I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything
theawl.com
theawl.com
Look! He's different! Let's make assumptions about his motivations and get him!
It's also interesting to see how many times Reddit (and other communities) fly into a rage-fest because of lack of context, only to make an about-face when the full picture comes out. It's also interesting how no matter how many times this exact situation happens, there is no stopping the next rage-fest.
Above all other things, internet communities is what makes me cynical about humanity.
"The reaction, then, had nothing to do with hipsters. It was a hatred of people that need to stand out for standing-out's sake. That realization was at once positive and negative—people didn't hate me because I was a hipster, they hated me because I looked like I was nakedly desperate for attention, and had gone about that attention-grabbing by glomming on to marginalized trends."
I believe that statement would be true even without the "glomming" part. Societies seem to both love and hate attention seekers. We pour accolades on attention-seeking celebrities, but scowl at neighbors who buy flashy cars or ride a Penny-farthing (I had to look that up) seemingly only for the attention.
"The experience of being labeled and then cast aside made me realize that what many people call 'hipsterism' or, what they perceive as a slavish devotion to irony, are often in fact just forms of extreme, radical sincerity."
So in the end, they hate us for our freedom. They criticise you because they are jealous of you, like mom said. I don't understand this lack of self-awareness in a generation and class so obsessed with self-cataloging.
And they exist for the same reason cable news is in such a state: There just isn't enough 'news' to justify 24x7 coverage, so programming must be invented that is, by definition, not things that would otherwise be considered news. [2]
[1] Without stepping into discussion of merit, our culture does ascribe value to people who play sports well, act well, are likable parts of the media, are fashionable/attractive, etc.
[2] There are cross-overs, sure. Some famous-for-being-famous types cross over into 'actual' celebrity. But that's more an effect of the secondary content operating as a 'farm league' of sorts. They throw a lot of famous-for-being-famous / 'reality-star' stuff against the wall and graduate anything that 'sticks'.
And I personally wonder at what point the 'celebrity media' will start openly paying C and D-listers directly, to generate content.
e.g. pay a couple fashion models to go to the beach and provide photo content. maybe even get some clothing labels on-board to under-write the thing for the sake of having -their- products featured and plugged in the resulting copy.
But I digress.
But that is (one) definition of hipster.
Casual speculation: Would the situation have been different if the sign advertising the service weren't hidden? I think yes.
Would the situation have been different if he weren't wearing stereotypical "hipster attire", and instead were in say a pinstripe suit? I think yes.
Based on my own anecdotal experience, I think part of the anger comes from a sense of discomfort at the dissonance between how one thinks the attention-seeker is being perceived and how one thinks the attention seeker believes they are being perceived.
In the case of someone using a typewriter, the issue isn't simply that one thinks that person looks foolish, it's the dissonance between knowing they look foolish and imagining that they think they look super cool. Dissonance leads to discomfort, discomfort leads to anger.
With other kinds of attention-seeking public behavior -- street performance, for example -- even if one doesn't enjoy it, there's a much closer match between how the performer believes themselves to be perceived and how they are actually perceived (assuming they are competent).
I harbor no ill-will towards hipsters, self-identified or otherwise. But if I imagine someone using a typewriter in Starbucks, it does make me uncomfortable, and by far the biggest part of that is imaging that person thinking they are really funny or really cool.
Update I could probably justify this comment by making a point other than, "young whipper snappers be cray, yo."
Hipster hate has been around for years. I find that it comes from young, self-conscious people posturing and picking on other people based on the way they look, the music they like, and other trivial things. It's cruel to pick on other people for something so utterly trivial. There's nothing thinly veiled about it, IMO: it's just bullying and it seems to be a phenomenon I strongly attribute to young people.
Maybe that makes me an old, ignorant, ruddy-duddy but I seriously haven't really heard someone over the age of 30 or so make snarky remarks about how so-and-so is such a hipster douchebag. They'd get funny looks and people might think, "What is this, high school!?"
I think someone should make this a youtube video. Old people picking on other old people for liking obscure bands young people have never heard of in forty years. Calling them hipsters (a term that originated in the 50s beat movement, no?).
> "but I seriously haven't really heard someone over the age of 30 or so make snarky remarks about how so-and-so is such a hipster douchebag"
Maybe that's because you surround yourself with people who have similar outlooks? That doesn't mean that all people over 30 are above high school bullshit. And it certainly doesn't mean that all people under 25 are perpetuating high school bullshit. There is really no reason to bring age into this conversation at all. You're just confirming your own bias.
tl;dr condemn the behavior, not the demographic that you feel is representative of the behavior
Except... then I reached my 30s. And realized that I was not, in fact, an exception to that rule. I was perhaps worse, because I was aware of it and somehow thought I was above it.
Now I'm closer to 40 than 35, and haven't seen anything to change my mind. The majority of twenty-something people I encounter in life and online - no matter how intelligent and capable - are still maturing well into their late 20s. Just as I was, even while convinced that I was not.
I'm nicer about it now, though. I realize it's probably physiological.
There have been studies, such as by the National Institutes of Health that show that "the part of the brain that restrains risky behavior, including reckless driving, and thinking skills is not fully developed until the age of 25." Meaning the Frontal Lobe and Prefrontal cortex have not yet matured until 25, that's the area of the brain area responsible for planning, prioritizing and controlling impulses.
There is an amount of truth in this.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044371370457760...
But I've also met far more who are arrogant, confused, and wistful.
It's hard not to make broad, generalized statements when making such observations which is why I felt like I should justify it a bit more. I'm not saying there aren't any adults over 30 who don't act like bullies; the game just changes in my experience.
