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Comment by analognoise | Hacker News Reader

If the internet has taught me anything, it will be full of Swastikas and penises the moment you get above a certain critical mass of users.

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It is not an anonymous website, it is a physical space. The same rules about vandalism that apply in, say, a library, would apply there.

Bret already answered similar concerns:

https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/959852576274444288

https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/1036409565389185024

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

I think GP was referring to petty vandalism rather than hyperbolic debate, i.e. the tendency of unwatched drying concrete to attract drawings of cartoon penises and bendy swastikas.

There really should be a name for the phenomenon if there isn't already.

I should have been clearer.

> There really should be a name for the phenomenon

I’d say it’s a sort of affordance[0], but I’m sure Don Norman[1] suggested material properties can be described as the “psychology of materials” in his book[2]. He describes how British Rail kept building tougher and tougher glass that was still always being broken, but when it was replaced with plywood the vandalism stopped, even though the wood would be easy to break. Certain materials (and designs) beg to be used (and abused) in certain ways.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Thing...

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