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Comment by picks_at_nits | Hacker News Reader

> People go to extraordinary lengths to join groups and send this membership signal...

> It's dumb, but it is what it is, and people wrap an awful lot of their identity up in their chosen tribe rather than just being themselves.

Cough. Written on Hacker News, but not Reddit or Digg or Facebook. Cough.

C’mon, we’re sitting right in the middle of a tribe. Even writing that Sennheisers sound better is sending a tribal signal. That’s why people write it instead of just buying a pair and listening to them in private.

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I'm not saying I'm not dumb at times.

FWIW, I have a $20 pair of Sony unknown model # headphones I picked up at Ross. I bought them because they were over ear and cheap not because they're white, have Sony logos on them, or because I wanted to make a statement about what group I'm in or not in.

But yeah, HN is also very group membership oriented and people spend extraordinary amount of time to build things with things that signal that they're part of this group. The trope is "yet another photo sharing app" right?

I don’t think it’s dumb at all. Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe. Just try doing a startup in Somalia.

> Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe.

That's utter fear driven rubbish. Humans survive and thrive all the time without joining a group.

Where? Alaska in an old bus? Even there, humans benefit to a small degree from law enforcement that strongly discourages the next hunter from shooting them and taking their possessions.

There are some survivalists who may or may not be able to operate for a while on this basis, but even if they aren’t “joining” a tribe, they are protected by tribes. get rid of all the tribes, and new ones would spring up and we’d be back to this.

You clearly don't understand the distinction between a tribe and a society.

Excluding hermits, living anywhere is living within a tribe.

The largest tribe is currently that which accepts a commonly defined currency in exchange for providing value of some sort.

No its not. That's why people think it's important to signal tribal membership. You don't understand the difference between a tribe and a society.

Do you know anything about Somalia.

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