The point is that hipster hate tends to be a symptom of the self-conscious people who lack a solid understanding of their own identity. This can be a problem for people well into their 50's or through out their lifetimes: I don't know. Either way I wasn't implying anything negative about young people. Except that they're all absolutely insane in my opinion. Hate me if you want.
Wow... you actually believe that? You're insane.
Yuppie douchebag on the other hand...
I wore thick-rim glasses because 1. I didn't/couldn't care about fashion 2. my parents didn't have the money for nicer frames and 3. I actually could not see without glasses. So yeah, when I see thick rim glasses being worn _because_ they "look geeky," or worse, without even any lenses because the person has perfect vision, it annoys me a little bit. Because I got treated like dog shit by the exact same class of person who now dresses in a parody of my life as a frivolous fashion decision.
I can understand your annoyance and you're certainly entitled to it. I suppose the first thing I did when I read your post is ask myself "Well, why do I wear these glasses?" The simple answer is that my girlfriend thought I should get new glasses, so we picked out a bunch from Warby Parker to try on and she liked these the best. But even though she picked them out, I was complicit in the choice; if she had picked out some sort of bizarrely-shaped polka-dotted frame, I'm pretty sure I would've vetoed that. So there was some part of me that said "hey, I kinda like how I look in these."
Now, does this mean I'm appropriating a look that was formerly a magnet for bullies? Maybe. But the key thing to remember when considering the relationship between ridicule and compliments is that both are equally arbitrary. There was no reason for people to mock you or me for our choice of glasses back then, just like there's no intrinsic reason that these same glasses should appear attractive 10 years later. That's just how fashion/culture works.
I think if someone personally harassed someone else for wearing "dorky" glasses, and then later decided to wear that same style of glasses to appear fashionable while continuing to deride people that don't share their taste in clothing, then yeah, that would seem pretty hypocritical.
What suggests to you that these are the same people? Like, if I wore lensless glasses for kicks, would that put me into the "high school bully" class?
You're doing what TFA complains about: making assumptions about people & speaking ill of them because of how they dress. Why make assumptions? Why get mad because some guy wears a V-neck?
People with both styles are in many of my social circles, but they still seem relatively distinct to me.
The two objects of interest are not the same, they're not in the same category, but they're both tied by the same kind of enjoyment for retro things.
So it's not really about which shirts are worn by geeks and hipsters at the same time ...
Depending on where you're at culturally, anime could be relatively obscure.
Hipster is a blanket term that really means something along the lines of "they're doing something unique to others in order to stand out and be 'cool.'" A "geek" may wear a Github or a Mario T-shirt because it's "cool" within their circle, but relatively obscure to the general public.
You want to use a typewriter at the local coffee shop? Rock on.
It is most often upper-middle kids (generally white) adopting and gentrifying sub-cultures and then abandoning them when all of the cool has been drained out. What is left becomes fodder for "ironic" mockery.
That is what the author never thinks of addressing. What he boils down to "they hate me because they think I want attention" isn't because he wants attention, it is because he has taken on the trappings of a group who devour other groups.
Then an image and a lifestyle got attached to it--some mix of the effete New Yorker, the post-punk Seattlite, and the "urban woodsman" Portlander. And now it just refers to those things, and no longer really carries the requirement that the person so-labelled define themselves via contrarianism and contempt.
But language influences thought, people still remember the old meaning, and "slur it forward": seeing people who are hipsters-as-in-culture and assuming they're worthy of the same contempt given to hipsters-as-in-contemptuous-assholes.
And it isn't a term that just completely died out in the 50s and was reborn in the aughts (e.g. in Seinfeld, Kramer gets called a "Hipster Doofus").
Nothing new there. This how pecking orders form in human society; people who are pushed around look for other people to push around, to feel better about themselves.
That bully who stuffed the smaller kids the locker at school? He was probably being bullied at home by bad parents.
Works also with "internet nerds" with a history of being bullied. Give them an ounce of leverage and they will lord it over other people, they just tend to engage in psychological bullying instead of the physical kind.
The internet is like alcohol: it doesn't put ideas into people's heads. It just lowers their inhibitions. If people are being dicks on the internet, it's because they are dicks, and the internet gives them a relatively consequence-free forum for expressing their dickitude.
If we're "cynical about humanity" because of "internet communities," we should be "cynical about humanity" because of humanity, full stop.
I'm going to assume this statement was meant as a rhetorical device, because on its own it's clearly ridiculous. Of course the internet puts ideas into people's heads.
More generally, while I understand the point you're making, I think you're underestimating the influence of a community on the behaviour of its members. I would say that by far the most significant factor causing people to be dicks on the internet are communities that normalise that kind of behaviour. People see others criticising "hipsters" and they are taught that this behaviour is accepted and even encouraged. Many of these people would be offended by the same behaviour in real life, and not even notice the hypocrisy.
I'm sort of joking and sort of very serious.
I think hipsters, with their funny tight pants, single-speed bikes, and amusing attention to facial hair, have had a positive influence on society. The world needs people to be overly fixated on the mundane, or else we get too productive.
I personally am not cool in any way, nor do I aspire to indicate coolness through my physical appearance. I've got a wife, a kid, and a mortgage. I just can't spare the cycles trying to look cool.
But, I'm happy the hipsters are out there.
Plus, some of them serve excellent coffee.
Another common critique I hear is the mindless pursuit of "authenticity", an aping of anything whose style is "old" -- the automatic assumption that old is authentic, and authentic is better. These are, in my mind, two core branches of an otherwise very difficult to define notion.
How would a hipster caricature respond to the kiffeyeh becoming an empty fashion trend?
