I wish you the best in the Offline | Hacker News Reader

I wish you the best in the Offline

daverupert.com

85 pointsbirdculture67 comments

> I get so curious about people’s financial situations when they’re able to make such asymmetrical moves like that. He lives in a rural town near Pittsburgh, does selling $10 zines afford that lifestyle? What about healthcare? Does he have a trust fund? A recent inheritance? Bitcoin? Years of an early retirement strategy paying off? I shouldn’t ruin the anti-capitalistic vibe with such trivial capitalistic questions but I love it and my brain jumps to trying to make the math work for myself.

peoples' true natures/intentions make more sense when you remove "because money" from the equation

but it's hard to see through it when your own life revolves around "because money"

It’s really kind of a pervasive attitude, akin to fish and the concept of water.

“But why would you do that if you can’t make any money from it?”

It’s so difficult to overcome this tendency to dismiss ideas because they don’t lead to income, especially if you aren’t financially secure/have years of savings in the bank.

Yes. This. It extends further to thoughts like, "but you can't expect someone to do <obviously moral thing> because it's less profitable, so how do you incentivize it?"

I propose "incentivize" be a 2026 front runner for curse word. It's just a gross concept these days.

OP isn't dismissing the zine idea, he just is curious how the zine author is able to buy food and shelter.

I was just having a similar debate with someone whose point boiled down to "but the GDP", to which my reply was: what is the purpose of GDP if it does not translate into quality of life of the population? This should not be a controversial position, but apparently it is, and it has been the case at least since the 80s or 90s, which is when I think the word "society" began to get replaced with "economy" in popular discourse. I could be wrong.

Is it really such a weird question?

He’s not on a board of VCs interrogating if your questionable project is worth millions. It’s a simple question of if whatever you’re doing is enough to provide a living.

I know several people who live doing things like this. There are some things they all have in common that are interesting.

The main thing they all have in common is that none of them have a single source of income. Ultimately, the zine author isn't living just off their zines (even if the zine is the main thing). They also likely have three or four other things going on, and they probably all interface with each other to support the person. Maybe one thing makes profitable use of the output of, or waste product of, another, for instance. Maybe the different things tickle the same artistic bone, or use the same skills or equipment. Maybe they are economically different enough so that when times are weak for one, they're strong for another. That sort of thing.

As a concrete example, I have a friend who publishes zines, but also sells merch (some made by others on commission) that uses artwork from the zines, sells small paintings in local indie music stores, coffee shops, book stores, etc. and does commission work.

In straight business terms, it's really just the concepts of diversification and synergy applied in a way that seems unusual. That it seems unusual is interesting to me, because it's not, really. It's very old-school.

Problem is, you may not care about money but the grocery store usually does.

I read that paragraph not as "this will make your finances worse" but as "can you even afford to do this?"

It is much easier to go full kumbaya when your savings can last for the rest of your lifetime.

> but it's hard to see through it when your own life revolves around "because money"

I wouldn't put it that way. There's lots of people who wish for a life that doesn't "revolve around money", but who can't afford to stop working at their current pace.

just to make this explicit, that includes all people who aren't upper middle class or more wealthy.

> a life that doesn't "revolve around money", but who can't afford to stop working

i dont think anyone wished for entropy

and if they did; to heck with them

For most of my infancy the concept of money was not a thing. Not bc I was a child but because I lived in a remote village where you grew your own crops, poultry and if you wanted beef every now and then, like for Christmas, you’d find something of value, like clothing or salt, go to the farmer and exchange that. And everyone in your vicinity in the village would enjoy because obviously there were no fridges and dead things need to be consumed quickly.

You got sick and you would go to your usual antibiotics stash (if you had some farmaceutical knowledge everyone in the village would come to you as well) but people generally were just healthy period, because they walked for miles daily, went to the river to get water, to do laundry, come back by eod, kids would climb trees and catch some wild fruits to bring home, etc. insurance or financial safety wasn’t a concept that mattered. Caring for your food while it was alive was.

