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I don't know. I think since 2010 so many shared experiences coming from the internet that it actually became rare to learn new stuff from conversations. That'

• raverbashing 4y ago
  Yeah. I'd say while channels like Tom Scott and Smarter Every Day are good, they "encourage" a shallowness and a certain homogeneity It's only about the "money shot" the punch line and that's it.
• substation13 4y ago
  Gosh, XKCD 927 is the most low effort comment that comes out every time sometimes tries to improve the state of things. I think there could be an argument for banning it entirely from Show HN threads.
  • scrame 4y ago
    "Relevant XKCD" is one of the few things that will get me to log into a site just to downvote.
    • cwillu 4y ago
      Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/33/ https://xkcd.com/33/
      • scrame 4y ago
        Back at ya: https://xkcd.com/7/ https://xkcd.com/7/ Dudes a creep.
    • ratww 4y ago
      I make a point to flag it. It's too low effort and people tend to pile in. Really wish there as a rule or automation against it.
• thatguy0900 4y ago
  This just seems like you only go to places your familiar with yourself. Go to forums and meet new people you're not similar to and you'll get exposure to all kinds of new things. Go to /x/, heres some new ones for you https://boards.4channel.org/x/thread/32404158 https://boards.4channel.org/x/thread/32404158
  • ratww 4y ago
    Well, sorta but not really! I kinda expect old forums (and old friends!) to have the same old lingo from before and be set in their ways. But the crazy thing to me is that this happens with new venues and new people too. I not-so-recently moved countries, and also moved cities, and it's definitely crazy how even completely new people still talk about the samey internet things as the other city. I did the same 15 years ago, and it was completely different. I'll check your link for fun stuff later!
• BobbyJo 4y ago
  This is the first I remember seeing that XKCD. I have probably seen it before, but my immediate lack of context was comical to me given the premise of your rant :P
  • spookthesunset 4y ago
    Turns out there is even an xkcd for the phenomenon you just experienced!
    • ratww 4y ago
      Yep, that's the second worst XKCD! :D
      • kibwen 4y ago
        Nah, whereas 927 should die in a fire, 1053 is extremely insightful and empathetic. It's the only XKCD that I would frame on my wall.
        • spookthesunset 4y ago
          That is actually true. 1053 is pretty empathetic. I’d frame that one too.
      • astrange 4y ago
        The second worst XKCD is the one saying it’s good to deprive someone of freedom of speech as long as you’re not in government when you do it. Well, and the really old ones that are just him writing passive aggressive comics about his ex-gf.
        • ratww 4y ago
          I honestly hate them all at this point. Overused crap that kills discussions, overused by uncreative people.
• clukic 4y ago
  We're living in a moment of great homogenization. The myriad of microcultures that spanned the globe, and gave rise to so many unique ideas and movements are evaporating, and the result is a type of global group think. The results of this are evident everywhere. Fashion, music, web design, food, academic writing. In any discipline or artistic endeavor, it's like the whole world decided this is the one best way to do things and nothing outside of that norm receives the nourishment (capital, time, attention, thought, support) that it needs to develop.
  • ratww 4y ago
    Exactly. This, to me, is the major downside. Anything outside the norm in subcultures, subgroups, hobby communities, is left to wither and die.
• dwringer 4y ago
  I confess to also getting bugged by the repetitive "speaking only in memes" phenomemon that seems to pop up past a critical mass of community size. Weirdly to me it seems like different ones go through different phases, but I haven't determined whether that's just an illusion created by my becoming attuned to one or another at various times. One of the last examples I remember is about 18 months ago I noticed everyone, everywhere, as if coordinated by some unseen entity, started replying "oof" to everything. Maybe this really is just a variant of the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon (another one of "those little memes" you mentioned, heh).
  • jrochkind1 4y ago
    The meme to speak about speaking in memes would be to mention: Star Trek, the Darmok episode. Temba, his arms wide.