"I wore it before it was cool" i.e. I was better/smarter/above simple fashion herding.
So, yeah. I think that's the over-riding common thread linking the various branches and spectra of hipsterdom and the one thing that's almost universally criticized wherever hipsters are being discussed.
Also, being judgemental and having a superiority complex are very different to bullying. Thinking you are better than someone is very different to telling them they are worse than you.
My theory has been that the downtrodden are pissed because they're on the receiving end, not because it's wrong, evidenced by many examples of them engaging in the same behavior when the opportunity presents itself. Whether it's immigrant minorities or geeks/nerds, the pattern seems to come up time and again.
"We do the things that we perceive as good for reasons we perceive as good. They do the things that we perceive as bad for reasons that we perceive as bad."
And the teasing/bullying of members of other tribes is just a core human behavior to reinforce status within their own tribe. "Look at how well I recognize what's wrong with them! I'm a good one of us!"
I quit browsing Reddit because of the comment sections.
What makes an internet community any different from any "other" community? They are both human social constructs. The only difference I would argue is that online communities are much more public about their members' views. "Offline" communities can often hide under a veil of an organizational hierarchy of structure (usually in the form of a representative such as "head of").
Any self-righteous style that tries to come off as cool and aloof that seem ridiculous to others is going to be made fun of. It doesn't matter what it is. Portlandia makes fun of hipsters. Zoolander made fun of high fashion.
Be yourself first and foremost: type on an old typewriter in the park, wear RPGs even though you were never formerly in the military, drink double Doppios from non-chain coffee shops, and break up with a girl because she said PETA stood for People Eating Tasty Animals. But being made fun of comes with that game.
In any case, talk about much ado about absolutely nothing. A bunch of people said silly things, largely under the assumption that it was no consequence (that no one was hurt, etc): In many ways the comments on there are performance art. It is the most astonishingly meaningless thing going, and really the purpose of this entry that we're discussing is the chap talking a moment to extend that fifteen minutes.
Above all other things, internet communities is what makes me cynical about humanity.
People declaring their cynicism about humanity (or trite variations like "faith restored") make me cynical about humanity.
The post to which you're replying didn't even mention Reddit. Reddit is by no means the only place where a nerdy demographic (and I'll define 'nerdy demographic' as 18-25 that skew towards STEM education and exhibit above-average internet usage) tends to engage in destructive behavior, but they're certainly guilty of it.
A bunch of people said silly things, largely under the assumption that it was no consequence (that no one was hurt, etc)
The whole point of the article is the inherent falsity of the assumption that what you do online has diminished/no consequences.
People who are on the Internet tend to forget that literally everybody else is on the Internet too. Being a jackass isn't somehow excusable just because you don't know who you're being a jackass to (in fact, some would argue that it makes it worse.)
Reddit however is not made up of internet nerds. Reddit is made up of average joes who know enough about computers to register at facebook and reddit. The average reddit user is no more advanced than the average 13-year-old nowadays - can browse the internet, turn of a computer and install some games on their smartphone and tablet. They were never made fun of for being internet nerds, because they're not nerds nor geeks. They're just average joes; because as you say, everybody is on the internet nowadays, and those who are the truly advanced users who MAY have been made fun of more because of it generally do not spend their time raging about a hipster. I say may because honestly, geeks are not the object of ridicule as they once were.
I doubt that internet usage is any longer a measure of how "nerdy" a person is.
There are teenagers, especially girls, constantly using internet-based services from their cell phones to communicate with other people for most of the time they spend awake [1,2,3]. Would you call them "nerdy"? I doubt.
[1] http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/social-media/...
[2] Madden, Mary; Lenhart, Amanda; Duggan, Maeve; Cortesi, Sandra; Gasser, Urs. "Teens and Technology 2013," Pew Internet & American Life Project and Harvard's Berkman Society for Internet & Society, March 13, 2013. http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2013/PIP_T...
[3] Reidulf G. Watten, Jo Kleiven, Knut Inge Fostervold, Halvor Fauskeand Frode Volden. "Gender Profiles of Internet and Mobile Phone Use among Norwegian Adolescents" http://seminar.net/images/stories/vol4-issue3/watten_et_al-g...
It's also interesting to see how many times Reddit (and other communities) fly into a rage-fest because of lack of context,
Didn't this all kick off with a mean-spirited reaction to a photo on Reddit? The ancestor post hardly needs to mention Reddit explicitly...
This. "We didn't know we were hurting anybody" is no excuse for hurting somebody. Man up, accept the blame, apologize, and move on. It's not the end of the world if you hurt somebody's feelings, but you're a piece of shit if you knowingly hurt somebody's feelings, or they make it publicly known, and you DON'T apologize.
For me, having a somehow technical or scientific background means to look at things as they really are instead of believing stereotypes yourself. The internet only makes it easier to voice these oppinions. At the very least it says more about the commenters than anything else by ahowing just how ignorant they are.
But than, maybe that's just human and we are were like that at a certain pint in our lives.
The post I replied to specifically mentioned Reddit. Although that was later edited out, it is hardly necessary given that the entire story is about a post and discussion on Reddit.
Being a jackass isn't somehow excusable just because you don't know who you're being a jackass to
While no one said it was excusable (at best I implied that it was ignorable), at times people want to take ownership of offense and leverage if not exaggerate it to prolong exposure, which is exactly what is happening in this case. Naturally played out, Internet memes have a half life of about a day, after which they would naturally be forgotten.
