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I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

• mturmon 13y ago
  One of several worthwhile remarks in the article: "For all the hateful words that were lobbed at me, it barely ever bubbled over from the world of online forums and websites." This is also true of political forums. Many people complain on-line, but these people rarely show up at the council meeting to actually make a real-world difference.
• losethos 13y ago
  I made God's temple. Highs and lows balance. mental illness is the ultimate scorned and humiliated. Blessed are you when scorned for you shall be worshipped. lepers God says... C:\TAD\Text\Words\AUGUST.TXT in these things I unawares sin, but afterwards am aware of it. At other times, shunning over-anxiously this very deception, I err in too great strictness; and sometimes to that degree, as to wish the whole melody of sweet music which is used to David's Psalter, banished from my ears, and the Church's too; and that mode seems to me safer, which I remember to have been often told me of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader of the psalm utter it with so slight inflection of voice, t
• the_cat_kittles 13y ago
  The bottom line is, doing anything new puts you in a vulnerable position. Just ask the people saying the truly mean-spirited insults- have you ever tried to do anything new or different? The answer is pretty much "No". So, their opinions really don't carry much weight. Negativity is just useless!
• adt2bt 13y ago
  Related to his original idea: I think it's simply fantastic. Not only does it help avoid writers block (You constantly have a stream of stories to create), but it's forced practice. Nobody says Mozart's first few works were brilliant. It wasn't until he practiced for years that he became a virtuoso. An approach like this, while easy to view from the lens of simply making people happy, is an investment in one's creativity and writing skill that will pay off in leaps and bounds years down the line. It's just so unfortunate that the internet makes it so hard. You're either loved, hated, or ignored. He, thanks to an unlucky picture angle and loss of context, fell into the 'hated' category by many. I applaud the effort to just do it. It is funny how many view the real world as hard and the internet as an easy escape, yet in his experience, it was just the opposite.
  • abraininavat 13y ago
    You're either loved, hated, or ignored I'm curious what you'd suggest as an alternative. To have strong, passionate, but neutral, feelings about people?
    • resu_nimda 13y ago
      The alternative is to have less strong and passionate feelings. Like "Oh I wouldn't really do that but that's cool that he is." Why would one need to have such strong opinions about a random guy in a picture? I think the point is that the hivemind/bandwagon/mob mentality pushes everything to an extreme, because the people with more neutral opinions aren't very motivated to post them.
    • txutxu 13y ago
      In the little town where I did born, you're loved or hated. You can't be ignored in a little town. I've noticed more and more about this, as I move across the world.
    • adbachman 13y ago
      How about strong passionate acceptance or tolerance? A resolute desire to give strangers the same consideration you hope to receive from people who don't know you.
  • the_french 13y ago
    Besides, using a typewriter is really the only viable way for him to do this. If he used a computer he would have to deal with power, printers etc... If he handwrote it then there would be the issue of legibility, consistency and fatigue. A typewriter is a great for the purpose he used it for, it allows him to print his story as he writes it with no additional equipment.
  • bryanlarsen 13y ago
    "Nobody says Mozart's first few works were brilliant. It wasn't until he practiced for years that he became a virtuoso." Are you trying to be ironic? Mozart's first work was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andante_in_C_for_Keyboard_%28Mozart%29#Andante_in_C.2C_K._1a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andante_in_C_for_Keyboard_%28Mo..., written when he was 5 years old. Mozart's the canonical example of somebody who didn't have to practice for years. Obviously he did spend thousands of hours practising as he grew up, but that's a nuanced argument. You'd be much better choosing pretty much anybody else for your example.
• voyou 13y ago
  TBH I preferred this story when it was an Onion article: http://www.theonion.com/articles/two-hipsters-angrily-call-each-other-hipster,5230/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/two-hipsters-angrily-call-e...
  • parfe 13y ago
    Portlandia has a similar joke http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• potatolicious 13y ago
  Hipster-hate strikes me as just another thinly veiled form of bullying, and it's interesting to see how readily internet nerds - the people who are disproportionately to have been bullied in the past - engage in it. Look! He's different! Let's make assumptions about his motivations and get him! It's also interesting to see how many times Reddit (and other communities) fly into a rage-fest because of lack of context, only to make an about-face when the full picture comes out. It's also interesting how no matter how many times this exact situation happens, there is no stopping the next rage-fest. Above all other things, internet communities is what makes me cynical about humanity.
  • mikestew 13y ago
    "it's interesting to see how readily internet nerds - the people who are disproportionately to have been bullied in the past - engage in it." My theory has been that the downtrodden are pissed because they're on the receiving end, not because it's wrong, evidenced by many examples of them engaging in the same behavior when the opportunity presents itself. Whether it's immigrant minorities or geeks/nerds, the pattern seems to come up time and again.
    • roc 13y ago
      It's simpler (and more universal) than that: tribal identity is based on ascribing virtues to the tribe -- and vices to others -- based not on objective reality but based on their own values. "We do the things that we perceive as good for reasons we perceive as good. They do the things that we perceive as bad for reasons that we perceive as bad." And the teasing/bullying of members of other tribes is just a core human behavior to reinforce status within their own tribe. "Look at how well I recognize what's wrong with them! I'm a good one of us!"
      • gurkendoktor 13y ago
        But then the next question is, why does the geek tribe pick on the hipster tribe as nastily as it does? I don't see the same amount of _personal_ hatred against bankers, or people who do sports to the extreme. Weren't hipsters the least likely to pick on geeks (me)? Is that why they're now at the bottom of the pecking order? I don't see how a difference in values alone explains it.
• peterwwillis 13y ago
  Cyber bullying kills kids. That's one thing to remember about all this. If he had been a shaky, insecure, frightened teen, this kind of treatment can push mild depression into thoughts of suicide. And many adults are also vulnerable to this kind of abuse. If you see this happening to anyone, please, step up and defend them.
