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Hollywood has also been moving in this direction, with a lot of Chinese investment in the studios, and blockbusters adding special scenes with Chinese actors and locations.
What does it mean for America when it's no longer the owner or creator of culture? It's historically one of our largest (and most important) exports. I'm not sure if that claim to fame is a net positive for the world, but the changing of this guard will certainly have a local impact.
I'm just not yet totally sure what it means, broadly.
I think that's pretty unnecessarily cynical.
It's all around you. It's in the people: their beliefs, their charity, their hopes, their parents, their children, their food, their routines, their compassion, their striving. 330 million people and dozens of major cultural sub-groups, it's extraordinarily rich.
In the US alone, this can very wildly between cities, counties, states, etc. What it means to be American in Idaho is something quite different to what it means to be American in Hawaii.
Not sure if you're doing this intentionally, but these are all the things Americans definitely don't share in common or agree on, even within the same cities and states. In fact, we have never disagreed more on the subjects you listed. Largely because individuals have become increasingly atomized due to the internet age and a multitude of socioeconomic trends.
In fact, I'd posit that it's not very likely that the average american shares much with his neighbor culturally, outside of entertainment, even if they superficially seem to have a lot in common. It's more common to seek out a specific group(or faction) that you can relate to, than to form a local offline community with people physically near you.
>What it means to be American in Idaho is something quite different than what it means to be American in Hawaii
And yet there are all sorts of people in both Idaho and Hawaii. Many of whom agree on little and share almost nothing in common. I'd bet that even in a small town in Idaho very few citizens would agree with more than two of the things you listed.
In general, I'd have to agree with the person you're responding to: shared, common American culture is mostly the lowest common denominator entertainment we get through TV and Internet. For example, recognizing references from "The Office"
Don't say things like this. If you have a problem with my argumentation, then just say it; don't couch it in weasel words.
As it happens, I addressed the assertion that people are different. Of course people are different, between individuals, between cities, between regions, between states, etc. You then proceeded to refute that very point, so I'm not sure what your thesis is. Is there a vast, shared culture or not?
Well, obviously, I say there is.
The word 'culture' doesn't dictate that everybody has exactly the same mentality, a mistaken line of thought which is very sharply indicated by your assertion that people from a small Idaho town wouldn't 'agree' with more than two of the highly general potential cultural artefacts I listed. People don't 'agree' with cultural artefacts; they participate in them, their world views are informed and shaped by them; their ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, acceptable and unacceptable, healthy and unhealthy, proper and perverse, are all developed by cultures of all sizes: from the micro of the family, the neighbourhood, and the city to the macro of the state or the nation.
Whether all or even the majority of Americans are adherent to the full sum of a describable "American culture" is not the question, and it was never my thesis that it was. If I made any assertion, it's that Americans, as a whole, still adhere to at least some of the tenets of some overaching American culture, something distinct enough that it could be identified by outsiders, taking an etic point of view, as unmistakably 'American' when sufficient cultural artefacts become apparent enough.
It's embedded in the language, in the way people speak, the choice of language they use, their insults, their slurs, their forbidden words, their spelling; it's embedded in the way they interact with others, the space that is kept between interlocutors, the way that strangers are treated, the relationship between a manager and his or her subordinate, and what constitutes professional courtesy; it's in the way that money is spent, the willingness to give a tip, to donate, to accept paying things at retail place, to argue when something costs too much, to seek reparation when overcharged, the wherewithal to demand to see whoever is in charge; it's embedded in manners, the use of 'please' and "thank you", the offence caused to people from other cultures who use 'please' and "thank you" in different ways, how people should address each other.
There are so many more aspects of culture that I really think you're failing to see because, from an emic point of view, as a participant of the culture, you have no clue that they even constitute your culture.
But even if you could identify them, cultural artefacts aren't items on a checklist, whereby only by ticking 80% or more of the boxes does one belong to the culture.
Think more high for it exists, it's still relatively vast, and it's deep; some Americans might only dip a toe in it, others might be positively drowned in it, and I'd be willing to say anybody who claims "people only recognise internet memes and references from 'The Office'" are more firmly in the latter camp than the former, unbeknownst to themselves.
There is not a vast shared culture outside of the lowest common denominator: popular entertainment.
>Don't say things like this. If you have a problem with my argumentation, then just say it; don't couch it in weasel words.
Humor can be cryptic online these days. I wanted to make sure you weren't making a joke that went over my head. In my view religion, social norms, etc are all over the place in this country, to the point where there's nothing unifying at all. I wasn't sure if you were sarcastically signaling that we shared the same presuppositions.
Granted, it wasn't always like this, with American culture. I'd concede if you weren't talking about the present, but we live in a multicultural country now. It's no doubt a good thing, but I think "American culture", as you described it, is an antiquated concept that died in 20th century.