Secondly, while this seems counter-intuitive, the discussions on Reddit aren't about the subject (in this case guy on typewriter in NY city) -- they're about a contrived representation that is essentially a created fiction (the fiction in this case was "guys who try to be different by bringing a manual typewriter to parks -- hipsters!", which has absolutely nothing to do with "performance artist making a living". The guy being discussed on Reddit is not the actual guy in the picture, and few confuse the two). I called the discussion itself performance art because it really is -- people aren't trying to insult the guy literally, but instead are engaging in the banter of Reddit, which is something that exists unto itself.
There is another post in here by a guy whose wedding picture got appropriated for a meme, and while he took it in stride and seemed good natured about it, and while it sucks when the internet machine appropriates one's stuff, that meme has literally nothing whatsoever to do with him or his wife or anything at all to do with their life. In that case, again, it was simply representative for people to discuss, essentially, marriage. Just as typewriter man is simply a stand in for the purported hipsterism. People needn't over-personalize this stuff.
Exactly. Encouraging the stereotype that in addition to having deserved bullying in high school for their poor social skills, nerds deserved bullying because they are mean spirited and just waiting till it's their turn to be the bully.
This is very intriguing. Although I have some idea of what you mean, I would love it if you could elaborate on this.
Hipsterism is like that, putting on airs without having the substance, and that annoys people.
Above all other things, internet communities is what makes me cynical about humanity.
Pre-internet communities were far from unicorns and rainbows. Conformity was much more strongly required.
Yes, but if someone took an embarrassing photo of you, you could move to another city and be done with it. There's no escape from internet ridicule. I honestly don't know if I'll be able to handle the world of Google Glass & co where no public faux pas will be forgotten - at least the OP was out there in the public by his own choice. :/
Imagine this: Young nerdy guy sees incredibly popular hipster guy in his high school listening to some band, I don't know WAM! or whatever the kids listen to these days. Either way, young nerdy guy LOVES that band, but has only recently started listening to it.
So he decides to strike up a conversation with popular hipster about WAM's newest album. Popular hipster shuts him down simply by saying, "Oh, yeah, that album's okay, if you like mainstream sounds, but I've been listening to them for like 5 years now. You should hear their unreleased Japanese single called 'Kuma o tabetai'." Young nerd now has nothing to talk about, and shambles away.
Not OVERT bullying, but it is absolutely asserting dominance in an aggressive way through exclusion.
Then they do things like this themselves on a daily basis!
You can't talk about Reddit as a hivemind, because it isn't one person, or even a definite collective of people. The people who take things out of context, and the people who call them out, are different sets of people. If Reddit seems to have multiple personalities, it's because... well, it does.
Reddit can turn into an angry mob in a nanosecond, tear someone's life apart, utterly destroyed, and then a nanosecond later flip around because of the discovery of guilt and empathy, to try and repair what just happened.
It's not any one person, but the collective does have certain predictable patterns of behavior. If you're part of Reddit, you're part of that super-organism, like it or not.
Which is to say, their ability to fly into a collective rage and stampede through the lives of innocent people isn't really unique to them, it's probably just a phenomenon inherent in all large groups of mostly-anonymous humans.
Reddit just gets named and shamed constantly because they are the largest group of mostly-anonymous people on the internet. Had things gone differently it'd very well be Digg in its place.
Really? Most people? Then why is your comment the most popular comment? (Hint: because the majority of people like to believe themselves superior to the majority of people. 'If everyone is being dumb but me, then that means I am unusually smart!')
Also pretty ugly to watch.
I don't bother commenting on Reddit anymore, and rarely on here. There is absolutely no point.
My wife and I had one of our wedding pictures take the number one spot on /r/all one day -- There was some rather embarrassing text super-imposed on it that said "Oh you think married women still give BJs" (google Condescending Wife to find it).
Despite some of the comments in the thread being pretty mean, my wife and I took it in stride, we're both internet people, we get it; we thought it was pretty funny all things considered --
The awkward part of all of this though, was this picture was EVERYWHERE for about a day. All over Facebook, Tumblr, etc. So countless friends and family inevitably saw it. I got a call from my concerned father, asking me if everything was ok and if I had seen what the internet had been saying about me and my wife. I explained to him that we didn't really mind and we left it there as explaining reddit to him would have been near impossible. But it was just a really surreal experience. We got dozens of texts and emails that day all asking if we had seen the picture.
The best part of the the internet's short term memory is how quickly this image found it's way into obscurity; to be completely forgotten. No ill harm to my wife's nor my reputation.
My mother found out when she went to yahoo.com to log into her email and I was on the front page. My father-in-law was watching the local news and saw me giving an interview. Two years later, I can bring out my driver's license at parties and people remember it. But they don't remember me, just the photo, so no harm done. (And happily, my domain has enough precidence on google to at least appear first for searches of my name).
On the upside, if I ever meet Greg Proops or Ellen DeGeneres in person we'll have something in common to talk about.
The OP grovelled and apologised for posting the photo without her permission, but still, I think that was one of reddits lowest points
Does that seem bizarrely self absorbed to anyone else?
And wait, you're surprised a human, in media, is self absorbed? That seems bizarrely self absorbed.
Don't you think it would be a bit demanding on your part if you wanted your friends to stop hanging out with and being friends with your ex? Maybe you should figure out how to get closure on your relationship and move forward in a healthy manner rather than hoping that the rest of the world will coddle and protect a wound that only you could possibly understand or be responsible for.
This happens in any insular subculture. Do I even need to mention the "geek girl" bullshit?
The problem has quickly become that this revulsion has also played into the jock-centric bullying of anyone who dares to be different--"my football coach won't let me grow my hair long so now let me go punch that faggot with the plastic frames" sort of crap. Any indie community that still exists needs to rid itself of all this baggage for that reason alone.
