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Comment by ryguytilidie | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the time my wife's mother was very sick with cancer and we were at dinner and her dad was texting her updates. One time we happened to be at dinner and he sent her some messages so they were texting back and forth for 2-3m. During this time, the older gentleman at the table next to us actually says excuse me, can you get off your phone? You kids always being on your phone is getting really old. Because, you know, at 31, I personally embody ALL kids.

I guess maybe the moral of the story for me is that we would probably be happier people if we weren't fretting about a harmless thing people were doing and instead focused on our own happiness. Maybe instead of sitting there getting grumpy that a stranger was looking at a screen this guy could have just had a conversation with the person at his table? Maybe its time for people to stop throwing a fit about things other people are doing and maybe that would make us all a bit happier.

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This is a terrible comment, and I want to explain why. It subtly changes the subject.

It's not about what others think of your technology use. It's what you think about it yourself. The reason many of us feel moved by the article and the video isn't some need to tell others what to do, it's the recognition that we ourselves are missing out on important parts of life in some kind of weird attempt to become a TV reporter.

So sure, for the .1% time that you're texting your sick wife with cancer and she's able to vicariously experience things, you are probably feeling pretty good about what you're doing. Now how about the other 99.9% of the time? Do you personally feel that all that tech use is in the interests of some greater good? If so, have fun with it. After watching my own habits, I am very doubtful that this is true. I see people all the time use tech in such a way that's directly opposed to their own best interests -- and they're smart enough to realize this, too. The problem isn't my judging them -- heck I don't care what people do -- it's that we're turning into a society that's spending significant time doing things that we don't want to do. They just give a bit of immediate gratification.

This is a terrible comment and I want to explain why. It uses hyperbolic language in an aggressive manner far out of proportion to content of the comment it is replying to.

Youtube comments are generally terrible. Stormfront comments are terrible. 4Chan comments can be terrible. This comment had content directly related to article it was replying to, talking about the utility this technology can provide, and also that the main thrust of the article and the video it contains seems to be someone else's value judgement on what other people should enjoy.

So sure, for the .1% of the time that a comment on this site is actually derailing or contains just blatant flamebait, trolling, attacks, etc it probably feels pretty good to call it out as terrible. But for the other 99.9% of the time? Have some perspective, grapple with the content of the comment, and do so in a non-aggressive manner entirely in proportion to what you are replying to. Don't go for the over the top hyperbole, no matter how much immediate gratification it gives you.

But he got to insult a stranger on the internet. How else is someone supposed to build their self esteem?? :(

Good grief. Just to be clear, no disrespect to the commenter was intended or made. The comment itself was bad, because it took a wonderful personal story and used it to derail the attempt by the larger group to analyze the topic. Good people can make bad comments. I do it all the time. Most of the time I try to self-identify such comments by prefixing them with "sidebar" "meta" or another tag.

Yep, it is not disrespectful in any way to call someone's point stupid and use your own incorrect projections as a way of doing so. Maybe the next time you think "I'm going to make a helpful comment on the internet" just go sit in the corner and don't bother the people who are actually having a useful adult discussion that involves facts versus baseless, passive aggressive projected insults. I genuinely feel like you would have contributed more to society by just sleeping in today...

Maybe 'bad' is not the best description for getting your point across in this case. I feel that the two of you understand differently what you tried to say.. 'bad' is quite emotionally charged for some (for someone it's directed at) and can distract from the discussion for this reason, and I think there are adjectives that do a similar enough job without this while still explaining what happens here from your point of view.

wrong. the article is very much about one person (an assertive type-a sociopath) imposing what they think of technology on others:

> A few weeks ago, while out with some friends, I took everyone’s phone and powered them off for the night, saying that we were going to focus on the night rather than our “stupid fucking phones.”

> Next time you’re in a restaurant with friends, have everyone put their phones stacked and face down in the center of the table. If anyone takes their phone off of the stack during the meal, they have to pay everyone else’s bill.

Huh? I didn't say that my wife is on the phone any non healthy amount of time. She was on the phone for a short period of time for a very good reason and someone lacked the mental health and self awareness to think "maybe me butting in and lecturing two strangers eating dinner IS more rude than someone being on their cell phone." Normally our usage is completely fine and not a problem, so during all of this, I never had a problem with our usage and only some old stranger did. This is a problem.