  • GhotiFish 13y ago
    Please get them away from the internet, defending them will do literally nothing. Bullying in schools is awful because children have absolutely no recourse. They can't get away, they are forced in day after day. They have no tools to mediate conflict. Bullying on the internet is trivial, you arn't trapped, you arn't forced into these situations. You can hide if you want to. You don't have to reveal who you are. You can walk away. You can be anonymous. You should be anonymous anyway. This article is about someone who suck his neck waaaay out, and got his head bashed in for it. Don't do that.
    • user24 13y ago
      > Bullying on the internet is trivial, you arn't trapped, you arn't forced into these situations. You can hide if you want to. Yeah, just stop going online, it's so simple! I know almost your entire social life is online, and the identities we create online are increasingly hard-linked to our real life identities, but all you have to do is exclude yourself from everything that you enjoy doing online and you'll be fine!
      • TheLegace 13y ago
        I never really understood why people needed identities on the Internet. I never had one, I mean I didn't have too many friends and wasn't very popular. I cannot say for sure how cyber-bullying affects people, well because maybe I just missed the era where elementary/highschool kids really engaged on the net. I think I have spent more time on the Internet that anyone in a square mile, maybe more. But I opened a facebook account and I don't even have a profile picture. I never really found it interesting, because people are super boring.
• uptown 13y ago
  This is one of my favorite quotes: "The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you." -Lost in Translation
• djmollusk 13y ago
  I was expecting to read something about Christian Weston Chandler. That guy is an object of internet ridicule like no other.
• actionscripted 13y ago
  To add to the discussion/close the loop: http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1mp79c/i_am_an_object_of_internet_ridicule_ask_me/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1mp79c/i_am_an_o... Having been on Reddit for more than 6 years, what always blows me away are these "lessons". Sure, everyone backpedals a bit and thinks, "gee, he's not the douchebag hipster we thought and we acted like assholes" but it happens over, and over and over. As others have also mentioned in here, I'm always amazed that those most prone to being bullied seem more than okay taking on the role of bully online with zero context.
  • 3rd3 13y ago
    Being bullied once does not mean that you are immune to the temptation of segregating someone. It still requires some thinking and empathy to withstand that temptation.
• bolder88 13y ago
  Internet commenting is a cesspool of idiocy. Hivemind, kneejerk reactions, things taken out of context like this. It's an absolute waste of time commenting on anything online, because there is an absolutely inexhaustible supply of people who are wrong. (Yes I realise the irony).
• PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  The only valid definition of "hipster" is "someone who cares whether people are 'hipster' or not." With that firmly in mind: fuck hipsters.
  • tunesmith 13y ago
    Funny that you just told yourself to go fuck yourself. :)
  • chris_wot 13y ago
    Uh, by your own definition you care whether a person is a hipster so you can tell them o go fuck themselves. Doesn't this make you a hipster? What's it like to tell yourself to get fucked?
    • PhasmaFelis 13y ago
      That was the joke, yes.
      • chris_wot 13y ago
        I feel awkward now. Whoops.
• revelation 13y ago
  The website she referred to had a series of essays they dubbed “It Happened To Me” that they sprinkled in amongst feminist-leaning news and features. “I want to talk about how all of this makes me feel. You, all over the Internet, right after you dumped me.” Does that seem bizarrely self absorbed to anyone else?
  • jdmichal 13y ago
    Of course it is, but I don't think it's possible to write about yourself without being self-absorbed. Personally, I think it's an interesting story idea from a perspective that I never would have thought about before.
  • victorf 13y ago
    I'm sure at the time it seemed like the world was conspiring to show her this guy everywhere. I would have complained about it too, albeit privately, and then probably felt like a pompous douchebag after reading how he felt.
  • crystaln 13y ago
    That seems appropriate for a column called "it happened to me". And wait, you're surprised a human, in media, is self absorbed? That seems bizarrely self absorbed.
  • kohanz 13y ago
    Aren't most people self-absorbed for a period of time, post-breakup? It may be a self-defense or healing mechanism, of sorts.
  • benched 13y ago
    I can definitely relate to the feeling. For a full 1.5 years after my ex and I broke up, it felt like my friends were being deliberately cruel, first by continuing to involve her in various events, then by continuously posting about stuff they were doing with her on facebook. For a long time, it felt like they were actively trying to push me out of the picture or drive me to jump. The only difference is, this woman wrote an article about how that feels.
• kilroy123 13y ago
  I would not at all worry about what reddit users think and say about you... Especially since it's mostly just mid-twenty to 30 years olds. [1] IMO - reddit comments have gotten worst over time. While not youtube comments, bad. It's getting there. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit#Demographics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit#Demographics
  • fernandotakai 13y ago
    default subreddits are just plain bad - but if you go to smaller ones (or, even better, highly moderated like /r/askscience or /r/askhistorians), it gets a lot better.
• analogousboy 13y ago
  Random attacks against people/personalities in a mob-style from people on the internet is disgusting. Why do people get the idea that others' lifestyle choices (that don't affect them at all) are okay as targets of ridicule?
• lnanek2 13y ago
  front page of hacker news too now. congrats to him! kind of hard luck about the sign text not being in the picture, though. would have helped his business
  • isxek 13y ago
    ...and (probably) helped him avoid all this hate.
• PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  Tangentially related, things like this are why I have not stopped wearing my fedora (in appropriate situations, with appropriate outfits). Dear Internet Fashionistas: You've decided that fedoras and suspenders are the mark of a horrible person. Your opinions have no connection to reality. Over here in the real world, I look good. When I come back to the bar the next day to pick up my credit card, and the bouncer remembers me well enough to compliment my outfit from the previous night, that means I'm doing it right.
  • nether 13y ago
    This and the obsession with t-shirts reminds me as to why I never take fashion advice from HN.
    • jlgreco 13y ago
      What is the obsession with t-shirts?
      • Apocryphon 13y ago
        T-shirt obsession is really a universal techie thing. Everything from the latest hip startup to the most stodgy of conventions give out t-shirts, often sizes far too large for most people to wear.
        • jlgreco 13y ago
          I guess. T-shirts just seem like one of those hyper-cheap things that companies can give out with their logo. Not much different than pens or foam 'stress toys'.
