Everyone Is a Girl Online
wired.com
wired.com
Does the author think that redefining a bunch of words makes them “deep” or something? Either make an attempt to be understandable or don’t publish. And shame on wired for dropping the bar so low, you wouldn’t see this type of laughable shit out of a more respectable outlet like new yorker
Glad I grew up pre-internet.
I'm a little confused at what makes you think that the internet is not included in the set of things considered to be real
This is the same as the dream state involked by, say, reading a novel, or watching a movie, or even going into that out-of-body experience that occurrs when someone is immersed in code development, or painting. But the dream state invoked by the internet is interactive, personallized, and orders of magnitude more potent than any of those traditional media pathways.
What's not real is what the human is imagining while they use the internet.
It's a fantasy world. And while transcending to a fantasy state is essential for imaginative innovation, like solving a hard programming problem, it's equally essential that those benefits be brought back to the real world, physical 3D reality.
This is the part that doesn't happen with the fantasy escape of trending "nonsense".
The meme-speak is just a medium of expression for the illiterate.
Really sad that once again "girls" are just a means of enforcing mindless consumption for the benefit of ownership.
This break from physiccal reality has been abrupt, and near ubiquitous, and quite likely the end of the modern world order...
I don't understand. All those things are real to me. What definition of real are you using?
> There is no clear evidence that Baudrillard deployed Lacan’s theory consistently, as Baudrillard himself did his best to erase the footprints of employed sources; yet, Baudrillard’s knowledge and use of Lacan is something taken for granted by most Baudrillardian scholars[1].
I'll point out that the study of the Real requires a certain suspension of disbelief or a willingness to sit with the tension of not understanding something for a very long time before it starts to make sense. It comes with the reward of understanding or at least feeling like having an understanding of where your subjectivity comes from. And this requires a vulnerability in admitting that a lot of us are quite a bit more subjective than we're willing to admit to ourselves.
1. https://baudrillardstudies.ubishops.ca/the-invention-of-hist...
We study the hourglass from inside of the hourglass, and are subject to what happens TO the hourglass. If it's shaken or broken, it can never exist in its previous state again. Likewise we can only guess what everything is like outside of the hourglass. Our reality is inside the hourglass, and we probably can't get out.
How do you know?
In this instance, I argue that the computer we exist on is real as it is imposing laws we are subject to. There's no way to prove it isn't a Russian Nesting Doll where it's simulations all the way down (and up), but if we can't leave our reality to check out the one above us, this is more the realm of philosophy than physics.
In a non-simulated universe, the laws of physics as we experience them are imposed by something. Whether that something is just our frame of reference as a collective species trapped in a single area of spacetime or the grand unifying theory we keep searching for, there is some objective measure which regulates physics. Maybe if we find it, we can find how to make it subjective and abuse physics like a speedrunner does in a video game.
One test for reality, given this definition, is to remove all the humans from the scene. Afterward, does the situation still exist?
If not, then it's a fantasy state.
What many people consider to be "reality", is just humans agreeing to a given abstraction, like money. It's completely fictional. We just all agree to go along with the fantasy (try not going along with it and see how long it takes for guys w/ guns to show up at your door).
In many cases the only "reality" to these abstractions are human willingness to exert physical violence against those that don't comply.
To reassert from the original comment: not all of these abstractions are "bad", many are necessary for civilized life. But retaining the ability to distiquish the difference is also mandatory for staying grounded in "reality". A condition with is vanishing among many (first world) people...
> If not, then it’s a fantasy state.
So, humans themselves are a “fantasy state” and not part of “reality”?
Your test seems to be based on a rather bizarre conception of reality that is particularly unsuited for any use by or relating to interests of concern to humans.
The nuero-electrical activity is very real, but the castles in the sky we imagine these mental states to represent are not.
I'm not at all surprised that people don't/can't/won't recognise the difference, as it often directly interferes with an individual's "identity" or other fictional mental states that people hold very dear.
Hang on to your "dreams" as much as you want, it's your life!
But in the end reality will exert it's dominance. We'll each die, and everyone else will bury us and ignore the reality that was just enforced and continue with their individual dream states...
A macro example of this is the "demographic crisis" over declining population, when nearly every physical crisis in progress in the modern world is due to massive human over-population. We'll continue with the dream state, and eventually physical reality will take it's toll...
Please! Don't actually step in front of a bus! It's just a thought experiment!
--- org message ---
There's a very simple test for the existence of objective physical reality: Step out in front of a bus
You can even start by very ernestly ensuring yourself that the bus is just a figment of your tenuous senses.
The outcome is obvious. I wonder why you're so determined to deny that physical reality isn't the same as our inner imaginings...
--- end org statement ---
The general answer to how we know what's real and what's a dream is: Experiment.
We can cogitate on what we do perceive and construct scenarios, the outcomme of which tell us more about what's "out there". Then we can use that new info to cogitate again and construct even more suble experiments.
