Hacker News Reader

> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.

Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-voted comment?

From Neil Postman's 1985 "Amusing Ourselves to Death":

> “With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.”

> “Spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face.”

It's less about whether we "enjoy" the stimulation, more about what kind of people we become when we lose ourselves in this bizarre sea of superstimuli. We're like reinforcement agents creating adversarial examples for each other, drawing ourselves further out of any sort of meaningful life, into a fever dream where the most desirable job for the next generation is to be famous for being famous [1] rather than do anything for any kind of deeper purpose.

[1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-zs-no...

I like your description. I sometimes wonder if the final equilibrium state will be most people working on addictive products and the rest working on addiction treatment.

I'd say with the current state of things it's more like two singularities in which either:

- A landian-stephensian accelerationist timeline occurs where the majority of the urban population becomes some flavor of AGI-tuned VR junkie

- An extreme naturalistic counterculture movement occurs that causes majority of the civilized world to willingly roll themselves back 1 or 2 centuries technologically in order to feel something again

Why not both?

- And there has to be the third, hyperminmaxers yearning forever more control and power trying to be(at) the machine. Thus becoming a reflection of the first.

- Fourth must be some sort of hybrid between denialist and creationist, whom I don't even want to envision through. Which would be a reflection of the second, but instead of withdrawing, they would bubble themselves into something terrifying version of the Amish.

I personally believe that at some point, many people will realize that the majority of the people with economic means are the people who are able to concentrate and don’t waste all their time. Note that I don’t mean the super wealthy, I’m referring to people who are solidly middle class and have means. I know a lot of successful people who aren’t glued to their phones. I think there will be enough good and bad examples out there for people to start catching on.

The most successful people I know absolutely are glued to their phones. They're networking and messaging and reading and planning on their phones.

But from the outside it looks very similar to candy crush. . .

Perhaps the current obsession will just go the way of heavy drinking or smoking? Ie the population will eventually develop some partial immunity to the allure, but it won't even go away completely.

See: Walkaway by Cory Doctorow (2017)

Been reading their latest on interoperability. Interesting stuff, and a possible avenue for tech sanity in the upcoming years.

"Dune: Prophecy"

https://youtu.be/CzVHWNosS2o?si=NtT7P8SX3LebjIuf

Can't wait for the Butlerian Jihad

We are already there.

>> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.

> Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-voted comment?

100% agree. I had to read that sentence and surrounding parts like 5 times to check if I was missing a satirical nod somewhere. It's like writing a review of Franz Kafka's books and saying "Despite what we may say about bureaucracy, clearly lots of people enjoy it because his books were best sellers!"

Lots of art is there to make you think, not to "enjoy" it.

I think it's kind of necessary to be exposed to ideas and views of people like Postman to even think of them when you play a game like this. The top comment is disappointing, but so it goes.

I enjoyed the game, for the attention to detail and making a mockery out of so many things in our daily lives that are in essence absurd, in such a brilliant yet simple way. The frowning Duolingo owl. The pillow delivery tracking made me chuckle. The only thing I missed was booking a an apartment on booking.com with a billion reminders to hurry up as the place might be gone any second, or doing an online check in. Although maybe it happened, I refreshed the game accidentally and never came back.

If HNer's were as enlightened as they think they are, this would have been flagged and buried.

For me, the only thinking this inspired was:

1) Haha 2) But I already played Cookie Clicker

I've been trying to disentangle myself from the internet for the last couple years. Maybe this hits better for those who haven't yet realized they are spending too much time online.

It's not self-defeating, it's a commentary.

I've built up a reflex to leave any sort of overstimulatory atmosphere. I don't watch short form videos and leave any page that causes high levels of stimulation (Temu's spinner stops me from shopping there, for example).

I quit this game after about 10 minutes when it hit a comical level of stimulation and still upvoted this. I loved the commentary because the game seemed to follow the natural "evolution" of the web, straight to the point where every app has attached mini games and multiple in-game currencies. Listening to the man popping his beer can and pouring it at the same time as a live police scanner was truly dystopian but also feels like a daily occurrence in modern society.

I think it's great that you didn't really have a stomach for the absurd level of noise and flashing lights, but I just don't think it's a moral victory that people should necessarily strive for.

I do. Less people tolerate crap like this (not the submission, but patterns it emulates), the less we will see it implemented.