        • jes5199 13y ago
          I swore I wouldn't wear startup shirts anymore, but then a shirts.io guy handed me one at a conference and it was so absurdly meta (print your startup shirt using our cloud API!) that I want to wear it all the time
        • 13y ago
• at-fates-hands 13y ago
  This was the best line for me during the argument between two Redditors: "you do realize things have value even if they're not digitized, right" Brilliant point and something that is sadly being lost in our evolving digital community. As a former Anthropologist, we are leaving less and less artifacts for those future civilizations to discover us by. At times, it's incredibly depressing to me this is the case. How will people know about the human race if our entire culture is wrapped up in bits and bytes and discarded without a thought to their permanence? It will as though we never existed.
  • idProQuo 13y ago
    The same way we know of ancient civilizations. They'll uncover warehouses full of old government forms and shipping records, and use them to draw conclusions about how we lived.
  • unimpressive 13y ago
    >At times, it's incredibly depressing to me this is the case. How will people know about the human race if our entire culture is wrapped up in bits and bytes and discarded without a thought to their permanence? It will as though we never existed. You may want to talk to Jason Scott or other Internet Archivers. (He mostly goes from physical to digital, but I'm sure this subject would interest him.) In the meantime have some links: http://carlos.bueno.org/2010/09/paper-internet.html http://carlos.bueno.org/2010/09/paper-internet.html http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3613 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3613
  • smsm42 13y ago
    That may be both curse and blessing. I wouldn't want future civilizations to think of me basing on comments on Youtube and Reddit. I have faith the things of actual worth will persist. There's not a lot of them, but that's always so. See Sturgeon's law.
• sfbsfbsfb 13y ago
  I have the utmost respect for anyone that can take their natural (legal) talent, go to a park and turn it into beer/food money in an hour or two. When I met my wife she was substitute teaching occasionally and to make ends meet she would do pencil portraits in the park. She would always wear a floppy hat and a colorful long skirt. Back then (1975) she would have been referred to as a hippy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie :-) as opposed to a hipster. I remember sitting in her apartment and watching her gleefully straighten and count a pile of small bills. Great times!
  • MartinCron 13y ago
    I work just up the street from Seattle's Pike Place Market where I see talented street performers of all kinds. Guitarists, sax players, one guy with a big parrot, magicians, everything. I don't see the idea of writing a super-short story as any different. Now I'm surprised I haven't seen it yet.
• kyro 13y ago
  If everyone's public, online comments were tied to their real, physical identity, would the internet on a whole be a more pleasant place? I don't see the type of vitriolic comment threads on Facebook that I see on Reddit. What would be the long term implications of that? Is online anonymity in a public forum a right that we have?
  • brokenparser 13y ago
    No. Think prism to the 8th power or more. Yes!
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • makomk 13y ago
    Nope. One of the nastiest internet conversations I've seen was on Facebook with everyone using their real, often respectable identities. (A feminist organisation decided to take a stand against transphobia by other feminists. I think they eventually ended up deleting the entire post and all comments on it because the reaction was so nasty - accusations of supporting pedophilia and all sorts.)
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  Hipster diagnosis fail. Guy has a work ethic-- enough to actually finish writing projects-- and is therefore, by definition, not a hipster.
  • maldeh 13y ago
    the whole problem likely stems from this very bothersome definition of a hipster. At a baseline, a hipster is simply "a person who follows trends and fashions in an ironic way". Different people have these other nuances and qualifiers that are applied inconsistently... "they're not a hipster unless they're also shallow and facile"... "hipsters are attention seekers"... "a hipster is somebody who tries to be one, until it stops being cool" and so on. What irks me about these various definitions is that it's as if people are having an academic debate about which pejorative or negative stereotype deserves to be christened a "hipster", when there's already a very diverse and complex community in existence that self-identifies as such. The only context I see such a debate making sense is when people have a perverse need to somehow preserve their ire and rage against the word "hipster" after being confronted with wholesome, happy counter-examples. This poor bloke is a guy whom a lot of regular people would quickly slot down as a hipster, just from his looks and habits. He probably self-identifies as one too (because, hey, he likes the same music and dresses the same and it's always nice to have a sense of community with like minds). And there ought not be anything wrong with it. Yet there's an active hipster-hate community that's not going to drill down into his benign motivations before shredding him up. So what appears to be the way forward here? Collectively agreeing that it's high time to dial back the rhetoric on hipsters? Or telling the guy who thinks he's a hipster that he's not really a hipster because hipsters are supposed to be jerkfaces?
• drcode 13y ago
  NEWSFLASH: If you're doing something specifically to get attention, it's possible the attention you get might not be to your liking. (Though I agree people should be more open to people doing fun performance-ish stuff like this, it does not mean a performer is entitled to receive only positive reactions.)
  • pdenya 13y ago
    I don't think you can expect this type of reaction from a performance. One of the larger issues is that people don't get that it was a performance. Roughly equivalent to taking a picture of a clown and making fun of him for his make up as if he walks around like that in every situation.
    • drcode 13y ago
      If you do some kind of guerilla performance art, going around in public doing weird stuff, then most people will probably not realize it's a performance. Expecting otherwise seems irrational.
      • spuz 13y ago
        You are correct, but that's not the issue. The issue is not that people are not able to jump to the right conclusion, it is that they jump to the wrong conclusion.
      • chris_wot 13y ago
        If you crop out the clues that its performance art, then it's more likely to be misunderstood.
  • opminion 13y ago
    "Hate" is a proper subset of "negative reactions".
    • phogster 13y ago
      No subset of negative reactions is proper.
• forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
  Well, being ridiculed by people in Reddit is something honorable. Who cares what they think about you? Don't lose your time with these people. Take a video camera and explain what you do for people in the internet, youtube and vimeo... Better, you could create a cool kickstarter project in which by the way, you explain better what you do. Never forget that being able to tell stories is one of the most important abilities humans have, since hunters met at fire in the dark of the ancient night. Now FOCUS ON FEELING THE LOVE, not the pain. In my business the customer support people used to ignore thousands of satisfied customers letters to focus in the couple of crazy ones. Don't dedicate neurons to them, don't think yourself the object of Internet ridicule, because we see only validation. Find yourself as the object of respect and love. You have my respect and validation and lots of other people's too. Search for it and you will find it.
