Block the Rich | Hacker News Reader

Block the Rich

addons.mozilla.org

57 points8organicbits41 comments

If we extend this to “attention whores with a platform” it may be a very useful plugin indeed.

I’d say this is a good start.

I find the idea itself stupid and distasteful. I've never understood the blind unsubstantiated hate for the rich. Surely, a lot of them has done things many could find objectionable, but this seems more like institutionalized prejudice than anything else.

What part is institutionalised?

If you're asked to hate someone, or worse hate an opaque group of someones, for the grave crime of just having lots of money, you're being sold a bridge.

That doesn’t answer my question. It sounds like you’re using “institutionalised” as a scare word.

The institution of using the spread of information (or "information" as it were) to incite conflict and unrest for ulterior motives is an institution known to man since the dawn of politics.

The specific form adapts as the means of information spread changes over time, but the institution at its core remains the same.

That’s not what most people would see as “institutionalised prejudice” though.

That doesn't seem to be the purpose of this plugin. In fact, if there is an institutionalized, blind hatred of the rich then this plugin would decrease the amount of hate in the world, since people would be seeing less of what they hate, wouldn't it? And does it harm the rich any? Can't see how it does.

It’s not about “having” money, but what you did to acquire it and what you’re doing with it.

Maybe not the best choice of words on my part, but I used it as a prejudice that it widely accepted and propagated as morally non-dubious by mainstream culture.

A moral rejection of self-enrichment is a core cultural value in the West (and probably in other regions as well) going back to, at least, the Middle Ages. If you’re expecting to alter people’s core cultural values through posting on HN, you’re going to have a bad time.

Fuck the rich and their bootlicking admirers.

Reminds me of this tongue-in-cheek quote [1] by the LindyMan [2]:

"It's easy to hate the rich. But do you have the courage to hate the poor?"

Also, why is the list of "the rich" so short? At the very least, there are about 2,640 billionaires in the world [3]. They all surely qualify as being rich.

[1]: https://ifunny.co/picture/lindyman-paulskallas-it-s-easy-to-...

[2]: The Lindy Way of Living (NY Times): https://archive.is/NBAej

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_World%27s_Bil...

I'd personally love a filter that was regularly updated to included every pop star, major movie, etc.

I swear to god if I hear one more thing about a certain Mattel doll or a certain nuclear physicist, I'm going to fucking scream. Hollywood reacted to the strike by, seemingly, convincing every single possible media outlet, talk show, streamer, etc. to come up with the most contrived ways to mention the two movies.

Even fucking NPR has been infested with this shit...damn near every program the last few days has been centered on the two.

They seem hell-bent on saying "well if you're not going to promote the movies, fine, we don't need you."

It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't make it obvious that previously high quality social news sites are losing the bot war.

I'm a real person / real account.

I believe a decent fraction of forum posts are bots

WITH THAT SAID:

I think in this case a lot of people are just genuinely happy that there's a prominent Hollywood movie that's a fun comedy and not yet-another marvel style movie.

>"It's easy to hate the rich. But do you have the courage to hate the poor?"

The majority of the population is not rich and the answer to this question/quotation is self mostly self evident to the same majority of the population.

I got taken for a ride back when the "Occupy Wall Street" movement was all the rage about 15 years ago. Hate on the 1%! We are the 99%! We are the poor! Hate on the rich for making us poor! Fuck capitalism! Fuck big corpo!

Yeah, it was very easy to hate on them alright. Felt good, even, at least in the immediate wake. But you know what? Nothing changed, obviously because hating on the rich isn't actually doing anything constructive. Sure, I felt good about myself, but the problems were still there as evident as they always were. It didn't take long for me to realize I was being coaxed into chasing a carrot on a stick for the benefit of the powers that be.

I grew wiser from that experience, but it sure would have been nice if I didn't have to go through it and had a chance to gain that wisdom via more palatable means instead. Oh well, I wasn't wise so I had to go down that rocky path sooner or later.

Anyway, the question of the quoted passage is asking whether you're just virtue signaling to feel good about yourself while resolving none of the problems you complain about, or whether you're serious about fixing some bullshit in the world around you which will be uncomfortable, hard, and arduous.

Having the "courage to hate the poor" means having the courage to face very discomforting facts and the guts and will to really do something about the reality you take issue with. You're not taking the easy path of virtue signaling, you're going down the path of hellfire which might lead to a better world. Do you have that courage? That's the question being posed.

These are the rich people who hunger for fame and attention and use their money to bring themselves to everyone else's attention, like it or not. Your local billionaire whose wealth rests on horrible, inhuman business practices that exchange other people's misery for their profit, but feels no need to make everyone look at them, is not saturating every piece of media with their imbecilic attempts to show off what wonderful and wise people they think they are.

> "It's easy to hate the rich. But do you have the courage to hate the poor?"

I don't have my RSS feed flooded with some poor guy's latest hot take or bravado, ad nauseam, so it's waaay easier to hate the rich just for the media noise they produce alone.

Surely the same could be achieved with a few UBo filters and clever use of :has-text()

That wouldn't get the authors attention though.

I have absolutely no idea what that means. I'm not a web dev. I've never written a browser plugin. I only know C, C++, and python.

This plugin is for people like me (the vast, uncountable, overwhelming majority of people).

UBo is short for Ublock Origin. It’s a adblocking plugin and If your interested in installing browser plugins I suggest you try it. It works great just by default, but the feature I mentioned, filters, can be set up to block individual elements of webpages. The has text thing can only block elements containing certain text. I use it to block subreddits I don’t want to see while browsing Reddit logged out, or to block annoying pop up’s over text.

I think this does deserve to be its own thing but the code (https://github.com/aCosmicWave/blocktherich/blob/main/blockt...) is very un-optimized. Should just construct a single regex up front.

Is this a serious remark or a meta HN joke/throwback to The Dropbox Comment?

how about just blocking politicians?

Politicians are only so because people elect them. Blame the voters never who they voted for

And blame people who maliciously fund local election campaigns around the country to manipulate things.

I blame the people who fall for manipulation

Sounds like victim-blaming.

Do you not blame media outlets for manipulating the masses?

It depends. How are they manipulating people? If the information is true or an option based on true facts then I blame the person.

If they are lying or stating opinions based on false facts then I blame the person.

However the internet exists and information is accessible to anyone.

You're right though, I'm making it too simple. People are to blame and so is the media. Different levels depending on the person or media source.

Aah yeah, but now people will not hear anything wrong about billionaires. Isn't that wrong?

lol at Trump being one of the top 10 billionaires. I’m skeptical he’s a net billionaire at all.

It did say the list included "wannabe" billionaires.

Forbes estimates that his net-worth is around $2.5 billions. [1]

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/

How much of that is attributed to the value of his worthless brand? Also Forbes is a rag that idolizes the wealthy.

So? Is it incorrect anywhere else, because that'd be an indicator that it's wrong here. Otherwise your unfavorable opinion of it is meaningless to the discussion.

You idolize Apple.

> How much of that is attributed to the value of his worthless brand?

I don't know, but I think most of it is probably real estate. Also, can his brand really be called "worthless" if its worth billions of dollars?

Threads already failing btw

Reply on news.ycombinator.com