? Crazy how the anonymity and lack of context can easily influence folks to be so negative.
MrLeap 5y ago
I'm making a game around the pretense that people would enjoy watching someone do this online. It's cool that people are into it in person. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1537490/Tentacle_Typer/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1537490/Tentacle_Typer/
MarcScott 5y ago
I once had a blog post go a little bit viral on HN, Reddit, Twitter etc, years ago. At first I was really worried about the negative comments, and tried to justify myself or make corrections. After 24 hours I was so numbed to it all, that I began to find the negative comments amusing. One Reddit commenter called me a "Incompetent fuckbucket" and I enjoyed that phrase so much that I ended up screen capping it and using it in a couple of public talks.
- sjclemmy 5y ago
  That chimes with my experience. Back in 2009 my (then) 9 year old son made a few stop frame lego movies and we posted them on YouTube. Some of the comments were really mean. I remember being surprised by the response but found it quite amusing. We still joke about our favourite comment: “You’re an embarrassment to the stop motion community”
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  That's the most original insult I've seen in a while, drew a couple of chuckles...
ALittleLight 5y ago
If I saw what the picture purports to show, a hipster in the park typing on a typewriter, I might smirk or roll my eyes or something if I did anything at all. However, if you want attention commenting on a post on reddit, or anywhere, you can't just say "There's a chance I'd subtly roll my eyes at this" - you have to go more extreme. In the same way that BuzzFeed described the picture as one that would make you "Black out with rage" you've got to go from "10% chance of smirk" to "I will smash this hipster-doofus's typewriter." A lot of stuff in internet comments is stuff that would absolutely never happen in real life. If you saw a hipster on a typewriter and a crowd of people bullying him in real life, it would be absolutely clear which behavior was worse. Plus, none of those people in real life would actually do any of the extreme things they write about in internet comments. The whole thing makes me imagine a forum of the future. Maybe it's more like a physical forum or park in virtual reality. There's a story at the center and radiating out from it are avatars that have been left behind by commenters. The avatars would be run by an AI that has been briefed on what point the commenter wanted to make. Other users, using the forum live, could wander through the park and interact with the deposited avatars or one another. Bringing some elements of reality to the forum experience - i.e. making it look like you are in a public space and interacting with people, may also bring in some elements of civility that we enjoy in reality and not online.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  IE the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19). The bitter irony is that originally, mods and admins on forums did what they could to contain this kind of behavior. Now it's actively encouraged because rage means engagement, and engagement means more ad revenue.
  - naravara 5y ago
    Honestly, with Twitter and Facebook actually being more noxious than anonymous forums like Reddit or HN, I'm not so sure that anonymity is the driver.
    - 5y ago
Bodell 5y ago
I’m not sure I understand why people would violently react to a picture of a typewriter. If these same people saw a young kind with an original game boy would the urge be to punch them. Nor do I see how it’s ironic. The only real irony being that people who are striving for online attention are enraged when perceiving someone else as trying to get attention. It’s seems anytime I hear or read the word “ironic” it’s used in some novel way and is impossible to get a read on what it means in any given context. “Hipster”, “ironic” and “pretentious” seem all to be very slippery words that are really just a judgements of how “normal” or not something is. It smacks of assimilate or die. Which are typically a projection of how little that person values their own life and how easily shaken they are by someone not make if their same choices. It’s no real wonder to me that a hyper-competitive culture would bring about this sort of behavior though.
locallost 5y ago
I guess it's a label that will be applied if you're doing something you want, just for the hell of it, without making it look cool. the people that are super conscious about themselves and how they present themselves cannot accept it.
walrus01 5y ago
Typewriter in a public park? How about a backpack with an old school rotary desk phone, an analog to SIP ATA that supports pulse dialing, a battery pack, and an opengear LTE network bridge/router? Set up a folding table somewhere and make and receive phone calls. Or pull the whole rig out on the countertop at a Starbucks and have an important business call. https://www.ebay.com/itm/174796261408?hash=item28b2ab4820:g:83EAAOSw87xgtn1F https://www.ebay.com/itm/174796261408?hash=item28b2ab4820:g:...
lewsid 5y ago
My friend's roommate dated him and I used to hang out at their place a lot in Brooklyn. Super nice guy! It was in the years after this happened, and he was still typing stories for strangers. I respected that then, and I continue to now.
debo_ 5y ago
Years ago, I met a performer at an event who sat there and ground a key for you. The key wasn't for a lock, it was a unique artifact they made just for you. It took about 10-15 mins, and they just sat and spoke with you while they ground the key. It was a soothing experience, and I kept that key around for a very long time.
utunga 5y ago
I was lucky enough to get actual death threats due to stuff I posted online (it involved Saudi Sheiks and was almost 20 years ago you won't find it, it doesn't matter). They (not the Sheik some other random people from the internet) had looked up my address in the Upper East side from DNS records and sent me an email along the lines of 'I know where you live and I'm going to come over and kill you'.. I dunno something like that. I had a small kid at the time. Freaked me the f out. Anyway, I did nothing. Nothing happened. I also got threatened by the fancy lawyer of a rich Sheik. Did nothing to take the content down. Again nothing. Lesson I take from this is to not let threats get to you too much, that the internet's bark can be worse than it's bite. Except, of course, for the poor souls for whom this is not true. YMMV I guess.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
>> Someone with the user handle “S2011” summed up the thoughts of the hive mind in 7 words: “Get the fuck out of my city.” Oh, that must be the mayor of NY?

