Hacker News Reader

Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

What are "things like this"?

Is it things that exist in public but which don't have clear attribution? B/c in 2020 there were the "monoliths", which were pretty cool. Or, you know, Banksy still exists. Or @fog_karla / @karlthefog for that matter.

Is it playful, non-scalable experiences? There's Improv Everywhere. My city has a number of curb-side bird-house sized "libraries". There's a guy who keeps doing extremely long walks in the UK in his speedo for charity but presumably also to make people smile.

There are more than 7.5B people on the planet and plenty of them are doing weird fun creative things. Just maybe fewer of them revolving around 80s soft drinks.

View on HN

What's being lost is the mystery of it all. Instead of happening across this fascinating monolith while out hiking, and it's an interesting story to tell friends in person when they ask about your trip, they were blasted all over Twitter and the rest of the Internet in hours. It reduces conversations to "did you see that thing on Reddit?" "yeah" "k". It's like having a cartography degree in 2021 vs 1491 (no offense to cartography majors). It's the ennui of "there's nothing left to explore, it's all been found already".

It's fair to point out that there's more weird creative energy out there than ever before (Meow Wolf). There's the enraptured wonder of the possibility of exploring an entirely new world (Mars) in our lifetime. There are things gained in today's always-on, connected culture. But don't pretend nothing was lost.

Say you set up this vending machine today. More and more people quickly find out about it. Eventually a few people are waiting for it to be restocked so they can quickly buy all the rare cans and sell them on eBay, so it's empty most of the time. Maybe the owner gets discovered. The fun is gone and it gets removed.

This is subject to survivorship bias, though. These days it's certainly easier for things to go viral, but things can only go viral if they get found in the first place and, crucially, if those who found it choose to share it. Maybe the clout economy of instagram etc. increases the odds that people will expose such things for likes, but I personally know of at least one fantastic, incredible (, almost certainly illegal) thing in the woods in my hometown of Pittsburgh that I'll never tell anybody for fear of it becoming popular. Look for it yourself. :P

Yeah, good point. Of course most of the big things you know about got ruined, because the ones that didn't get too popular, you don't know about.

Banksy is a marketing man. He pretends to be anti-establishment but his organisation defends his IP as fiercely as Disney defends its. He is all about the money.

I agree that that the world is full of weird, creative people, but you won't find them at Sotheby's.

I don't think defending your IP makes you a sell-out. It's basically his alter ego, why would he let his identity be co-opted by strangers?

Right. It helps him make money. It helps him maintain attention. It lets him do his art. What does he gain from letting dozens of Banksy-like copies proliferate? He probably loses his ability to do his art his way.

Depends what you mean by anti-establishment.

Even most hardcore anarchists believe in some form of cooperation. Just because you criticize parts of an establishment doesn't make you anti all kinds of establishment.

You can both be anti establishment and supportive of some parts of it.

I do think the stunt of the artwork that destroyed itself during the auction was cool in that it seems to have surprised everyone, and anyone in the room who _didn't_ buy it also got a surprise performance art experience.

I think dril is an interesting case in this - the creator has been outed, but many just don't care and refuse to read and find out who it is. The mystery is the appeal.

I don't want to know who dril is.

> My city has a number of curb-side bird-house sized "libraries".

Possibly these: https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/

There's quite a few in San Francisco, I always enjoy running across a new one. Often the owners do some fun themed decoration for them as well. Can't say I've ever actually read anything from one, but I have dropped off some books before.

For anyone else who hadn't seen these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_similar_to_the_2...

Somehow I'm not surprised that in addition to local artists copying the one in Utah several companies also put them up as advertising.

The amount of effort put into this rebuttal is why I try hard to avoid reading the comments here.

80s soft drinks is cool but when you realize what a plague upon humanity that sugar beverages are, it kind of detracts from the playfulness tbh. I stopped drinking soda years ago and haven't looked back. It is one of the largest causes of metabolic disease globally. And it's sad that people associate having a sugary beverage as a 'good time with friends.' Lets enjoy poison together?! :-/

I predict this won't go over well with the HN crowd who'll probably downvote me, and loves to snack on junk while coding, but there are better ways to get energy effortlessly without chewing or being protein heavy, like complex carbohydrates and MCT oils.

>And it's sad that people associate having a sugary beverage as a 'good time with friends.' Lets enjoy poison together?! :-/

Oh boy, just wait until you learn about alcohol.

I might be able to compartmentalize slightly better than GP, but as much as that machine is charming as hell and brings warmth to my heart, soda has more or less been a plague on humanity.