I think I quit after the DVD sounds

I quit (the first time) after the first three totally unlabeled icons appeared. Not having hovered on them, I had no idea there was anything more. Lesson for designers of scroll bars and other commonly-hidden but important UI elements.

The mobile version places an explicit "upgrades" button to indicate that they're clickable.

perhaps it's another commentary...

You lasted 10 minutes? I lasted about 30 seconds. Life is too short.

There’s some pretty funny commentary in there mixed into the absurd overstimulation

Maybe, but my life feels better by going for run for 30 minutes or to the gym, or spending time with my kid and/or partner rather than clicking one button on a web page for 30 minutes straight.

> at any point during this game we could just open a new tab and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream.

That's a great observation.

I'm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but there's something going on for at least some people - definitely for me - that the thing we're seeking refuge in are given meaning by the things we're seeking refuge from. Like you said, at any point during the game - or before, or after - I could open a new tab and watch the ocean on YouTube, or even watch the same thing that was the ending of the game. Except, obviously, I wouldn't, because why would I? It would be totally random and arbitrary, a kind of plot non sequitur you'd complain about if it was a piece of fiction. This ocean scene only makes sense as an ending of this game, as a refuge, a contrast, a punchline. It's the stimulation game preceding it, that gives meaning to the ending.

I've noticed I often feel similarly about many hobbies, interests, tasks, - heck, even people - they rapidly stop being interesting once I don't have any stressing obligation I should be working on instead.

(My HN comment history, too, is strongly and positively correlated with amount of stuff I should be doing instead in my life, but not necessarily want to.)

Doesn't seem self-defeating if it aroused that level of analysis, seems like good art! Art can bring up questions that author didn't intend so it's often best not to bring the authors viewpoint into the discussion, or at least not make authorial intent the authority.

I've heard someone say good art isn't about saying new things, but saying known truths in new ways and I found this very effective. Your question about who really stays to watch the ocean is interesting, and I don't think diminishes the game.

you're looking at it from a framework that there's a "right" way to interpret a given piece of art, or that a given piece of art has "a point" instead of "a set of ways in which people interpret it". You're describing one way of interpreting it and then leveling a charge against the piece when, in reality, that charge should be leveled at that interpretation.

I do believe there's an intended interpretation or "point", and that's what I'm commenting on. Do you disagree with this?

are you asking about this specific piece or about art in general? Either way yes I disagree.

I don't know the author of this work. I don't know what they intended, so I can't comment on their intentions. I don't know if there's an "intended interpretation" or not, I don't know what that intended interpretation is, I don't know if it lines up with the interpretation you described. If the author intended for a specific, singular interpretation, I would reject that; any interpretation is just one of many. Some interpretations make more sense than others, and how a piece is interpreted can easily change from person to person, or even over time for a single person. Whatever you get out of it: it's true that that's what you got out of it.

This is actually a 100+ year old divisive point in literary/media criticism - the older traditional view is authorial intent is the only thing that matters, the post-modern view is authorial intent shouldn't be considered at all and you should only look at the text in isolation. I think the sensible and most common view is that authorial intent should be taken into account, but should not be considered the final word - because you can't truly know what the author is intending, there may be subconscious things even the author isn't aware of (for example the complete sexlessness of HP Lovecraft is probably not intentional but probably telling), and how the author gets it wrong can be interesting and should be considered part of the piece as well (for example, when you mention how people won't watch the ocean, that's interesting, and should be considered part of the piece because the game leaves room for that kind of interpretation).

TLDR, there may be an intended point, but that's not the only thing a piece can be judged on. The best art leaves room for multiple interpretations, it has a life of it's own beyond the creator when it's experienced by people.

I didn't find it enjoyable or soothing... I played it for about 30 seconds, got the point, chuckled because it was a mildly clever poke at the stupid engagement tactics used to addict people to otherwise boring and pointless actions - sort of a demo of how we're all dumber than lab mice, who at least get food for pressing a button - and then came back here to see that some people actually kept playing it to some sort of end. Which is crazy.

> sort of a demo of how we're all dumber than lab mice

Funny you mention that, in the scrolling "breaking news" bar one of the stories was "LAB RATS UNIONIZE AND DEMAND FAIR COMPENSATION"

> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page. The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but another level to the game. All the content creators whose inclusion at first seems like an indictment of the kinds of internet videos that lead to addiction or overstimulation also all get a pleasant shout-out which seems silly. Are these supposed to represent what's awful about the internet?