  • steve-howard 13y ago
    Sure, we all know that we should ignore people that get us down. It's a lot easier for some than for others to put that into practice.
    • forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
      The first step for that is to acknowledge it. Could you believe the people in customer service had not realized what they were doing? They were going home depressed, feeling so bad, because this focusing made them live this reality. Just making them notice and putting some simple rules made a world of difference.It was also much better for our customers.
  • GhotiFish 13y ago
    I know someone who did what you described, she was a scam artist. She intentionally used the "no press is bad press" tactic to grab attention, then started a baseless kickstarter project on the wave to fund bogus projects. Come to think of it, that fits the description of many people.
• sp332 13y ago
  I'm not claiming to have much fashion sense, but how is wearing giant plastic glasses "sincerity"? Is it about self-expression? What sentiment do huge glasses express? The reaction, then, had nothing to do with hipsters... they hated me because I looked like I was nakedly desperate for attention, and had gone about that attention-grabbing by glomming on to marginalized trends. I thought that was the whole reason people didn't like hipsters. Now I'm confused.
  • roryokane 13y ago
    He said later in the article that his clothes were a function of budgetary constraints. Maybe he couldn't afford well-fitting glasses.
    • heartbreak 13y ago
      I understand everyone has their own financial priorities, but I personally would prioritize my glasses over purchasing an iPhone (clearly visible in the first picture in the article). That being said, I'd also live in an area with a more favorable cost-of-living if I needed to busk in order to make ends meet. Though he clearly enjoys busking, and he can do as he pleases. Point being his comment about budgetary constraints irked me.
      • __david__ 13y ago
        Not me. I refuse to pay more than about $30 for glasses. I hate them—hate that they exist, hate the way they look, and hate that my optical organs are sub par enough to require them. Why should I spend a bunch of money on something I hate so much? I'll happily drop $2500 for a laptop and the $3000 I spent on LASIK was money well spent, but no glasses in the world are worth more than a couple bucks. To me.
  • arrrg 13y ago
    I’m confused. Do you seriously have a problem with the kind of glasses someone wears? I think you should re-evaluate how you view other people and stop being so judgemental.
• jhonovich 13y ago
  Is this satire or is this a real person? edit: I guess it is a real person but this reads like an Onion piece.
• homosaur 13y ago
  It seems like the hipster-as-a-pejorative thing started around the total collapse of the music industry in the mid-2000's and unfortunately was driven by indie scenesters who resented the influx of popularity when say, Modest Mouse had a song appear on say, One Tree Hill. The primary aesthetic religion of the indie scene from punk onward, no matter what the genre or style, was D.I.Y. so suburbanites who went to Hot Topic to grab Iron Maiden t-shirts were profoundly reviled. This happens in any insular subculture. Do I even need to mention the "geek girl" bullshit? The problem has quickly become that this revulsion has also played into the jock-centric bullying of anyone who dares to be different--"my football coach won't let me grow my hair long so now let me go punch that faggot with the plastic frames" sort of crap. Any indie community that still exists needs to rid itself of all this baggage for that reason alone. Whatever utility the word "hipster" had as a pejorative, if any, is gone. Internet killed pop culture and it's dead to stay. The most popular cartoon character now is effing Grumpy Cat. Anyone should consider anyone else using "hipster" as an offhand pejorative to be no greater than a classroom bully, no different than calling someone a dweeb in the 1980s.
  • ameoba 13y ago
    When you call somebody a hipster... http://dustinland.com/archives/archives464.html http://dustinland.com/archives/archives464.html
  • Dylan16807 13y ago
    >Do I even need to mention the "geek girl" bullshit? The thing is, the 'geek girl' stereotype is something that almost never happens, but as far as I understand it the stereotypical hipster is not uncommon. It is possible to 'like' something the wrong way: namely where you do not actually like it. Hipster hate isn't about being different, it's about a perception of dishonest attention-seeking.
    • moutarde 13y ago
      > Hipster hate isn't about being different, it's about a perception of dishonest attention-seeking. Isn't this the same justification that's used to shame the "pseudo" geek girls?
• nickthemagicman 13y ago
  At least 4chan hates everyone equally.
  • astrodust 13y ago
    Even themselves.
• sharkweek 13y ago
  The front page of reddit can be a cruel mistress My wife and I had one of our wedding pictures take the number one spot on /r/all one day -- There was some rather embarrassing text super-imposed on it that said "Oh you think married women still give BJs" (google Condescending Wife to find it). Despite some of the comments in the thread being pretty mean, my wife and I took it in stride, we're both internet people, we get it; we thought it was pretty funny all things considered -- The awkward part of all of this though, was this picture was EVERYWHERE for about a day. All over Facebook, Tumblr, etc. So countless friends and family inevitably saw it. I got a call from my concerned father, asking me if everything was ok and if I had seen what the internet had been saying about me and my wife. I explained to him that we didn't really mind and we left it there as explaining reddit to him would have been near impossible. But it was just a really surreal experience. We got dozens of texts and emails that day all asking if we had seen the picture. The best part of the the internet's short term memory is how quickly this image found it's way into obscurity; to be completely forgotten. No ill harm to my wife's nor my reputation.
  • adambard 13y ago
    I shaved half of my hair and half of my beard so that I'd have an interesting driver's license, and posted the photos on Reddit. So I can't really complain about someone else appropriating my image. But it did get big in a way I didn't expect. My mother found out when she went to yahoo.com to log into her email and I was on the front page. My father-in-law was watching the local news and saw me giving an interview. Two years later, I can bring out my driver's license at parties and people remember it. But they don't remember me, just the photo, so no harm done. (And happily, my domain has enough precidence on google to at least appear first for searches of my name). On the upside, if I ever meet Greg Proops or Ellen DeGeneres in person we'll have something in common to talk about.
    • hackula1 13y ago
      Wow, I had never seen that before. That is one epic driver's license.
