7 ms·

As more normies got on the web more of it becomes about how to herd them. In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are mor

As more normies got on the web more of it becomes about how to herd them. In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service. The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable. Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.

llm_trw 2y ago
The solution is to move to the dark web and make your site unpalatable to normies. The posison slug strategy.
ggm 2y ago
Dividing the world into normies and others is a very odd way to characterise widespread adoption of anything. I hesitate to use the neckbeard word, but it's got overtones. There are as many usefully curated sites, as sites where state actors curate content to hide the reptile led barcode truth from the normies.
- bitexploder 2y ago
  The nomenclature could use some polish, but on HN we know they mean ability to bypass technological restrictions .
  - aaplok 2y ago
    I am probably not part of the "we" you are talking about, but I had no idea "normie" means that, and I couldn't infer it from the comment. In fact I inferred a completely wrong meaning from that comment (something like "unenlightened"). Isn't "normie" a pejorative word (genuine question)?
    - ggm 2y ago
      This was the basis of my response too. It's almost never said by people in contexts where it's not pejorative, to my understanding. It's a staple of incels and the elite Mensa types. It dismisses the average lived experience because iamveryspecial.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I dont think it dismisses or invalidates their lived experiences, it just recognizes that differences in interests and adoption exists.
    - astrobe_ 2y ago
      > Isn't "normie" a pejorative word (genuine question)? It depends on the context. It can be a synonym for "average" (mostly neutral) or "mediocre" (pejorative).
    - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
      I suspect that ‘Normie’ is the normie-friendly version of an earlier 4chan-derived term, which was absolutely a pejorative.
    - bitexploder 2y ago
      It generally refers to a group of “normal” people. E.g in some context they are an “out” group that does not have some specialized knowledge or understanding that the “in” group would have. So it can be negative, but it generally just means someone inexperienced with the given topic area. There is an implication of otherness to using the term “normie” for the group using it but it is generally a pretty common term now. For example, imagine a bunch of policy wonks debating something in highly specific language and then someone asks “how would the normies react?” They mean, “how would people unfamiliar with the inner workings of political policy react?” Stuff like that. It does have a negative connotation for that group in some contexts, but the usage is pretty common and softened now.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- typewithrhythm 2y ago
  If you want to split the categories between normies and neckbeards that's good enough a model of the world to understand the issue. The part that I miss is we had things in public, collaborations between everyone who was interested in spending the time to access the space. This barrier was enough to keep things feeling like a community, with most of the things like this that came up being able to be addressed by internal arguments. Now everything has to be robust to the idea that you will have neckbeards and normies interacting, and that curation is required. You have passive users, who's eyes are valuable... contributors, with divergent motivation, some pure for the joy of the project, some who want to put their agenda in front of the first group... And even external state actors pushing things at a scale that's hard to understand.
- vehemenz 2y ago
  Why? It’s a salient distinction when talking about mass-adoption of technology. Social dynamics change dramatically when the ratio of neckbeards to normies is upset. I don’t like these terms either, but “neckbeards and normies” has a nice alliterative quality.
dartharva 2y ago
It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.
- lazide 2y ago
  It might make more sense/be more palatable if you think of it as manifestations of particular inter-societal evolutionary strategies. And that people actually have less control over their actions than anyone is willing to acknowledge or believe.
  - fuckbunker 2y ago
    [dead]
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  It's like the humans turned into cattle in the seventh season of Supernatural, except they are doing it to themselves.
  - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
    Normies were an adaptation for social cohesion of followers of chieftain, it wasn't supposed to scale beyond, say, thousand people, MSM just parasitize on this instinct.
- stogot 2y ago
  To be fair, adblockers have an inordinate amount of access. We all trust uBlock’s creator but I’ve never met him. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat
  - chris_wot 2y ago
    If adblockers have a huge amount of access, then consider how much access ads themselves have. uBlock Origin is open source.
2Gkashmiri 2y ago
As a wikipedia contributor (aroound 10-13 year old account) but not really serious, i have no kind words for wikipedia. The trolling and brigading is alive and well there. Thats the reason i stopped contributing. As my name would suggest, I live in a hotly contested part of the world and I have hundreds of pages in my watchlist. The amount of "bjp it cell" work they put in to portray their world view on Wikipedia is astounding. Ithought naively for a few years I could fight them but I simply couldnt. They just March across pages, make edits with their clear intentions and make you the enemy. I remember a time when I had a particular "pronoun" ish word on certain pages and that was swiftly being edited out as soon as I changed it. It became hopeless. Besides, they just go "Well since this is "Indian" page, we are responsible to maintaing it in our image". I dont really use Wikipedia these days because of their hate.
- intended 2y ago
  It’s the same on Reddit. I wouldn’t confirm if it costs of ‘teams’, since it could also include loosely organized organic behavior. Reddit also has similar turfing efforts for Sino related news and content. The only time this ever gets over turned, is when some news article gets traction during EU/US consumption hours, and gains its own following.
- defrost 2y ago
  > bjp it cell I'm not Indian, I have no specific interest, I'm reading to pick up PoVs outside my own: BJP IT Cell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_IT_Cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_IT_Cell a department of the Indian political party BJP that manages social media campaigns for the party and its members. According to Washington Post, 150,000 social media workers spread posts aimed at exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority across a vast network of WhatsApp groups. BJP orchestrates online campaigns through its social media cell to intimidate perceived government critics. Sadhavi Khosla, a BJP cyber-volunteer in the BJP IT Cell said that the organisation disseminated misogyny, Islamophobia and hatred. That's a hell of a propaganda machine you're dealing with there.
  - 2Gkashmiri 2y ago
RobotToaster 2y ago
At the risk of sounding like a boomer, I blame smartphones.
- immibis 2y ago
  Smartphones were the next stage evolution of the Eternal September effect.
Aerroon 2y ago
Some users even support this these days. From "the law is the law" and "you shouldn't be in business if you can't follow the laws" to "serves them right for having X opinion!"
consf 2y ago
[dead]