>If I made any assertion, it's that Americans, as a whole, still adhere to at least some of the tenets of some overaching American culture, something distinct enough that it could be identified by outsiders, taking an etic point of view, as unmistakably 'American'
Outside of pop culture, I really don't know anything that would be "unmistakably 'American'" other than being a consumer/unit of GDP that speaks English (as a second language in my case) in a certain geographic area. It's possible I just haven't experienced what you're talking about. I live in downtown Miami, not a white suburb of California, but I have traveled around our country quite a bit.
>It's embedded in the language, in the way people speak, the choice of language they use, their insults, their slurs, their forbidden words, their spelling; it's embedded in the way they interact with others, the space that is kept between interlocutors, the way that strangers are treated, the relationship between a manager and his or her subordinate, and what constitutes professional courtesy; it's in the way that money is spent
This is just capitalism and English. See above.
>what constitutes professional courtesy; it's in the way that money is spent, the willingness to give a tip, to donate, to accept paying things at retail place, to argue when something costs too much, to seek reparation when overcharged, the wherewithal to demand to see whoever is in charge; it's embedded in manners, the use of 'please' and "thank you", the offence caused to people from other cultures who use 'please' and "thank you" in different ways, how people should address each other.
This all varies quite a bit among hispanic, whites, asians, and african americans. No cohesion here.
>There are so many more aspects of culture that I really think you're failing to see because, from an emic point of view, as a participant of the culture, you have no clue that they even constitute your culture.
Maybe, but I think we grew up in demographically different "Americas".
Makes no difference. That simply means the widespread culture is evolving.
> I think "American culture", as you described it, is an antiquated concept that died in the 20th century
You're free to think what you like, but that doesn't make you any more correct. Again, culture isn't static; why are your ideas about it?
> This is just capitalism
Nope. There are plenty of capitalist nations around the world, all with completely different ideas about what's worth spending more for, what constitutes a good deal, whether it's worth demanding to see the manager, etc.
By way of example: haggling, for instance, is very much _not_ a thing in my country. It's seen as incredibly rude. Ditto for tipping, it's not expected by the staff and patrons don't expect to give one. Paying by cash, seen in my country as a bit old fashioned and fuddy-duddy; on the other hand, paying by credit card is a little bizarre. In America, the opposite or something close to it is true; at the very least, the social acceptability of such actions differs to an appreciable extent. Those are examples of cultural artefacts.
> and English
Again, no. Linguistic norms, politeness, courtesy, and all that sort of thing are very different amongst English-speaking countries, even the US and Canada. Yet, widespread, generalisable norms are to be found in America alone that differ from the rest of the world; I gave an example, the use of 'please' and "thank you".
People from Commonwealth countries tend to think Americans don't say 'please' or "thank you" enough; on the other hand, Americans wouldn't dream of saying "thank you" in the same places that British people might.
Anyway, try telling a sociolinguist that "the English language" is global enough to not be used differently between nations. Language is one of the strongest markers of cultural belonging, and the way that Americans, in general, use English isn't limited to trivial things like whether colour (correctly) has a 'u' in it.
> This all varies quite a bit among hispanic, whites, asians, and african americans. No cohesion here.
Again, who is talking about cohesion? You're still under the impression that culture means everybody has to be of the same mindset, as opposed to finding generalisable-yet-shared facets that are common to the largest population of a given group available.
The group in question is Americans, overall.
Again, not a checklist.
> Maybe, but I think we grew up in demographically different "Americas".
I'm not American. I'm from New Zealand. The values of America, the habits, the behaviours, the attitudes, the fashions, the foods, the tastes, the festivals, the celebrations, the commiserations, the way people interact — they are markedly different than here in New Zealand.
And yes, of course there are differences — between people grouped by race, religion, affiliation, their hometown, their current city, whatever state they're in — but the overall, generalisable cultural artefacts are what they are.
If you're only going to point out the differences between individuals or micro-groups, and ignore things at the macro level, then you're not talking about culture at all. I believe the reason is that, as hinted by your notion that "American culture" is something that has the ability to become 'outdated', you think culture is prescriptive: that to be American means ascribing to certain values, certain ideals, certain beliefs.
Yet, culture is not concrete. Culture evolves, it reforms, it absorbs: the multicultural nature of America adds to the culture, transforms it, and makes it something new — but still American.
Culture is descriptive. It is impossible for it to become 'outdated' unless the very idea of an American people is outdated; that is not one that has yet proven to have fallen by the wayside.
Additionally, American culture is exported so heavily through entertainment and literature, books, films, television, and so on, that its saturation around the world might feel like everything that was once so American is now global. I assure you, this is not the case; for our cultures, in all other nations around the world, are just as adept at taking what we like of American culture and discarding the rest, keeping our cultures ours.
> Cuisine, fashion,
Cuisine seems to be universalized in the west. Everyone eats the same stuff, driven mostly by availability and cost. Regional cuisines seems to me 90% scam fed to tourists, 10% something you might find yourself enjoying on a holiday. Fashion, similarly, is almost in lock-step everywhere around the western world; everyone wears the same stuff, and regional clothing is something again fed to tourists, and sometimes seen during festivities.