    • ratww 4y ago
      That doesn’t bother me at all, because I never heard of it! Maybe I should start participating in Star Trek discussions!
      • jrochkind1 4y ago
        https://twincitiesgeek.com/2018/05/how-star-trek-the-next-generation-predicted-meme-culture/ https://twincitiesgeek.com/2018/05/how-star-trek-the-next-ge...
        • ratww 4y ago
          Thanks!
      • groffee 4y ago
        jrochkind1 and ratww at HN, ratww their eyes open!
      • kingludite 4y ago
        The episode involves a species that talks by referencing stories by title. It cant be translated without knowing the stories.
• nonameiguess 4y ago
  This could just be a symptom of getting old. Whatever subcultures you found yourself a part of are basically what you're stuck with at this point, unless you go out of your way to find different kinds of people and hang out with them. This is a lot different than when you're still in school and forced to be in the same room with people that are nothing like you for many hours a day, many days a year, years on end.
  • ratww 4y ago
    Well, it’s not really about specific subcultures, the Autotune comment for example was from random people from different walks of life, different ages. It's just that I happen to work with it sometimes, and I slip some mad facts into conversations... you know, to be interesting. But then people drop the "dId YoU kNoW tHaT AuToTuNe iS jUsT aN eFfEcT" thing and I'm like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA not again. All my friends, acquaintances and groups that I see daily are also kinda new, seeing I moved countries and barely see old pals, so I doubt it's about being stuck in a group. And it's not really about hearing the same things as from N years ago. It's more about hearing the same information from 10 different people. Before I would hear a piece of information from one or two, despite having access to pretty much the same number of people. There is definitely more information online, but people are looking at the same things! Things weren’t as homogeneous as they are now.
• doubled112 4y ago
  > All my guitar playing friends watch the same fucking videos on Youtube I see the echo chamber effect in a lot of these communities. You need one of the 5 approved amps for X style, or are you even a guitarist? These arguments amuse me more than anything. But is everybody really like that? If I'm watching YouTube videos on guitar gear I'm trying to get a feel for something, and then I try stuff. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't, but at the end of the day I choose what I like. I hadn't played in quite a few years and am recently back at it. Back then, I certainly owned things the Internet community collectively agreed sucked. Now that I'm back at it, some of this gear is now considered good to great, and I have to laugh about it. No regrets for having my own opinions. I don't have many friends who play though, so perhaps being all on my own shelters me from the monotony. Or perhaps you need to find different people?
  • ratww 4y ago
    Well it kinda is, in the online communities it kinda is. The vocal majority watches the same things, buys the same things, decides to sell the no-longer-new things after the hype cycle is over, has pedalboards organized in the N approved ways, has the same trendy guitar, the same amps. In those internet communities there’s people who don’t play this game but they barely post. In real life, there’s also the people who don’t care, but then again they won’t really talk about it as a hobby. But the people who actually had some interesting insights 10 years ago are now only parroting the “mainstream” guitar influencers. Which themselves are often parroting things from 10 years ago. I’m not complaining, btw: it is what it is. It’s just that it is homogeneous and boring!
• miloignis 4y ago
  That's an interesting perspective, which I've seen a bit, but I think I've experienced the opposite as well, and I wonder how common it is. If everyone has shared basis of reference for something, then you can move on and talk about other new things! For instance, most of my friend group watched CGP Grey for a while, and we don't debate how to choose a movie or restaurant anymore, we just choose one quickly via either approval or veto voting. Or online someone mentioned XKCD 927 and then we can discuss the finer points of the new standard instead of just how it's going to replace all the others (for instance, instead of saying Matrix is just the chat protocol to unite everything else, talk about how it's an eventually consistent graph replication protocol and how that differs from XMPP's point-to-point system). It feels like this shared culture and background can serve the same purpose as like shared education in math, literature, and history - to provide ground knowledge and references as a jumping off point to discuss more in depth, or with more nuance.
