In Defense of Idiot Masses

http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/237233145/in-defense-of-idiot-masses

by unalone • 17 years ago

22 18 17 years ago

marinich.tumblr.com

kalendae• 17 years ago

"I don’t know why people go looking for idiots so they can jerk themselves off over them. That’s a fetish I’ve never had."

but the fetish of looking for the people who go looking for idiots, now that's apparently very appropriate to jerk yourself over?

unalone8• 17 years ago

I don't see why not. It's similar to my political beliefs, where I an extremely distasteful of people with extremist beliefs.

Think of it as my being against negativity. I'm okay with everything but people who put other people down. And smug assholes can defend themselves well; idiots can't, so I defend them instead.

EDIT: I don't think that's quite a cohesive answer, so let me elaborate. I like productive criticism. I've spent a lot of time here criticizing Twitter in the past, especially when it was first growing, because I really don't see the use in it myself beyond for publicity purposes. I don't write shortform very often, so why Twitter was better than a communal blogging system struck me as odd. Similarly, I criticize a lot here and very willingly throw myself into arguments.

Where I draw the line is when people make blanket statements against people they don't know. I understand that's a paradoxical concept, but there's no better way to put it. I also dislike smugness. So criticizing, say, Robert Scoble for being very overearnestly wrong and overreaching when he writes a silly article, that's fine. What wouldn't be fine is making a statement like "Scoble shouldn't ever write again," because it implies that just because somebody's wrong about something should mean they shouldn't try again. I prefer criticism that encourages people to try again, criticism that's potentially constructive.

So I support the masses, even when they're dumb, and I'll go out of my way to criticize people who've got the antiquated attitude that having somebody stupid on the Internet somehow brings the whole Internet down. That's a negativity I can do without; I'd like to see that converted into more earnest criticism in the hopes that those masses become enlightened rather than ticked off that people they don't know are putting them down.

I see it in real life, on occasion, when I meet people who're big into 4chan and Reddit, and it makes me want to hit them. I lost that smugness when I met Internet People in real life and realized they were people, not degenerates; other people carry that smugness over and act like what they type online allows them to spit on other people who care about other things more. Those other people don't care enough to respond, so I provide my viewpoint in the hopes that it'll quell things.

andreyf• 17 years ago

I’ve tried Twitter three times and closed my account every time;

Why does Author care enough to close a twitter account, not once, but three times? This seems strange to me.

I threw a hissy fit when the blog service I use added social features.

I use tumblr, and am completely unaware of the "social features" which Author speaks of. Threw a hissy fit? Really? Isn't that caring just a little too much? This entire post seems to care a little too much over things completely unimportant...

unalone8• 17 years ago

> Why does Author care enough to close a twitter account, not once, but three times? This seems strange to me.

I started one when Twitter started, got rid of it, tried keeping a "public" Twitter account for a while, got rid of that too, then had a private one for a bit with friends that I deleted when Facebook changed their feeds. I'll probably start one soon to mirror this new blog, too, hopefully permanently. (I also submit that if I weren't a strange person I wouldn't be writing about Twitter in the first place.)

> I use tumblr, and am completely unaware of the "social features" which Author speaks of. Threw a hissy fit? Really? Isn't that caring just a little too much?

Tumblr used to be my absolute favorite site, back when it was fresh and new and entirely basic. When they added the liking and reblogging I thought it was unnecessary, but acceptable. What pissed me off last year was their Tumblarity system. I can't fucking stand having numbers on web pages; it sets me off. (I dislike karma on HN, too, but this is a social site, whereas I always used Tumblr as a private engine.) It's what led to my ending the last blog I kept. I had a more freeform blog, and I'd started to realize I was posting more fluff content to boost Tumblarity and I was avoiding longform because it was dropping my score. Even now it irritates me that by blog is being "ranked" by such an arbitrary metric, and I wish there was an option to disable it and remove myself from the rankings.

I think it's a compliment to Tumblr that I got as upset as it was. Most sites are shitty enough that I don't notice when something's bad on it; Tumblr was such a perfect site that the addition seriously worsened it. It's still very good, but it's not what it once was; I was also upset because the Tumblr staff had seemed to share my design philosophy up to that point, and when they added that feature it confirmed the accusations facing them that they cared more about socialite frivolity than they did about the integrity of their design.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

Interesting format for this article.