Far from it. I think you take a narrow view of what cuisine is. It's not just foods; it's preparation methods, it's how you eat them, it's where you get them, it's the cultural significance placed upon them, it's the stereotypes associated with them, it's
It's not just food cooked at home nor restaurant food; it's fast food, it's the localised version of what should be American once it hits foreign shores, it's the Americanised version of what should be foreign once it hits American shores, it's the localised version of the Americanised version of the foreign thing.
It's the snacks that you eat, it's the soda you drink, it's the choice of flavours, it's the stereotypes associated with those — the very idea that Mountain Dew goes with Doritos, the very fact that Mountain Dew is sufficiently in peoples' consciousness instead of another drink.
Examples to follow:
> Everyone eats the same stuff
I really doubt Americans know what a meat pie, in the New Zealand sense, is, the significance of them to a typical New Zealand childhood, or the knowledge that there's nothing quite as tasty as getting one from a petrol station. Even if they are acquainted with putting beef mince and chunks of cheddar cheese inside a flaky pastry, I doubt it occurs to any to consider it a handheld snack. I'm sure a French person is more likely to reach for a Croque Monsieur any day.
Brits put completely different condiments on fish and chips than New Zealanders do. We wouldn't dream of combining that dish with vinegar and mushy peas, and they wouldn't dream of putting it with tomato sauce. Neither of us, on the other hand, would dream of putting it in a basket; that's much more American, since the rest of the world is content with old newspapers for wrapping. My South African husband tells me they don't always fillet the fish over there; on the other hand, coming to New Zealand nearly twenty years ago was the first time he'd seen batter on a sausage with a stick shoved up the bottom, what we call "hot dogs" but Americans call "corn dogs".
By the way, it's "takeaways" for us, not "take out". It seems like it's only a word, but it actually carries a different connotation as to what constitutes as food suitable for going out to eat and bring home; it's never quite right unless it's a Chinese family yelling sweetly to each other in Cantonese, a combination of traditional and Americanised 'Chinese' food jumbled up on a menu that is ultimately ignored in favour of the $20 fish and chip special. If we do go to the big fast food chains, we certainly don't have biscuits with our KFC (because they don't sell those), nor does our Maccas (that's McDonald's to most of you) offer poutine like they do in Canada, chicken wings like they do in Asia, and nor will anybody outside of New Zealand ever quite know what a Georgie Pie is — something so near and dear to New Zealanders of a certain age's hearts, to dismiss it as yet another fast food item is to spit in the aforementioned poutine in front of a Quebecker.
Even American candy is different when it hits different regions. I've not seen a local offering that tastes of whatever 'Blue Raspberry' is supposed to be, but it seems to be that every candy has a blue raspberry flavour in the States. A friend of mine is sending candies that taste of cinnamon, something that would seem completely foreign outside of a speciality store here. Even then, I keep saying 'candy'; I should be using the local lingo, they're lollies.
Our Coke is much less sweet than in America, so we use it for different things, different occasions. We mix it with raspberry-flavoured fizzy drink (not 'soda') to add more sweetness; we don't typically flavour things with cherry. We know what it means to "drink the Kool-Aid" but the reference is completely imported via Jonestown; no gullible person in my country is said to "drink the Raro", just as I'm sure Kia Ora or Jungle Juice is not the exclusive domain of British suicide cults.
Don't even start me on food from the American South. My friend swears up and down to me that deep-fried pickles are a thing, and I just can't see it. I hear that tea, being sweet, is "sweet tea" there and the default form of tea; the nations of the Commonwealth do put sugar in their tea sometimes, but not to the same extent. Tea is for a cloud of milk, not for twice as much sugar as in a bottle of (American) Coke!
While we're on it, biscuits are little circular discs of goodness, so are cookies, and scones are bready things. When Americans talk about chicken and biscuits, the idea just fails to parse in practically everybody else's minds.
> Fashion, similarly, is almost in lock-step everywhere around the western world
High fashion, perhaps, but that's because it's ruled by European fashion houses anyway. In businesses, sure, because business fashion is almost a sort of uniform.
Meanwhile, the style on the street, depending on the street, can be quite different. What the typical New Zealander wears in the summer might frighten a typical American. Our summer get-ups are frequently incompatible with the American "no shirt, no shoes, no service", such that we'd never get into any establishments over there were we to bring our fashion with us on holiday.
If I fail to put shoes on in a New Zealand city, the only thing people will wonder is if my feet are cold if the temperature drops below 20°C. In Australia, make that 24°C. In any other major Western nation's cities, I'm either poor, on drugs, or a complete maniac whose flouting of social conventions around decency are so flagrant that my failure to think of the children will warrant deportation! — or so goes the stereotype, which can only exist because ideas around fashion differ so much.
