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Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

> Unless you've been hiding under a rock the last week or so

What’s the purpose of starting a blog post like that? The phrase is a cliché, and not a polite one. Whatever follows that introduction is either something the reader already knows and has fresh in memory (thus useless to mention) or you’re calling them oblivious.

A sentence that’s irrelevant or mocking the reader seems like a poor way to start an essay.

Most of us would do well to “hide under a rock” for a while. News and the way they are presented to us are stressful and largely irrelevant. Chances are you could live the rest of your life without knowing Twitter was hacked.

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Humans communicate using an imprecise language. Some parts of our language are designed to convey belonging and familiarity - rather than facts.

Why do fairy tales start with "once upon a time"? It helps the reader feel familiar with the text they're about to encounter. Why do formal speeches start with "Ladies and Gentlemen"? The audience knows the expectation of formality which that structure provides.

In this case, the author is using a cliché for a couple of purposes. This first is to let the reader know that this is an informal piece of work and shouldn't be treated as a rigorous scholarly article.

The second is, hopefully, to make the reader feel "in the know". Anyone from the target audience reading that might think "I haven't been hiding under a rock! Unlike other people who read this. I am smart!"

Not every piece of writing has to be original. Clichés exist to help guide people through unfamiliar territory and to provide them reassurance.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Your first examples are timeless and neutral. They don’t convey when they were written and make no assumptions of the reader.

The author’s intro will be relevant for a few months at best and has a negative connotation. I doubt anyone will feel empowered or happy by the author’s phrasing.

I agree clichés have a purpose. I’m commenting on this one because I feel it has no redeeming qualities.

No in this case you are negative.

It could read as funny. No way I've been hiding under a rock silly my 4 year old might say.

Informative: I have been at the cottage this week what happened?

Creates a narrative/introduction: I've been following this story what's new?

There are people who will turn it into.. I've only been following this a bit. I suck, I could do better. Why did I waste my time on some other story? I need to do better in life.

How you perceive that old boring saying tells us about you.

I agree it could be read in different ways, though that could be said of anything. Even your mood or current context can influence how you perceive what you read.

I don’t think being old and boring is a reason to not reevaluate our words; I find doing so can be interesting.

The entirety of the article is relevant for a few months at best.

As for the negative connotation, it's certainly there, but it sure seems to me that it's meant to be taken facetiously, presumably made under the assumption that it's relatively unlikely to offend anyone. I would guess that a Venn diagram of people who read this blog (or follow news sites that would link an article on this blog), and people who hadn't heard of the Twitter hack, probably looks a lot like an illustration of Mars and the Sun, drawn to scale.

There's always Scalzi's Law waiting in the wings when someone tries to be humorous on the Internet, but, considering that this particular formula doesn't have any clearly discernible minority group as its victim, or anything like that, I'm inclined to say it's safe to stick to HN's 3rd guideline on commenting here.

> As for the negative connotation, it's certainly there, but it sure seems to me that it's meant to be taken facetiously

I agree. I don’t think the author (or most people who use the sentence) wrote that to be intentionally disparaging. But I also think it’s healthy to reevaluate the idioms we use on auto-pilot.

My commentary is on the phrase, not the author.

The parent showed two good examples why it isn't completely negative: informality signaling and tribal/relevance awareness signaling. The fact that some people aren't part of the tribe doesn't mean that it serves no purpose.

Not all writing has to appeal to or be directed towards everyone.

Too much sugar is bad for you.

“Of course too much is bad for you. Too much of anything is bad for you. (…) That’s what “too much” means. (…) “Too much” is precisely that quantity which is excessive. That’s what it means.”

From https://youtu.be/XewVicFzRxw?t=2m44s

I suppose that if you start with an obvious fact without any disclaimer of that then it gives the impression that everything else will be obvious too, and so the article isn't worth reading. They could perhaps have phrased it a bit differently e.g. "you're no doubt aware that ...". Personally, I wasn't offended.

It reminds of something a little different but on a similar theme: the advice to never say "clearly, ..." in lectures, because it serves no purpose except to intimidate people that don't already know what follows. Actually, it does serve a purpose: so that people who do find it trivially obvious aren't thrown off wondering if there's something deeper there than they had realised.

This. Those phrases are useful for distinguishing between “I’m giving new information” vs “I’m starting from what I expect to be common knowledge”.

And yes, it’s possible to abuse such phrases but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their place.

The comment wasn’t on those types of phrases, but on that phrase in particular. There are better (more positive, don’t lose significance) ways to convey that information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23897649

Honestly, your comments so far were the most negative thing I saw in all this.

The intro provides no information now, and the the more time passes the more irrelevant it will be. A variant of “it’s all over the news that Twitter got hacked” would do the same job without commenting on the reader.

The author didn’t even need to rephrase the sentence. Cutting everything up to the first comma would be an instant improvement with zero effort, conveying the same information just as clearly and in less words:

> You probably know that Twitter got “hacked”.

> What’s the purpose of starting a blog post like that?

The author is excusing themselves for beginning the post by adding some context - that is likely already well-known to readership. They are saying "yes, I know you already know this, but please excuse me while I pop in some context in case there's a reader who is unfamiliar with it".

Hope this helps.

Speaking of hiding under a rock, this is the first I'm hearing of Mastodon. Is it really an issue if Mastodon gets hacked? Do any notable people like Bill Gates or Obama use it, or would it be like how people were impersonating politicians on Parler [1]?

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/02/republicans-parler-...

Wil Wheaton was on it for a while and gained a significant following (relatively speaking) but then he got cancelled: https://mastodon.cloud/@wilw/100635779449174251

In theory, people of note would have their own instances which are run and provided by their employers.

This feels a little over sensitive. As you say yourself it’s just a turn of phrase!

> News and the way they are presented to us are stressful and largely irrelevant.

This perspective comes from privilege. Nothing wrong with that but I could just as easily complain that assuming everyone has the luxury of ignoring the news is insulting in the way you think the original post was.

> This feels a little over sensitive. As you say yourself it’s just a turn of phrase!

That’s a limitation of text. Were we conversing in person, I doubt you’d have felt that. I don’t feel personally attacked by the sentence, I just don’t think it’s a good one.

> I could just as easily complain that assuming everyone has the luxury of ignoring the news

I did mention “for a while”.

To clarify, there are relevant news we should and want to know. My concern is about the barrage we are fed, not in the name of keeping us informed, but to keep us glued for more.

> What’s the purpose of starting a blog post like that? The phrase is a cliché, and not a polite one.

Different writers have different esthetics, Some have developed a more refined taste and a more exact language; while others have a less cultivated taste and are more given to cliches, mixed metaphors, tired jokes, and so on. It's a matter of style.

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