265 points by paublyrne 5y ago

This article was excellent! I feel sorry that the author had to go through all that. It's made me realize and regret some of the times I personally have negatively snap-judged a person on the Interwebz based on just one context-devoid picture with too many upvotes. Tribalism is a heck of a drug. Easy to get involved in, satisfies our primal instincts, and is frequently horribly destructive. I hope one day I can have enough discipline to not criticize every stranger on Twitter.

moreira 5y ago
I find it best to try never to say anything negative online, and certainly not attack anyone. I have my own opinions, and I can share them with those close to me. There’s nothing to be gained from saying anything negative in public, no matter how you feel.

pvaldes 5y ago

Anybody in this situation needs to hear Weezer's song "Pork and Beans".

notRobot 5y ago

(2013) One of my favourite articles on the internet

FerretFred 5y ago

Wow, that was a great read! Thanks for sharing!

jokethrowaway 5y ago

What a great read. I wish more people were aware of the value of anonymity. Exposing yourself to the world comes with its pros and cons. Attaining celebrity status may make you rich, but at what cost? Maybe many will turn into paying fans, what about the stalkers, the bullies? What about the mentally disturbed with a knife?

moreira 5y ago
This provides a bit of insight into what life as a celebrity might be like. And the more famous, the worse it would be. Imagine never knowing if you’re safe going anywhere. You could be fine, or you could come across a stalker fan or a disturbed person with a knife.
ghoward 5y ago
I agree with you about the value of anonymity. For me, though, I use my real name everywhere because I don't want to be able to hide behind an anonymous identity, and the reason for that is that it's easier to be like the jerks that were mean to this writer when you're anonymous. Not being anonymous means that I think more carefully about what I am going to say and try, in every instance, to be nice, even if I disagree.
- esyir 5y ago
  I feel the opposite though. Anonymity is key, especially if you're not well protected. You can be the nicest guy in the world, but if you ever step out of line once and the wrong person decides that you're his target today, there you go.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    You are absolutely correct. To be honest, what I do does not work for the vast majority of people, and even though I do it, it does make me nervous. But one big reason I still do it is that the current culture thinks I am a terrible person anyway, so they are not going to think worse of me. I have already been the target of collective vitriol once, when I spoke against one particular Open Source project rewriting in Rust. So I have already weathered such a storm, which means I can do it again if I become someone's new target of the week. Can everyone do that? I don't think so. So yeah, you are absolutely 100% correct. (Side note: that experience with Rust has pushed me away from Rust, period. I don't want to be part of a community that does that. I know the Rust maintainers don't like that culture either, so I don't blame them. But it still exists, so Rust doesn't seem like a community that would want me in it.)
- 5y ago

upofadown 5y ago

Social media is primarily a way for people to express their emotions. Hate is an emotion. This stuff is not any more complicated than that.

nicaragua 5y ago
I agree. Social media sucks. Zuckerberg, you here? Facebook sucks. Twitter boss? Twitter sucks. Haters hating on each other while people make money. Sort of how prisons work as well, just a different context. Prisons for the mind. Keep people locked in. Make money. Haters gonna hate.

wccrawford 5y ago

That's a great reminder that the internet is full of cowardly bullies. They don't actually want to understand things, they just want to tear other people down to make themselves feel better.