Whatever utility the word "hipster" had as a pejorative, if any, is gone. Internet killed pop culture and it's dead to stay. The most popular cartoon character now is effing Grumpy Cat. Anyone should consider anyone else using "hipster" as an offhand pejorative to be no greater than a classroom bully, no different than calling someone a dweeb in the 1980s.
The thing is, the 'geek girl' stereotype is something that almost never happens, but as far as I understand it the stereotypical hipster is not uncommon.
It is possible to 'like' something the wrong way: namely where you do not actually like it. Hipster hate isn't about being different, it's about a perception of dishonest attention-seeking.
Isn't this the same justification that's used to shame the "pseudo" geek girls?
As far as I am aware, the discussion of 'fake geek girls' has mostly come from MRA-types that spend most of their time failing to see women as people. So any particular instance of 'fake geek girl' is almost certainly the commenter being an ass and wrong. But, again, as far as I am aware, there are no large groups going around being 'anti-hipster' in situations where it doesn't fit. So instances of being 'anti-hipster' are often accurate.
Also, pop culture is not dead #twerking #beiber #hashtags
(Though I agree people should be more open to people doing fun performance-ish stuff like this, it does not mean a performer is entitled to receive only positive reactions.)
Expecting otherwise seems irrational.
I remember seeing this on reddit and thinking that surely it must be staged satire, poking fun at the types (pun intended) of people one sees around Chelsea. Without the context of it being a piece of (really rather compelling) performance art, the photo looks like a person who is trying very hard to be noticed.
But the reason art is cool is PRECISELY BECAUSE artists have to take risks and stick their necks out and have to be able to take the heat if their art gets a bad reception.
It seems to me OP wanted the cachet of doing art, but doesn't want to accept the risk that is an integral part of being an artist.
In real life, you can see something like that, and then walk around until you see the sign and have better context, and be less dismissive or confused. When all you have is a photo, that's less easy.
yeah, many celebs behave that way. they don't mind seeking irrational popularity that makes them sign multi-million contracts, but get extremely butthurt when popular opinion shifts against their favor when something goes wrong. the same medium and communities that made them famous and rich suddently get called a bunch of abusive haters that need to get exterminated.
What on earth was he doing to get attention?
He was doing a job.
If you are writing stories for people in a park, a typewriter is probably the best way to do it, how else would you?
How was he trying for attention any more than the ice cream van I'm sure was down the road? Since when do people working in public have to be "NEWSFLASH"ed that they are trying to get attention.
Bottom line, using a manual typewriter is a theatrical element and designed to draw attention to him.
As to doing it electronicly, he deals with that issue, a electronic story email would have little value to most people. ---------------- My favorite exchange was between “I_thrive_on_apathy” and “dlins”:
i_thrive_on_apathy: What the fuck is he going to do with that typed page? Scan it?
Dlins: you do realize things have value even if they're not digitized, right?
i_thrive_on_apathy: Huh? ------------------------------
Now I'm surprised I haven't seen it yet.
Dear Internet Fashionistas: You've decided that fedoras and suspenders are the mark of a horrible person. Your opinions have no connection to reality. Over here in the real world, I look good. When I come back to the bar the next day to pick up my credit card, and the bouncer remembers me well enough to compliment my outfit from the previous night, that means I'm doing it right.
Hell, I have worn a suit to a friend's place and gotten hate from it.
I've had several internet fashionistas try to tell me that fedoras (and bow ties, and suspenders, and etc.) are Ruined Forever because a few unpleasant dudes on OK Cupid wear them. I find the notion absurd.
You're reading their casual implication in the wrong direction. What they usually mean is that disgusting, reprehensible goblin implies poor fashion decisions. Thus, by Bayesian inference, poor fashion decisions are evidence which increases the likelihood that you are a disgusting, reprehensible goblin.
And fashion is entirely about Bayesian inference--or "judging a book by its cover," as it is sometimes known. ;)
It's just so unfortunate that the internet makes it so hard. You're either loved, hated, or ignored. He, thanks to an unlucky picture angle and loss of context, fell into the 'hated' category by many. I applaud the effort to just do it. It is funny how many view the real world as hard and the internet as an easy escape, yet in his experience, it was just the opposite.
Are you trying to be ironic? Mozart's first work was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andante_in_C_for_Keyboard_%28Mo..., written when he was 5 years old.
Mozart's the canonical example of somebody who didn't have to practice for years. Obviously he did spend thousands of hours practising as he grew up, but that's a nuanced argument. You'd be much better choosing pretty much anybody else for your example.
I'm assuming the parent was referring to information presented in the book Outliers, which provides a counter-argument to this
I'm curious what you'd suggest as an alternative. To have strong, passionate, but neutral, feelings about people?
I think the point is that the hivemind/bandwagon/mob mentality pushes everything to an extreme, because the people with more neutral opinions aren't very motivated to post them.
I've noticed more and more about this, as I move across the world.
Bullying on the internet is trivial, you arn't trapped, you arn't forced into these situations. You can hide if you want to. You don't have to reveal who you are. You can walk away. You can be anonymous. You should be anonymous anyway.
This article is about someone who suck his neck waaaay out, and got his head bashed in for it. Don't do that.
No. No no no no no no no.
You're saying what happened to him was justified, or that it should be expected. This is wrong. Nobody should have to change their life to avoid being abused. Instead, we as human beings should stop the abuse. Here are some examples of your position put in other situations:
Don't dress like a slut and you won't get raped.
Don't be out and gay and you won't get gay-bashed.
Don't look weird and people won't treat you like shit.
Instead, we as human beings should stop the abuse.
If you pretend like it doesn't exist, you will get burned. If you didn't know and you got burned, then you have my sympathies, but there is nothing that can be done.
