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Comment by FreakyT | Hacker News Reader

I love this breakdown; it really demonstrates how the "ruining" of Burning Man is no different than the sort of aversion to change that occurs with basically anything that people are enthusiastic about.

* Bands? "They used be all about the music, then they went mainstream"

* Video games? "Now they just cater to beginners; they don't care about real gamers anymore"

* Movies? "They're so focused on the special effects, they don't even bother with the story"

...and the list goes on. Name just about anything that people enjoy, and you'll find a vocal contingent complaining about how recent changes have "ruined" it.

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I think people like to feel special about themselves. When you were part of a small group of people who liked some band, and went to see them at small local venues for $5 a show you are "in the know". You are a part of that local music scene, and not one of the masses who just listens to what's on the radio. On one hand, you have discovered music that is good and not everyone listens to. You might say it is all about the music, but I think a big part of it is knowing that you "know" something that others don't. This makes you feel special about yourself. You aren't just a boring, uncritical person who listens to whatever commercial music is presented to them.

Then that band becomes slowly more popular, you are happy for their success until a certain point is reached. Now kids who you thought were just random lame kids with no taste in music at school are listening to them. If you want to see their show you have to buy tickets on ticketmaster, pay much more, and worry about sold out shows.

From a practical standpoint, it is now more difficult to see your favorite band. But I think the part that really bothers people is losing that feeling of being special. Everyone likes them now, there is nothing special about you liking them.

This same process can be applied to video games, films, craft beer, clothing/fashion trends, and probably any thing where you get very passionate fans.

Those seem to be legitimate complaints that seem to be "take something specialized that caters to a small crowd, then water it down so it appeals to everyone."

That said, sometimes such complaints are clearly a bit whiny, but then again, sometimes they are warranted critiques.

I don't have any data to back this up but I would argue that as the total number of video games has increased, the number of good games (as good and better than the games when you were 20 years younger) has also increased.

We didn't take N good games that 10% of people like and turn them in to N bad games that 90% of people like.

Instead, we have something more like 10xN good games that 10% of people like and 100xN bad games that 90% of people like.

With movies, as opposed to games, I think this is less pronounced given the age of medium but still present.

I think there are two situations here that account for this.

[1] Technical barriers to entry. Photography had huge barrier to entries when it first started. With wet-plate exposures you had to be at a high level of technical ability in multiple disciplines to even take a picture. Only the people deeply interested in the subject participated. Also the high cost (in time and money) to take a single photo meant that a lot of effort was put into a single frame. Today it's trivial to snap a photo on my phone. However there is still great photography being today! It's just that there is a bunch more crap photos being taken. This is similar to developing a game (there were still plenty of crap games being made then too!). Personally, I think it's all awesome.

Ignore the crap and enjoy the awesome. No one judges a guitar based on how bad players sound. People listen to the players they like.

I don't know why this is being downvoted; there have never been more or more diverse games, and the old ones don't go away quite so readily, between emulators and GoG. Gaming is now mainstream and very nearly respectable. Kind of like football ("soccer") in the 90s, just with a different kind of hooligan.

We've lost a bit to genre crystallization, but there's no shortage of people willing to experiment with weird things in Unity or mods to existing games.

The hyper-mainstream games are of course boringly predictable, but it's a short step away to other things.

I would agree about video games. I haven't seen the supply of games slowing down any, and there's a lot of high-quality stuff mixed in there - way more than any one person could ever hope to consume. Of course there's a lot of shovelware too, but Sturgeon's Law.

Movies seem to really be hollowing out the middle more. You've got a lot of very low-budget fliers and indie prestige stuff and a lot of $100M+ mega-movies, drifting now into attempts at Marvel-esque cinematic universe perpetual money-printing machines for increasingly dubious IPs.

Most movies have always been trash. It only seems better historically because we don't tend to remember all the trash that got released in decades past, while all the trash in the past year or two is still in memory.

For your reference, that's a restatement of Sturgeon's Law.