helpfulclippy 5y ago
Fucking bullies. I'm gonna go find someone who looks like a bully and beat him up!
- zero_deg_kevin 5y ago
  You could always disrupt bullying when you see it. A lot of people would be grateful and you're less likely to go to jail.
rchaud 5y ago
A positive outcome of this was that these people dialed down their rage when the person in the photo commented. Before that however, they were still perfectly willing to expend a lot of angry energy trying to eviscerate the person they had created in their minds.
david422 5y ago
I think it's also just a product of the hivemind and people not thinking. Not realizing that there is a real person in that picture. Causes normal people to be asses without thinking. As evidenced by the fact that the tone of the conversation changed when he responded.
mr-wendel 5y ago
Hmm... I like how you center on "don't want to understand things". It's a LOT harder to hate something you understand, especially when it comes to people. I'd quibble on the final part though: they do it not to make themselves feel better (that is simply not possible), but to justify feeling bad about themselves and not wanting to admit it. It's quite narcissistic.

jwdunne 5y ago

I remember reading this back in the day. I remember being shocked and dismayed at the way he was treated. I mean the idea is a bit insane but the guy needed to eat and he’s a writer. I still think the idea of using a typewriter to become a writing busker was pretty clever in the end. I wonder how he’s doing today.

MikeDelta 5y ago
Happy to see that he seems to be doing fine: writing a book, doing podcasts, and still available with his typewriter for personalized stories. https://cdhermelin.com/ https://cdhermelin.com/

cko 5y ago

I'm glad I saw this. While reading and feeling bad for him, I wondered what I would have done if I saw that reddit pic without context, and then read the mob of comments. Perhaps I would have upvoted some mean comments, or laughed at them, or maybe shared the link with a friend, hoping to invite more ridicule. I wish I could say I'd be some of the people defending it, or even better, someone who doesn't click on such posts.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

A lot of internet communication platforms are just The Two Minutes Hate, only they run 24/7.

Brendinooo 5y ago

I don't know if there's a named maxim for this phenomenon, but something I learned on Twitter is that everything you say can be interpreted in bad faith. This can be done on purpose, or it just happens because there's not enough shared context to connect how you read something to what the other person was trying to say. (Also, while a picture still says 1000 words, I've never had less faith in the veracity of those words.) I've tried to be earnest on social media, for reasons like this. You see a photo of a guy with a typewriter, try to paint it in a good light for yourself. I'm not sure how I would have reacted, but I had a short phase in college where I dredged up an old typewriter from a friend's garage and used it to type love letters to girls. So maybe I could have related a bit better!

vadansky 5y ago
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
It seems like an extension of the actor-observer bias / fundamental attribution error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmetry?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_asymmet...
chias 5y ago
"Men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves." -- Bill S. (1599)
ergot_vacation 5y ago
Not only CAN it be interpreted in bad faith, but users are ENCOURAGED to do so, because that makes people angry, and people stay on the site and keep clicking longer if they're angry.
dalbasal 5y ago
>>everything you say can be interpreted in bad faith. You're only saying that to absolve yourself from understanding that people's criticism of whatever stupid or evil thing you're into is valid.

rchaud 5y ago

Well-written article. I believe I actually saw that image a long time ago. This kind of context-free Reddit post often leads to cascading levels of verbal abuse. All that these kinds of post do, and all it is intended to do, is to incite a hail of abusive comments with a lot of self-righteous sanctimony thrown in. This was the raison d'etre of now-banned subs like r/fatpeoplehate. People had their photos posted without their permission, for no other reason than for posters to abuse them for all their perceived personality failings (lack of willpower, laziness, entitlement) --- all on the basis of one photo, of a person they've never met.

heywherelogingo 5y ago

tl;dr: people jumped to conclusions from a photo presenting someone out of context.

iJohnDoe 5y ago

Title says 2013. Wasn’t it only in recent years that people were brining typewriters to Starbucks. Maybe it was never considered cool, but it wasn’t treated like this person. Funny how time changes things. It’s like the “nerds” that were treated so badly in the 80s for being into Starwars and dressing up in their favorite characters. Now Starwars is cool and dressing up garnishes respect based on how elaborate and how much work went into it. I guess none of the above is surprising. It happens with everything. Inventors, entrepreneurs, and other people that are later respected as pioneers.

