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I'm struggling to identify what it is about this nostalgia that infuriates me so deeply. Perhaps it's just fascinating to me that so many people find it fun to

by polarix 12y ago

I'm struggling to identify what it is about this nostalgia that infuriates me so deeply. Perhaps it's just fascinating to me that so many people find it fun to be in stupid situations. I find it barbaric and twisted. More productively, I wonder how people would respond to this after having grown up with the boundary of their 30s knowledge horizon roughly equivalent to that of humanity's experts 10yr prior. Anyone born since ~2000 perhaps is in this situation. Will they have eliminated this kind of "fun" "bullshit" from their behavior completely?

bung 12y ago
1. Provide instant answers to everyone on the planet 2. No one ever lies again 3. ??? 4. Star Trek becomes real
- chris_wot 12y ago
  You'll get a Riker.
swatow 12y ago
For me it's the assumption that if since a particular circumstance triggered an interesting social interaction, that the lack of that circumstance would mean that no interesting social interaction would occur. At the base, it's the same hollow critique of millennials: because they do things differently (e.g. interact socially online as well as in person) they must be missing out on all the great things that the Boomers experienced.
- Klinky 12y ago
  This looks to be a Gen X story. I am not sure what the Boomers have to do with this?
barsonme 12y ago
I honestly believe we live our lives for the moments that aren't spent learning. Facts are facts, and that's just about it. This behavior is "fun" because their bullshitting about Steven Tyler led to them meeting up with some girls, going to some bars, and having a good night out. It's weird how all these advancements in technology that were supposed to free up our time have just taken up more of our time. It's sad, really. Learning used to be an adventure, and sometimes you were wrong. It was a game, even if you knew the answer beforehand. Now it's a chore, and I really don't see all these bullshit facts being removed from our society today, even though almost everything is a few taps of your iPhone away.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  It baffles me how you can call this convoluted process "learning". It's not. It's rightfully called the art of trivia bullshitting and has nothing to do with learning. It's a purely social process that seems foreign and awkward to a visible majority of the HN crowd. I happen to agree with that crowd, I don't see the fun in it. I don't see the point in it. I wasn't raised to respond positively to this specific situation. Instead - and again I believe a majority of the people on HN are in the same boat - I get socially interested in people with whom I can have exchanges that have the potential to affect the way I work, I behave or I see the world. I have a fairly arrogant (but not necessarily incorrect) theory about this. I suspect that when you work/live in an environment which constantly stimulates you intellectually, you have an easier time getting to the "rewarding" part of more intellectual exchanges (eg. the facts of a conversation) than someone who works 9-17 at Walmart, and whose curiosity in the world is not being constantly nurtured, might. Thus we see a large majority of people who do not get any satisfaction from talking about more in-depth subjects than, say, Steven Tyler and Mary Tyler Moore. And that lack of satisfaction is present on both sides. Once you have tasted what it's like to fire pure knowledge and experience at each other in a conversation and having all parties enjoy it, it's very hard to find any pleasure in exchanging senseless, bullshit factoids that will only serve to be repeated to someone else in the same social situation later on.
  - stolio 12y ago
    You learn a lot while bullshitting, but probably not about what you're talking about. Like in programming: a lot of "functions" don't return anything, they're ran for side-effects.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      I wish you would go into details rather than give an absolutely meaningless analogy.
      - stolio 12y ago
        You learn about the people that you're bullshitting with. We're social animals, we live in groups, we solve problems in groups, we tackle adversity as groups. Our lives depend on our abilities to function within groups. Bullshitting is a type of play. Play is important for developing as an individual and for a group developing a shared identity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_(activity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_(activity)
sliverstorm 12y ago
I find it barbaric and twisted. Sounds kind of like a high horse. By this line of thought, are you not saying people of fifteen years ago were barbaric? Have we really become so enlightened and superior since then?
- polarix 12y ago
  More that we've undergone a pretty significant state change in the past couple decades, and much of how we understand the world now has dependencies on full information access; inflicting variable negative reinforcement on those thought patterns by removing that dependency restricts the smooth transition to a more inclusive and durable self.
tfb 12y ago
> Anyone born since ~2000 perhaps is in this situation. Will they have eliminated this kind of "fun" "bullshit" from their behavior completely? They find different ways of having fun and bullshitting.