    • yannk 13y ago
• mikestew 13y ago
  Masses of comments from people one has never met, and likely never will meet, aren't much to be concerned about especially when the comments are based on a single picture with no context. We all quickly build stories based on a single glance or vastly incomplete information. "He looks like a douchebag marketing guy." "The way she walks, she's probably one of those types that...", etc. The really insecure among us go out of our way to post it online. That the Reddit folk built a huge narrative out of a single picture doesn't surprise me. My personal favorites are the anonymous internet tough guys: "if I ever met him in person, I'd punch him". No, you wouldn't. You'd walk on by in silence, thinking your snarky little thoughts and tell your friends about it later. Because you, sir, have likely never been the first to throw a punch in your entire life. I'm not saying one is wrong in feeling a little sting in such comments. Maybe it's too many years on Usenet, maybe it's spending way too much time on Xbox Live (that will grow you a thick skin), but I just pay them no heed anymore and let them wallow in their insecurity. That's not to say that when my mother is referenced on Xbox Live that I don't point out that the 68 year old woman would probably love some time with a young, studly Call of Duty master like yourself.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • badman_ting 13y ago
    I actually agree, but a weird thing happens to me where I get pissed at people saying these things about someone else, or about groups of people. I can totally let personal insults to myself roll off my back, because like you I've seen a lot of internet. And I agree that the face-punching probably won't actually happen in reality. But the widespread phenomenon of supposedly normal or good people talking about complete strangers having "punchable faces" feels ominous to me. I guess my problem isn't with the insults as such, but rather the widespread cultural acceptance this kind of attitude has gained. Sorry, but you can't decide you hate someone based on their appearance and also be a good person. That makes you a psycho. Look, we all do this to some extent in private moments. But turning it into a group sport? And, again, the acceptance of it all? People who talked this way on the internet used to be called "internet tough guys", and we scorned them. Now it's de rigeur. Maybe it's just the new form of hating communists. Maybe we just need to have someone to hate, and it's not that big a deal. But it feels bad to me, very bad.
• cobbzilla 13y ago
  I was in NOLA in February and thought this street poet was quite entertaining: http://www.tout.com/m/hitche http://www.tout.com/m/hitche and his typewriter is older & cooler :) I don't care how more street authors and poets "steal" this idea. Please copy, adapt, iterate, mutate, spread.... that's what culture is all about. Improvisational public writing is awesome on so many levels.
  • isxek 13y ago
    I remember reading somewhere about Harlan Ellison doing the same thing during a science fiction world convention many years ago, after which Ben Bova (then editor-in-chief for Analog sci-fi magazine) bought the whole piece. In other words, yeah, I'd like to see more of this.
• fnbaptiste 13y ago
  This is a cool idea. If I was walking down the street with the lady I would totally pay this guy to write us a story. This post however is way too long for me to read. I get the idea though and it's great. I like it.
• ap22213 13y ago
  Seems more a problem of celebrity than anything. Do what successful authors, artists, musicians, actors (anyone creative) do: Don't listen to what others say.
• fmax30 13y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn't even remotely know who this guy is ?
• danielrhodes 13y ago
  I always find it interesting how people are eventually drawn towards the things they are naturally talented at. In this case, he is an excellent writer and so perhaps this flash of inspiration to write stories for people wasn't as sudden as it may have seemed.
• philwelch 13y ago
  It doesn't surprise me that the Redditors responded with some contrition when this guy confronted him while the commenters on the feminist blog didn't. This kind of pack bullying behavior is only encouraged when you give the bullies an ideological identity to justify their behavior.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• brokenparser 13y ago
  (Emphasis mine) ..it was dozens of someones—*faceless and impossible to control* Strike 1. I asked...if she would *let me read a draft before she sent it* to her editor... ...I ranted back to her, *mad that she hadn’t sent me the article* Strike 2. ...the hipster label is a compliment, a devotion to a *self- evident truth* Strike 3. This guy isn't hipster, he's sinister.
  • notReallyGuy 13y ago
    Please explain how the internet is not populated a teeming mass of faceless opportunists, deliberately avoiding any and all efforts to be controlled. You are fucking wrong. Your fragments in strike two are literally paragraphs apart, and ignore huge details that add context. But even so, there's nothing evil about asking someone you know personally, when they've openly told you they're going to write about you, if you can read it before it goes live. And very obviously, they're both professional writers, so it's actually a pretty collegial courtesy that acquaintances extend to one another. It doesn't grant him any undue influence over her creative process. Asking for that isn't wrong. And nothing but MEH for your third strike against the guy. Both of you are entitled to your opinions, and I'm entitled to my opinion of your opinions. Your classification of "sinister" is head-up-your-ass unfounded, sir. You deserve more downvotes.
    • brokenparser 13y ago
      Please turn off your computer, go outside, and have some fresh air. Your health is important to me regardless of how often you create a new account just to pull an XKCD 386 with foul language.
      • Ygg2 13y ago
        Strike 1/2/3: I asked.. to.. Strike.. hipsters Hurray! I can misquote as well :D
• D9u 13y ago
  I, myself, would have started, and stopped, with the last sentence: I prefer to let these little cesspools of cyberspace fester and then stagnate, forgotten as they should be, secure in the knowledge that I am doing something that matters to me. As reddit is nothing other than a festering cesspool of cyberspace.
  • hackula1 13y ago
    For certain things, it is unfortunately one of the few options. Slashdot is a wasteland nowadays. Hackernews is good, but the emphasis has been shifting to startup finance rather than hacking. Programming subreddits are some of the best sources for info, at least in combination with others.
  • dwaltrip 13y ago
    There are good corners of reddit
    • SnydenBitchy 13y ago
      Yes, I’ve met some relatively decent neo-Nazis too.
  • pnathan 13y ago
    Some of the subreddits are actually very decent places. My town's subreddit is very nice, for instance.
  • drivebyacct2 13y ago
    >As reddit is nothing other than a festering cesspool of cyberspace. What possible good or truth can come of making a statement like that? Hopefully you aren't proudly so ignorant as to actually think that's remotely authentic. But then again, most "Reddit is literally Hitler" trolls don't know what they're talking about or sub to any subreddits, so whatever.