llm_trw 2y ago

The solution is to move to the dark web and make your site unpalatable to normies. The posison slug strategy.

ggm 2y ago

Dividing the world into normies and others is a very odd way to characterise widespread adoption of anything. I hesitate to use the neckbeard word, but it's got overtones. There are as many usefully curated sites, as sites where state actors curate content to hide the reptile led barcode truth from the normies.

bitexploder 2y ago
The nomenclature could use some polish, but on HN we know they mean ability to bypass technological restrictions .
- aaplok 2y ago
  I am probably not part of the "we" you are talking about, but I had no idea "normie" means that, and I couldn't infer it from the comment. In fact I inferred a completely wrong meaning from that comment (something like "unenlightened"). Isn't "normie" a pejorative word (genuine question)?
  - ggm 2y ago
    This was the basis of my response too. It's almost never said by people in contexts where it's not pejorative, to my understanding. It's a staple of incels and the elite Mensa types. It dismisses the average lived experience because iamveryspecial.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I dont think it dismisses or invalidates their lived experiences, it just recognizes that differences in interests and adoption exists.
  - astrobe_ 2y ago
    > Isn't "normie" a pejorative word (genuine question)? It depends on the context. It can be a synonym for "average" (mostly neutral) or "mediocre" (pejorative).
  - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
    I suspect that ‘Normie’ is the normie-friendly version of an earlier 4chan-derived term, which was absolutely a pejorative.
  - bitexploder 2y ago
    It generally refers to a group of “normal” people. E.g in some context they are an “out” group that does not have some specialized knowledge or understanding that the “in” group would have. So it can be negative, but it generally just means someone inexperienced with the given topic area. There is an implication of otherness to using the term “normie” for the group using it but it is generally a pretty common term now. For example, imagine a bunch of policy wonks debating something in highly specific language and then someone asks “how would the normies react?” They mean, “how would people unfamiliar with the inner workings of political policy react?” Stuff like that. It does have a negative connotation for that group in some contexts, but the usage is pretty common and softened now.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
typewithrhythm 2y ago
If you want to split the categories between normies and neckbeards that's good enough a model of the world to understand the issue. The part that I miss is we had things in public, collaborations between everyone who was interested in spending the time to access the space. This barrier was enough to keep things feeling like a community, with most of the things like this that came up being able to be addressed by internal arguments. Now everything has to be robust to the idea that you will have neckbeards and normies interacting, and that curation is required. You have passive users, who's eyes are valuable... contributors, with divergent motivation, some pure for the joy of the project, some who want to put their agenda in front of the first group... And even external state actors pushing things at a scale that's hard to understand.
vehemenz 2y ago
Why? It’s a salient distinction when talking about mass-adoption of technology. Social dynamics change dramatically when the ratio of neckbeards to normies is upset. I don’t like these terms either, but “neckbeards and normies” has a nice alliterative quality.

