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Comment by awaythrower | Hacker News Reader

Let's be honest: owls are birb ninja assassins.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? Also, could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

How about no, control freak.

While I agree with you that some folk may become obsessed with controlling people (inefficiently) as a method to inflate their own ego (freak) - I err on the side of "dang" in this scenario where you have rejected the request (not just because she/he is our common moderator on this platform). Your comment prompted me to address some communication abnormalities that I have been noticing across the past few election cycles, which is why I still find your past few permanent text inputs valuable (representative of the common worker).

Over the years, I have expected this forum (HN) to be reserved for people who will digest internet content and output thoughtful responses - "dang" is my warden.

Reddit migration is understandable (you are seeking more substance). The simple act of including more word variation in your responses is enough to avoid the text-shade-lightening that is being naturally inflicted upon your simple-minded input.

However - the quantity of words in a comment issued is not necessarily proportional to the value provided.

Let's always be honest (a scientist cannot lie out of principle because experiments produce evidence that if not properly observed will destroy any chance of replication and thus the ultimate eventual adoption of new useful technology into society). I've heard some workers in this region (aged 20-30) preface their verbal dialogue with phrases like "seriously, honestly, I'm not gonna lie, for real though, literally".

I know that these are akin to "loading time" phrases that people habitually use to interject into a talkative group or to introduce their vocal tone before the meat content is transmitted to multiple listeners. But it is the nature of the phrases that suggest the existence of lies or an exaggerated reality that fascinates me (you had me thinking of honesty or lying before you had me thinking about the nature's ninja assassin metaphor).

I do not see it as a bad thing - this is only our natural response (clues are in these "harmless" phrases inserted into everyday conversation) to a few decades of concerned tax paying citizens being fed questionable or far-fetched content from their media outlets as a method of attempted economic subjugation?

Most recently, I’ve heard sentences starting with the phrase “No meme, <some statement>”. I personally find it frustrating because it makes it more difficult for me to communicate if the veracity of any thing I say is assumed to be false by default because I am too used to communicating the truth by default. It is something I can adapt to, but I cannot help but feel sad that we have lost trust in each other to such a damning degree that the immediate reaction to any statement unadorned in this way goes beyond healthy skepticism to outright default assumption of falsehood, which I find to be both hostile and insulting.

I have not yet heard "No meme". Interesting. I saw the word "meme" in Richard Dawkin's book before I was noticing it on the internet, something about how flocks of chickens and their pecking order have memes of behavior that are remembered and retransmitted if useful - so the idea has existed before the internet gave it to us (theme or target subject is the picture, text overlay is the pitched opinion) - such an image is worth a thousand words so its a fast (shortcut without research) Information Age method of "voting" for or against a pitched idea?

"No meme" could suggest "Don't try to shortcut and assume things about <some statement>" because we have realized that memes are a lazy way to transmit ideas without research? Disinformation seems to be the consequence of exponentially increasing bandwidth for all....

I encountered the “No meme” that I mentioned on Twitch (twitch.tv). Over there, “No meme” is similar to “No joke” and “memeing” is similar to “joking” except that there is an overarching theme/meme that is being referred to as part of the joke in question. Sorry, I should I have been more clear.

No need to apologize, because this is a matter of intellectual discourse. Being "clear" (also a Scientology concept) implies that you wanted me to "see it your way" instead of inspiring my new thought vector (which you have - my past 72 hours have been positively altered because of your input on this surrogate-preface-phrasing matter).

But now that you have clarified your intended description of your twitch.tv banter encounter - it makes sense. "No meme" is a synonym for "no joke". Joking exists as an informal method of addressing (challenging?) a certain idea, and laughter reporting (lol, rofl, lmao, etc) confirms reception. Twitch seems to be a social arena for leisure, where workers exchange ideas and bond after-hours over a shared virtual experience with allotted "free" time (virtual/comfortable, therefore abundance of "joking" because nothing is at stake). But when a user desires to "get down to business" and submit concepts to the local chat space because her/his mind has been prompted to consider more pressing issues, then the surrogate-preface-phrase "no meme" can be applied in order to summon the "real world" empathy of connected compatriots also confined to the same virtual space.

It's a way to prime others in the convo to start focusing in you. Then once focused, you deliver the meat. It's a very, very old technique. The reason we write those conversational techniques down is our increased literacy (we use written words more and more) and the acceptance of writing informally basically everywhere.

This makes sense - talking with fingers and leaving records of our dialogue to be eventually read at the leisure of recipient(s) is does not require the instantaneous turn-taking auditory announcement devices we are referencing.

I wonder if people will gradually become less quick and witty over time with this increasingly standard mode of communication.

But there are benefits to be reaped from our ebb & flow of commenting and pondering throughout our day.

You see this with political parties (we have a multi party system here). I don't know if it's rehearsed, maybe they had an event with some communication consultant. Or maybe they just pick it up naturally from each other since they spend a lot of time together. But suddenly they all are starting every other comment with some awkward pre-phrase, for example "it is a known fact that..."

I suspect modern politicians are far-removed from their predecessors, in that these historical figure heads performed other roles in society and as a result of their effectiveness they were elected [by the citizens they had already benefited] to wield political power (determine the direction for tax-derived resources to be deployed [1] [2])

Now, the modern "career politician" may be one who can say many words and appear reasonable and educated [3] despite having only spent his/her life in classrooms and "seats" of progressing political levels.

I'm assuming that for the past few decades, POTUS has been just a ceremonial role for mass media consumption. If you need a metaphor (American football), the POTUS is a lineman, the vice POTUS is the quarterback, (Queen Amidala and Handmaiden Padme) the coach/offensive&defensive coordinator/ team owner are people you will never see on a screen (sidelines).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoninus_Pius

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus

[3] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-green-eggs-and-ham_n...

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