  • aspensmonster 13y ago
    Reposting a deaded comment by drivebyacct2, since it seems any comment that goes against the "we're so much better than reddit" grain gets deaded by the mods: >>As reddit is nothing other than a festering cesspool of cyberspace. >What possible good or truth can come of making a statement like that? Hopefully you aren't proudly so ignorant as to actually think that's remotely authentic. But then again, most "Reddit is literally Hitler" trolls don't know what they're talking about or sub to any subreddits, so whatever.
• protomyth 13y ago
  It just saddens me when someone is doing something unique or looks different and people have nothing better to do than trash talk. I get the feeling that our lack of ability to deal with actual mental health issues as a society can be seen in the general reaction to the healthy, spirited, marching to their own drummer folks.
• im3w1l 13y ago
  >Thinking about her own troubles in creating something viral, she remarked, “It’s too bad you can’t figure out a way to exploit this somehow.” Other than sometimes posting my Twitter handle on pages where I saw the picture, I couldn’t do much. Since this is hackernews, it would be interesting to discuss this portion. What would be the best way to use this to propel oneself into success? It seems he was granted a strong brand for free. Mostly negative, but also with some positives. My idea would be to try to be even more hipstery, to really validate peoples impressions, and then try to sell things associated with hipsters: Second hand stuff. Organic, fair trade, hand made clothing. Maybe try to appear in a commercial for glasses. I don't know much about marketing so sorry if this is completely wrong. Just wanted to put some ideas out there to start a discussion.
  • tripzilch 13y ago
    See now this is a good point. I was thinking along similar lines, reading the article. Automatically thinking, "could this guy have handled this better?". I want to make clear that I don't blame him, all he did was sell people live-typewritten short stories in the park. It's quirky, nothing that deserves Internet-wide ridicule (which happened because of the cropping of the photo, not the quirkiness per se). Also I don't think his clothes are that out of the ordinary, definitely on the "hipster" side as styles go, but many people wear this style, and indeed if you're buying clothes on a budget there's often not much choice: either you get something really shabby, or you have to pick one of the current youth main stream fashion styles. In that case I'd go with "hipster" too. Anyway, what I thought was, if right that day when he hit Reddit's FP, he'd have made a simple webpage (could even be a Tumblr blog with one post in it) with roughly the first part of the story in this article--aka what he actually does and why he's doing it. Also, if he had one laying around, an uncropped picture of him with the typewriter and the sign. The idea being, he explains that even in the Reddit thread (threads?) some people came to his defence. Giving them something easy to link to, makes that a lot easier. Especially if the topic comes up again on some other sub-reddit, the whole shaming-then-"oh wait he's just trying to make a buck, sorry" can be cut short if one of the first commenters just links to that page. Basically what this does, is give you a communications medium back to your audience. Yes he now has an audience. That's how it goes in the 21st century sometimes. Also write that URL tiny in the corner on the back of his paper. It's better than a Twitter account.
• alxndresp 13y ago
  I don't understand why people hate on others so much, for no reason at all. What is the point? Just let people do whatever they damn like, it isn't like their interests are affecting you. How do people grow this mentality? I have never once negatively judged or put down someone because of some "weird" interest they had, such as preferring to use a typewriter. I seriously don't understand.
• richardlblair 13y ago
  The most amazing thing about this story is that he stayed true to himself. He continued to do his thing, went to the park, did some typin'. I think that is pretty awesome! Why do I think that? Because fuck everybody else. Hater's gunna hate.
• ateevchopra 13y ago
  By the time I reached the middle of the post, i had totally forgot how i got here. How i got to this page, this awesome piece of article. I totally forgot this was on the top of HN. Now that's the power of your storytelling. i just loved it. it felt like i was sitting beside you and you were telling me your story. Awesome storytelling abilities. Thumbs Up !
• leefrank 13y ago
  what Linda replied I'm stunned that a mom can get paid $5082 in 1 month on the internet. go to website http://goo.gl/HRSfiS http://goo.gl/HRSfiS
• sequoia 13y ago
  Then they'd shake their head and tell me that the idea and the execution were “genius.” Modest, too!
• Yhippa 13y ago
  > I often wear tight jeans, big plastic-frame glasses, shirts bought at thrift stores. ... and then later ... > And that my wardrobe was more a function of my budget than hipster assimilation. To me his style comes off as hipster assimilation. Am I missing something?
  • darylgab 13y ago
    You can get jeans for $30, glasses for $50, and shirts for $10, at Costco. If this guy's concern is really about a budget, he is bad at budgeting.
    • veemjeem 13y ago
      To be fair, Costco is definitely not the cheapest place to buy clothing. Plus the author lives in NYC which probably doesn't have that many large Costco facilities near subway.
      • andrewpi 13y ago
        Actually NYC has several Costcos within range of the subway.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
• guelo 13y ago
  Why can't we just upvote this kind of story on Reddit and leave it there?
• techtalsky 13y ago
  Kind of recently, a close friend of mine took a picture of him and his wife explaining something to their dog: http://i.imgur.com/bfpOGYK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bfpOGYK.jpg They're the sweetest, coolest, most open-minded people and I adore them. They're not trying to act like they're better or more stylish than anyone else, but the level of "hipster hate" they got in the thread was just intense.
  • nicolethenerd 13y ago
    That picture is adorable! How could anybody have something bad to say about that? Haters gonna hate, I guess.
  • scoot 13y ago
    I'm trying hard not to descend to the level of the hipster haters, but while I don't see anything pretentious or stylish or cool, it does come across as a tad absurd. Dogs are smart, but not that smart.
    • hudibras 13y ago
      I'm going to unilaterally say that this thread is a one-time exception to the "HN is not Reddit" rule and post this: http://i.imgur.com/3Gpey.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3Gpey.jpg
  • GhotiFish 13y ago
    Hmmm. I can almost... ALMOST see how it's possible a few denizens would interpret these two as counter cultural attention seekers, but they're clearly not. That photo's a good joke. I'm actually having some trouble imaginging to big a fallout on this, if any. I suspect you're being dramatic, where did this happen? tineye doesn't return results. https://www.tineye.com/search/dad74b36792f392b44d2df523fe17addd28c10f9/ https://www.tineye.com/search/dad74b36792f392b44d2df523fe17a... edit: Never mind it was easier to find than I thought http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1h7apd/my_wife_and_i_had_to_explain_something_very/ http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1h7apd/my_wife_and_i_h... This seems good natured enough. I don't feel these two are being mocked in this thread.
