Hacker News Reader

Comment by wutbrodo | Hacker News Reader

Likewise, I don't have any illusions about medium fully defining the quality of content: eg reading 50 Shades of Grey isn't more rewarding or meaningful than watching The Wire.

But apples-to-apples, watching video is the only common activity that feels maximally passive.

I guess with the exception of listening to music? Not sure how this fits in

View on HN

Music consumption itself is passive, but we frequently use it as a backdrop to do other things. Or we dance to it. I would like to think that the curation of playlists or mp3 libraries is considerably more involved than doing so with videos, on account of how limited in scope most songs/tracks are compared to video.

Agreed about background music, but I definitely spend time listening to music and doing nothing else, and the medium feels active to me in a way that television doesn't.

On the other hand, I've been a musician since I was three, so perhaps the way I'm processing music is different from normal. One facet might be that I usually don't find myself focusing much on lyrics (if any), which means it ends up as a semi-meditative activity in a way that TV can't.

I DJ in the local techno underground and produce it as a hobby, music is a very active and deliberate activity for me. That there are so many different ways to engage with it is part of why I don't lump it in the same bucket as TV.

This is not true for everyone. It's mostly true for me (although I play Guitar Hero, which makes it quite active). It's not at all true for my girlfriend, who listens to music very actively.

I’m sure if you drew a Venn diagram of “people who post to HN” and “people who dance”, the overlap wouldn’t be that large.

Are you kidding? I bet a ton of us go to raves or undergrounds or festivals, Burning Man has been pretty much taken over by SV tech dweebs, and I meet tons of tech folks in the local scene here, and that scene is just a tiny fraction of the overall picture for this area

If YOU don't, I would highly recommend considering it. Hell I'm pretty sure I got my COVID 19lbs because I couldn't go out and dance at parties when lockdown hit

> Burning Man has been pretty much taken over by SV tech dweebs

Burning Man has been intertwined with tech culture for like...30 years?

My going to a rave at 49 years old would be…sad

But I do a run and lift weights regulatly

Reply on news.ycombinator.com