There's plenty yet to explore on those two topics alone that I've not covered. These things are far from universalised. In a world where an American or British tourist can get their home comforts quite easily overseas, it might seem that way; the New Zealander who simply wants the childhood favourite of a Marmite (our stuff, not the runny British gunk) sandwich on a slice of Vogel's bread whilst travelling around, we're shit out of luck; the realisation will hit us much faster than our cuisine isn't your cuisine.
For me, this will be made all too apparent when I completely fail to find a pair of jandals to make shod my offensively bare feet — only to realise I should be asking for flip-flops.
A broader perspective on the world
>Believe me I know it's not easy.
IKR! Seeing rude comments like that outta nowhere really grinds gears. Please let me know if you have banned me :)
That premise is no more valid today with China than it was at the height of Japan-takes-over-the-world mania.
Japan via Sony accumulated a large ownership position in US music. Sony acquired Columbia Pictures in 1989 for $3.4 billion, a huge deal at the time. Nintendo and Sega took over US video gaming from Atari. What did it mean? Nothing as it turns out.
I don't think it will go the way it did with Japan.
Inflation adjusted their GDP was nearly as large in 1995 as China's is today. They did that with 1/11th the population. China will never accomplish something that dramatic economically.
Japan held a lot more influence over the US at the time precisely because we were allies. China will never be allowed to acquire large numbers of important US companies (and vice versa), because we're unlikely to ever be allies. Japan's holdings of the US national debt back then as a % were also far greater than China's position is today.
In 1991, it was Japanese billionaires dominating the global richest 50 list. Taikichiro Mori and Yoshiaki Tsutsumi were the two richest people in the world, at $15b and $14b. That's nothing like what is occurring today, American billionaires are dominant.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the Japanese corporate giants that ruled the global economy. Today it's American corporate giants by a large margin. China's giants mostly can't leave their own borders and never will. The regressive command economy straight-jacket - mixed with political doctrine-based restraints - that their companies are permanently ruled by, won't allow it.
China's leverage today is not orders of magnitude greater than Japan at its economic peak. Asia as an example was far poorer across the board in 1985-1995 than it is today, Japan towered over Asia economically in a way China never will. In 1985, South Korea's GDP per capita was 20% that of Japan; China was 2.5% that of Japan; and so on.
"China will never accomplish something that dramatic economically."
What China's accomplished in reducing extreme poverty, given their starting point under the Mao regime, is nothing short of miraculous. It has far wider reaching lessons for developing countries than Japan's post-war boom does.
"China's giants mostly can't leave their own borders and never will. The regressive command economy straight-jacket..."
When you have a billion + people, it makes sense to focus on that market first. Anyway, the US wouldn't be warning partners about Huawei if their equipment wasn't a key part of most nations' telecom infrastructure already.
Maybe rather than complaining about it, we should actually build things?
Maybe we should pay a schoolteacher more than 1/4 what an advertising optimizer makes?
We sell everything to the highest bidder, buy from the cheapest supplier, but then when it's a Chinese company investing it's suddenly a cultural crisis?
If a German company was buying part of Reddit, would it be the same cultural crisis?
Also note in the 1980's the Japanese were buying up a lot of Hollywood.
Appreciate the great conversation had in this thread, as it helped inform my thinking.
They won't care, because they probably make no money off of me.
I wish to keep HN away from the masses as much as I'd like a broader perspective in the light of how things go with typical social networks. There is no lack of funny things on the internet. Even witty jokes have no place here because slowly and surely it will erode away why HN is a gem of the internet.
Think how dumb the average joe is, then realize that 50% of the population is dumber than him.
You can still find intelligent discussion on reddit, you just have to do a lot more work filtering.
That said, still some of the best comments.
A good example is this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19140862
I don't remember seeing that kind of politics on HN in the past.
Anyway, I don't really want to include a value judgment here; I'm just observing that it changed.
All this happens while plenty of other niche subreddits go on as usual. I'm subscribed to a bunch of subreddits with great communities.
While popularity certainly has a huge role in the downfall, Reddit was already Internet-popular years ago. I think the problem now is that Reddit is being gamed pretty hard and they don't have the means to fix it. And it's not just a technological problem, it's a social one.
FTFY, to bring a little reddit to this thread.
The median Joe.
Even the median Joe in this case is relatively similar to most other Joe's because 2/3 of the population is within 1 standard deviation of intelligence.
Therefore, my use of "average" is a pragmatic usage that gets the point across better, even if it's not technically correct.
Try just visiting specific Reddit communities, rather than looking askew at the entire menagerie as if there was value there.
Same goes for YouTube: just subscribe to specific channels based on out-of-band recommendations. Or for Twitter, or Netflix, or anything else. These platforms have good things; even curated collections of good things. But you won’t find them by asking the platform to show you something good.
In short: ignore recommendation systems. They are very good at surfacing content that the average “profitable” user that the business targets, wants to see. They are horrible at surfacing the “best” (e.g. highest positive impact on your life for having consumed it) content.
