Hacker News Reader

Comment by semiotagonal | Hacker News Reader

On Reddit, several weeks ago, I strongly objected to an author singling out a presidential candidate with a nickname, while not doing the same for the others.

It's fair to say I was outraged since I threw an "F" word in there. Although I didn't do it to seek status, it got something like 2000 upvotes.

Anecdotally, I can see that grandstanding works, if "karma" is what you care about.

View on HN

People like to pretend that karma/upvotes/likes aren't "real" but they absolutely are real, if everyone even slightly considers them a symbol of status online.

Real life is hard to deal with. However, if you look at what other people do, then you can learn from their mistakes. But there's still too many scenarios that occur and too few people to watch. So you can listen to the stories that your peer group tells. You're second hand watching the people your extended peer group is watching. And bonus points, you can get tribal knowledge where people remember what others have said long after they're gone.

This makes being a person who people listen to an important aspect of being part of a society. If you're listened to, then you and your "social lineage" get to survive to the next generation of how to live. This also means that you don't have to relearn the lessons of a competing "social lineage" in order to stay compatible with your peers.

Getting likes is an easy feedback mechanism to know if people are listening to your ideas. Additionally, some people will listen to people who others listen to. So getting likes can directly feed into your own social fitness.

Likes are much more real that most other things that people deal with in their day to day lives.

Not to mention making your account more valuable to sell to marketers. Its a booming, and old-as-reddit business.

Thomas theorem: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com