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Comment by bellyfullofbac | Hacker News Reader

Are you Gen-Z? One of my observations is that people born in since the late 90's have known social media and metrics like Likes and Hearts since their teens. I wonder how damaged many of them are.

It's not to say that me, someone just born after the Gen-X era's declared end, isn't? also addicted to these numbers.

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You're reading way too much into what I wrote. I'm certainly not addicted to numbers or social media. I don't participate in the latter really (yet here I am!) and I generally don't care what people think. I don't have any projects or stars on github and I'm not seeking them.

I was just expressing an alternative to view that seem to dismiss nerdy people who derive pleasure and satisfaction from github and a fairly smug sounding "be normal."

I'm early Gex X FWIW.

Being exposed to these things from an early age means they form a part of your early philosophy. Notably, they're around and salient during the “cynical about everything” phase that lots of teenagers go through. It might not have as big of an impact as all that.

Wow. That's a mind blown for me. I've never thought of that, but you're right. When my kids watch a YouTube video, the first thing they talk about is how many views, subscribers.

You might ask them why, because views and subscribers are interesting metrics.

I always pay attention to them because they reflect how the general public respond to different things. So they might be thinking "wow this is so stupid but it's got so many views!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDH_o8RqR0Y&t=1015s

This guy is in the middle of Nowhere, Siberia and even the kids there care about his number of subscribers...

haha yeah that's nuts. It's funny because my kids don't watch tv or movies, and so they wouldn't know a single Hollywood celebrity, but thinking now, I guess their way of judging if someone is a YouTube "celebrity" is by subscribers alone.

... thinking now, why should Hollywood > YouTube given that the content they consume is more localised. Maybe it's me who's wrong!

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