Funny thing to me is that it is really hard to isolate yourself in this way on Twitter. I've spent a lot of time trying to do this but politics always seems to leak through. One thing that has helped is by turning off retweets for as many people as I can.
I've turned off all retweets for exactly the reasons discussed but twitter still shows me that so and so liked some snarky thing so and si said about So and Se, Candidate from State about current affair.
If I can prune that last bit, my twitter feed just might be saved.
I resisted setting an account up for years on Reddit, but you're absolutely right - it's the only way to effectively filter things you don't want to see.
You also don't need an account if you want to whitelist with the RES extension instead:
I'd happily give them $5 to prove I'm human but I won't feed Google.
It’s not just hard to filter things out on Twitter; it’s downright impossible.
thanks Autocorrect
I am surprised this has to be said. It's the same thing with Youtube. Unless you're signed in and have set your own preferences, you will be exposed to the dumpster fire that is mainstream internet content...high schooler humor, conspiracy garbage, superhero movie trailers, etc.
I think it’s on tic-toc where they try to feature “new stuff” a lot more than just popular things, effectively helping along newer users. I know hello talk tries to do this too.
Popular users and content don’t need help! If these places used their power to point at more hidden gems in their content the entire system would feel healthier
It used to be that everyone in a geographic region would read the same newspapers, watch the same news stations, and listen to the same radio stations. Causing people to mostly be exposed to all the same content. However, now with recommendation algorithms everyone gets exposed to a totally different news diet.
Twitter for whatever reason takes me forever to find a good set of folks / companies to follow for a given topic... and then they go berserk too and same goes with YouTube, watch something I like for a bit and then that same person starts doing reaction videos and youtube drama stuff ....
The platforms themselves tend to skew the content over time even if you're curating.
Reddit has similar issues, some city based subs I read are regularly spammed by users from other political subs with all sorts of fake news type stuff.
* The introduction of Reddit Gold, then the introduction of Reddit Silver - originally a joke, now a real thing
* The degredation of the UI - old.reddit.com won't last forever
* The push to mobile apps (see degredation of UI)
Why is this a problem? You're not forced to use it or interact with it. It's just a way for reddit to make more money, which I have no problem with.
old.reddit.com going away is a legitimate fear that I share, though.
And I'll be sad about it. Smaller subreddits are just about the last bastion of the communities I so enjoyed in the BBS/early internet era. But the new UI is, frankly, a dark-pattern shitshow. And I don't use that term lightly.
Shame too, because there are subreddits I love like /r/homelab.
Me too! I'll be super happy about it, though. Will break my reddit addiction and principal time sink once and for all. The new design is just so visually disgusting to me I get a palpably negative reaction to it. So cartoony and spaced out, so much less information, even the concise views make everything look like it was obviously designed for mobile and to be like instagram. It's gross. The whole reason I read reddit is for the good discussion and comments. Part of the reason I like HN and craigslist is they're simple and not a visual overload.
> The degredation of the UI - old.reddit.com won't last forever
I pretty sure Reddit Enhancement Suite will just continue to be developed:
https://redditenhancementsuite.com/
> The push to mobile apps (see degredation of UI)
RedReader is open source and amazingly good for mobile.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.quantumbad...
"But wait, why don't the platforms just do that themselves?!!" I'd argue the economic incentives for the platforms to recommend "brain-candy" lobotomizing content is too high to go against this trend, but a third party with a lot less to lose could actually do a better job at recommending more useful, thoughtful content.
Great idea in theory, and the people peddling these technologies are even convinced they’re changing the world for the better.
I’m not trying to antagonize you. Good intents lead to hell or something like that.
The concept is called filter bubbles and there is an old (2011) TED talk about it: https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...
As for "best content recommendations": The problem is that everyone has a different opinion on what is good content. So the money is in figuring out what you think is good content. Advertising and Social media companies are great at this: they gather as much data on you as they can to figure out what they think you like, and they show you that.
That would either cost way too much money, or cause unsustainable immigration into interesting subcultures. Probably both.
I'm always nervous that the one little corner of the internet that I still like for intelligent content is going to fall apart. It's a <1000 person subreddit, a few related slow and/or defunct blogs and a discord group.
I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member. Doubly so if a recommendation system sent me there.
"Why don't you just browse your own front page instead of r/all?" I do, but Reddit decided it would be a great idea to limit the number of subreddits they display on your frontpage unless you purchase their premium membership. As a result, even though I'm subscribed to many interesting subreddits, I only see content from the largest and most active ones on my frontpage and the rest of them are hidden from me.
I started browsing r/all instead and filtering out all of the subreddits that don't interest me as a workaround to the above problem. I used to see a lot of interesting subreddits pop up on r/all, but as the site has grown real content has become drowned out by low-effort meme subreddits that multiply like rabbits, politics, and karma-farming bots that repost incessantly. Right now on the first 10 pages of r/all 15/250 posts pass my filters. I have no doubt that over the next few years this number will continue to decrease towards 0.