dartharva 2y ago

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

lazide 2y ago
It might make more sense/be more palatable if you think of it as manifestations of particular inter-societal evolutionary strategies. And that people actually have less control over their actions than anyone is willing to acknowledge or believe.
- fuckbunker 2y ago
  [dead]
ruthmarx 2y ago
It's like the humans turned into cattle in the seventh season of Supernatural, except they are doing it to themselves.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago
  Normies were an adaptation for social cohesion of followers of chieftain, it wasn't supposed to scale beyond, say, thousand people, MSM just parasitize on this instinct.
stogot 2y ago
To be fair, adblockers have an inordinate amount of access. We all trust uBlock’s creator but I’ve never met him. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat
- chris_wot 2y ago
  If adblockers have a huge amount of access, then consider how much access ads themselves have. uBlock Origin is open source.

2Gkashmiri 2y ago

As a wikipedia contributor (aroound 10-13 year old account) but not really serious, i have no kind words for wikipedia. The trolling and brigading is alive and well there. Thats the reason i stopped contributing. As my name would suggest, I live in a hotly contested part of the world and I have hundreds of pages in my watchlist. The amount of "bjp it cell" work they put in to portray their world view on Wikipedia is astounding. Ithought naively for a few years I could fight them but I simply couldnt. They just March across pages, make edits with their clear intentions and make you the enemy. I remember a time when I had a particular "pronoun" ish word on certain pages and that was swiftly being edited out as soon as I changed it. It became hopeless. Besides, they just go "Well since this is "Indian" page, we are responsible to maintaing it in our image". I dont really use Wikipedia these days because of their hate.

intended 2y ago
It’s the same on Reddit. I wouldn’t confirm if it costs of ‘teams’, since it could also include loosely organized organic behavior. Reddit also has similar turfing efforts for Sino related news and content. The only time this ever gets over turned, is when some news article gets traction during EU/US consumption hours, and gains its own following.
defrost 2y ago
> bjp it cell I'm not Indian, I have no specific interest, I'm reading to pick up PoVs outside my own: BJP IT Cell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_IT_Cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_IT_Cell a department of the Indian political party BJP that manages social media campaigns for the party and its members. According to Washington Post, 150,000 social media workers spread posts aimed at exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority across a vast network of WhatsApp groups. BJP orchestrates online campaigns through its social media cell to intimidate perceived government critics. Sadhavi Khosla, a BJP cyber-volunteer in the BJP IT Cell said that the organisation disseminated misogyny, Islamophobia and hatred. That's a hell of a propaganda machine you're dealing with there.
- 2Gkashmiri 2y ago

RobotToaster 2y ago

At the risk of sounding like a boomer, I blame smartphones.

immibis 2y ago
Smartphones were the next stage evolution of the Eternal September effect.

Aerroon 2y ago

Some users even support this these days. From "the law is the law" and "you shouldn't be in business if you can't follow the laws" to "serves them right for having X opinion!"

consf 2y ago

[dead]