  • ratww 4y ago
    Oh, don't get me wrong: I really like useful information like the one in the CGP Grey video you mentioned, and also things like regional/cultural information that is part of "shared culture". Same for things like TV shows or music or old kids shows... Those really don't bother me. Shared culture is important! But the things I'm complaining about don't really become part of "shared culture". They're more like temporary "memes" that people use to show off they're interesting. Which is perfectly fine, we all do it! But the issue for me is that those little trivia tidbits that people are using are repeated so often that they start to irk and people look deeply uninteresting. :(
• throw10920 4y ago
  I thought I was crazy, being the only one that had this experience (along with a corresponding distaste for it). One of the parts of this that you didn't mention is politics, which irks me in particular. I can barely bring up any political topic without incurring a strong emotional reaction that causes the other to close off their mind - and that includes with people that I mostly agree with! There's even this politics-like part of homogenized programming subculture - strong emotional reactions to things like webtech, Electron, C++, Rust, Windows, Apple - and you see the same "arguments" over and over (because I don't believe that there's really "critical thought with the intent to convince" happening - just talking points regurgitated over and over). In the particular case of HN, many of these memes just straight-up break the guidelines, and many users don't care, because they'll upvote or vouch low-quality content that fits their worldview. (I'm guilty of this myself, even when I'm specifically watching myself to try to avoid it)
  • ratww 4y ago
    Oh I completely forgot about politics. This kinda thing definitely seeped into politics. Especially with Facebook memes, even my parents couldn't escape those :( And yep, programmers in 2022 are definitely not a group known for originality! Even (we) the dissenters walk in step...
  • itronitron 4y ago
    I wonder if that political emotional polarization will burn itself out in the next five years or however long it takes for most people to inoculate themselves to a modified form of information. Back in the mid `90's when the internet was a new thing for most people there was real exhaustion from the information overload of hours spent 'surfing the information superhighway'. But now no one is really affected by that specifically. If we adapted to that then I am hopeful we will adapt to the new political ragebait making the rounds.
• faeriechangling 4y ago
  >On Hacker News there's always those little memes... XKCD 927 (Jesus I wish it would die), Betteridge law of headlines, Gell-Mann Amnesia. It's the same things over and over. I've had existential crosses about this and wondered if I had an original thought. Even having an existential crisis seems trite. I'm not sure the alternative of everybody having unique ideas would be preferable though because most of them would almost by necessity suck.
  • ratww 4y ago
    "The alternative"? What? Funny, that's another pet peeve with Hacker News. Posts that are phrased as if there's only two ways things could go and they're black or white, and completely unrealistic to anyone spending more than two seconds thinking about it. The alternative is the one I presented (watching an actual variety of stuff), not some unrealistic crap.
    • faeriechangling 4y ago
      You're the one who said black and white hyperbole like "there's no opinion anymore" and then took serious issue with a literal interpretation of my post. I'm just pointing out there's a cost to originality and you're talking my post to mean more than it does. Also let me flesh out my "alternative", which is starts with suggesting that perhaps people aren't being too unoriginal and that them changing their behaviour would be for the worse. Maybe the true alternative is changing your own behaviour so you're exposed to people culturally different than yourself just like the person who you first responded to.
• pjc50 4y ago
  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9791247-what-a-shocking-bad-hat-was-the-phrase-that-was https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9791247-what-a-shocking-bad... >> "What a shocking bad hat!' was the phrase that was next in vogue" -- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, 1841 Memetic culture is older than you think. That book covers a lot of different types of group behavior that could be called "memes".
  • whoosh3 4y ago
    Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd is another good reference.
• shalmanese 4y ago
  Well yeah, your filter bubble has filtered you into a group of people who also experience the same filter bubble as you. Go into a twitch stream or watch a YT video intended for 15 year olds, for example, and you'll find it'll be an alien language to you with its own set of memes and references that you'll have no comprehension of. It's so unpleasant that your mind will just glide off it and regard it as non-content because of how strong the filter bubble effect is.