4 ms·

I found XOXO conference to be much the same way. The attendees were capable of some basic social grace, but having manifested from the context of "internet peop

I found XOXO conference to be much the same way. The attendees were capable of some basic social grace, but having manifested from the context of "internet people," they lacked substance in person. It's not hard to not be an internet person. You just have to decide to actually study something, anything, and to a deep level. Once you do that the grounding manifests itself and then you have more important priorities that preclude drifting around like that.

neilk 4y ago
I suspect this is an attempt to troll us all into fighting, by bringing up a beloved conference that some might classify as “woke”. But anyway, there’s something to what you say but I think that analogy doesn’t go very far. Every year the hosts have, in their intro keynote, urged attendees to be more outgoing than normal. So yeah there are lots of introverts. But the promise is that being more outgoing will pay off - because XOXO is curated to be entirely nice nerds. And it’s very anti-grifting. The scene the OP portrayed of e-girls and NFT guys seems like a polar opposite of their vibe. It’s more literature nerds showing off their board game about Pride & Prejudice, or an indie game about a mischievous goose. The whole point of XOXO, I think, was to find people who were doing internet stuff for the love of it.
ryandrake 4y ago
Back in the day, I went and attended a "Fark Party". Remember Fark? Well, they actually had meatspace events, and they were as pasty and awkward as you could possibly imagine! Mostly a bunch of 20-year-olds who were much less interesting than they thought they were. Fortunately, the one I went to was in Vegas, so it was easy to ditch the edgelords and go have fun. A few people mentioned the article's subject matter being Gibsonish, but if I recall (haven't read him in a while), Gibson's cyber-characters were not just online-cool, but were generally backed by richly complex humans. The influencers and Twitterati the author describes have barely any human personality behind them--they're all boring, vacuous, superficial. "You're really not that interesting."[1] 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZTksDoH6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZTksDoH6w

neilk 4y ago

I suspect this is an attempt to troll us all into fighting, by bringing up a beloved conference that some might classify as “woke”. But anyway, there’s something to what you say but I think that analogy doesn’t go very far. Every year the hosts have, in their intro keynote, urged attendees to be more outgoing than normal. So yeah there are lots of introverts. But the promise is that being more outgoing will pay off - because XOXO is curated to be entirely nice nerds. And it’s very anti-grifting. The scene the OP portrayed of e-girls and NFT guys seems like a polar opposite of their vibe. It’s more literature nerds showing off their board game about Pride & Prejudice, or an indie game about a mischievous goose. The whole point of XOXO, I think, was to find people who were doing internet stuff for the love of it.

ryandrake 4y ago

Back in the day, I went and attended a "Fark Party". Remember Fark? Well, they actually had meatspace events, and they were as pasty and awkward as you could possibly imagine! Mostly a bunch of 20-year-olds who were much less interesting than they thought they were. Fortunately, the one I went to was in Vegas, so it was easy to ditch the edgelords and go have fun. A few people mentioned the article's subject matter being Gibsonish, but if I recall (haven't read him in a while), Gibson's cyber-characters were not just online-cool, but were generally backed by richly complex humans. The influencers and Twitterati the author describes have barely any human personality behind them--they're all boring, vacuous, superficial. "You're really not that interesting."[1] 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZTksDoH6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZTksDoH6w