Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> users don't care

From The Truth by Terry Pratchett, on a similar dilemma between pursuing the (journalistic) public-good versus satisfying the immediate desire of the average public:

> "Are you saying people aren't interested in the truth?"

> "Listen, what's true to a lot of people is that they need the money for the rent by the end of the week [...] This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society [...] They've got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren't lumped in with parrots. It's not their fault. It's just how things are."

> [...] "It's important! Someone has to care about the... the big truth. [...] if they don't care about anything much beyond things that go squawk in cages then one day there'll be someone in charge of this place who'll make them choke on their own budgies. You want that to happen?"

____

Our civilization is filled with uncountable things that were once "nerd fantasies" that the average person doesn't even remotely care about... Until it all goes tragically wrong.

If I'm being honest, your quote makes the first character sound like an out-of-touch loonie. It doesn't make the point you're trying to make. Maybe in its original context it did, but the way you've presented it, it's like going to an AA meeting with a large binder, intending to expose corruption in the senate. There is such a thing as time and place.

The context is that the Lawful-Neutral leader of the city-state has been framed and thrown in the dungeons by a shadowy conspiracy of powerful figures. The printing press was just recently invented the first character accidentally inventing Journalism wants to break the story while a coworker is arguing that it's not relevant to the citizens.

Expanded portion:

> "Someone has to care about the... the big truth. What Vetinari mostly does not do is a lot of harm. We’ve had rulers who were completely crazy and very, very nasty. And it wasn’t that long ago, either. Vetinari might not be ‘a very nice man,’ but I had breakfast today with someone who'd be a lot worse if he ran the city, and there are lots more like him. And what’s happening now is wrong. And as for your damn parrot fanciers [...]"

____

With respect to "we've had rulers", a bit from a previous book Men At Arms:

> "[...] He wielded the axe, you know. No-one else'd do it. It was a king's neck, after all. Kings are," he spat the word, "special. Even after they'd seen the... private rooms, and cleaned up the... bits. Even then. No-one'd clean up the world. But he took the axe and cursed them all and did it."

> "What king was it?" said Carrot.

> "Lorenzo the Kind," said Vimes, distantly.

> "I've seen his picture in the palace museum," said Carrot. "A fat old man. Surrounded by lots of children."

> "Oh yes," said Vimes, carefully. "He was very fond of children."

Yeah, I got that part. I took at face value that whatever the character's concerns were, they were legitimate. Even granting that much he still sounds silly, because he's trying to publish his findings at "the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society". Like I said, time and place. Of course it would not be welcome at such a venue; it's off-topic discussion. It would be like exposing a CP ring through a post in a programming forum. It'd just get your thread locked.

Trying to commandeer the attention of the attendees like that is simply disrespectful; it doesn't matter how important you think what you have to say is. Unless the building is on fire or there's an armed squad standing outside, whatever he had to say could have waited until the end, and whoever wanted to listen to it could have stuck around, and whoever didn't could leave.

> he's trying to publish his findings at "the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society". [...] Trying to commandeer the attention of the attendees like that is simply disrespectful;

Ah, I see the confusion, no, these are two people running an actual newspaper.

When the coworker says "this is a report" it's because they're holding it up in their hands to display it, as an example of something their average working-class reader might care more about than estoeric politics.

Alas, the 2-hour edit window is closed, but:

> She held up a piece of lined paper, crammed edge to edge with the careful looped handwriting of someone for whom holding a pen was not a familiar activity. "This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society," she said. "They're just ordinary people who breed canaries and things as a hobby. Their chairman lives next door to me, which is why he gave me this. This stuff is important to him! My goodness, but it's dull. It's all about Best of Breed and some changes in the rules about parrots which they argued about for two hours. But the people who were arguing were people who mostly spend their day mincing meat or sawing wood and basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They've got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren't lumped in with parrots. It's not their fault. It's just how things are. Why are you sitting there with your mouth open like that?"

Fair enough, then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com