The scientific process...
> try not going along with it and see how long it takes for guys w/ guns to show up at your door
I have no idea what this is referring to
Hyperreality deals with the simulation of the real (both classical/physical simulation as well as idea and mental-model simulation), so much so that the real eventually becomes less important than the simulation itself. At some point the symbols of the simulation begin to take on a life of their own (think of brand logos, the Nike swoosh, the apple with a bite taken out). The symbols begin to have their own meanings apart from reality, welcome to the realm of the hyperreal.
The word "girl" is not a real girl, it's meant to "capture" or "represent" what a girl is in communication. We attempt to capture "real girlness" in the words we use and the mental models we build. Over time usage of the word gets perverted, it no longer "accurately" captures the essence of what a girl is, it is a distortion of the real. The word, which started out representing reality, becomes untethered from reality, and starts to take on a life of its own.
Eventually you leave behind all pretense of reality, and the word/symbol has it's own inherent meaning that only makes sense in context of the hyperreal. This article only really seems to make sense if you live more in the world of hyperreal symbols, and are less concerned about the real world that the words once represented.
A lot of this is due the Enlightenment, as we now live in an "Age of Reason" which is absolutely obsessed with simulation -- everything must be captured, categorized, analyzed, broken down, understood, only to eventually be integrated and manipulated in our mental models (simulations).
In many ways The Internet is (or has the potential to become) home for the absolute hyperreal. All that matters to the internet is the relationship between symbols. Are you aligned with the right symbols, brands, products, politics, lifestyles, etc.? Endless bites of "simulated false realities" designed for mental consumption. We yearn for the real, the authentic, while living in an increasingly hyperreal world starving of any underlying meaning.
What's more important; The Real, or The Internet's captured and increasingly perverted version of "The Real"?
I am unconcerned with the hyperreal when what it claims to represent is untethered from the real world. To some it's deathly serious. I've found my mental health is better staying focused on things that are more real.
If you find these ideas compelling I suggest you read up more on it [1]. The book Simulacra and Simulation is a wonderful starting place, really opened my eyes [2].
Hyperreality isn't just about brands or explicit simulations. Remember that Baudrillard says the map covers the entire territory: there isn't some corner of human life that we can retreat to. The Real has already been surpassed, never to be returned to. I suppose you disagreed with that aspect of the book you recommended?
I work in hyperreality, I make my living in hyperreality. I remind myself that I do this in order to live better in the real world around me. My house, the land around me, the people I know in person, are far more important to me (and worth worrying about) than the symbols I endlessly encounter during my workday.
Articles like this are just nonsense as they have no practical use to me (and I suspect most living along side me) in the territory that I inhabit/value.
At first you say:
> I'm a little confused at what makes you think that the internet is not included in the set of things considered to be real.
Which suggests to me that you believe (and are trying to convince me) that The Internet is more real (not hyperreal) than I think it is.
But then you say:
> No, again, there is no territory, it is gone, we are living entirely in the hyperreal.
Which would seem to agree with the original point I was making, The Internet is hyperreal.
It seems the only difference between us is that I value a map that more closely resembles the territory, and your opinion is that it doesn't matter, they're all of equal importance??
sigh
Let's ignore all that. I moved on to interrogating your (mis)understanding of Baudrillard. According to the book you recommended, there is no "real" that you can retreat to. You seem to talk about how your life outside of the internet is the real, but Baudrillard wrote the book before the internet was even a thing. He was talking about your normal life, not the internet.
It's not about what I think, it's that you recommended to me a book that you quite strongly disagree with...
—James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
He extrapolates that into a theory about the way society interacts with itself; Most individual agents doesn't interact directly with most things. They have a mental model based on the ones they've touched, and assume that when someone else talks about a teapot that that teapot matches their mental model. When you talk about a teapot, my mind imagines it as my ideal teapot, until you add descriptors and detail. Still, however, it is "my ideal teapot" + "Descriptors" and in no way the teapot in your mind. On aggregate, that works - Our interactions with teapots are mostly the same, and it doesn't much matter whether I'm imagining a blue teapot and you a pink. They get filled with water and put on the stove to boil.
As Software people, we're especially susceptible to reducing objects and experiences to the sum of their functions. We even have a word for it - Duck Typing. A teapot is a teapot because it boils water and pours it into cups; We can say that any old pot is a teapot if we add a funnel adapter, a kettle is a teapot, a tin can is a teapot, etc.
In reality, you don't use a tin can as a teapot, because it's not convenient. You need gloves to handle it, or you'll get burned. It doesn't hold much more than one cup. It's not really washable and reusable. In Analog but not Analogy, a tin can is not a teapot.
Modern philosophy is entirely based on equivocation. A tin can is a teapot, therefore all teapots are hard to handle for heating water, so why bother heating water, anyway? It's stupid and soliphistic. This article, like so many like it, is trash and the author should be laughed out of the room. Instead, there's a giant cancerous mass of this bile replacing literature and journalism.