I don't think so. Surgeon's law basically just says that most of everything is crap. I'm talking more about a form of rose-colored glasses, the "everything is crap now" mentality. It's sort of the same thing that makes everyone think that the music industry peaked when they were 20.

Sturgeon's law is a response to somebody asking "how come most of X is crap, when that's not the case for Y?". The response is that most of Y was crap too, you're just remembering the good stuff.

So yes, it's definitely the standard reponse for the "everything is crap now" mentality.

> Sturgeon's law is a response to somebody asking "how come most of X is crap, when that's not the case for Y?".

That's true but it's not the scenario posed. The scenario is not "why do most movies suck when most games don't?" It's "why do most movies suck now when they didn't years ago?"

These are related but different things. The "why does it suck now" stuff is nostalgia and romanticism, which is not what Sturgeon's law addresses. Sturgeon's law along with recency and forgetfulness lead to this nostalgic effect. But saying that Sturgeon's law is the same as nostalgia because it contributes is like saying radiation is the same as cancer because it contributes.

> The response is that most of Y was crap too, you're just remembering the good stuff.

Sturgeon's law was not phrased this way. It wasn't "you're remembering the good stuff" because it was addressing criticism of SciFi vs other contemporary genres. There was no question of remembering the good stuff. It was a question of sci-fi getting criticism that other genres simply didn't.

I get that you're trying to make X be "movies now" and Y be "movies then", but this is an awkward (mis)use.

If it is awkward mis(use) and I don't think it is, then pretty much every invocation of Sturgeon's law is also awkward mis(use). The typical invocation is "the type of music I like" vs "modern music".

And like any popular adage, what counts is popular usage, not original intent. Most popular adages have generalized and shifted over years of usage.

I guess I don't agree that this is the common definition or use. Maybe it will become so.

I'm not sure I agree. Those two types have certainly risen, but if you look at films from last year, there a are still a ton of "middle" films with decent budgets (10-30M) and high praise from the critics - Selma, Spotlight, Carol, The Big Short, etc. I don't see a hollow middle.

I pretty much agree. Honestly, even with the ready availability of rather low cost digital cameras, editing software, etc. it still takes a pretty decent budget to create something that really looks "professional." Certainly there are some indie/art films (perhaps especially documentaries) that stand out but most true low budget looks it and is probably hard to fully appreciate it outside of the smallish demographic that's into that kind of thing.

All of those are Oscar-bait prestige pictures. They aren't really aimed at the middle.

So, except for good expensive movies, good indie budget movies and good middle budget movies all movies are crap?

That's sounding a little bit like Sturgeon's law.

My own experience seems to reflect this. The availability of quality work seems to grow logarithmically in relation to the quantity of something.

Yes, quality is a function of quantity. This applies to all kinds of things besides games such as the relationships between friends and family members. The more time you spend with someone, the more likely a certain percentage of that time will be of high quality.

I think the level of quality has also increased compared to pre-2005.

Games like Factorio and Minecraft didn't even exist. It's not a stretch to call FTL and Spelunky the best rouge-like games so far. Ocarina of Time, even with its huge nostalgia bias, is less re-playable than A Link Between Worlds. CS:GO basically amplifies everything good about CS 1.6 and CS:Source then adds the competitive support. Similarly, DOOM (2016) takes everything (Except perhaps the mod-ability and level design) that made Doom so good and improves it.

Doom4 is fantastic for those of us who grew up on Doom1.

OOT is a classic simply because of its weirdness and innovative time mechanics, but I prefer the bright joy of Wind Waker and the more recent Twilight Princess is just better in so many ways.

Many people (myself included) would argue that CS:GO is worse than 1.6 or source. CS has always had competitive support by nature of being able to host your own servers.

I don't think Burning Man could yet be called "appeals to everyone". Got a ways to go? There's still a core of weirdness that proves its still got something going on.

It appeals to a certain kind of everyone.

But this always happens in anything that starts out as counter-culture. Always.

