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Comment by jetrink | Hacker News Reader

This brings to mind Carmen Hermosillo's 1994 essay, Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace[1].

i have seen many people spill their guts on–line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money–value. [...] i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul.

1. http://folksonomy.co/?permalink=2299

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It’s great she had this self realization , but it doesn’t change things. It’s like being the friend that’s full of great advice but doesn’t get any in return. Or the friend who has the car and is always sought out for rides. After a while they may feel burned out overburdened or they feel like they contribute to humanity or whatever...

What I mean is this calculus happens regardless of medium.

And what about paying professionals to hear you out years on end?

>> i have seen many people spill their guts on–line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money–value. [...] i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul.

> It’s like being the friend that’s full of great advice but doesn’t get any in return. Or the friend who has the car and is always sought out for rides.

No it isn't like that. What you're describing is giving in the context of human relationship, but what she's describing is more like being exploited for someone else's profit (e.g. we'll pay you in "exposure").

> commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money–value.

Nit: you probably mean something more like "productized" or "marketed," not "commoditized." Commoditized implies something worse than what you're saying, that not only have you sold your feelings and thoughts online, that they're indistinguishable from anyone else's.

>[>>]> commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money–value.

> Nit: you probably mean...

That was a quote. You probably meant to go back in time to 1994 to nitpick humdog herself.

Em... aren’t we all doing that for ycombinator right now?

They haven't tried to overtly, aggressively monetize hacker news. Also subjectively the quality of the comments is still pretty high compared to other similar sites.

Hacker News is a marketing tool for Y Combinator and the companies they invest in - there’s a reason it’s on news.ycombinator.com and not e.g. hackernews.org, and a reason YC’s application periods and companies get hyped up on here. There’s a reason that pg’s writings get discussed ad infinitum.

It is also, secondarily, basically the “social media” equivalent of a newspaper - a mechanism for YC to push their opinion of how the world should work and create a consensus around that ideology.

Putting ads next to someone else’s content isn’t the only way you can make money off it.

All true, but there is also a lot of interesting stuff on the site, because there are a lot of interesting people. I don't really care if YC startups get to post at #6 on the front page occasionally. Plus, they're often interesting, so it's "targeted advertising" but done the right way.

Aye, you’re very welcome to sell your time and labour for something you get out of it. It’s just... be careful to know what you’re trading it for.

Maybe how the board brought in enough money to continue hosting the blog and people could post their content for free? Bloggers can always go the self hosting route if they don't like content farms.

Like people complain about online ads. But we get so much capability and content for free this way. Maybe we aren't looking at the full picture.

> that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul.

You may not have profited in dollars, but you profited some utility out of it. Otherwise people wouldn’t be posting. Or they can do it on their own website. But then not enough people would see it.

That's like saying people get utility from using heroin.

In the economic sense of the word "utility", yes, they do. "Total satisfaction received from consuming the good or service". People wouldn't do drugs if they didn't get some benefit out of them, whether it be a high or something else.

I think lonelappde understands that and is saying that just because something gives you utility and it maximizes some sort of current idea of utility, it doesn't make it good and doesn't necessarily maximize you cumulative lifetime utility.

People who do drugs usually admit that they don't get some sort of lifetime benefit out of them. There is often regret. Social media use is often similar (and yes, this is social media and I should know better than to waste my time on HN). Some people get notoriety, money, etc from their use of social media, but most don't and even those that do may regret it or could have been fairly or just as successful without it. (Cal Newport makes some great arguments along these lines.)

A lot of good insights. Thanks for posting.

> in other words, most people lurk; and the ones who post, are pleased with themselves.

> it wants to commodify human interaction, enjoy the spectacle regardless of the human cost. if and when the spectacle proves incovenient or alarming, it engages in creative history like, like any good banana republic.

That essay was posted to HN a month ago (we invited the repost actually) and sadly didn't get more than a couple comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22800532

I love the "old internet". Thank you for sharing this. I've tried hard and unsuccessfully to help others realize about the "ills" of adtech and how the hubs we've built extract money from our input, and the value we derive is... unfulfilling.

> ..."ills" of adtech

This is a tricky problem because people don't like paying for things.

One of my favorite pieces when it comes to community commercialization: "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution" https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

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