Introduction. Careful analysis of a commentary and observation. Lots of hand-waving and profanity. Back to the analysis. More profanity during a rebuttal. Drawing the analysis into a thread. Some toss-away scatology at the end. Coming to some sort of a conclusion.

I'm not sure I like it, but I really enjoyed reading the format when the author actually was getting to a point. Too many times once the "fucks" begin the author goes somewhere out on the deep end and never comes back. This looked like it had been rewritten a bit.

Having said that about the format, the content was mediocre. Maybe I've read so much commentary I'm swimming in it, but it just seemed to restate the obvious. Perhaps others got more out it.

I'm really interested to see if this style takes off, however. It might have some potential. Not a rant, but not exactly analysis either. Sort of a controlled rant.

unalone8• 17 years ago

It was actually a Hacker News comment that I wrote; the thread was deleted before I posted it, so I revamped it a little bit and published it, just in case it'd be something worthwhile of discussion.

I'm still in the process of getting a new site launched; it's also been a handful of months since I wrote anything—my last blog, which was submitted a lot here, went offline in June—so I'm still trying to pick up what I'd developed then. My plan is to split the site into drafted articles and more polished releases, but that's not ready yet. I'm hoping within a week I'll have that.

I don't think I'll be submitting it much to Hacker News, though. Even writing this much felt unnatural to me; I'm not deep enough into the stuff Hacker News is to write much that'd be of interest to the community. Hopefully I'll come up with a few things, though.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

I was just thinking that I'd like to write another well-researched and thoughtful piece for my blog but just can't seem to get excited about anything enough to start one.

I'd like to see more from you, if you write any. I liked the edgy tone combined with the careful analysis and think you could make it into a nice style.

A couple of times in the last week a comment has made me interested enough in a reply. There was a good thread this past week on the limits of quality in software. Is total quality always a good idea? I thought about blogging about it but taking the time to work up a good narrative and then cross-checking and rewriting several times is a major pain in the ass. So kudos for following up on this.

getgambit• 17 years ago

"I want professional journalists to get stuck in the flood of everyday people so that they’re forced to be brilliant just to stand out. A lot of professionals have gotten away with being lax and amateur because they had no competition; now they’ve got to pick up their game."

Unfortunately, no one in professional journalism seems to know yet -how- to "pick up their game", and in the meantime, it's just easier to resent the everyday people. It'll be nice to see what, if anything, emerges.

NathanKP2• 17 years ago

My humble opinion:

Nice blog design, decent point, pathetic use of profanity.

unalone8• 17 years ago

I only used "fuck" twice and "shit" three times. Tough crowd.

NathanKP2• 17 years ago

It might just be my personal preference. Personally I hate it when somebody has a great blog design and great content but then they drop the f-bomb in there.

Nothing personal, and I do agree with the point of your article, I just don't like the profanity usage.

3pt14159• 17 years ago

I found it to be quite readable. Just my 2 cents.

teeja• 17 years ago

Most US newspapers also haven't been long on the analysis, history and erudition that lets us make wise choices. And they were conspicuously quiet about a lot of significant questions during the Bush years. Who can you trust? I tuned into The Guardian a lot.

In that sense, US papers made their own bad situation worse. They chose poorly. Too damn bad - for us all.

My reaction to Twitter being mentioned in the same paragraph as journalism is that we're in trouble. Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that the facts aren't part of the social provinces.

unalone8• 17 years ago

> My reaction to Twitter being mentioned in the same paragraph as journalism is that we're in trouble. Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that the facts aren't part of the social provinces.

They aren't by default, I agree. I don't think we'll ever have a world of fact-checkers and I'm glad we never will.

But I think it's likely that we'll see groups of passionate writers who strive for accuracy in their writing, not because it's an organization but because it's their individual style. Just like the world of tech blogging has led to these ecospheres, where there's the TechCrunch/Mashable crowd and then the Gruber/Kottke/Mann crowd, and each one has a different approach that different sorts of people like.

joblessjunkie• 17 years ago

This author has a really mean, nasty attitude.

unalone8• 17 years ago

Elaborate.

In Defense of Idiot Masses

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