• piratebroadcast 13y ago
  This guy used to be my dog walker inBoston, not kidding. In the South End.
• TomGullen 13y ago
  I keep saying it, taking photos of random people out in public not hurting anyone for the intention of posting online and ridicule is one of the most vulgar, inconsiderate modern phenomenons that seems to be socially acceptable. Its the ugly, non creative side of accessibility in modern technology that hurts people sometimes significantly. If someone did it to me, I would probably be very hurt. "Look at this super ugly fat guy on my bus!" That ugly fat guy might of just mustered enough courage over the last week to step outside and as a result he gets ambushed in a hurtful demeaning way. It's not just the post, imagine going outside and noticing people slyly trying to snap pictures of you, how would you feel? These sorts of posts are often veiled behind a thin curtain of pathetic vacuous wit. People need to call this sort of behaviour out more.
  • drcode 13y ago
    He wasn't "random people", he was a guy doing a piece of performance art for attention.
• JeremyMorgan 13y ago
  Why do people care so much about how other people dress?
  • NovemberWest 13y ago
    There are quite a lot of reasons. But I imagine you were being rhetorical and do not want to discuss pecking order and a lot of other social stuff. :-) But have an upvote.
• carlaas 13y ago
  I'm the one that took the picture and here is the uncropped version (http://www.flickr.com/photos/crlnh/9818826176/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/crlnh/9818826176/). I didn't expect all this when I posted it on reddit
  • isxek 13y ago
    Unfortunately, the two cute girls I was writing a story for are cropped out. Looking at the whole picture now, it still doesn't appear evident (at least to me) that the two ladies chatting beside him were waiting for their story to be done. I agree with the author: seeing his sign more would have put more context into the picture.
• penrod 13y ago
  Making a big fuss about the internet hating you is so hipster.
• benjvi 13y ago
  "The reaction, then, had nothing to do with hipsters. It was a hatred of people that need to stand out for standing-out's sake." Isn't this close to the most common understanding of the word "hipster"? People that are middle-class, want to stand out, and also come off as a bit arty.
• bliti 13y ago
  I wonder what would happen if I did the same thing but with programs.
  • jes5199 13y ago
    programs aren't very interesting
    • bliti 13y ago
      One just sold $800MM in one day.
      • jes5199 13y ago
        lots of boring things cost a lot of money
• gadders 13y ago
  I think this is a pretty good summary of why hipsters are such an object of ridicule: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/?_r=0 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-...
  • kazagistar 13y ago
    I could not actually extract a single argument for why it would be OK to dislike hipsters. This is poor written even for the standards of people trying to rationalize irrational emotions. The best I can find is "hipsters cannot talk about important issues, and prevent societal progress", which I somehow have a difficult time seeing any reason to believe, but I guess it is a reason. Its just social signaling. Like much social signaling, it works better if it upsets preexisting social norms. Its really not that complicated.
• DigitalSea 13y ago
  Stories like this make me feel bad for naming my music blog Killhipsters. I think Reddit have proven one too many times that they're good at jumping to conclusions and ruining lives, look no further than the Boston Marathon bombing fiasco where many Redditors incorrectly blamed someone for the bombing and started a flurry of unwanted media attention. While the name of my music blog is a comedic take on the hatred people have for hipsters, I think it's sickening if anyone has a real hate for hipsters beyond jokingly on the internet or between friends...
• l33tbro 13y ago
  HIPSTERS ARE A MADE UP GROUP - POSSIBLY BY THE GOVERNMENT AND MI-5!!! Sorry for the crazy-person all-caps, but this thing really crunches my Funyuns. Hipsters are a totally made-up label to brand people with that are into different shit. Would we have called Dylan a hipster (in the derogatory sense, not the beatnik sense)? What about Steve Jobs in the early days? Shoot, even Woz wore some pretty ironic bow-ties (definite hipster). What's also a gas is that all these "hipster bashers" are so heck-darn defensive of mainstream culture. We all acknowledge that Walmart is a shithole. We all agree McDonalds is feeding garbage into our souls. So why are people so darn defensive about people who are trying to explore different things. The "hipster" label is a sickeningly old cliche. Seriously. So-called "hipster-bashing" has been going on for 10 years now (it all started with 'the hipster handbook'. I've never really got it either. I mean, people don't actively go out and go "right, I'm going to be a hipster". Like the amazing roaming typist, these people are just interested in different things. In my opinion, these "hipster bashers" are people that are just so obviously insecure about their own lives. Why bash others, just because you can't step out of your box. Then again - maybe the definition of a hipster is someone who does actively embrace the attributes of this made-up subculture to form an identity - without understanding the depths of what they are appropriating. I must say, I have not met anyone like this. Hence, why I think hipsters don't exist.
• eagsalazar2 13y ago
  Hipster hatred really baffles me. The only thing I've come up with is that hipsters generally are people who actually are trying to live by their liberal ideals of anti-consumerism. Yes they are into fashion as is everyone else, that doesn't make them hypocrites. People hate them because they make them feel bad by generally doing things most people are too lazy to do themselves, not because they go around telling everyone they are crappy or acting holier than thou. The act of recycling old clothing is what offends people, not hipsters talking about it. You know what is holier than thou? "Hipsters are hypocritical scum". I've never been told anything like that by someone who is a hipster (except my radical feminist lesbian sister-in-law and it isn't because she's a hipster)
• nether 13y ago
  I just don't like all the dashes. It's like jumpcut editing for text.
• timmyelliot 13y ago
  It seems like walking around with a typewriter on your lap, no matter what decade, would have been seen as <slightly> odd, and would have gotten positive as well as negative responses.
• altcognito 13y ago
  There were a whopping 229 comments in his thread where he was ridiculed by the "internet". Star wars kid he is not. Hell, there are more comments in this thread. http://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ygfv7/spotted_on_the_highline/ http://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ygfv7/spotted_on_the_hi...