OJFord 5y ago
> dressing up garnishes respect based on how elaborate and how much work went into it. That sounds very much like a 'within the community' sort of thing. Isn't it just that the internet's made it easier for groups with (varying degrees, of course, of) niche interests to congregate?
- playpause 5y ago
  I think it’s a bit of both. The internet has also made the niche groups more visible, probably making them grow in confidence/appeal/numbers. So people don’t need to worry as much about being labelled weird by association. Being labelled too basic/boring is also probably more of a concern than before, so the social pressures are aligning more and more with taking part in niche interests, or at least not being seen as scornful of them. I don’t have any numbers to back this up but that’s how it seems to me. Compared to a few years ago anyway.

dang 5y ago

Past threads: I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412708 - Sept 2013 (378 comments) I Am an Object of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997902 - Aug 2015 (3 comments)

alex_young 5y ago

I remember this. This article convinced me that the word "Hipster" is just another random insult directed at the generic other. A completely useless descriptor.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
I never liked the word. It isn't even clever.
pmoriarty 5y ago
It's not random. Someone in stereotypical metalhead attire is unlikely to be called a hipster for it, neither is someone dressed in punk fashion, nor a goth or a jock, etc... well, they won't by a anyone with half a clue as to what the identifying features of these subcultures are. The negativity comes from people assuming that hipsters think they're cool, but (according to their critics) they're not... it's kind of a rejection of a holier-than-thou attitude, but in fact the critic is engaging in the same snobbery by picking on the hipsters (or whatever subculture they're targeting). The insult slingers are trying to act as a fashion police, as if there's something special about them that let's them see what's "really cool" that hipsters are blind to. But every sense of fashion is just as arbitrary and ridiculous as any other, and no one's so cool that they can't be looked down on and sneered at by someone else.
- strken 5y ago
  It's not exactly because they "think they're cool", it's because hipsters reject cheap mass-market consumer goods and embrace expensive one-off artsy goods, while simultaneously adopting poverty aesthetics like wearing old second hand clothes and recycling everything. They're seen, perhaps unfairly, as rich gentrifiers.
  - cosmicglee 5y ago
    Well said. It's the perceived hypocrisy in hipsterdom that is seemingly so eyeroll-worthy, but to roll one's eyes, one needs to pointedly ignore the fact that we're all hypocrites about something. I blame this on the deification of schadenfreude in popular culture. The advent of reality TV, and the prurient interest in other people's pain exemplified by the afternoon talk shows that predated it, gives us all not only the opportunity, but the permission and encouragement to feel like we're superior to others because of some dehumanizing glimpse into an uncontextualized portion of their private lives. What a different world we might have if society cultivated a sense of humility, a 'hey, none of us are perfect and we're all out here struggling and I wish us all the best' mentality. But then, fostering divisions and appealing to our baser, more ignoble instincts is more beneficial, both in terms of profit and also 'divide and conquer' social control.

ta2162 5y ago

Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared. Most of the people who would have fallen in one of the aforementioned groups a decade ago are now non-binary, gender fluid, etc. They found a way to tie their identity to their humanity so now it's bigoted to scoff and laugh at them. Have any social psychologists studied this phenomenon? It's a great defense mechanism that seems to be working quite well.

handrous 5y ago
The topic's getting you downvoted, but this perspective suddenly makes a lot of what my wife's observed among middle-schoolers in the last 3-4 years make a ton more sense.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
It's no longer as socially-acceptable to bully strangers for being “weirdos”. Is that it? > Scene, hipster, emo, goth, etc. all but disappeared. Have you not noticed what's replaced these? We have hundreds of subcultures: weebs, dank memers, bronies, demoscene, lifehackers, outside, Bitcoin, competitive Pokémon… What you're seeing is a change in who you're bullying, not a change in reality.
- ta2162 5y ago
  >It's no longer as socially-acceptable to bully strangers for being “weirdos”. Is that it? Not at all. People/children still bully each other, always have, always will. Now they can easily bully each other through social media, relentlessly. >Have you not noticed what's replaced these? We have hundreds of subcultures: weebs, dank memers, bronies, demoscene, lifehackers, outside, Bitcoin, competitive Pokémon… What you're seeing is a change in who you're bullying, not a change in reality. You may have missed the "etc." part of my original post. Weebs, bronies, Pokemon/gamers, etc. were all alive and well during the scene/emo/etc. times, they weren't "replaced", they live concurrently. Something else is going on, but it's definitely not "bullying is no longer socially-acceptable". It hasn't been "socially-acceptable" for decades at this point.
  - 5y ago

