_why's best twitter posts

http://favstar.fm/users/_why

by RyanMcGreal • 17 years ago

118 41 17 years ago

favstar.fm

TimH• 17 years ago

His top post is one of my all time favourite tweets. Often quoted.

Jeremysr3• 17 years ago

I have this one engraved on the back of my iPod touch:

turtles and goats, turtles and goats, turtles and goats are filling up boats.

(It was free so might as well.)

sho8• 17 years ago

Yeah, might as well ruin your iPod with that fucking nonsense.

Why the fuck is this bullshit being upvoted. This is how modern art gets popular, you know? People "upvoting" IRL because they're tricked into thinking it's good. Peer pressure. Social "proof". Sheep mentality. When if they saw it in isolation, they'd realise it's just rubbish.

You know what? I can toss this shit out all day. Here we go, I feel an epiphany coming on:

bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes are tickling my toes

WOOOAH! That is, like, SO deep. Am I a genius yet?

update: Wait! More is coming! I am channeling the good shit!

check it out:

chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs are climbing the logs

That would look perfect on the back of any iPod IMO.

quizbiz• 17 years ago

I would agree with you but I think you're pushing the point a bit too far.

pygy• 17 years ago

“A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's Punk?', and I say 'No, that's trendy!'” -- Billy Joel Armstrong.

You're missing a few things.

Your second line is phonetically almost as good as the original, IMO, but the picture isn't as fun. Both are imitating the same (good) template and are therefore less original.

Regarding (modern) art, context is king. Most of these tweets would of little worth if taken independently. They may not have much lasting appeal (the future will tell us, I hope some of them do), but they were fun or puzzling in the context of why writing them, and I enjoyed reading them.

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

When if they saw it in isolation, they'd realise it's just rubbish.

Of course. All language is just rubbish. Transient sound waves in the air. Scratches of ink that will fade. Tomorrow's trash.

Try traveling to a country where you can't read the language. (China or Japan work, for me.) It reminds one, forcefully, that all words are arbitrary. I can stand in the middle of a Chinese bookstore, surrounded by great literature, yet unable to see anything but well-ordered squiggles. To someone who otherwise tends to forget that he wasn't born knowing how to read, it is a dizzying experience.

What matters in language is what it evokes in the listener. A lot of it is about context: Who is speaking, and who is listening. _Why's poems are better than yours because they remind me of _why, a genuinely nice and optimistic guy. Your poems remind me of someone who would crash a party in order to spit on the guest of honor. In other words, it's all in the delivery.

unalone8• 17 years ago

You're going to want to chill the fuck out, Sho. Want to know what's really fucking nonsense? You telling somebody else that they're bullshit because you don't agree with what they decided they liked. Also, you telling a bunch of modern artists who've spent years doing their thing that their work is valueless.

I've got news for you. Do you know what makes things valuable? The people who decide to spend their money on things. That's it. It doesn't make things necessarily good, but what is good? Some people genuinely think Damien Hirst's dangling shark is good art. I don't. I think the concept's vague and it's not worth the money it takes to produce. Ditto his diamond-studded skull. But there's a gap from not liking something personally and deciding to devalue other people because they like it.

Newsflash: It's a large world. If you don't like people who like lines like that, avoid them. Don't waste your time bitching them out and snarking around. It takes a pretty fucked-up person to decide it's worth making people feel bad about themselves.

I used to feel the same way as you, back when I was the tender age of eighteen. (My birthday was last week and I've decided to excuse any bursts of maturity I've had on it; you and I know that's bullshit but it amuses me so let me continue.) I was totally caught up in the Ayn Rand swing, you know? Where people with worse taste than me were destroying the human race, I had to preserve standards, etc., etc. The idea that everything is objective gives me the moral right to insult other people if it means improving the human race a little bit. Problem is, things aren't all objective. You can monitor some things about art, you can come to a consensus with people on how well-crafted something is or how unique it is, but eventually you're just assigning arbitrary values to complex things, and you're forced to let people decide what they like on their own.

My big sticking point was Twilight. Shittiest book ever. I couldn't write that bad if I tried. So I used to tell myself that I disliked people because they were brainwashed by the modern culture that told them it was okay to like Twilight. Kind of like your "sheep mentality" thing. Then I realized two things:

A) The sort of person who judges somebody by what they read when that person's not a reader is a douche.

B) There's a difference between judging somebody in their face, and making private judgments that don't hurt anybody.

If somebody likes something, then let 'em. All power to them. Maybe one day they'll change their mind. Maybe you can show them something you like better, and that'll influence them along a new course. I was a counselor at Princeton for the last month, watching over 13-year-olds who were into stuff like Two and a Half Men, and I brought in Arrested Development for them to watch. Gentle nudges.