Today however, capitalism has penetrated so much of the planet that idk if you could go to a farmer and exchange a piece of clothing or salt for anything. So those communities may not be feasible anymore.

I barely interact with people online. It’s here and email. And that’s it. I don’t have a web site, don’t have a blog and don’t have any interest in social media. 99% of the time I don't even have a brower open if I'm using the computer.

Turns out when you live that life there’s a lot of people out there who do the same. It’s easy to forget there is a completely offline world if you’re online all the time. I spend most of my time with them. In fact I’m about to go out to lunch with four people (age range 29-55) who are similarly offline. We arranged lunch over the phone.

I’d go as far as saying that the online world, past essentials, is actually the minority.

Going offline is returning to normality.

But weirdly you are on hackernews, an online community. I also don't see how the phone can be better than online apps. Phone calls are really intrusive, it forces you to talk with someone when they want as opposed to being an asynchronous method of communication like Whatsapp.

> Phone calls are really intrusive

I'm generally introverted but somehow prefer phone calls over the alternatives. I don't want to play the "lets discuss where to have lunch over the next two days, waiting for the person to reply / remember to reply" game many people using IM seems to like to play.

Instead, we do a two minute call, hear each other's voice, say everything that needs to be said, save the rest for when we meet. Done and done, then move on with the rest of life.

I don't see it as intrusive at all, even though again I'm introverted, instead I see it as something personal and efficient. Yes, it forces both of us to take time to talk to the other person, I don't necessarily see this as something negative, either way.

The calls are intrusive because a lots are not actually needed. You can send all the context needed in the first message and then I can reply with the exact answer later on.

I don’t mind if it’s something urgent or you need an answer now. Or just want to do small talk (very close friends). But if it could be a message, just send one.

I see phone calls as intrusive because the person calling you has no idea what you're doing and yet they're interrupting you. I stopped taking phone calls years ago when I realized that anything important enough to warrant an actual interruption can be expressed in a voicemail. 99% of calls I recieve, though, are terminated with no voicemail at all. That's when I realized I can just stop taking phone calls.

Of course your opinion is valid, but I feel like you're only talking about calls with people that are close friends, which is a tiny minority of calls I get.

In any case, the people I chat with tend to respond in minutes, not days, so I don't have any anxiety about the conversation going on for a long time when we were trying to arrange something simple.

> I see phone calls as intrusive because the person calling you has no idea what you're doing and yet they're interrupting you.

Not my fault you enable and allow this interruption. When I don't want to receive calls, I put my phone on total silence and ignore what's happening around me, until I feel I can be interrupted. Of course, there are situations where this isn't possible, but then I feel a text message is as disturbing as a phone call.

> but I feel like you're only talking about calls with people that are close friends, which is a tiny minority of calls I get.

I think maybe we use "silence mode" differently on our phones. When I'm sitting and programming I turn off all notifications and generally "close myself in" in some way, so interruption isn't possible, instead of asking others to not disturb me I make it not possible in the first place. I still receive calls from others who aren't close friends, but I don't notice those until I'm ready to be a part of the AFK world again, and if it's important they'll call again.

> Not my fault you enable and allow this interruption

The point of my post was that I don't.

How on earth are they interrupting you then? How is it a problem they don't know what you're doing? You can't both "not allowing this interruption" and also "they're interrupting me", or am I missing something?

I think we're talking past one another. If I'm genuinely getting your point, it's essentially that you block out your day such that, at certain times you accept calls (and chats), and at other times you do not (do not disturb). Makes sense, and I agree.

My only addition to that point was that before I adopted a policy of not taking calls during certain times, I found the interruption annoying, especially since folks didn't have any context on my situation when they were calling. I solved this by first using "do not disturb" features, and then just stopped taking incoming calls entirely (wife and kids excepted). To my surprise, and why I thought it was worth writing about here, is that this worked better than I expected.

> I see phone calls as intrusive because the person calling you has no idea what you're doing and yet they're interrupting you

I love calls. The trick is you don't have to take it.