Jun8 5y ago

Ohboyohboyohboy, it seems I dodged bullet with an idea that I had 5-6 years ago that was very similar to this guy's: My idea was to sit beside a sign that said something along the lines of "Celebrate yourself Through Poetry" in the morning in downtown Chicago in front of a large office building. People going in would commission a poem in the morning, I would finish it and write it in calligraphy on a nice piece of paper by 4pm for a fixed cost, say $20. They would either buy or not buy the poem after I show it to them. A poor person's Francois Villon, if you will. I've never mentioned this to anyone other than my wife (who used to work in that building) and she laughed her head off. Now that I write it, I feel like I might do this in the future. What do you think, would you buy such a thing for $20-$30 a piece? OTOH, I've gotta admit: I think most of the customers would be young women, so that would make me seem more of an object of ridicule / creep than this guy. Still ... EDIT: OK, now that I've read my entry I feel like I have to admit something that makes the above proposition more insane or interesting, depending on your POV: I cannot write poetry, like not at all! My proposed strategy was to lean in to my NLP skills and get software help to find interesting ideas, rhymes, etc. Sort of auto poem creation with human tweaking.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scoot 5y ago
Or... you could read the linked article? It seems that you've completely missed what was being ridiculed, and why.
- Jun8 5y ago
  I did (I thought my subtle reference of dodging the bullet to a comment to the piece his ex wrote was clever ;-), I was just going on tangentially about an idea similar to the one that he had, which, in retrospect, is more ridicule-worthy.
  - scoot 5y ago
    > an idea similar to the one that he had, which, in retrospect, is more ridicule-worthy Like I said, that isn't what was being ridiculed, nor why. What was being ridiculed was a photo of him in the park with his typewriter, because the image was posted without context. Your story is in no way comparable, because in your case it's the idea of writing poetry that your girlfriend found derisible, not the idea of you sitting on a bench with pen and paper in hand.

nrp 5y ago

“ After I posted, the message board thread’s climate changed immediately. Not unlike real life, people were complimentary and kind. Many people deleted their mean comments — one person was so embarrassed for threatening to smash my typewriter that he apologized to me, and then went through and started trying to make other haters apologize.” This is deeply familiar to me and is amazing to see in action. I regularly reply to people on Reddit and HN who are crapping on a product I’ve made and witness both the person’s position on the product and the thread’s overall tone change almost instantly. For whatever reason, it works less well on Twitter.

freedomben 5y ago
It's truly amazing to me (in a bad way) how humans are on the internet. They don't seem to realize that other people are real people. There's something about a reply that snaps them out of it. I've seen it happen many times myself as well.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Something similar sometimes happens in heavy road traffic too I think.
- munificent 5y ago
  > They don't seem to realize that other people are real people. It is hypothesized that there is a rough upper limit to the number of people our brains can naturally conceive of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Of course, with effort, we can be mindful that in fact we are surrounded by millions of strangers, but it's not an instinctual emotional reaction. When in environment like sitting at home staring at a screen, it's easy to forget to do that cognitive work.
- inigojonesguy 5y ago
  By writing this I'll contradict what I'm going to say, but, generally, not applying to this thread, I observed that many times people spend their precious time to write a reply instead of using it to better understand TFA.

drewzero1 5y ago

I remember seeing either the original Reddit post or a reference to it and thinking it was a really neat idea. I collect typewriters and had a slim portable Royal Hermes that would have been perfect for that kind of job, but I wasn't (and still am not) brave enough about my writing to share it in that way.

sambroner 5y ago

I remember seeing this in person when walking around the highline around this time. I was with my SO and we thought it was cute, hipster-y, and fun. What's interesting to me is that we had some of the same sentiments that were expressed so negatively on reddit, but in a very positive light? Crazy how the anonymity and lack of context can easily influence folks to be so negative.

MrLeap 5y ago

I'm making a game around the pretense that people would enjoy watching someone do this online. It's cool that people are into it in person. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1537490/Tentacle_Typer/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1537490/Tentacle_Typer/

MarcScott 5y ago

I once had a blog post go a little bit viral on HN, Reddit, Twitter etc, years ago. At first I was really worried about the negative comments, and tried to justify myself or make corrections. After 24 hours I was so numbed to it all, that I began to find the negative comments amusing. One Reddit commenter called me a "Incompetent fuckbucket" and I enjoyed that phrase so much that I ended up screen capping it and using it in a couple of public talks.

sjclemmy 5y ago
That chimes with my experience. Back in 2009 my (then) 9 year old son made a few stop frame lego movies and we posted them on YouTube. Some of the comments were really mean. I remember being surprised by the response but found it quite amusing. We still joke about our favourite comment: “You’re an embarrassment to the stop motion community”
sergiomattei 5y ago
That's the most original insult I've seen in a while, drew a couple of chuckles...

