A newfound discomfort with hypertext | Hacker News Reader

A newfound discomfort with hypertext

maya.land

30 pointscacher19 comments

I enjoy the website design - it's nice to see people keeping the Web 1.0 feeling alive, focusing on creativity, unafraid to use cool animations, etc.

I'm not sure I fully get the point of this entry though. It sounds like the author is becoming overly self critical and reflective. Just make what you want, share it, and have fun. That's what I've finally gotten around to doing on my personal websites (in my bio).

And what's supposed to be the point of the racial comments? They're not productive, only inflammatory. They make me feel unwelcome on the website for being a "pale male" as the author puts it; maybe that's the point. It's disheartening because a beauty of the web, as eloquently put in the Hacker's Manifesto, is that "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias" on here. Yes, you have "as much right to speak on the topic as this fellow", as we all do. Let's try to all be in this together to make a better world instead of dividing ourselves.

I think they were expressing their own insecurities surrounding being white and male and wanting to be creative despite maybe being "under-qualified". Having "yet another mediocre white man" perspective. In short, made anxious by racism and sexism targeted towards them.

The author's a woman: https://maya.land/who/

I love the website but I hate the trend of using "white males" as a punching bag.

It’s a comment on the salient “voice” of the internet and a self-reflection on pressure to co-opt that voice. The fact is that early internet and large internet companies are dominated by the views and values of white American males.

As to whether this is a point worth discussion, that’s up to you. I wouldn’t think the worst of it though. I don’t think this post is more than a (perhaps flawed) commentary on a personal insecurity. The fact the white male voice matters to them is incidental

It's a fact that early hip-hop is dominated by black people. If you made the same kind of comment in relation to that, would that not be deemed racist?

Not that I think it is racist, I would prefer equality of standards though. Unfortunately currently one is deemed acceptable and the other not so much.

If you said that gangsta rap's origins are in Black thug hood culture, I think most people would find that just as acceptable, if not more acceptable, than saying the early internet was pale and male.

You couldnt say that shit if you were white without everyone getting their pitchforks out

The author is pointing out the "boy's club" nature of certain parts of the internet. Seems like valid criticism to me (I'm a white male). I don't mind being stereotyped occasionally for a good cause. I find the "Karen" stereotype more concerning considering it impacts such a small minority (people named Karen... the ones in my life don't fit the bill).

https://blog.ayjay.org/the-homebound-symphony/

"My task, as I now conceive it, is not to engage in critique but rather to bear a small light and keep it burning for the next generation and maybe the generation after that. I want to find what is wise and good and beautiful and true and pass along to my readers as much of it as I can, in a form that will be accessible and comprehensible to them."

Huh, I don't think I really get what they are trying to put down? I dont see how their title and text connect. Some of their fears felt pretty relatable. I did find their summary of our relationship pretty funny - can't copy and past on their site but the bit about coming for correctly nested html tags for a fee of zero dollars.

Side note - that font felt uncomfortable to read, what kind of font is it? I'm super ignorant on this.

I read it as printed books mean something whereas online is just throwaway.

A few critiques of the online way of doing things (including of hyperlinks as authority, which I assume is what the title is about).

My irony detector may be too sensitive, but you complaining about the font seems like something that could have fit right in to this essay.

Ah, thank you for sharing those insights.

As for the font - I was worried it would come off as a complaint but didnt really know how else to express that feeling or ask for more information.

I didn't read it as a complaint, you said you didn't get the point, and your comment about the font highlighted that, for me at least.

As the author states

>You came here for correctly nested HTML tags and I sent you them for the fee of zero dollars. I owe you no quality, no restraint.

You didn't pay for this, the author owes you nothing, a printed book you paid for would mean they do owe you something.

I detected irony because people don't tend to criticise font choices in books as much as they do in blogs. Despite the fact said blogs are free and the author owes you nothing.

But this is art, so it's all open to interpretation, and this is mine.

My counterargument to this is that there's more throwaway anything in any medium than there is worthwhile stuff.

I kind of don’t know what to make of this - imposter syndrome? They don’t feel they deserve to be heard, or to be creative, or something? They feel guilty for making stuff? They think it’s okay to present a certain level of content quality in one medium, but not another? Is this one of those “I am living with mental illness and this is how it makes me feel” type confessionals? Also what’s with the weird race stuff?

having this web page open made firefox continuously use 50% of my (four-core) cpu and increase my power consumption dramatically

nothing visible on the page accounts for this

there's no long-running JS so nothing invisible really accounts for it either. is the background's SVG noise having difficulty rendering on your machine?

it's an interesting question; how could i find out?

It's not, like, the correct way, because I don't know what that would be, but if your browser has developer tools (or if you happened to already have something like Stylus installed) that let you apply e.g.

html { background-image: unset; }

you could see if that made the CPU calm down any, maybe?

The other two things that maybe could explain it would be the animated star GIF background (the GIF itself shouldn't be too bad, but maybe because it resizes with the page?) which could be tested a similar way with

#sideframe { background-image: unset;}

or the use of border-image, which really shouldn't be difficult to render, but which I've noticed e.g. Safari often gets weird about, so

* {border-image: none !important;}

The whole thing is developed on Firefox, so a bummer to hear it's having issues. (And someone above said it couldn't copy-paste – there's certainly nothing meant to do that!)

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