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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

My god, how immature are the inhabitants of the web? I was on the site for 2 seconds and was literally quite depressed at what I saw. Why can something like this not exist except with kiddies turning it into an expletive-filled hate and anger textbox?

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Context matters. Many people who wrote gibberish or stupid things there might otherwise be quite intelligent and productive. Maybe not, but I'm just saying that you can't read too much into this.

Srsly? You're surprised?

It's not surprise. Just sadness at the incredible potential that isn't.

What you're looking at actually is potential. It's like we have to flush all this nonsensical, vile shit out of our unconscious to detox it for big creativity. Or like you can't have the crest of a wave without a trough.

I see the stuff you described and I'm always so thankful that humanity finally has public, anonymous dumping grounds for the worst of our id. It's therapeutic and, I think, healthy.

Psychologists have pretty much debunked catharsis as being a good thing. [1] I think that having a environment of competitive creation is a good thing only when it causes people to excel, and only then when it is not done to excess and thus burnout or what have you. Sometimes, also, you can get some amazing things [2] when you have a negative influence which causes you to excel, but that isn't what we are seeing here, either. So sad to see so much time wasted on unproductive [3] stupidity.

[1] A weak citation is here (but I bet you could find plenty more where that came from): http://books.google.com/books?id=Pye5IkCFgRYC&pg=PA853&#...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286253

[3] Unproductive in the sense that it isn't helping anybody. As is mentioned in the book excerpt I cited in [1], this isn't even "relaxing" people, except from exhaustion. It would be better if they were doing something which reduced their arousal.

It seems to me that creative catharsis is a different beast than the rage catharsis of punching a pillow or screaming. Giving one's moods free reign seems a recipe for bad socialisation. But giving creativity free reign seems a requirement to get some of the stranger or more unexpected results. Ascii cock-and-balls and racism with bad grammar seems a small price to pay.

Coming back from work, mentally drained, with a glass of tea next to the computer. You check HN and stumble on a place where you can write whatever you want. A graffiti corner on the internet. What do you write?

It's just appeasing to some people to stop respecting rules and decorum for a minute. No higher meaning to it. There's some more serious stuff too, but honestly, when I want to read something intellectually stimulating, I don't go to 4chan /b/ or to the textbox where anonymous people write whatever.

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/ -> The center is polluted but the unimaginative hordes haven't realized that you can drag the screen. The areas around remain untouched and astounding.

EDIT upon looking more: I retract that. The companion cube song is oddly intact though.

That's cause I just fixed it : ) I found two versions and added a third! It's been stuck in my head ever since I got portal a few weeks ago.

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