I don't understand what you mean here. It sounds as though you have a black list versus the superior option of a white list (in this case)? Surely it's better to let in what you want and ignore everything else by default versus being surprised by something you don't like and having to ban it?
I wasn't even aware it was possible to have a whitelist and I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, to be honest. I'm guessing it would be easy enough to construct now that RES supports complicated custom rules, but I think at this point I'm too lazy to. It's far more convenient to be able to just hover over a post and one-click filter a subreddit from the card RES displays.
There are two reasons to do it this way. The first is that you never find smaller subreddits you might like with a whitelist. The second is that reddit will not actually give you a whitelist of subreddits. It instead picks a random 50 subreddits among your subscriptions and limits itself to those. That 50 is fixed for a period of time (I don't know how long).
???
You register an account, unsubscribe from everything, and then subscribe to what you want. That's a white list. I don't know what this 50 limit is you mentioned... never run into that. My "Home" screen contains posts from every sub I'm subbed too...
https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204579749-Some-...
I realize that giving them page views counts as 'support' when they're trying to raise money from investors. I hope that my infinitesimal effect on their monetization numbers in the opposite direction cancels it out. Who knows.
My main is a 12+ year account of reddit. I think the site is more useful than it ever has been.
I’m in a variety of subs, genres spanning many interests and have mod on several.
Sure there are accounts focused on upvotes. But not only can this be corrected, you see this on all social platforms now.
TikTok, for its youth and growth has this and that platform—though it boasts leading edge media presentation—is completely without the real and deep comment threads you find all of the time on reddit.
You find more “shitpost” content and commentators on major networks, local news and even newspapers as they attempt to keep up with what grows out of subs every day.
There is stuff discussed in subs that is incredibly serious and you won’t find talked about as openly anywhere else on the internet.
If anything the site is undervalued and growing.
But one of the most important things of being a successful comedian is to play to your audience. On HN, you cannot be crass. You cannot be dumb, but you can be pun. You should not be satirical, but you can be ironic, and you should know the difference. And you absolutely cannot be cruel or stereotype others -- these jokes aren't really funny anyway, despite what people think. Those comments deserve all the downvotes, and occasionally flags.
But a certain kind of joke is part of HN culture, especially those that make you think. Humor is the nexus of our expectations and reality being in conflict, and the best jokes can demolish our illusions.
Many people think humor is unwelcome here, but that just isn't true. You identified some types of humor that are very unwelcome here, along with some that can go over quite well.
A few of my highest-voted comments here have been off-the-cuff humorous remarks. But they weren't the kind you would find on some stupid Reddit pun thread.
If I could share one example to illustrate... A few years ago there was a news article that said homeowners in London were digging far underground to build multi-level basements. They would bring in a digger (like what we call a backhoe in the US) to dig out those basement levels. It would dig down and down, excavating each level.
And then, because it was too expensive to retrieve the digger, they would just have it dig out a little hole on the side and park itself there, never to be recovered.
(There were suggestions that the story may have been apocryphal, but that isn't relevant to this discussion.)
My comment was:
"These diggers are the very definition of a sunk cost."
If anyone doesn't see the humor there and how it might be the kind of humor that could be well received here, let me know. I try not to be my own Joke Explainer, but will be happy to clarify if needed. :-)
I think sometimes seeing what you want to see takes the form of seeing what you don't want to see.
Agreed. I downvote ferociously on HN when I see people attempt to be funny or meme on hacker news. It'll be a sad day once people try to use HN as some sort of hacker joke thread.
The things that I hate the most are screenshots of other people's tweets (who cares) and "when u" with some stupid pop culture still attached. Everywhere I turn, I see this shit-tier cyber detritus. I am unable to escape it, even with endlessly tiresome filtering, list management, content blocking extensions and the like.
A long, long, long time ago, there was an absolutely delightful community called "b3ta" where people chatted and shared images (as still happens today), but there was a wonderful _culture_ to it, where it was simply socially unacceptable to post other people's content as your own, or even your own content if it wasn't really up to snuff. That seems unthinkable these days, as shameless reposting is not only the cultural norm, but the very business model for the largest web's primary attractions. And yet when I think about the delight the internet can bring, that's what I think of. I also think it's dangerous to cling to that nostalgia for the "golden era" of the internet, recognize that for the most part the great experiment has failed and to simply abandon it, or move on to the next thing with some of these bugs ironed out.
However, I suscribe to rust, mechanical keyboards, how make programming languages...
One of the most wholesome programming communities I've participated in.
Forums also had a unique look and feel, even if they were just different color themes selected from the admin panel.
With Reddit, you have individual communities, but one account gets you access to them all. So you will get people who joined a 'foreveralone' group and can now frictionlessly post on relationship subs about how women don't want nice guys like him, they want bad boys who'll abuse them.