• delinka 13y ago
  I tend to group posts like this in with the recent attention on sexism in tech, and it makes me ask ... Why do people feel the need to be such assholes to other human beings? Why should it ever matter what someone else does with their lives as long as it doesn't interfere with your inalienable rights? Why should it ever matter to anyone what color your skin is or what genitals you have if you get the job done? I just don't get hate in general.
  • meej 13y ago
    i agree. robert anton wilson put it well: "like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy, and don't take crap from anybody."
  • prawn 13y ago
    It's a bit worrying that so many of the HN comments obsess over the subjectiveness of labels and not on the vitriol.
• ahoge 13y ago
  Opinions on the internet are always extremely distorted. It's not like a survey where you make a bunch of random people answer some questions. It's several cycles of selection bias and network effects. It's kinda bizarre, actually. In general, most people are indifferent. They won't feel compelled to comment on it. Naturally, you only get comments by people who have a sufficiently strong opinion on that particular topic. If you now add voting to the mix, you emphasize this distortion even more. Now, the reason why it works this way is because it makes it interesting to those who participate in these discussions. That's the primary goal: encouraging user interaction. It does not paint an objective picture of the community's opinion. -- When I first saw that image about a year ago, I just thought he tried to create a distraction-free environment on a low budget. I had no reason to comment on it. If I had commented on it, my comment wouldn't have received many upvotes, because it wouldn't be aligned with this particular audience. That is, those who'd feel compelled to comment on this kind of picture.
• idealform01 13y ago
  it was a pretty interesting read, however by posting this isn't it only going to start the hate cycle over again? unless thats what the goal here is... can't fight the internet with a typewriter
• exodust 13y ago
  The "hate" that he talks about is not actually hate. People who make fun of others on the internet are often just having a go at comedy in the spirit of "The Roast" where jokes often cross the line but everyone is fine with it because it's "a roasting". It's the same thing online. The thread begins with "how can we make fun of this person", and people join in and have a go at being a comedian. Obviously, amateur comedians will always step over the line without evening knowing it. And by amateur comedians I also mean professional writers who aren't known for their Roasting Humor, but will have a go anyway (ie, NY Times writes and so on).
• x0054 13y ago
  Why on earth is this on the front page of hacker news. I understand that HN is not all about tech, and interesting articles of all kinds should percolate up. But why is this at the very top for so long. It's about Internet hate, and we all know that Internet hate is due to the anonymity that Internet provides, nothing more or less. This has little to do with hipsters or counter culture. SOME People on reddit don't hate hipsters, or puppies, or anything else. They just hate, period. They hate because there is a % of human population which just likes to hate. Think about the Sexual Harasment Panda episode of South Park and the "we don't take kindly to..." line from it. That kind of attitude + anonymity = net hate. The good thing is, net hate very rarely = real life. Any way, I think this guy is pretty cool. And it makes perfect sense to me that he uses a typewriter. He sells stories to tourists. He needs to give them a physical object, rather then an email, to inspire them to give him money in return. I know I would pay more money for a story written on a typewriter and given to me, rather then one emailed to me for the following reasons: 1. I know it's original, or at least typed just for me. 2. I will own the only exact copy of it. 3. I know some one actually spent time to type it out, which takes skills and effort. Besides, if he wants to give people a hard copy, what is he supposed to do, lug a printer and power generator with him.
  • jamesmiller5 13y ago
    Actually, I found it to be one of the best links that has come up in the last few days on HN. It, to me, is a critical look at what ways these amazing tools created by the tech community are used for. For example, reading the comments about him before his reply show a case of the fundamental attribution error on most of the commentators parts, ie assuming he is a 'hipster' and 'stand out for standing-out's sake'. As soon as he revealed the financial reasons for his dress and actions a lot of the stereotyping/prejudicial comments were stopped as well. That to me is interesting and worthy of studying. Perhaps the use of a typewriter set off the tech community, it seems quite a few both here and in the original article declare it a novelty and inferior to more technical means. To answer your question, sure anonymity enables the hate to flow out but why was it present in the first place? How are the tools we are building to give people such power being used and what can we do to make sure people such as himself have a way to be understood? At least the article brings such topics up :)
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• newobj 13y ago
  How is this news for hackers? I can't take it anymore. Bye.
• KaoruAoiShiho 13y ago
  Have you tried http://anonquest.com http://anonquest.com It's basically the internet version of what you're doing.
• kyzyl 13y ago
  There's been a lot of talk about hipsters in these comments. Could somebody explain to me, in any concrete terms, what the hell a hipster is?
  • kyzyl 13y ago
    Didn't think so.
• kbart 13y ago
  Clever marketing I would say. Now he could make tons of money just by selling printed stories via mail.
• Fuxy 13y ago
  Here's a good example of how we judge people by there appearance. We're not all photogenic or very aware of our appearance we may actually look like something we are not. Like this guy. He may look like a hipster but he's just an average guys trying to get by. The lesson is simple. Don't judge people on how they look talk to them and then decide.
• Sarkie 13y ago
  It is like the record player meme. http://www.stuffistumbledupon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/How-to-be-a-hipster-portable-record-player-ultimate-hipster-meme_thumb.jpg http://www.stuffistumbledupon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06... He is actually at a record shop where you can test the records before you buy them, to test the quality.
• barking 13y ago
  I want to see some of this guy's 10 minute stories before deciding his fate...
• Grue3 13y ago
  This post did little to convince me that the hate was unjustified. This guy is such a stereotypical hipster it's not even funny.
• Trakzstarz 13y ago
  Isn't "Internet Ridicule" an oxymoron? It's all trolls, just ignore them.
• leandrod 13y ago
  Serves you right for dumping your common law wife.
• SkyMarshal 13y ago
  One more reason to unsubscribe from all of the default reddits. There's quality stuff on reddit, but's buried several degrees away from the frontpage subs.
• conch 13y ago
  But... he is a hipster. I don't hate hipsters because they're different: I hate them because they're the contemporary version of dandies.