Yeah, just stop going online, it's so simple! I know almost your entire social life is online, and the identities we create online are increasingly hard-linked to our real life identities, but all you have to do is exclude yourself from everything that you enjoy doing online and you'll be fine!
There's lots to do online that doesn't require a hard link to real life, and everything that does require a hard link should be looked at with the most rigorous of scrutiny and suspicion.
I never had one, I mean I didn't have too many friends and wasn't very popular. I cannot say for sure how cyber-bullying affects people, well because maybe I just missed the era where elementary/highschool kids really engaged on the net.
I think I have spent more time on the Internet that anyone in a square mile, maybe more. But I opened a facebook account and I don't even have a profile picture. I never really found it interesting, because people are super boring.
Don't lose your time with these people. Take a video camera and explain what you do for people in the internet, youtube and vimeo...
Better, you could create a cool kickstarter project in which by the way, you explain better what you do.
Never forget that being able to tell stories is one of the most important abilities humans have, since hunters met at fire in the dark of the ancient night.
Now FOCUS ON FEELING THE LOVE, not the pain. In my business the customer support people used to ignore thousands of satisfied customers letters to focus in the couple of crazy ones.
Don't dedicate neurons to them, don't think yourself the object of Internet ridicule, because we see only validation. Find yourself as the object of respect and love. You have my respect and validation and lots of other people's too. Search for it and you will find it.
Could you believe the people in customer service had not realized what they were doing?
They were going home depressed, feeling so bad, because this focusing made them live this reality.
Just making them notice and putting some simple rules made a world of difference.It was also much better for our customers.
Come to think of it, that fits the description of many people.
Since this is hackernews, it would be interesting to discuss this portion. What would be the best way to use this to propel oneself into success? It seems he was granted a strong brand for free. Mostly negative, but also with some positives. My idea would be to try to be even more hipstery, to really validate peoples impressions, and then try to sell things associated with hipsters: Second hand stuff. Organic, fair trade, hand made clothing. Maybe try to appear in a commercial for glasses. I don't know much about marketing so sorry if this is completely wrong. Just wanted to put some ideas out there to start a discussion.
I want to make clear that I don't blame him, all he did was sell people live-typewritten short stories in the park. It's quirky, nothing that deserves Internet-wide ridicule (which happened because of the cropping of the photo, not the quirkiness per se). Also I don't think his clothes are that out of the ordinary, definitely on the "hipster" side as styles go, but many people wear this style, and indeed if you're buying clothes on a budget there's often not much choice: either you get something really shabby, or you have to pick one of the current youth main stream fashion styles. In that case I'd go with "hipster" too.
Anyway, what I thought was, if right that day when he hit Reddit's FP, he'd have made a simple webpage (could even be a Tumblr blog with one post in it) with roughly the first part of the story in this article--aka what he actually does and why he's doing it. Also, if he had one laying around, an uncropped picture of him with the typewriter and the sign.
The idea being, he explains that even in the Reddit thread (threads?) some people came to his defence. Giving them something easy to link to, makes that a lot easier. Especially if the topic comes up again on some other sub-reddit, the whole shaming-then-"oh wait he's just trying to make a buck, sorry" can be cut short if one of the first commenters just links to that page.
Basically what this does, is give you a communications medium back to your audience. Yes he now has an audience. That's how it goes in the 21st century sometimes.
Also write that URL tiny in the corner on the back of his paper. It's better than a Twitter account.
The reaction, then, had nothing to do with hipsters... they hated me because I looked like I was nakedly desperate for attention, and had gone about that attention-grabbing by glomming on to marginalized trends.
I thought that was the whole reason people didn't like hipsters. Now I'm confused.
For your other questions, I think someone who spent 2 grand on a suit just to be showy is pretentious. If they did it because they really like expensive clothes, that's better (although probably still vain). If they did it because their family comes from money and they're just used to wearing crazy expensive stuff, that would be the most "sincere" way I can think of.
When General Alexander wore jeans and a t-shirt to last year's Def Con, it looked pretentious. http://blogs-images.forbes.com/andygreenberg/files/2012/07/S... It looked like he was wearing a costume and imitating someone else hoping they would think he was like them. He looks like he would feel better in a uniform, like the one he wore to this year's Black Hat. http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/alexander2.jpg
Point being his comment about budgetary constraints irked me.
They're not sincerity, but why the fuck do you care? Why is it okay to dislike someone because their glasses are too large for your taste?
They're the sweetest, coolest, most open-minded people and I adore them. They're not trying to act like they're better or more stylish than anyone else, but the level of "hipster hate" they got in the thread was just intense.
How could anybody have something bad to say about that? Haters gonna hate, I guess.
I'm actually having some trouble imaginging to big a fallout on this, if any. I suspect you're being dramatic, where did this happen? tineye doesn't return results. https://www.tineye.com/search/dad74b36792f392b44d2df523fe17a...
edit: Never mind it was easier to find than I thought
http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1h7apd/my_wife_and_i_h...
This seems good natured enough. I don't feel these two are being mocked in this thread.
Its the ugly, non creative side of accessibility in modern technology that hurts people sometimes significantly. If someone did it to me, I would probably be very hurt. "Look at this super ugly fat guy on my bus!" That ugly fat guy might of just mustered enough courage over the last week to step outside and as a result he gets ambushed in a hurtful demeaning way. It's not just the post, imagine going outside and noticing people slyly trying to snap pictures of you, how would you feel?
These sorts of posts are often veiled behind a thin curtain of pathetic vacuous wit. People need to call this sort of behaviour out more.
