Hacker News Reader

Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Riffing on your comment, but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society). Like people leaving scooters haphazardly lying around or you pushing over delivery robots instead of pushing them out of the way. People feel more and more justified to engage in antisocial behavior. And it feeds on itself. You see this as being anti-social behavior by the robot companies, therefore justify engaging in more antisocial behavior.

I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.

View on HN

With these scooters, bicycles, mopeds for rent; and delivery robots it's also a form of not very nice but justifiable resistance in lieu of better ways.

Remember the sudden onslaught of Chinese app-rentable bicycles in cities around the world a few years back? Near useless pieces of unrepairable plastic, steel, and rubber clogging up the pavement (sidewalk) because technically this was not illegal. Several companies competing in a race to become the biggest one in any given city. In many cases it ended after new legislation and citizens demanding action; often spurred on by activists using the same fuck-you tactics these companies used to put them everywhere, but in reverse (often by means of gently chucking them in a canal).

Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too. Responding tit-for-tat is not classy, but some people feel they have little recourse, especially if municipalities are (at first) taken in by the greenwashing ideals of some of these companies.

> Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too.

Tell that to the rideshare companies whose drivers crowd the streets of cities, circulating while they stare at their phones waiting for a passenger (and leaving bottles of human waste everywhere).

Not too sure how pushing scooters out of the way to remove barriers for people who cannot go around them is "antisocial." Especially when those people are neighbors and are in need.

The companies and their users -- the companies don't have structures to prevent their users from leaving their property in right of way, their users leave the companies' property in the spaces preventing those in need of using the space -- are the ones partaking in antisocial behavior.

> but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society)

It makes sense that people who feel that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society would feel rather bitter about that.

To restore faith societies could take steps to compensate those worst hit by pandemic measures (i.e young people), so far that hasn’t happened.

Oh, it’s that and also anger at folks who don’t take prosocial steps like wearing a mask, justifying being antisocial to “those” kind of people…

…and the blame cycle goes round and round. Break the cycle! Be nice to people who don’t deserve it!

Your claim is that it is all right wing people becoming anti-social in unrelated areas?

You think only right wing people didn’t like being forcibly locked down?

I think that this was heavily partisan issue. So, yes, the "unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society" would have severe right wing bias. Just like anti masking and anti vaccine attitudes are currently heavily biased by partisan politics.

OP could have stated it in more neutral terms, but chosen not to.

What lockdowns has the US had?

Why right wing? I’m rather left leaning, even by European standards. I’m not some crazy antivaxxer either, plenty of those on both sides.

Nevertheless the pandemic responses by various governments I have to interact with have done much to deepen my distrust of them and the society around me.

Various governments have deployed drastic measures such as lockdowns in an effort to control the pandemic, but they’ve released little evidence to demonstrate the usefulness of these measures.

Research is increasingly showing that the lockdowns were not worth it. If that is really true their victims should be lavishly compensated and those responsible actually held responsible.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ijcp.13674

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7499782/

Of course I personally am not qualified to judge whether or not the lockdowns were a mistake, but the evidence seems to be piling up against them. The governments could alleviate these concerns by showing solid research confirming that they didn’t fuck up.

Because this was heavily partisan issue. It is just absurd to claim it was not.

Bad government decisionmaking should very much be a common issue.

It does not matter what attitudes people should have. It matters which they actually had.

The "feel that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society" was very right wing attitude. Even in places with no lockdowns and no restrictions. Even left wing disagreeing with this or that measured would talk about these in less emotional terms.

This sounds like some strange US bullshit to me, I’m not interested in importing what you’re selling.

Given that topic under discussion is US campus and behavior of Americans, the way attitudes are spread in US is relevant. In fact, "Americans" is only relevant demographics.

Also, coincidentaly, similar division occurred across Europe. The people more likely to be influenced by American conservative thinkers were more likely to be hostile to masks and lockdowns.

Honestly, how is any of that controversial?

I don't think it's fair to blame the pandemic measures, at least in the USA. People weren't nice and then all of a sudden turned shitty because they were asked to voluntarily stay home. I think it's more likely that they were already antisocial people, but spent most of their lives keeping it inside and mostly hiding it under a thin facade of basic manners. Then, maybe several years ago, something happened that encouraged them that manners didn't matter, and it's ok to own your own asshole. Maybe someone showed us that you could just say the quiet part out loud without consequences. Hmm... Some human embodiment of narcissistic anti-social contrarianism... Can't quite put my finger on it though...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com