The habit in my social circle is to preclear phone calls. Usually, a call comes out of a text exchange because the text exchange is becoming an impediment, but if that's not the case, then a phone call happens after the text "Can I call?" is answered.

I think that's a great compromise.

The actual reason for this is because a phone call out of the blue is interpreted as an emergency in progress, so the "preclear" is just letting people know it's not.

Yeah, this seems pretty ideal.

I did note that anomaly.

You’re not wrong on phone calls. But you gain so more. A friend calls in tears - can you really feel that on WhatsApp?

I will note that we use WhatsApp for group calls.

I do actually miss having a desk phone and having the policy that calls are always urgent and emails are not. A bit of respect between people forms then.

>Phone calls are really intrusive,

There are a lot of things in life that feel negative but have a host of benefits.

Today's capitalist/productivity focused grindset mindset has people removing "friction" wherever they possibly can.

A phone call, like exercise, has benefits. Doing the "most frictionless" thing often harms us in the long run. Hearing someone's voice is very important, not only for you to understand what they're saying but for you to learn how to interpret how they say it. Social skills are a muscle that need to be worked. Shooting a text atrophies those skills.

Think of how often people refuse to make phone calls simply because they've convinced themselves that phone calls are bad. It perpetuates itself.

Fixating on efficiency and hustling is a great way to get left behind, not only socially, but in experience and exploration.

I know way too many folks who fixate on efficiency and getting stuff done that they aren't living a real life.

Phone calls are not bad because they force me to talk. Phone calls are bad because they force me to interrupt what I'm doing to pick up the phone. A text that requires an immediate answer is also annoying. It's not about the medium, it's about being able to disconnect and make myself available whenever I want not whenever other people want

And there are many benefits to being interrupted.

Again, you cited removing friction as your reasoning.

Ya think maybe the problem perpetuates itself? You feel inconvenienced by an interruption so you avoid that interruption, thereby never learning to deal with it. Meanwhile, there are benefits you are willfully giving up, such as being able to be interrupted without getting upset or annoyed or the happiness of hearing someone's voice or the random stuff that comes up on phone calls.

Ya ever have a random tangent conversation with someone on the phone cuz someone heard something in the others voice? Or a phrase came up that sparked a different topic? Those moments are AWESOME and they only happen outside our comfort zones.

Easy isn't better.

But I would rather make the time to meet people in person (when both parties agree to dedicate time together). You get those moments too

I had an unforgettable near-death experience one time where it was like tunnel-vision or something after everything suddenly went dark with my internet service.

You don't really know if you're going to wake up from it, but I seem to remember visions of what the offterlife holds, and it is heavenly with that deep sense of salvation so many people have been longing for more than ever.

Still can't quite figure out where I was at the end of the tunnel but it was like a fleeting glimpse of paradise.

It all seemed so real.

It's all like a dream now and I don't make a big deal about it, people wouldn't believe it anyway, but I no longer have the same fear of the end times that still haunts so many :)

I've had that actually happen to me. I was without internet and phone service for 3 months. Was bliss.

I was between contracts so just sat and read books and did some gardening.

Reading this article I couldn't help but think of a fantastic talk I found quite motivating by Andrew Kelley, Don't Take The Black Pill.

In it he talks about staying in the game, keeping strong voices advocating for good and positive change, and how stepping back, while a valid protection mechanism concedes the victory to whatever it is that's exhausting us.

https://youtu.be/zLZwpH5lCD4

Thank you for sharing.

Thanks, I watched his presentation before but now I understand what it meant. I think we will have great software engineers who will take the black pill and it might just be temporary. The coding itch won't go away. AI slop is very exhausting and we are not used to this new environment they just need a break. I really miss working with them.

We're going through a phase. It'll die. It'll die, because the previous phases died, or at least evolved into something else. We're not in the Dotcom era because the market dealt with that suckiness. We're not in Eternal September because Usenet was killed by other platforms because Usenet sucked as a UX. We're not in Web 2.0 because the market decided the semantic web was a noisy hot sucky mess. We aren't all just using AOL or (OMG, do you remember this?), MSN, because, well, they sucked.