Having been on Reddit for more than 6 years, what always blows me away are these "lessons". Sure, everyone backpedals a bit and thinks, "gee, he's not the douchebag hipster we thought and we acted like assholes" but it happens over, and over and over.
As others have also mentioned in here, I'm always amazed that those most prone to being bullied seem more than okay taking on the role of bully online with zero context.
I prefer to let these little cesspools of cyberspace fester and then stagnate, forgotten as they should be, secure in the knowledge that I am doing something that matters to me.
>>As reddit is nothing other than a festering cesspool of cyberspace.
>What possible good or truth can come of making a statement like that? Hopefully you aren't proudly so ignorant as to actually think that's remotely authentic. But then again, most "Reddit is literally Hitler" trolls don't know what they're talking about or sub to any subreddits, so whatever.
People hate them because they make them feel bad by generally doing things most people are too lazy to do themselves, not because they go around telling everyone they are crappy or acting holier than thou. The act of recycling old clothing is what offends people, not hipsters talking about it.
You know what is holier than thou? "Hipsters are hypocritical scum". I've never been told anything like that by someone who is a hipster (except my radical feminist lesbian sister-in-law and it isn't because she's a hipster)
http://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/ygfv7/spotted_on_the_hi...
Sorry for the crazy-person all-caps, but this thing really crunches my Funyuns. Hipsters are a totally made-up label to brand people with that are into different shit. Would we have called Dylan a hipster (in the derogatory sense, not the beatnik sense)? What about Steve Jobs in the early days? Shoot, even Woz wore some pretty ironic bow-ties (definite hipster).
What's also a gas is that all these "hipster bashers" are so heck-darn defensive of mainstream culture. We all acknowledge that Walmart is a shithole. We all agree McDonalds is feeding garbage into our souls. So why are people so darn defensive about people who are trying to explore different things.
The "hipster" label is a sickeningly old cliche. Seriously. So-called "hipster-bashing" has been going on for 10 years now (it all started with 'the hipster handbook'. I've never really got it either. I mean, people don't actively go out and go "right, I'm going to be a hipster". Like the amazing roaming typist, these people are just interested in different things.
In my opinion, these "hipster bashers" are people that are just so obviously insecure about their own lives. Why bash others, just because you can't step out of your box.
Then again - maybe the definition of a hipster is someone who does actively embrace the attributes of this made-up subculture to form an identity - without understanding the depths of what they are appropriating. I must say, I have not met anyone like this. Hence, why I think hipsters don't exist.
"The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you." -Lost in Translation
"you do realize things have value even if they're not digitized, right"
Brilliant point and something that is sadly being lost in our evolving digital community. As a former Anthropologist, we are leaving less and less artifacts for those future civilizations to discover us by.
At times, it's incredibly depressing to me this is the case. How will people know about the human race if our entire culture is wrapped up in bits and bytes and discarded without a thought to their permanence? It will as though we never existed.
You may want to talk to Jason Scott or other Internet Archivers. (He mostly goes from physical to digital, but I'm sure this subject would interest him.) In the meantime have some links:
They'll uncover warehouses full of old government forms and shipping records, and use them to draw conclusions about how we lived.
Looking at the whole picture now, it still doesn't appear evident (at least to me) that the two ladies chatting beside him were waiting for their story to be done.
I agree with the author: seeing his sign more would have put more context into the picture.
My personal favorites are the anonymous internet tough guys: "if I ever met him in person, I'd punch him". No, you wouldn't. You'd walk on by in silence, thinking your snarky little thoughts and tell your friends about it later. Because you, sir, have likely never been the first to throw a punch in your entire life.
I'm not saying one is wrong in feeling a little sting in such comments. Maybe it's too many years on Usenet, maybe it's spending way too much time on Xbox Live (that will grow you a thick skin), but I just pay them no heed anymore and let them wallow in their insecurity.
That's not to say that when my mother is referenced on Xbox Live that I don't point out that the 68 year old woman would probably love some time with a young, studly Call of Duty master like yourself.
And I agree that the face-punching probably won't actually happen in reality. But the widespread phenomenon of supposedly normal or good people talking about complete strangers having "punchable faces" feels ominous to me. I guess my problem isn't with the insults as such, but rather the widespread cultural acceptance this kind of attitude has gained.
Sorry, but you can't decide you hate someone based on their appearance and also be a good person. That makes you a psycho. Look, we all do this to some extent in private moments. But turning it into a group sport? And, again, the acceptance of it all?
People who talked this way on the internet used to be called "internet tough guys", and we scorned them. Now it's de rigeur. Maybe it's just the new form of hating communists. Maybe we just need to have someone to hate, and it's not that big a deal. But it feels bad to me, very bad.
Why do people feel the need to be such assholes to other human beings? Why should it ever matter what someone else does with their lives as long as it doesn't interfere with your inalienable rights? Why should it ever matter to anyone what color your skin is or what genitals you have if you get the job done?
I just don't get hate in general.
robert anton wilson put it well: "like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy, and don't take crap from anybody."
... and then later ...
> And that my wardrobe was more a function of my budget than hipster assimilation.
To me his style comes off as hipster assimilation. Am I missing something?
"For all the hateful words that were lobbed at me, it barely ever bubbled over from the world of online forums and websites."
This is also true of political forums. Many people complain on-line, but these people rarely show up at the council meeting to actually make a real-world difference.
I don't care how more street authors and poets "steal" this idea. Please copy, adapt, iterate, mutate, spread.... that's what culture is all about. Improvisational public writing is awesome on so many levels.
In other words, yeah, I'd like to see more of this.