It used to be about r/askscience, r/atheism, a lot more textual stuff. I know the best experience is in subscribing to the right subreddits, but it's quite a shame the default front page that newbies land on has become 9gag.
HN today has deteriorated, what used to be a liberal and open minded place to explore new ideas, it has become a self promoting (especially if you are YC fam) to a large degree, and heavy policing.
With the rise of cryptocurrency I saw a lot more shill accounts manipulating comments and such.
So many of us have left HN, maybe there's something like HN out there?
Every time I see an old looking website or program its almost a refreshing feeling that it isn't going to try to suck money and data from me.
Big +1. Also design that favors metrics. Why did they include this one thing? Why did they remove the other? They're probably pushing you to use the site in a way that increases time spent on site by xx%.
But the rest of the new UI? I seriously do not get it. It't not just the look, which is a matter of taste [1]. It just does some weird things that make absolutely no sense to me.
For example, when you go to the comments for a post, it puts them in some kind of overlay window, with the post listing under it. I suppose this is great for quickly getting back to the post listing, as you just have to hit the close X up in the corner and it goes away and you are instantly back.
However, since the post list is still there while reading the comments, if you do a search within the page in the browser (well...in Firefox...I haven't tried in other browsers) it finds hits on the "hidden" post list too.
The good news is that if you open comments, and get this overlay window view, all you have to do is hit refresh. When the page refreshes it gives you a more normal comment view, without it being an overlay on the post list view. So now searching works like you'd expect.
Also, on Edge, scrolling is messed up in the overlay view. Apparently they are handling it themselves in JavaScript for some reason, and it doesn't match native browser scrolling making it feel awkward at best and hard to use at worst. So refreshing to get out of overlay mode also gets you a properly scrolling comment view.
But WHY would they have these two different ways to view comments? It makes no sense to me to have it come up one way, and then have refreshing change it to another way. (My guess is that the first way--the terrible one--is what it is supposed to be all the time, and the refresh thing is a bug).
[1] That doesn't mean I like it...the colors, fonts, styles, etc., of the post list make it hard for me to read efficiently. At first I thought maybe I was just used to the old style, and so to give it a chance I've stuck with the new UI for months and nope, not getting any better.
The project is in very early stage, but it's usable and lind of cute.
For a mobile friendly UI I prefer the open source app RedReader (which has a nice dual column view for wider screens). Otherwise for casual link clicking I'll just use old.reddit.com, it's snappier to load as well in my experience.
Considering the valuation, remaining as an unpaid moderator for a reddit sub, is absolutely crazy. Hopefully all the mods up and leave, nothing like letting others get rich from your free efforts.
Between the crushing "download our tracking riddled app" / "switch to our shitty new redesign" push recently and massive amount of engineered sponsored content, instead of paid-for advertisement, there's nothing there keeping me interested. This most recent funding round is just icing on the cake.
It's only a matter of time before they go down the twitter path and outright ban third party apps.
It's lamentable considering how simple the site is but there exist currently, no good alternatives! I suppose we can attribute that at least partly to the Network Effect. I've been tired of it since the front-end redesign; I grew weary of the dark patterns, the constant nagging to use their app when on mobile, the fact that my back button took me to the top of the page and (most of all, in fact) the overall quality of the threads, so my usage has decreased dramatically over the last 3 months. I suspect I we are no longer longer Reddit's target audience and they will do very well going forward but it's a shame for me at least, that something I've been using for over a decade is fading into background noise.
A few months later, I decided to start a non-profit with the goal of building a site that would actually be able to stick to its principles and address a lot of the issues that I think are hurting online communities: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of the announcement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093)
It's in private alpha and is still fairly small, but it focuses on higher-quality non-fluff content and discussions, and gets several hundred posts/comments a day. If you (or anyone else) is interested in an invite, please read the blog post I linked above and send me an email at the address listed in there and I'll be happy to give you one.
I'll remove that line, it was just me sighing and didn't add anything of value.
I have been using tildes for about 6 months so far. I love the technical side of the website. Its fast and its minimal and doesn't seem to be sucking up my data. I also love the interactions I have had while using it.
What its missing is the specialty stuff. On reddit I can find a whole community focused on one programming language. On tildes I'm lucky to see a programming post.
But this leaves me with an interesting problem, how can you have a website that has enough users to make up a group for specialty interests without it becoming big enough that it turns in to reddit. It almost seems like the only way is to have totally separate sites for every interest.
It's worth remembering that reddit didn't even have user-created subreddits until it was over two and a half years old, and only had a handful of admin-created ones before that. It takes quite a bit of growth and time to be able to support specialized communities.
That said, I do go to Reddit first when I'm looking to answer questions like HDD recommendations or things to do in my city. That's because searching Google for it will give me nothing but awful content mill blog posts stuffed with affiliate links and SEO-optimized keywords ("Best USD Hard Drives in 2019"). On Reddit you actually get the feeling that the question is trying to be answered by actual people.
