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Comment by quadrangle | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I'm more interested in the way people aren't willing to laugh about it.

I mean, yeah, I don't want the dot there. It breaks the fourth-wall in a way. But there's something to that too. Society of the Spectacle and so on…

It's FUNNY to notice how a little orange dot is taken as such a profound threat. People could do well to reflect on the whole context a bit. Our dependency on tech and the way we depend on a few companies who force things on us, it's all serious, scary, and absurd. And this orange dot business is not the ultimate example of the problem, it's a silly one, that yes, I acknowledge is a huge problem for some people's jobs in practice.

I've been around show production stuff, and I don't respect the way everyone takes themselves so damned seriously in that world. The dadaists were onto something.

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They take things so seriously because a lot of money, and the livelihoods, reputations and careers of a lot of people, depend on many, many apparently tiny details. Particularly in live performances every show you get one chance to get that show right. One. And then you have to do it again, and again. But getting it right for the next audience doesn’t make it ok that you got it wrong for the last audience.

Yeah, I get it. People can be really mad when systems they rely on get messed up. It makes PERFECT sense that people are really reactive about this awful design decision and are saying hyperbolic stuff. The part that doesn't make sense is the refusal to acknowledge that it's hyperbole. Although, to be fair, when people are triggered and reactive, we're rarely in the mood to acknowledge such nuance.

In any production things go wrong in a million tiny details.

Anything that doesn't have a workaround gets thrown away. And nope, it's bot a hyperbole. I've seen lamps discarded because they couldn't be made work just right, and stage props removed entirely because they looked out of place for that particular stage.

"Something is shitty, let's laugh about it and continue regardless" is what often separates people who don't care from people who do. Unfortunately, seeing all the shit we have to put up with daily, those people that do are in the minority.

"Something is shitty, let's laugh about it" does NOT inevitably require "continue regardless"

The idea that you have to connect laughing with not fixing things is evidence of being in a triggered, reactive, threatened state.

Did I ever suggest that the problem shouldn't be fixed?

People who can laugh about something are people who aren't in a state of threat. And yes, those who don't care are less likely to be threatened. But we can also find ourselves in situations where we are willing to laugh and not be so defensive and self-righteous while we still care about things.

In our outrage-driven society, that's the real minority: people who CARE and are also willing to laugh and not be in a victim mentality. And to be clear, this isn't some fundamental feature like we simply are one way or the other. These are states we can shift between, and most people are shifting all the time.

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