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Comment by tinalumfoil | Hacker News Reader

You could say almost the same thing walking through an ancient Bazaar as sellers yell advertisements at you for their wares.

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Right, but it probably sucked. We heavily romanticize it today, but we romanticize all sorts of things that were actually not so great.

Like the middle ages. All of it sucked.

wrong. some of it sucked maybe even the majority of it (if you insist) but most of it is not all of it.

The Black Death sucked.

Most of the middle ages probably wasn't that bad, but the civilization-destroying plague destroyed civilization, and Renaissance-era propagandists exploited the living memory of the plague to make themselves look better.

The one constant throughout time is that things sucked if you were poor and rocked if you were rich.

I'd rather be middle class in a developed country now than any king 200 years ago. No amount of wealth could have gotten me modern medicine, especially anesthesia(!). Even stuff that's now trivial like pretty fresh tropical fruit or good food from other countries in general would have been very hard to come by. I have way more knowledge and entertainment at my finger tips than any medieval king could have ever dreamed of.

To each his own. But look at all the wonderful things that medieval kings commissioned to keep themselves occupied. Art, music, cathedrals, palaces, sports, plays, libraries, etc. The impact of a (generous) medieval king in terms of things others could eventually enjoy far outpaces this age's netflix consumption.

Ask Henry VIII if he wouldn't give all that up for some gout medication.

That the same Henry VIII who shut down all the monasteries, which for most of the population were the only source of anything resembling medical and social care? Karma's a bitch.

Tell me you've never had medical problems without explicitly saying you've never had medical problems

IMO it's an interesting topic if the kings were in fact "generous" when they commissioned these things. I think there is an argument that these investments were mostly for their own legacy and that the resources could have been spent more efficiently to raise everyone's standard of living or reduce poverty. IMO just spending every cent possible on research to get non-terrible medicine would be far and away the highest priority. But of course I only say that because I know from today's perspective what is possible.

Poor people today live better than the medieval rich people.

Nah, throughout most of history, things sucked if you were rich, and sucked even more if you were poor.

Generally agree, but humanism and spaces between words are pretty okay.

One time HN linked an article romanticizing pickpocketing, with the expected reaction from me:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6065434

Wait until you find out about bank heist films?

In fairness, in those cases, when they romanticize the thieves, they usually try to make clear that they're only taking the bank/casino's owners and are careful not to hurt anyone.

HN never relents on its cultish techno-optimisms.

Yeah, if you live in a city, you're conditioned to ignore people trying to get your attention. Nothing is free. Don't believe it. I remember one time my little brother from my tiny hometown was visiting me in LA and I warned him to ignore the guy with the CDs. Don't let him put it in your hand and avoid eye contact. Told my sister the same thing but she didn't believe me and lost 20$ to a shitty mixtape in a millisecond. Those guys are slick. haha

You can't say the same thing about the Bazaar because that's why you went to the Bazaar. The shouts are what's going to be directing your entire journey. That's why ads aren't annoying in a trade magazine, because the ads are probably the reason you bought the trade magazine; the articles are commentary on the ads.

Accurate. And in a trade magazine, most the ads are making a value proposition of some sort; the ones that are purely based on emotional appeals tend to end up as industry memes, synonymous with vacuity.

Yup. A trade magazine ad is 100x more likely to be an undecorated copy of a datasheet than some vague emotional bullshit.

Especially if the Bazaar sellers followed you throughout the day through your work and leisure time.

And took notes on your personal life and tried to sell you things they'd specifically think you'd want.

And traded notes with other sellers.

It's not uncommon in smaller rural villages to have sellers slowly drive through the streets and yell that they are selling things.

Or the same about YouTubers, I'm fascinated that my kids don't find the constant yelling and over emoting annoying or at least suspicious.

This started becoming common in shopping malls at some point during the aughts or 2010s.

Usually accompanied by large in-corridor vendor displays which further obstructed already-crowded walkways.

I stopped going to malls.

High-street shopping districts still don't affect me to the same viscerally-negative degree. Even those which seem to be fairly consciously emulating and attempting to create a mall-like atmosphere. There's something about the open-air nature, and the fact that sounds attenuate rather than echoing off hard surfaces from all sides.

In NYC you're mostly trained just to ignore people trying to get your attention. Or at least I was. I assume ignoring banner ads is a similar phenomenon.

The sellers don't attempt to follow you around until you die.

It was sort of acceptable before the sellers in the Bazaar did a mind-melt that made them all effectively the same person.

That's exactly how it feels for me to look at the magazine rack in a drugstore, except that little to none of it is interesting.

It happens to this day in many parts of the world (like mine).

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