First the freaks and the true believers invent something that appeals to other freaks and true believers. Then it gets bigger and becomes a mainstream business. Then eventually it crashes as it starts to feel sterile and commoditised, and it becomes more about management and money than expression.

Then the cycle starts again elsewhere - sometimes with the same people.

(Any similarity to software is intended. Although sadly I think we have too few real freaks and true believers in software. Certainly not too many.)

Any favorite examples of freaks/true-believers in software?

Stallman? Also Erik Naggum springs to mind.

Erik Naggum's rant against XML, which I discovered thanks to the great uriel's site on harmful stuff, is a treat to read: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML

By the way, I wouldn't call him a freak, but I greatly admire Joey Hess, writing great Free software from his off-grid cabin.

I don't think it can be said to be 'about money' yet. Still a principle of no commercial presence. Again, got a long way to go yet.

It never really appealed only to a small crowd - that's the point of 'feeling special'.

In a country of 300M people (leaving aside international visitors), let's not pretend that only one hundred people (early 90s) or even the mid 90s 8,000 attendance are the only people to whom the idea appealed.

Popularity, and prominence are distinct, and tangential from these complaints.

I used to go to sleep away camp, I went there for 7 years. In the 6th year, they got a new head of camp, the boats were made heavier (compared to their motors), kids were observed more strictly, and the spirit of the camp never felt the same. I think you make a fair point that people are adverse to change, but I think there is an equally fair point that changing the spirit of a place or thing does truely make it worse, atleast to those who had enjoyed certain aspects that were lost. I am sure the new kids are perfectly happy with the camp, I am sure they are having a great time, but that place will never be the same to me and my friends, and the loss is disapointing. Ultimately, I don't own the camp, I only own the memories of my experience there, and I think is alright to be disappointed that others can't have the experience that I had.

To me, one of the key points of community inclusion is democratization but also global responsibility of enculturation (aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ).

Explaining and communicating culture is hard. When faced with a choice between "pitching in and helping do it yourself" and "have someone else do it so I don't have to" most people would choose the latter. Which never scales.

If you want a community to stay true to its values, then it has to be the responsibility of every member to do their best to help communicate those values to newcomers. Sometimes the newcomers ignore those values and sometimes they deserve to be ignored, but you can't delegate personal responsibility for helping maintain a great community.

PS: Thanks to everyone on HN who has put thought behind a community etiquette-driven up or down, or who has taken the time to explain to someone why their comment's tenor doesn't mesh with the community we try to create here.

As a fan of punk music this attitude is exhausting. It seems that you aren't truly punk unless you are literally the Sex Pistols. Punk was declared dead when The Clash signed to a major label decades ago and has died a million deaths since then. It has continued to evolve and influence all sorts of music, but apparently that's not real punk.

Yeah, those are all disappointing things. The hipsters are right. Not everything can get away with being good art. Some people don't "get it", and it ruins a good thing. There's a good reason people push back on homogenization. Plenty of run of the mill stuff already exists; something different and genuine is valuable.

But one shouldn't spend too much energy focusing on keeping things the same. We still have recordings of art when it was good (Burns of yore, I guess memories would have to suffice) Things change, and the new things have their own merits.

I will always object when people refer to Skrillex as Dubstep, but his stuff isn't that bad either, whatever it is. What I experienced this year at Burning Man was no doubt missing some of the magic from 10 years ago. I didn't fully "get it" though I did my best to fit in. But whatever it is today is also pretty damn impressive.

You say this like the people aren't in the right to complain, or that their complaining is unjustified.

If I went to a jazz festival and all I heard was electronic music, I might be understandably upset, even if I liked electronic music. The expectation was that there would be jazz. It wouldn't matter to me if you could trace the lineage of electronic music back to jazz, they are still different in very important ways.

It is not about aversion to change - it is about maintaining an elite position.

>* Bands? "They used be all about the music, then they went mainstream"

Whenever a band starts to play with a full orchestra you know they've jumped the shark.

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