Is it basically saying everyone online wants attention and that makes them girls?
The language they use has multiple overloading definitions, some of which conflict, and others are just completely opaque. And since it's about the "gender wars written from a woman", any critique will be tarred and feathered as "patriarchy".
For example, this is the second-to-last paragraph and single massive run-on sentence:
"It may well work in our favor to accelerate our way into Total Girl—that is, to consider the girl as a specific technology of subjectivity that maxes out on desire, attraction, replication, and cunning to achieve specific ends—and to use such technology to access something once unknowable about ourselves rather than for simple capital gains, blowing a kiss at individually-scaled pleasures while really giving voice to the egregore, the totality of not just information, but experience, affect, emotion."
The needless complexity is usually a marker that it's for others on the "in crowd" for the thing, and primarily used as a exclusion tool.
I get that complexity is needed, and reducing something too much destroys the ideas behind it. But packing up to 6 different definitions in a single word is just... stupid. It's like confusion is the point, and it's being used as a weapon to berate anyone who complains.
People are expecting this woman to play God, it seems
> Every ordinary person has to, in some way, pay attention to their semipublic image, even if that image is one that resists appearing on a platform.
The internet is a social platform upon which patriarchy has been subverted [in virtual reality] without anybody even noticing.
This is the age of social engineering. We all have to live like teenaged girls engaging in cliquish behavior whether we like it or not. Everything you say that can in any way be attributable to you will be used against you out of context.
If you don't think you do, then nobody has found a need to cancel you yet. Just wait until you get in another "girl's" way for a promotion or you're the target of staged histrionics so they can evade accountability for some other shit they did. Give it time and watch your back.
It's a quiet war you don't even realize is being waged until your life becomes a smoldering crater. This is by design. The favored weapon of women has always been poison, and it's not always the chemical kind.
I hadn't considered the sexist angle even after noticing my stepdaughter snooping on her parents' phones and cyberstalking me and was thinking just yesterday that it feels like I have to like like an aspiring presidential candidate. All skeletons must be macerated, all dirt must be swept away, all witnesses discredited or eliminated. I've seen what she does to the rest of her family with weaponized intelligence. There's no discernible endgame, just defamation and humiliation of everyone for the sake of elevating herself.
I now understand how teen girls get bullied into suicide by other girls. Some shit, you can't live down.
A lot of philosophers are women
My gist is that the author is basically saying that the category of girl is experiencing a cataphatic expansion - that is to say it's expanding in positive definite terms. It's also saying that this is a good thing and that it should be accelerated[3][4].
It's clear the author is well read enough to hint at ideas which such velocity that it overwhelms the reader. For example, I'm quite certain that the author would feel right at home talking about the category of girl in terms of reterritorialization a la Deleuze and Guattari[5]. But, the author never explicitly makes this connection.
Like nearly all philosophical works, it draws from, reapplies, or is a response to existing works. It doesn't go out of its way to tell you what they are - it expects you to be familiar enough with the topic that you can discern that from content and context.
I think it's easy to criticize the piece as being not accessible, but also, maybe the target audience (which the author assumes familiarity with) doesn't overlap with the population of HN readers. I don't think it's a stretch to say that author would see programming concepts as equally incomprehensible and requiring a foundation found elsewhere.
Back to summarizing the piece, the author write after a series of specific points "Living as “male” is to live in horror of ever being a girl." Going back to the point of the "category of girl is experiencing a cataphatic expansion," you can see how "male" is being defined apophatically[6] - that is to say, by negation.
The author combines this positive definition of girlness with the question "What is being rewarded by online platforms?" and arrives at the intermediate conclusion that the manipulation of desire(my words) is rewarded.
The piece then goes on to question, are the girls subject to the influence of platforms or can they wield this power to achieve goals?
Finally, I'm reserving the right to be completely wrong about my interpretation of this. I'm not exactly holding this interpretative view very strongly.
1. See The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) https://archive.org/details/phenomenologyofs0000hege_n6q1/mo... (translation)
2. Or see Time and Narrative (1984) https://archive.org/details/timenarrative0001ricu/mode/2up
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
4. Some form of Girl/Acc? (50% /gen, 50% tongue in cheek)
Not to be too mean to HN users but I think it's much more likely that the writer understands basic programming than HN users have a basic ability to read continental philosophy. I see a lot of HN users deride all philosophy entirely
Thank you for your take
I just don’t get this piece.
I expected more along the lines of Face editing: Japanese biker tricks internet into thinking he is a young woman https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56447357
For example, "girl dinner" is just "eating whatever is at home that you don't need to cook."
Which means that most of Gen X was eating "girl dinner" decades before anyone coined the term, and bachelors have been eating "girl dinner" for centuries.
If this is what a girls internet produces, they can keep it for themselves.