5 ms·

How many of these "X sucks" articles with an attention-grabbing headline can make it to the top of HN in a week? While these articles lament the state of techn

How many of these "X sucks" articles with an attention-grabbing headline can make it to the top of HN in a week? While these articles lament the state of technology today and wish it were better like back in the good old days, there are never solutions put forward. Only negativity. Why do they gain so much traction on HN, one of the few remaining outposts of thought-provoking articles and discussion? What do we get from these endless articles about why some product or technology sucks?

marttt 5y ago
+1. All these "fucks" and "shits" felt pointless, tiresome, not convincing. Overuse of this kind of language often results in a more superficial text imo.
- treacle 5y ago
  Well it was hardly a manifesto!
flohofwoe 5y ago
Quite simple, it's a real problem but without a realistic solution short of burning everything to the ground. Once the bean counters had discovered and invaded the paradise there was no way to kick them out again. Maybe the only solution is to build a new paradise and hope that it never gains enough traction to attract the vultures.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  I think that's a large part of the appeal of overlay networks like Tor, GNUnet, I2P, IPFS, etc. All of them are niche and not supported by any notable ad networks, many of them heavily discourage JavaScript and tracking, and with the networks often being either slow or high latency (or both) websites are forced to be fairly lean.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The cool thing is that you can do that on the existing system. Make a new service. Make it username / password authenticated. Don't give out the usernames and passwords to everyone that comes in. Have some kind of gating function (BBS's were all about who you knew, somethingawful.com made you pay twenty bucks one time, some old systems were gated on something no more complex than single-administrator bandwidth). You won't grow at a rate that any VC will care about, but that kind of capitalism-feeding growth isn't your goal if you're trying to cultivate a "web 1.0 experience:" web 1.0 didn't support most people's capitalist ventures. What you may find (what I've found participating in these experiments) is that the resulting space is a whole lot quieter than the rest of the web. And if you're replicating the web 1.0 experience, that's the goal. The site administrator will also spend a lot more time glad-handing individual users who have individual issues. That's fine; if you're going for a web 1.0 experience, authentication management isn't automated beyond a few simple config scripts. And if that's what a person wants, nothing about the modern web stops them from doing it, except that very few people will care they're doing it because (unlike the web 1.0 days) there are alternatives that accept all comers with functionally infinite capacity now.
jjordan 5y ago
Because it's generally agreed upon that the current web is indeed fucked, and along with the empathy in the sentiment, up-voting is one small way of raising awareness in the hope that someone will fix it.
cvhashim 5y ago
“X was good before it was ruined by Y”
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Damn Y, always coming in and ruining everything. I'm sick of it!
treacle 5y ago
There wasn't much in that rant. But it does stroke our nostalgia zones. You know something is not quite right, and can moan about it, without having a solution to the problem. Considering many people have drifted away from some of the big socials. Niche sites, and communities may and no doubt have sprung up elsewhere. Newsnet and PhpBB rooms of old have been replaced by other forums. In the UK, the web was the preserve of the well-to-do for a long time. Ubiquitous smart phones have put the web in almost every man's pocket these days. And the initial lavish jump on and novelty will wear off. Everyone's a troll and photographer for 5 minutes, or some such. My Mum has only just really discovered the web in the last year, via Youtube. She still doesn't really get the web, but gets that website (ish). It's still fresh for many. It's probably just easier to poke at a thing. Web rings still exist. My partner has a hobby, which is shared on a forum and via Youtube, and they are all very good at supporting and bigging up each other across those boundaries. It's a very vibrant community. And the technology is just backgrounded.
KronisLV 5y ago
> ...there are never solutions put forward. Only negativity. What are you supposed to do when you recognize a shortcoming or a way society/technology has regressed, but the thing is out of your or anyone's control to actually fix? Not talk about it? > What do we get from these endless articles about why some product or technology sucks? Recognition of the problem, so that no one could just claim that everything is great, when there are good demonstrable historical reasons to rightfully claim otherwise. Sure, on one hand some of it might make you feel worse, but on the other, i think it's nice to document how things were in a time where many weren't around to experience all of it. Not everyone should grow up with only the knowledge of walled gardens, closed platforms and largely centralized and corporation driven Internet. Very rarely (but still) you also get actionable steps to take, or the ability to build communities with like minded individuals, such as: https://512kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ Or maybe just fun little projects, for example, by people like Luke Smith: https://based.cooking/ https://based.cooking/ (there is information at the bottom of the site about it)
koonsolo 5y ago
The clash between conservative and progressive is becoming very apparent on HN. Any of the crypto or web3 discussions are just 2 opposite sides shouting at each other. I recently was discussing web3 on indiehackers. Way more constructive discussions. Maybe the next article reaching the top is how the old HN was better ;). edit: And looking at those articles, the conservative side is definitely in the majority. Like I say: just shouting at each other.
scruple 5y ago
> What do we get from these endless articles about why some product or technology sucks? Insight into the thought processes of other people. That's enough for me.
beej71 5y ago
> there are never solutions put forward. Only negativity. This one did actually point out a few ideas.
IshKebab 5y ago
I agree, and this article doesn't even make a remotely compelling case that the web does suck. It's all just "back in my day we had to walk uphill both ways and we liked it". Seriously, they lead with "it was better when there were no search engines and you had to trawl through a directory". I'm old enough to remember that. It wasn't better. It sucked. They even list phpBB style forums as a positive thing. I mean sure I guess they're better than StackOverflow and Discourse if you like clicking "next page" 84 times to find the solution to your problem. Their spectacles are so rose-tinted I'm surprised they can see through them at all.