In general, most people are indifferent. They won't feel compelled to comment on it. Naturally, you only get comments by people who have a sufficiently strong opinion on that particular topic. If you now add voting to the mix, you emphasize this distortion even more.
Now, the reason why it works this way is because it makes it interesting to those who participate in these discussions. That's the primary goal: encouraging user interaction.
It does not paint an objective picture of the community's opinion.
--
When I first saw that image about a year ago, I just thought he tried to create a distraction-free environment on a low budget.
I had no reason to comment on it.
If I had commented on it, my comment wouldn't have received many upvotes, because it wouldn't be aligned with this particular audience. That is, those who'd feel compelled to comment on this kind of picture.
IMO - reddit comments have gotten worst over time. While not youtube comments, bad. It's getting there.
I get the feeling that our lack of ability to deal with actual mental health issues as a society can be seen in the general reaction to the healthy, spirited, marching to their own drummer folks.
Isn't this close to the most common understanding of the word "hipster"? People that are middle-class, want to stand out, and also come off as a bit arty.
It's the same thing online. The thread begins with "how can we make fun of this person", and people join in and have a go at being a comedian. Obviously, amateur comedians will always step over the line without evening knowing it. And by amateur comedians I also mean professional writers who aren't known for their Roasting Humor, but will have a go anyway (ie, NY Times writes and so on).
With that firmly in mind: fuck hipsters.
What's it like to tell yourself to get fucked?
Do what successful authors, artists, musicians, actors (anyone creative) do: Don't listen to what others say.
http://www.stuffistumbledupon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06...
He is actually at a record shop where you can test the records before you buy them, to test the quality.
Then they'd shake their head and tell me that the idea and the execution were “genius.”
We're not all photogenic or very aware of our appearance we may actually look like something we are not. Like this guy.
He may look like a hipster but he's just an average guys trying to get by.
The lesson is simple. Don't judge people on how they look talk to them and then decide.
edit: I guess it is a real person but this reads like an Onion piece.
There's quality stuff on reddit, but's buried several degrees away from the frontpage subs.
It's basically the internet version of what you're doing.
Its just social signaling. Like much social signaling, it works better if it upsets preexisting social norms. Its really not that complicated.
But have an upvote.
It's an absolute waste of time commenting on anything online, because there is an absolutely inexhaustible supply of people who are wrong.
(Yes I realise the irony).
What irks me about these various definitions is that it's as if people are having an academic debate about which pejorative or negative stereotype deserves to be christened a "hipster", when there's already a very diverse and complex community in existence that self-identifies as such. The only context I see such a debate making sense is when people have a perverse need to somehow preserve their ire and rage against the word "hipster" after being confronted with wholesome, happy counter-examples.
This poor bloke is a guy whom a lot of regular people would quickly slot down as a hipster, just from his looks and habits. He probably self-identifies as one too (because, hey, he likes the same music and dresses the same and it's always nice to have a sense of community with like minds). And there ought not be anything wrong with it. Yet there's an active hipster-hate community that's not going to drill down into his benign motivations before shredding him up.
So what appears to be the way forward here? Collectively agreeing that it's high time to dial back the rhetoric on hipsters? Or telling the guy who thinks he's a hipster that he's not really a hipster because hipsters are supposed to be jerkfaces?
..it was dozens of someones—*faceless and impossible to control*
I asked...if she would *let me read a draft before she sent it*
to her editor... ...I ranted back to her, *mad that she hadn’t
sent me the article*
...the hipster label is a compliment, a devotion to a *self-
evident truth*
This guy isn't hipster, he's sinister.
Your fragments in strike two are literally paragraphs apart, and ignore huge details that add context. But even so, there's nothing evil about asking someone you know personally, when they've openly told you they're going to write about you, if you can read it before it goes live. And very obviously, they're both professional writers, so it's actually a pretty collegial courtesy that acquaintances extend to one another. It doesn't grant him any undue influence over her creative process. Asking for that isn't wrong.
And nothing but MEH for your third strike against the guy. Both of you are entitled to your opinions, and I'm entitled to my opinion of your opinions.
Your classification of "sinister" is head-up-your-ass unfounded, sir. You deserve more downvotes.
This has little to do with hipsters or counter culture. SOME People on reddit don't hate hipsters, or puppies, or anything else. They just hate, period. They hate because there is a % of human population which just likes to hate. Think about the Sexual Harasment Panda episode of South Park and the "we don't take kindly to..." line from it. That kind of attitude + anonymity = net hate. The good thing is, net hate very rarely = real life.
Any way, I think this guy is pretty cool. And it makes perfect sense to me that he uses a typewriter. He sells stories to tourists. He needs to give them a physical object, rather then an email, to inspire them to give him money in return. I know I would pay more money for a story written on a typewriter and given to me, rather then one emailed to me for the following reasons:
1. I know it's original, or at least typed just for me. 2. I will own the only exact copy of it. 3. I know some one actually spent time to type it out, which takes skills and effort.
Besides, if he wants to give people a hard copy, what is he supposed to do, lug a printer and power generator with him.
For example, reading the comments about him before his reply show a case of the fundamental attribution error on most of the commentators parts, ie assuming he is a 'hipster' and 'stand out for standing-out's sake'. As soon as he revealed the financial reasons for his dress and actions a lot of the stereotyping/prejudicial comments were stopped as well. That to me is interesting and worthy of studying. Perhaps the use of a typewriter set off the tech community, it seems quite a few both here and in the original article declare it a novelty and inferior to more technical means.
To answer your question, sure anonymity enables the hate to flow out but why was it present in the first place? How are the tools we are building to give people such power being used and what can we do to make sure people such as himself have a way to be understood? At least the article brings such topics up :)