I don't care how it's designed. It can be used as a tool.
I cannot help but think if it's the Reddit's censorship is in play here.
At a certain point, it's our fault for having a decadent and exploitable society.
Why has Reddit needed to raise hundreds of millions long after being established?
For sustained outrage, it needs to be something that cuts to core of everything Reddit treasures. Take away their ability to harass and ridicule overweight people online and you will have a war on your hands.
Reddit used censorship, its super effective! +++++$300,000,000
But for real, the idea of Reddit seems perfect to me its just way to popular now. Maybe a platform where you need to pass some sort of quiz created by the mods of the different communities in order to post/comment? I could see this having lots of issues though.
Also I don't really mind reddit going to shit ever since I found HN a few years ago.
FB groups have had this ability for a while. I'm in one (a meme page for a semi-popular TV show) and to keep the quality of conversation high, new members have to answer 3 questions about stuff from the show correctly to join.
If someone creates a new idea and it takes off they either get huge offers from existing companies to buy it or those companies use their huge resources to build a bigger and better version.
In the age of the start of facebook and reddit there were no mega corps taking interest or possessing the talent in these areas.
Why do we need centralized forums anyways?
Unfortunately, all of that was a lot better 10 years ago.
That rarely happens in practice. Knowledgeable people's comments have to be made at the right time in a post's popularity window (< 24h) for it to have been upvoted early enough for other users to see. If you come across a thread that's even a couple of days old, on a popular sub, you won't bother commenting because you know no one will see it. Unlike a message board, new replies to an existing topic do not take it to the top of the thread list page.
It is usually the opposite situation that is true. A certain post hits the Reddit front page (usually a meme or political post), and all of a sudden the community is overwhelmed with new subscribers, who are either trolling/brigading because they don't like the content, or simply bringing down the quality of the conversation by posting more memes etc., because that's what they think the sub is about.
Those whose criteria include "their commitment to free speech" usually have an ax to grind about something, which would explains if they've been banned from other places before.
Not really in Metafilter's case. It's norms changed under the feet of a significant fraction of its long time community members. I also wasn't talking so much about norms than a rather narrow range of orthodox opinion.
To put it in HN terms: think of it as a forum where it's orthodox to love Ayn Rand, think in Objectivist terms, and a transgression to voice anything but the most indirect critical perspective of her or her ideas. You might not realize it because there are tons of great threads about other things, but God help you if you venture the opinion that the government should increase mandatory taxes to fund assistance programs for the poor.
If anything, the quality of them has gone up since most of the "I just want lulz" people went to reddit. The software is better than ever too, with Discourse and XenForo adding modern web features.
There's also a few "new reddits" like Tildes which are quite good.
No single one of the above replaces reddit as a whole, but combined I find it much more enjoyable than reddit these days.
A lot of businesses in EU and Asia are owned or invested by US companies in many different industries. Why are people so offensive when it is other way around?
I’ve worked with Chinese! Let’s not blame all Chinese because of what their government is doing.
That person seems to moderate a lot of communities too!
Hollywood writers and producers still know how to marginalize these new Chinese characters and unfortunately, it seems the Chinese audience is still naive to it.
At least the villains had agency. These new Chinese sidekicks only purpose is to serve the “American” hero.
Interesting since the first Japanese male actor was a sensation amongst white women of the early 1900s silent film era, and thus Asian Americans were erased from mainstream films.
The more I study American history, the Japanese interment camps, the racist treatment of Asian Americans, the genocide against 50+ million Native Americans, Opium war, Boxer rebellion, vietnam war, hiroshima, the more I'm convinced that Nazi's escaped and helped build the Reich that they could've had in a far away new land.
Where r/conspiracy and r/redpill meet... Presumably you're talking about Sessue Hayakawa, and the same nonsense appears on his Wikipedia page, supported by citations that don't actually support the assertions.
> The more I study American history, the Japanese interment camps, the racist treatment of Asian Americans, the genocide against 50+ million Native Americans, Opium war, Boxer rebellion, vietnam war, hiroshima
I would recommend studying some Chinese or Japanese history too if you think American historical behaviour is in any way particularly notable, other than an unusual willingness for Americans to want to atone to it, compared to most other countries.
> I'm convinced that Nazi's escaped and helped build the Reich that they could've had
You appear to believe the Nazis were time-travelers, or simply have a particularly weak understanding of the chronology of the items you've listed.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Time to watch some Chinese Sci-Fi instead, with Chinese hero and Russian sidekick
Allowing such an oppressive government to control so much of our cultural mindspace is quite chilling.
[1] https://www.les-crises.fr/la-fabrique-du-cretin-defaite-nazi...
There is no way China would allow Reddit to operation in China, and there is no way China would allow a western company to own a significant percentage of "the front page of China".
EU values the privacy of its people, the online interactions are certainly not tracked like in China.