marttt 5y ago

+1. All these "fucks" and "shits" felt pointless, tiresome, not convincing. Overuse of this kind of language often results in a more superficial text imo.

treacle 5y ago
Well it was hardly a manifesto!

flohofwoe 5y ago

Quite simple, it's a real problem but without a realistic solution short of burning everything to the ground. Once the bean counters had discovered and invaded the paradise there was no way to kick them out again. Maybe the only solution is to build a new paradise and hope that it never gains enough traction to attract the vultures.

wongarsu 5y ago
I think that's a large part of the appeal of overlay networks like Tor, GNUnet, I2P, IPFS, etc. All of them are niche and not supported by any notable ad networks, many of them heavily discourage JavaScript and tracking, and with the networks often being either slow or high latency (or both) websites are forced to be fairly lean.
shadowgovt 5y ago
The cool thing is that you can do that on the existing system. Make a new service. Make it username / password authenticated. Don't give out the usernames and passwords to everyone that comes in. Have some kind of gating function (BBS's were all about who you knew, somethingawful.com made you pay twenty bucks one time, some old systems were gated on something no more complex than single-administrator bandwidth). You won't grow at a rate that any VC will care about, but that kind of capitalism-feeding growth isn't your goal if you're trying to cultivate a "web 1.0 experience:" web 1.0 didn't support most people's capitalist ventures. What you may find (what I've found participating in these experiments) is that the resulting space is a whole lot quieter than the rest of the web. And if you're replicating the web 1.0 experience, that's the goal. The site administrator will also spend a lot more time glad-handing individual users who have individual issues. That's fine; if you're going for a web 1.0 experience, authentication management isn't automated beyond a few simple config scripts. And if that's what a person wants, nothing about the modern web stops them from doing it, except that very few people will care they're doing it because (unlike the web 1.0 days) there are alternatives that accept all comers with functionally infinite capacity now.

jjordan 5y ago

Because it's generally agreed upon that the current web is indeed fucked, and along with the empathy in the sentiment, up-voting is one small way of raising awareness in the hope that someone will fix it.

cvhashim 5y ago

“X was good before it was ruined by Y”

giantrobot 5y ago
Damn Y, always coming in and ruining everything. I'm sick of it!

treacle 5y ago

There wasn't much in that rant. But it does stroke our nostalgia zones. You know something is not quite right, and can moan about it, without having a solution to the problem. Considering many people have drifted away from some of the big socials. Niche sites, and communities may and no doubt have sprung up elsewhere. Newsnet and PhpBB rooms of old have been replaced by other forums. In the UK, the web was the preserve of the well-to-do for a long time. Ubiquitous smart phones have put the web in almost every man's pocket these days. And the initial lavish jump on and novelty will wear off. Everyone's a troll and photographer for 5 minutes, or some such. My Mum has only just really discovered the web in the last year, via Youtube. She still doesn't really get the web, but gets that website (ish). It's still fresh for many. It's probably just easier to poke at a thing. Web rings still exist. My partner has a hobby, which is shared on a forum and via Youtube, and they are all very good at supporting and bigging up each other across those boundaries. It's a very vibrant community. And the technology is just backgrounded.

KronisLV 5y ago

> ...there are never solutions put forward. Only negativity. What are you supposed to do when you recognize a shortcoming or a way society/technology has regressed, but the thing is out of your or anyone's control to actually fix? Not talk about it? > What do we get from these endless articles about why some product or technology sucks? Recognition of the problem, so that no one could just claim that everything is great, when there are good demonstrable historical reasons to rightfully claim otherwise. Sure, on one hand some of it might make you feel worse, but on the other, i think it's nice to document how things were in a time where many weren't around to experience all of it. Not everyone should grow up with only the knowledge of walled gardens, closed platforms and largely centralized and corporation driven Internet. Very rarely (but still) you also get actionable steps to take, or the ability to build communities with like minded individuals, such as: https://512kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ Or maybe just fun little projects, for example, by people like Luke Smith: https://based.cooking/ https://based.cooking/ (there is information at the bottom of the site about it)

koonsolo 5y ago

The clash between conservative and progressive is becoming very apparent on HN. Any of the crypto or web3 discussions are just 2 opposite sides shouting at each other. I recently was discussing web3 on indiehackers. Way more constructive discussions. Maybe the next article reaching the top is how the old HN was better ;). edit: And looking at those articles, the conservative side is definitely in the majority. Like I say: just shouting at each other.

scruple 5y ago

> What do we get from these endless articles about why some product or technology sucks? Insight into the thought processes of other people. That's enough for me.

beej71 5y ago

> there are never solutions put forward. Only negativity. This one did actually point out a few ideas.

IshKebab 5y ago

I agree, and this article doesn't even make a remotely compelling case that the web does suck. It's all just "back in my day we had to walk uphill both ways and we liked it". Seriously, they lead with "it was better when there were no search engines and you had to trawl through a directory". I'm old enough to remember that. It wasn't better. It sucked. They even list phpBB style forums as a positive thing. I mean sure I guess they're better than StackOverflow and Discourse if you like clicking "next page" 84 times to find the solution to your problem. Their spectacles are so rose-tinted I'm surprised they can see through them at all.