There's a literary/artistic technique called "irony" where the depiction isn't meant to be taken at face-value and instead is actually being shown because the opposite is intended. The whole game is an ironic application of Stimulation techniques, and in order to show its negative impact, one must use them ironically.

These trends wouldn't be trends if they didn't work. The game can be awful and distracting, yet still succeed at garnering engagement. Not just in spite of the stimulation but partially due to the stimulation. It's not self defeating or hypocritical, it's a bad thing, an indictment, and also engaging all at the same time.

It got me to think and engage, so already I think it succeeds at being a great piece of art.

But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message? Is this game, livestreamer Ludwig, and all the achievements part of the problem being highlighted? (Not to mention the mean-spirited Mindspace parody) If you get enough stimulation here, it just seems like you get to cash it in so that you can advance to a state of higher enlightenment

> But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message?

Dozens of DVD signs jumping around, hydraulic press slowly pressing macaroons, infinite subway surfers, lofi girl, some guy eating burger, achievements popping left and right, hands molding some crap. All of that fit on a mobile screen with sounds of lofi, rain, thunder and constant clocking of dvd sounds. And I didn’t even reach bottom of the pit.

> But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message?

Smartest HN commenter.

I think work that contemplates a social phenomenon without driving home any particular opinion or moral can still be interesting.

We're taking part in boiling a frog. The game starts off blank and peaceful with a single button inviting you to push it. It adds the DVD bounce, which is a nice little charming and nostalgic hit of dopamine. Then you get another DVD logo, which is a nice touch, double the points! Then you get a hydraulic press. Hydraulic press automation. Level ups. Audio. Oh no. Now it's the kind of unending audiovisual nightmare that browsing the modern web without adblock is, and it evolved in much the same way.

If you keep playing it -- either to find out what the whole point of this game is or because you are trapped in the game loop by your stimulation-seeking brain -- and you just keep building and building in overstimulating nonsense versions of real-world content until you are presented with the calmness of it doesn't have to be this way.

That first wave in the calm after the storm gave me literal physical relaxation: I felt the tenseness of my back & shoulders ease into a slump once the incessant babble of the attention-seeking components of the game went away. I felt better than I had a moment ago. It was nice. And it was, counter to your point, exactly a look in the mirror. Why do I put myself through the wringer on modern social media when I don't have to?

All of that to say I don't feel like the message is self-defeating at all. The dissonance is the point. Condition yourself as much as you like to the way things are by continuing to play the game, the peaceful beach is almost certainly nicer. Even just for 30 seconds.

Why not get out in nature? Touch grass, maybe, as the kids say these days.

Having a "aha" moment while playing a game is enjoyable. That does not mean it can't be critical at the same time.

One of most popular misconceptions in art is that art that deals with serious topics has to be hard to consume and no fun is allowed to make it good art. Your reflection alone is a testament to what thoughts the game produced by making you do a thing. Of course the stimulation has to be somewhat enjoyable, wouldn't be realistic otherwise – in reality this is how they get you.

Neither the most human thing you can do is not think that deep on it.

Spoiler warning OMG. :P

This is so German

lol, my browser crashed (low power limited memory living room PC) well before any ending.

I never understood the appeal of being calm. It's fucking boring. Since early childhood I needed extra stimulation: first I'd listen to mom reading stories while I was playing with toys, then at school I'd listen to the teacher while playing games on my PSP. That allowed my brain to stay engaged. Now I just finished an exhausting day - I lay on the sofa, put on some music, have a slideshow on my computer screen, play this game. After finishing it, I'm feeling relaxed and tired in a way "now I'm ready to go to sleep". A friend of mine jokes that I have a motor in my ass because I can't sit still, whenever we meet I want to keep walking around, just for the sake of not sitting in one place.

I honestly think that high-stimulation is a great thing, as long as we use it to our advantage, instead of being hindered by it. The essence of life is doing things against the natural forces of inanimate physics, rather than sitting and doing nothing. The more you do, the more you live. The absolutely worst feeling in my life that I battle as an adult is being tired, when my mind and body refuse to do high-stimulation activities, and I end up just laying in bed the entire day.