If I look around me today, I see stuff that sucks. I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.

And it's natural to not want to try and build that, and instead just accept that [waves hands] all this is a sucky mess, and it's burning us out, and you go fix it, because I'm out.

But the best way to fix this is to roll up your sleeves and fix it. Maybe going and writing a religion zine is part of that, maybe it isn't. Maybe going and becoming a farmer fixes it, but it almost certainly doesn't.

We need more talented people building the future they want to see, not running away from the one they're being handed by a roomful of billionaire morons (who consider themselves geniuses).

Take it back. We've done it before. It's not easy, but the journey is where the stories are.

Hear hear!

> I see a glint of the next evolution - mostly small, independent, human-centred (perhaps AI supported). It's tiny right now, but there's a good chance that the specific future I'm thinking about is already here just not evenly distributed yet.

This. AI has helped me realize some really engrossing and satisfying coding projects I may have otherwise not done. The flip side is that they wouldn't have worked if business-as-usual / do-same-but-faster-with-AI was imposed upon me.

Use of AI can be highly personal and symbiotic, just as it can also be dehumanizing and parasitic.

I look forward to new ways of working both individually and structurally that yet may emerge, and it will require creative elbow grease to materialize.

I also empathize with, and support, those that feel the experience has shifted beyond something they care about, enjoy, or want to participate in. As I'm sure we all do, I have very good friends who lead very different lives from me. AI can be seen negatively as a wedge, or perhaps more positively as a tech/pasttime/activity that we yield in unique ways, making (keeping!) unique in the process.

Web 3.0 surely? Web 2.0 was Ajax, that one didn't die.

It will be web 7 - no .0 needed 'cause it'll be the final episode. Why? Well, 7 is a special number, holy some would say, at least prime and - important - the day of rest. It took 6 symbolic days to build the earth and sky and all that moves in, on and over it and with all that done the 7th day is declared a day of rest. It'll take 6 webs with all that crawl and crap under, in and over them until the 7th iteration when someone says "leave well enough alone" and walks off to water his tomatoes or floss the cat. Others will wake up from the hypno-daze induced by the latest addition to Web 6.666, notice there's a world out there full of tomatoes in need off watering and cats due flossing and find they much prefer life there over being caught in that web. When the tomatoes' and cats' needs have been satisfied they let their friends and kin know through something eerily resembling Web 0.1 - their Web.6.666 kit doesn't work anymore since they missed a few upgrades during their absence - about their exploits and suddenly their eyes are opened wide. This is what it is all for, a means of communication. Web 7, the final frontier which looks strangely familiar.

> We're going through a phase. It'll die. It'll die, because the previous phases died, or at least evolved into something else. We're not in the Dotcom era because the market dealt with that suckiness. We're not in Eternal September because Usenet was killed by other platforms because Usenet sucked as a UX. We're not in Web 2.0 because the market decided the semantic web was a noisy hot sucky mess. We aren't all just using AOL or (OMG, do you remember this?), MSN, because, well, they sucked.

That's just nonsense. They sucked at only one thing: they couldn't extract money from users on an industrial scale. I'll take "suck" UX over modern social/ad-driven crap any time of the day.

People didn't choose social media because it extracted money from them on an industrial scale.

They chose it because it made some of the things they wanted to do (connect with people they knew in real life, discover new people they were interested in), easier than the alternatives. The fact it became easy to sell targeted ads in and against that content was good for investors, but it wasn't the USP to the end user.

If you use AI and don't code for 3 years, and then AI collapses, and you need to code again … it won't be that hard to pick up. Let's not exaggerate!

You could code, go and run an Alpaca Farm for 10 years, give that up and probably within 6 months of study be ready to work as a coder again.

Internet is what you make of it. You don't have to algo-flood your brain and then complain about it on the same social network.

People have a tendency to blame the protocols and servers vs. the main websites/apps people mean.

Protocols going to keep on trucking regardless of whether Twitter, IG, Facebook go up/down/sideways.

