Comment by ivape | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ivape | Hacker News Reader

I suppose this demonstrates that the entire institution of Influencing is a corrupt one. Most people that are struggling with a disease are not exactly in presentable form, or ever were when they were fine, so this kind of fan-fare is not even possible for the vast majority of sufferers. So, that's one side of it. The other side of is, what do the consuming audience want exactly? Obviously most people don't want to be reminded of pain, so hard to watch videos of people in a hospital are not going to trend unless they have some marketable quality to it (are you cute?). So the whole institution is disgusting from all angles.

Cancer is very serious, it has to be treated with a certain honor. I can see how people are off put by it being thrown into the Influencer grinder. Likewise, those who consume this content are also parasitic and it shows. Reminds me a little bit of the Terri Schiavo horror show, where her vegetative state was used for politics. Some things are sacred.

It's impossible to paint the woman in question as wrong or bad because she is the one with cancer. Yet, I can't seem to entirely absolve her and it's not her fault. It's the whole thing, her, the fans, the mechanism and the phenomena of Influencing is just gross. Sometimes you have to realize the situation is bigger than big, and influencing and trending videos are huge, but this cancer thing is bigger. To her credit and young people in general, I don't think they know how to handle serious life things outside of the social media framework (hey I just got shot, let me go live - no, maybe have a private call with your loved ones about your final moments). What do they really know about quiet despair or quiet hope? For every viral video she made in chemo, there's thousands of others who wish they could get such fan-fare or even anyone to care or visit them. So it's very much in poor taste.

How do you teach a generation that hasn't been taught anything? Where do you begin?

The way I see it, this is more of an indictment of Reddit and their slow response to enforce their existing rules on doxing and witch-hunting. The influencer did nothing wrong. She is just sharing her cancer journey. The fact that she does not look or act like someone with stage 4 cancer, that's not her problem.

Like I said, it's not easy to put any weight on her. But again, I see a weight here that needs to be put on something. Let's say she shares her cancer journey, and she gets tons of great support. I still think this is in poor taste because many people don't get that support. Part of decency is to know that "hey, not everyone will get this kind of support, so let me take my place with the others". I hope that paints the weight properly, without putting the weight on her. There's no absolving the toxic consumers of the content. Where do you even begin teaching someone that if you don't have something nice to say about cancer, don't say anything at all? The whole thing is problematic, and such a scenario wouldn't even exist if the general population did not have such allegiance to popularity.

Who could get any support under this concept of "not everyone gets that kinda support".

That seems like an absurd standard... this person has cancer and now we're supposed to put the world of "not everyone" on them and expect them to what? Not post anything?

That's what common decency would suggest, yes. There's ways to do it of course, and one should confer with wiser people around them on how to do it. If there is a hospital full of 100 dying patients, and I offer one of them the chance to go viral (maybe they just have some viral quality that others don't), I would hope that one person doesn't take it. The whole thing is very somber and needs to be handled in that way. Nothing about this is easy, and I am suggesting modesty in the face of suffering.

Comedy might be the best analogy. There are ways to do it around sensitive topics. The go-ahead to do something is not as simple as "well I think it's funny", or in this case "well I'm the one that's dying".

But how is Sydney posting Tiktoks taking anything away from anybody else? She's not profiting off the suffering of others, she's making the best of the shitty situation she is in through no fault of her own.

I cannot explain this beyond what I explained. I urge you to read it again, if it doesn't resonate, then we simply do not agree.

I did, but I still don't see where you're coming from.

> The whole thing is very somber and needs to be handled in that way

Why does it "need" to be that way? Who are you to tell her how to live her life and handle her potential death? Are the Irish also "wrong" for having happy drinking parties at funerals where they reminisce about the dead, instead of sitting around mourning?

There is a reason why every grave at the Normandy beach cemetery is the same. Look, I totally get society doesn't have this sensibility, we live in a ridiculous ostentatious world. I'm fine with most of you not getting it.

I read it several times. It all just seems to me to be an excuse to be less compassionate to another person. If that's your end result, it is what it is.

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