Unlike soda, alcohol has a lot going for it, because unless you abuse it, it can be a pretty wonderful, unique inebriant.

Soda can make you fat and brown your teeth. It doesn't create addicts who destroy their lives over it. Soda doesn't kill people via Drunk Driving. Soda doesn't contribute to violent crimes and domestic violence.

That's right!

"Might as well go for a soda; nobody hurts, nobody cries."

- Kim Mitchell

It’s not fair to write off the harm caused by soda as just causing brown teeth and fatness and to then to juxtapose it with domestic violence and drunk driving. That’s a basic strawman, which I sought to exclude by carving out “alcohol abuse” in my OP. Because alcoholism is terrible, especially when it affects a close loved one, and was not the subject of my comment. Fortunately, the vast majority of people who consume alcohol are not alcoholics. But many people, if not most people in 2021 United States and other parts of the world are obese. Of course obesity is not alcohol-fueled domestic violence, but that’s obvious.

The majority of people who consume alcohol are not alcoholics however the majority of people who consume soda ARE unhealthy. Quite the disparity yet the above posters are trying to use the parallel as a strawman.

Alcohol contributes to obesity as well though. Alcohol, like soda, is unhealthy to drink and it causes the more serious problems I alluded to previously.

Indeed but not in children. You're comparison is a red herring. Two things can be bad in different ways.

Alcohol is very unhealthy for children as well. So toxic, in fact, it's illegal to sell alcohol to children or for them to consume it.

Alcohol and soda are both drinks that cause health problems. There is nothing wrong with the observation that alcohol is considerably worse than soda.

There are laws prohibiting kids from getting access to or drinking alcohol. No such laws exist for soda. Soda has a huge negative impact on young children, whereas alcohol doesn't. I'm discontinuing this conversation as you clearly have maligned intentions as evident by your uncharitable interpretations of my points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

I mean, I didn't come here to fight about soda, but metabolic disease is a real problem, and people do seriously consider whether the way our brains respond to sugar constitutes addiction.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/

Sugar doesn't contribute to violent crimes, but a coca cola bottling company in Colombia may have killed labor organizers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co.

Talking about compartmentalization, the earnestness of you anti-fizzy-dinkers struck me as a little silly, and then I realized that outside of childhood I avoided carbonated beverages and sort of hold a mental prohibition on them for some of the reason you allude to. I do enjoy the rare root beer or ginger-ale, though.

Now, where did I put my cigarettes?

I agree with you. A good beer like Guinness is full of micronutrients and if you only have a few, it's not a bad tradeoff for the stress relief. Soda on the other hand, because it's not associated with drugs, is overdrank and made into a habit.

Why is it that alcohol be a wonderful unique inebriate but soda can't be? It used to be my preferred source of caffeine. If you don't abuse soda, it has a lot going for it too. It's basically liquid candy that also makes you more alert and attentive.

If there's a problem with sugar filled soda it's how it has been aggressively advertised in ways which normalized it as something to drink regularly and included filling schools and restaurants with the stuff crowding out or even forbidding other options.

> Why is it that alcohol be a wonderful unique inebriate but soda can't be?

It definitely can be. I meant to say that for me, caffeine isn't in the same league of inebriants as alcohol. It's definitely a lot less subtle for me. I'm sure that varies from person to person though, so maybe it can be? I don't know.

> that also makes you more alert and attentive.

This must also be a subjective experience-based thing. I've never felt more alert or attentive from soda, but of course that's just me. And I may have ADHD, which may be a factor.

> If you don't abuse soda, it has a lot going for it too. ... If there's a problem with sugar filled soda it's how it has been aggressively advertised ...

Yeah, I agree with this. I think if there is a problem, that's the problem. Also the serving sizes, which used to be much smaller when soda first came about. And the degree to which people lead sedentary lifestyles, and a bunch of other factors.

For what it's worth, I'm not promoting alcohol here, either. I'm not a big fan because it's hard to get it right (but when I do, it's great) so in the last ten years I pretty much only consume alcohol like 5-10 times a year, max. It just goes wrong too easily for me.

Alcohol isn't as big of an insidious detriment. It is bad, sure, but we are aware of that. The biggest difference is the mutual understanding that society has about the negative effects of alcohol. It's understood to be a drug. Soda on the other hand doesn't have that cultural awareness.

I'm _hoping_ that in 2018 before the machine went missing, that if one bought a mystery beverage from the 80s, it wasn't to drink? Cuz that seems questionable for reasons other than sugar.

However, paying a dollar to get an intact artifact which is a throwback from the past, and reminiscing about what you remember from that time, or discovering a thing you never knew about seems like a lovely experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com