ALittleLight 5y ago

If I saw what the picture purports to show, a hipster in the park typing on a typewriter, I might smirk or roll my eyes or something if I did anything at all. However, if you want attention commenting on a post on reddit, or anywhere, you can't just say "There's a chance I'd subtly roll my eyes at this" - you have to go more extreme. In the same way that BuzzFeed described the picture as one that would make you "Black out with rage" you've got to go from "10% chance of smirk" to "I will smash this hipster-doofus's typewriter." A lot of stuff in internet comments is stuff that would absolutely never happen in real life. If you saw a hipster on a typewriter and a crowd of people bullying him in real life, it would be absolutely clear which behavior was worse. Plus, none of those people in real life would actually do any of the extreme things they write about in internet comments. The whole thing makes me imagine a forum of the future. Maybe it's more like a physical forum or park in virtual reality. There's a story at the center and radiating out from it are avatars that have been left behind by commenters. The avatars would be run by an AI that has been briefed on what point the commenter wanted to make. Other users, using the forum live, could wander through the park and interact with the deposited avatars or one another. Bringing some elements of reality to the forum experience - i.e. making it look like you are in a public space and interacting with people, may also bring in some elements of civility that we enjoy in reality and not online.

ergot_vacation 5y ago
IE the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19). The bitter irony is that originally, mods and admins on forums did what they could to contain this kind of behavior. Now it's actively encouraged because rage means engagement, and engagement means more ad revenue.
- naravara 5y ago
  Honestly, with Twitter and Facebook actually being more noxious than anonymous forums like Reddit or HN, I'm not so sure that anonymity is the driver.
  - 5y ago

Bodell 5y ago

I’m not sure I understand why people would violently react to a picture of a typewriter. If these same people saw a young kind with an original game boy would the urge be to punch them. Nor do I see how it’s ironic. The only real irony being that people who are striving for online attention are enraged when perceiving someone else as trying to get attention. It’s seems anytime I hear or read the word “ironic” it’s used in some novel way and is impossible to get a read on what it means in any given context. “Hipster”, “ironic” and “pretentious” seem all to be very slippery words that are really just a judgements of how “normal” or not something is. It smacks of assimilate or die. Which are typically a projection of how little that person values their own life and how easily shaken they are by someone not make if their same choices. It’s no real wonder to me that a hyper-competitive culture would bring about this sort of behavior though.

locallost 5y ago

I guess it's a label that will be applied if you're doing something you want, just for the hell of it, without making it look cool. the people that are super conscious about themselves and how they present themselves cannot accept it.

walrus01 5y ago

Typewriter in a public park? How about a backpack with an old school rotary desk phone, an analog to SIP ATA that supports pulse dialing, a battery pack, and an opengear LTE network bridge/router? Set up a folding table somewhere and make and receive phone calls. Or pull the whole rig out on the countertop at a Starbucks and have an important business call. https://www.ebay.com/itm/174796261408?hash=item28b2ab4820:g:83EAAOSw87xgtn1F https://www.ebay.com/itm/174796261408?hash=item28b2ab4820:g:...

lewsid 5y ago

My friend's roommate dated him and I used to hang out at their place a lot in Brooklyn. Super nice guy! It was in the years after this happened, and he was still typing stories for strangers. I respected that then, and I continue to now.

debo_ 5y ago

Years ago, I met a performer at an event who sat there and ground a key for you. The key wasn't for a lock, it was a unique artifact they made just for you. It took about 10-15 mins, and they just sat and spoke with you while they ground the key. It was a soothing experience, and I kept that key around for a very long time.

utunga 5y ago

I was lucky enough to get actual death threats due to stuff I posted online (it involved Saudi Sheiks and was almost 20 years ago you won't find it, it doesn't matter). They (not the Sheik some other random people from the internet) had looked up my address in the Upper East side from DNS records and sent me an email along the lines of 'I know where you live and I'm going to come over and kill you'.. I dunno something like that. I had a small kid at the time. Freaked me the f out. Anyway, I did nothing. Nothing happened. I also got threatened by the fancy lawyer of a rich Sheik. Did nothing to take the content down. Again nothing. Lesson I take from this is to not let threats get to you too much, that the internet's bark can be worse than it's bite. Except, of course, for the poor souls for whom this is not true. YMMV I guess.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

>> Someone with the user handle “S2011” summed up the thoughts of the hive mind in 7 words: “Get the fuck out of my city.” Oh, that must be the mayor of NY?