by polarix 12y ago

bung 12y ago

1. Provide instant answers to everyone on the planet 2. No one ever lies again 3. ??? 4. Star Trek becomes real

chris_wot 12y ago
You'll get a Riker.

swatow 12y ago

For me it's the assumption that if since a particular circumstance triggered an interesting social interaction, that the lack of that circumstance would mean that no interesting social interaction would occur. At the base, it's the same hollow critique of millennials: because they do things differently (e.g. interact socially online as well as in person) they must be missing out on all the great things that the Boomers experienced.

Klinky 12y ago
This looks to be a Gen X story. I am not sure what the Boomers have to do with this?

barsonme 12y ago

I honestly believe we live our lives for the moments that aren't spent learning. Facts are facts, and that's just about it. This behavior is "fun" because their bullshitting about Steven Tyler led to them meeting up with some girls, going to some bars, and having a good night out. It's weird how all these advancements in technology that were supposed to free up our time have just taken up more of our time. It's sad, really. Learning used to be an adventure, and sometimes you were wrong. It was a game, even if you knew the answer beforehand. Now it's a chore, and I really don't see all these bullshit facts being removed from our society today, even though almost everything is a few taps of your iPhone away.

scrollaway 12y ago
It baffles me how you can call this convoluted process "learning". It's not. It's rightfully called the art of trivia bullshitting and has nothing to do with learning. It's a purely social process that seems foreign and awkward to a visible majority of the HN crowd. I happen to agree with that crowd, I don't see the fun in it. I don't see the point in it. I wasn't raised to respond positively to this specific situation. Instead - and again I believe a majority of the people on HN are in the same boat - I get socially interested in people with whom I can have exchanges that have the potential to affect the way I work, I behave or I see the world. I have a fairly arrogant (but not necessarily incorrect) theory about this. I suspect that when you work/live in an environment which constantly stimulates you intellectually, you have an easier time getting to the "rewarding" part of more intellectual exchanges (eg. the facts of a conversation) than someone who works 9-17 at Walmart, and whose curiosity in the world is not being constantly nurtured, might. Thus we see a large majority of people who do not get any satisfaction from talking about more in-depth subjects than, say, Steven Tyler and Mary Tyler Moore. And that lack of satisfaction is present on both sides. Once you have tasted what it's like to fire pure knowledge and experience at each other in a conversation and having all parties enjoy it, it's very hard to find any pleasure in exchanging senseless, bullshit factoids that will only serve to be repeated to someone else in the same social situation later on.
- stolio 12y ago
  You learn a lot while bullshitting, but probably not about what you're talking about. Like in programming: a lot of "functions" don't return anything, they're ran for side-effects.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    I wish you would go into details rather than give an absolutely meaningless analogy.
    - stolio 12y ago
      You learn about the people that you're bullshitting with. We're social animals, we live in groups, we solve problems in groups, we tackle adversity as groups. Our lives depend on our abilities to function within groups. Bullshitting is a type of play. Play is important for developing as an individual and for a group developing a shared identity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_(activity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_(activity)

sliverstorm 12y ago

I find it barbaric and twisted. Sounds kind of like a high horse. By this line of thought, are you not saying people of fifteen years ago were barbaric? Have we really become so enlightened and superior since then?

polarix 12y ago
More that we've undergone a pretty significant state change in the past couple decades, and much of how we understand the world now has dependencies on full information access; inflicting variable negative reinforcement on those thought patterns by removing that dependency restricts the smooth transition to a more inclusive and durable self.

tfb 12y ago

> Anyone born since ~2000 perhaps is in this situation. Will they have eliminated this kind of "fun" "bullshit" from their behavior completely? They find different ways of having fun and bullshitting.