The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens | Hacker News Reader

The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens

newrepublic.com

71 pointssamsolomon24 comments

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11133663

Yes, I remember this was posted recently. I thought the wait period for dupes was a year?

It used to be something like that. It now appears to be based on the number of votes as well as the amount of time.

It is, so we've buried this one.

> In early 2014, when she was 16, some Tumblr users dug up posts Miller had written when she was 13 in which she used the word “nigga.” Screenshots of the old posts went viral. At one point, according to Miller, she had 9,500 concurrent visitors on her blog and she received over 2,000 angry messages, some of them telling her to kill herself.

If you're telling a child to go kill themselves, because of something they said when they were 13 years old, and didn't understand a complicated issue from halfway around the world...

...you should kill yourself? Maybe most of the messages were from 13 year olds.

What I just don't get is how these teens who were supposedly so internet and media savvy and established huge followings based on "being honest" or somesuch couldn't see that deliberately posting low-quality content which was fundamentally dishonest (the opposite of what they'd been doing) was just as certainly going to hurt them. ...and that thousands of teenagers are apparently involved in this kind of thing, it's probably safe to call it "widespread".

Clearly there's a lapse here, but I'm uncertain if it's an ethics problem or simply an educational problem (we didn't teach them not to deliberately poop into the internet).

> supposedly

This is the reason. Kids and teens are not anything savvy in reality, and specifically are no more internet savvy than anyone else.

Umm...pardon me? I'm pretty sure kids under 20 are far, incomparably, even, more internet-savvy than the previous generations.

Just because there's a small percentage of 20-50-somethings who actually understand or use it, doesn't mean there's not a huge percentage of 7-year-olds who understand technology infinitely better than their parents. This is the norm, not an exception.

Proof? Let's take something super-recent - Microsoft's ludicrous failure with 'Tay.' The lack of 4chan/reddit-proofing indicates how wildly out of touch the previous generation is with the internet of the current generation. It's sad.

First off it was a 16 year old. I have more experience using the internet than they have experience living. Extend that out to 25 year olds and I have more experience dealing with desktop computers in general than they have living.

No, people under 20 do not have the most experience online. That 7 year old doesn't understand anything about what they're using, it has been made so that they don't have to. People mistake no fear of using something as experience and knowledge of that thing.

That 7 year old doesn't understand shit, they're just not scared of braking it and having to pay for a replacement. The majority of teens fall in to this as well.

We don't mistake the almost ubiquitous use of cars in the US as an indicator that the US population is 'car savvy,' so why do we do it with computers, cell phones and the internet when in reality you need to know just as much about how they work as how your car does in order to use it?

Simple use is not understanding.

And Tay is a better example of the failure of American society to raise people than anything else. Microsoft didn't have these problems in Japan or China.

And honestly, you want to talk about outliers and than use 4chan users as some example of 'the current generation?' Hell 4chan users themselves are not some coherent group.

> We don't mistake the almost ubiquitous use of cars in the US as an indicator that the US population is 'car savvy,' so why do we do it with computers, cell phones and the internet when in reality you need to know just as much about how they work as how your car does in order to use it?

That may be true from the perspective of understanding the technical workings of the internet, but it's orthogonal to the discussion of understanding internet culture.

"Internet savvy" in this context means savvy with media and savvy with modern social networks, not with the OSI model of networking.

> "Internet savvy" in this context means savvy with media and savvy with modern social networks

But they're not, they do not have 'shrewdness and practical knowledge' of social networks or how the internet works they're just not scared of them.

Not really, no. The current generation of kids is growing up with the Internet, but that doesn't mean they're automatically "tech-savvy" or "Internet-savvy". For most, it's just another magic box.

I think it's time to bring up this classic: http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-comput....

RE Tay fiaso, I wouldn't blame it on previous generation being out of touch. Programming is a mainstream discipline now, most programmers are out of touch with the messier side of the Internet just like most kids these days.

Fun stories from tech support.

But why is he trying to "clean viruses". He should be just saving some data, and then reinstalling from scratch...

Also, while ios isn't quite as open as desktop oses, at least it has an sdk and we have internet. Growing up, I couldn't write software for my nintendo as easily as for ios.

far, incomparably, even, more internet-savvy than the previous generations.

Counterpoint: My mother will not post personally identifying information online because she's afraid that it will be used against her later in life.

Part of being internet-savvy is understanding that the internet never forgets, and that sooner or later what you say be used against you.

I'm pretty sure kids under 20 are far, incomparably, even, more internet-savvy than the previous generations.

So I'm going to go ahead and guess this is a problem with the use of the word "savvy".

Let's take the internet out of the equation. Kids are inexperienced, short-sighted, and lack the perspective to understand the short- and long-term ramifications of what they say and do.

In short: they're (on average) dumb.

And this has never and will never change. It's part of this thing we refer to as "growing up". It's why minors can't legally vote, or buy alcohol or cigarettes.

All the internet did was give them a very public, very permanent place to be dumb.

Tay is nothing new. Eliza would be verboten in Germany by now, _except_ Eliza doesn't "learn" from interacting with people like Tay does.

Kids understand how to use systems. They don't necessarily understand how those systems work, though a few do.

As counter-proof I would submit my college students (mostly 18-22) who I see struggling with simple technology. Yes some of them are very tech savvy but I am amazed at how few actually are.

I might've gotten down votes, but at least I started a conversation XD

> deliberately poop into the internet

Take a look at the Youtube Poop movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Poop

They're teens, good judgment is something they're still working on developing.

I'm over 30, and it's occasionally made obvious to me that good judgement is something that I'm still working on. It's a skill and like anything other skill in life, starting early and lifetime learning is the best solution.

And those are just the secret lives someone would attach their name to: http://abdlstoryforum.info/forums/index.php/topic,6486.msg63... .

In Internet time, this article is ancient.

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