In the end, society's an illusion. That's the big realization I made. I could spend my life ranting against Twilight fans. Maybe if I'm good I could reach a hundred thousand fans and make them feel bad about themselves, and I could try and tell myself that I've made a difference. Problem is, I don't know those people. I don't care about those people. They aren't a part of my life. So why bother with them? It's a huge world filled with people who I'll like, and if the human race doesn't implode (it won't) there'll be people I'd like in the future, and it doesn't matter if they never take over the world because their existence is enough.

Incidentally, I will offer the way my friends and I converse as a model to you, since I think you need it. When we have disagreements about things, we ask the people we disagree with to explain themselves. The awesome thing is that by trying to rationalize the way your mind works, you both discover things about yourself and about the things you liked but take for granted. It's awesome dining conversation and nobody gets hurt.

I need to quote Tao Lin's article about the Virginia Tech killings, which was a huge influence on me. The essay can be found at http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2007/04/crippling-lone....

If you think someone else's writing is 'shitty,' 'terrible,' or 'bad' and you think this seriously, as if the writing were objectively 'shitty' or 'terrible' (which means you believe if anyone likes the writing they themselves are 'shitty' and 'terrible'), your existence is a distortion of the universe that causes more pain and suffering. Many people like Gary Lutz. Many people like Stephen King. If you type, "I dislike Stephen King," that is a fact. If you type, "Stephen King is horrible," that is not a fact, it isn't anything; it's you saying either, "I am the only person who exists and my opinions are actually facts," or "I am the entire universe and the universe is not indifferent but actually makes value judgments on specific things within itself without defining a context and a goal."

A person's writing comes from their brain. It is who they are. Some people have very sad facial expressions and when they talk their voices tremble and maybe they have a deep voice or respond mostly with one-syllable answers or maybe they don't speak and don't make eye contact. That is who they are, most people would say. If you met that person you wouldn't say, "Your facial expression and voice are horrible, you have no talent. You have no talent for the pitch of your voice. You are talentless and horrible and unoriginal. Your voice and facial expression are very bad. You should stop doing those things and releasing your terrible shit onto the world. Maybe you should try something else, instead of existing. Maybe you would be good at something else, like not existing." Most of you would not say that about a person's idiosyncrasies, a person's 'personality,' etc. But most of you would say those things about a person's writing, if you didn't like it.

A person's effect on the world is their 'art,' that is who they are. How they move, release noises, arrange their room, write their sentences, give their poems line breaks, etc.

People laughed at Cho Seung-Hui's voice and other people (and people currently, on the internet) said (are saying) his writing was 'horrible,' 'talentless,' 'embarrassing,' etc.

"You have no talent," means "I am the only perspective that exists and I judge you and you are not good," which is a meaningless statement if a context and a goal is not defined.

But now let's throw all that peace and tolerance bullshit aside, right? You don't care about that stuff. You care about being the Voice of Reason, telling that motherfucker Jeremysr just how valueless his decisions are. Well, here I come, experienced practitioner of art, to tell you that your lines were bullshit and that _why's was a gorgeous bit of nonsensical prose.

First, we'll establish the existence and artistic defense of nonsense poetry. I submit that Green Eggs & Ham, despite being absurd and rather redundant, is in fact a piece of art, given the context of Seuss's stories. On its own it is still a defensible piece, but in context it is something great by my standards.

In order to determine the context here, we have to take a look at _why. Luckily, HN has provided buckets of context for us. He was a brilliant programmer, and at the very least an enjoyable writer, artist, and musician. His stuff is appreciable even for those of us that don't like the absurd - the Chunky Bacon foxes are quite funny, his writing style in the (Poignant) Guide is probably the best I've come across in programming guides, and his music, while bizarre, is nuanced and fun. So we have to assume that if _why wanted to be clever in a less absurd sense, he could have been, and that he is an experienced enough person to be able to decide for himself which styles he prefers.

Now look at the context of these other Twitter posts.

"trying to reading dhh’s articles on himself, but his website is so drenched in axe body spray that it has more of a tear gas effect."

"my lady, this poorly rendered page marks you as the whore of internet explorer. i mean that in a way that is both graceful and degrading."

"until programmers stop acting like obfuscation is morally hazardous, they’re not artists, just kids who don’t want their food to touch."

So he's proven himself to have a certain command over words. We'll assume, then, that he's not a hack trying to trick people into liking him, that people like him for perfectly good reasons.

Therefore, the line in question:

"turtles and goats, turtles and goats, turtles and goats are filling up boats"

is a piece of nonsense lyricism, no more, no less, but appreciable as such. While I wouldn't put it on my iPod - mainly because I don't like engraving things - Jeremysr's putting it on his is not the downfall of society.

Now, let's look at your two attempts at mockery. We'll ignore that you lack the context of being a genius artist and that the only credit to your name is that you like being an asshole online who bullies other people.

"bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes are tickling my toes"

We'll ignore that your entire form is derivative of _why's form, without any innovation whatsoever. Your line is broken and messy, primarily because of your use of the word "bitches", which slows down everything, and "tickling", which is hideously unflowing. (See, these are objective criticisms based on the form of the words themselves. I wouldn't call people fucking nonsense if they liked your line, but I wouldn't be surprised if they preferred _why's.)

Your second one:

"chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs are climbing the logs"

Here you have a not-completely-awful flow, but it's not the same as _why's. Whereas his words all sound from the same part of the tongue (tərt, fəll, and the long o of goats), yours come from three different sources (chəck, frãg, clim), breaking up the pacing when sounded aloud.

Meanwhile, conceptually _why's got something and you don't. While chickens and frogs are animals I don't have a hard time seeing lumped together, turtles and goats - beyond sounding nice, and triggering something that feels purple in my mind, likely because of the echo in the word "turtle" - are a more bizarre coupling, linked together only because of how they feel sonically. By ending with "filling up boats", he implies something on a grander scale than "climbing the logs". In fact, I can't see instantly how you could correct your own attempt, because while "filling up boats" implies necessarily that there are many goats and turtles completely filling these many boats, yours doesn't have an end in sight. _why's statement is terminated at the completion of the boats' fillings. There is a logical conclusion inherent in his wording. Your statement, meanwhile, has no termination, and no meaning. Where are these logs? We know the boats are on a body of water, and that they will likely sail off. Logs I imagine at once a farm, a mountainous trail, and my next-door neighbor's cleared-out back yard. That's dissonance in my mind. It doesn't work.

It takes a lot of work to break down something simple that's created by reflex, but it's possible, and when people look at lines like _why's, their minds go through a similar process trying to create a mental response. Nonsense is harder than you'd think. There are rules to it like there are in anything. Having actually put some thought into _why's line, I like it more than I did before I decided to defend it. There're a few things going on there that I appreciate more now.

tl;dr: Hacker News is not the place for you to be an asshole. No place ought to be the place for you to be an asshole, but if you're going to try and be a cunt on Hacker News, you've got to deal with people who're a lot more experienced than you who have kindness in their best interests.

mcantelon• 17 years ago

Is that you, Why?

More! More!

dylanz2• 17 years ago

Awesome posts.

You know, the entire internet is abuzz with _why news right now, but... why? Sure, he deleted his internet presence. It's probably a healthy thing to do once in a while. Like spring cleaning!

He's still alive people! He's probably happily riding a unicorn into a misty valley full of friends. Or, he could be camping.

noodle• 17 years ago

i couldn't help but think of this exchange when i saw all of the _why things

- Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?

- Then what died? Who are you mourning?

- A point of view.

Cain, Elbis O'Shaughnessy, and Abel, in Sandman: The Wake

dylanz2• 17 years ago

That's a great exchange. Thanks for sharing that!

ErrantX• 17 years ago

thanks for reminding me of that :D read it years ago at school and you inspired me to dig a copy out.

blasdel• 17 years ago

Why are you so sure he's still alive?

This could easily be his way of saying "don't look for me, I'm gone, not missing". It's sensible when you're as anonymous as he is -- how else are people going to find out you're not coming back? (without the inane drama of a flounce: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Flounce)

burke• 17 years ago

    ~ % dig +short hacketyhack.net
    72.232.19.34
    ~ % dig +short -x 72.232.19.34
    Cewki.com.

http://cewki.com was registered today and says:

    where's _why?
    see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773106

EDIT: So this is interesting. As far as I can tell, this site is hosted by Isaac Force, owner of autognosis.org, and ruby user. He lives in Oregon though, and is almost definitely not _why.

Also, cewki is Polish for "coil".

Maybe the problem is that I don't understand DNS. Is there some way reverse DNS could point at this guy's server without _why telling it to? What's going on? >_<

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

what makes me such a lousy programmer is that i can excuse anything by saying this isn’t so bad— i myself am a much bigger hack than this.

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

"you seem to think i'm random, but i'm only psuedorandom. you would be exactly this way, were you seeded at the very same time and place."

If _why were to eulogize himself, I think this is what he'd say.

tomkinstinch• 17 years ago

A video is online for the talk he delivered at the Art+Code conference at CMU earlier in the year: http://www.vimeo.com/5047563

sutro• 17 years ago

when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.

Inspiring. And antithetical to his recent actions, which are surely more destructive than creative. Yet who among us is not a contradiction? Like Walt Whitman, _why contained multitudes.

ssn• 17 years ago

Also interesting, posts faved by _why:

http://favstar.fm/users/_why/faved_by

troystribling• 17 years ago

This one cracked me up "It's all coming to a head. A sharp, pointy head. With tiny little eyes." http://twitter.com/chrisrhoden/status/1574388823

polos• 17 years ago

To all of you caring so, so much:

Man, you're really waaaay to virtual already...

Go get some life contact!!

P.S. This english computer culture really is able to fool us too badly, making us aliens on our very own planet...

_why's best twitter posts

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