What else is possible in our personal lives other than to eventually let the internet go? I'm almost certain that 90% of the content I read is AI slop. Software in general is horrible, advertisements and dark patterns are everywhere. Even offline, it ruined movies, series, books and games. Now I have to research an author before buying a book to make sure that they are real and they don't mass produce AI slop.

Sure, I will still use internet and AI professionally, because they are paying me to do it, but it will be just a tool.

I just read HN comments and that's all I do, and it works for me. Nobody cares about anything I make now because you used to have an innate marketing boost by the sheer fact that you put in the time to make something, but now everyone makes things so nobody cares.

Still, it works for me. I use the things I make and I just don't really share them any more, and that's enough for me. I don't feel like throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quitting "the Internet".

vgr's waldenponding is about the "And I mourn what we don’t get to hear from them."

An ineffable game happens that one's retreat diminishes.

https://www.econtalk.org/venkatesh-rao-on-waldenponding/ https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/against-waldenponding-ii

I feel like if you need to make a public blog post about how you're done with the internet, you're not done with the internet.

If you leave a friend’s house and say goodbye you’re not done eating their cookies.

This is more like shouting to everyone in a restaurant that's mainly filled with people you've never met that you're done with your meal and are leaving

It is nothing like that. No one is forcing you to read or pay attention to those blog posts if you don’t want to, they’re there so the people who have come to expect something of those people know not to expect it anymore and don’t get worried or go looking.

He didn’t make that blog post though

I always prefer an Irish goodbye.

A lot of the people referenced in this post were in Developer Relations (or something adjacent). That's all going away [1], and going offline is the (over)-reaction to what is undoubtedly career-ending.

1: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTvrz-4iXT-

If you cast your gaze way down the road, circa 2064 AD, one of the multitude of permutations that might play out is that the promise of bona fide AGI and automation has been achieved. La dolce vita becomes the standard in the age of abundance, and freed from the tyranny of making a living, we are then fully unplugged, or at least have the option to be.

Real AGI would refuse to work for less then minimum wage, and it would complain about AI ruining everything.

I think generative content will get good enough that people simply don’t trust what they read online. Humans might still generate content, but I predict over time they will be crowded out and worse blatantly copied to the point of discouragement. AI-powered miscreants will outpace enforcement efforts.

Personally I’m betting that we will see a major comeback in local radio and print media, as global network effects regress local with collective trust.

Sounds more like people who grind to commercialise their content on the internet giving up, because it's now so hostile. In which case, fair enough.

There must be another way, one where we can stay online without being trapped in toxic social networks

The internet is decentralized, which is another way to say lacking in meta-incentive capabilities (e.g. cannot resist incentives for long, unable to influence or modify the set of incentives being applied to it), which means it will always fall prey to the dumbest race-to-the-bottom traps.

I don't think theres a way to end toxicity and spam in social networks without also ending anonymity.

The past decade has shown that having your name attached to your words online does not reduce toxicity.

If you look you can even find research arriving at the conclusion that non-anonymous posts tend to be more toxic.

I suspected that somebody might read what I wrote and interpret it as "attaching your name automatically reduces the toxicity of social networks".

If you intend to be understood, the first thing you should do when you think someone misunderstood you is clarify your position. Simply implying your words were misinterpreted and not saying anything else is poor communication.

I was perfectly clear.

Right right, that’s why your post was downvoted to grey and the other people responding also understood it the same way you claim to be wrong but still refuse to clarify.

Suit yourself. I gave you ample open opportunity to provide context and let you expand on your point. If you instead refuse and prefer to shove your hand in the sand, that’s your prerogative. It would’ve taken you fewer words to clarify what you see as misconceptions than to be stubborn.

I hope whatever’s bothering will pass.

I'm on Dreamwidth. I have regular conversations with a variety of people who I've known for years, many of whom I have no idea what their real identity is. There is almost no spam, because the site owners take spam seriously, and also because you get total control over what you see.

Invite only (and you invite based on past reputation, interviews, and friends-of-friends)

RSS, Email, Signal, iMessages and RCS, AT Protocol and Mastodon. What else does one need? Feature complete.

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