The fact that you called my point a terrible point and projected that I must be "turning into a society that's spending significant time doing things that we don't want to do." when you don't know me at all is a pretty scary lack of self awareness. Your entire point is rock bottom terrible and you STILL start off by telling someone else that their point sucks. I don't even know why I bothered to respond because you don't seem even slightly interested in your argument connecting to the actual reality at hand and instead construct it to argue against a strawman version of our society you've built.

"So sure, for the .1% time that you're texting your sick wife with cancer and she's able to vicariously experience things, you are probably feeling pretty good about what you're doing. Now how about the other 99.9% of the time?"

Is the implication here that I must only be using my cell to waste time and drive myself into some sort of deep depression while being too stupid to realize it? Well finally the internet messiah came along to save me! Anyway, my call very certainly saves me time when I use it and I only use it when I need to. I'm not sure why I've become the example when I presume my habits must not be known to you?

"... I never had a problem with our usage and only some old stranger did. This is a problem..."

This is a problem, sure. But it's not related to people themselves using their phones and being unhappy with their usage.

The comment was bad because it took a discussion around whether we are ourselves with our tech use and turned it into some kind of reminiscence about annoying mentally unhealthy people. That's a great story, but it has nothing at all to do with what this article is about.

If you and your wife are happy about your tech use, good for you. If there are rude people in the world, that's a shame. Okay. Got it. Now can we move on to the subject of the article, which is something along the lines of "are we really happy with our own tech use?"

Or we could continue talking about how rude the guy at the restaurant was, how rude I am, how people are always nosing into other people's business -- and a dozen other things not related to that. As long as you realize you're changing the topic, works for me.

There's going to be a very big adverse selection effect on the comments to this story anyway, because anyone who has a healthy relationship to technology is going to think "Eh, it's not worth my time to participate in the debate and get worked up over something generally inconsequential to my life."

I thought about reading through the comments here and participating, but I'm going out for a walk with my family instead.

OP here, that's a great idea :D

"Your point, as I understand it, is that since there is one good use case for texting while eating, we should not discourage people from texting while eating in general. That is pretty clear from your post."

I don't think you should discourage anyone from doing this because you don't know what you're talking about.

"The comment was bad because it took a discussion around whether we are ourselves with our tech use and turned it into some kind of reminiscence about annoying mentally unhealthy people. That's a great story, but it has nothing at all to do with what this article is about."

No actually the story pretty much reads like a "I'm sick of these damned kids doing this thing I don't like! I don't understand it and therefore it is evil!" story and assumes that every single time someone uses their phone at dinner they are terribly unhappy and socially unhealthy. My point was simply that he is wrong. There are many completely acceptable uses and sitting there watching someone do something productive or useful on their phone and thinking "this is upsetting! I need to stop this!" really reverses the role of who actually has the problem with unhappiness here.

"If you and your wife are happy about your tech use, good for you. If there are rude people in the world, that's a shame. Okay. Got it. Now can we move on to the subject of the article, which is something along the lines of "are we really happy with our own tech use?""

Um, yeah, my answer was simply. We are happy with our tech use but multiple people want to push a belief on us that we are not happy for no reason. This again seems much less mentally healthy to me.

"Or we could continue talking about how rude the guy at the restaurant was, how rude I am, how people are always nosing into other people's business -- and a dozen other things not related to that. As long as you realize you're changing the topic, works for me."

Whereas you being rude while being 100% disconnected from the topic in any way while twisting my words to the point they couldn't be recognized. Finally the messiah has come to save us all from our own stupidity right?

> " There are many completely acceptable uses"

This article is about being on your phone putting your eyes on advertisements put out by facebook, buzzfeed, etc. because you need to be constantly entertained. It's an encouragement to people who are in that situation to stop doing it.

If you're not in that situation, proclaiming that you're not in that situation and that maybe other people aren't in that situation is a useless comment. It's simply not relevant to the discussion. It's like coming in to a discussion about Hulu and Netflix and telling everyone that you only watch live sports on broadcast TV. What's the point?

[EDIT: P.S. you're not, by any chance, Ryguy from Rangers blue squad?]

The story you've laid out isn't the problem. The problem is when you are at lunch with someone and instead of conversing with you they are on their phone (in your example this is justifiable but I'm guessing most people aren't getting important updates - they're texting, or checking Twitter). It's rude (I don't think anyone can deny that). The person at the next table shouldn't give a shit - it's nothing to do with him. But I can be pissed off. In this example I care about what someone else is doing because it is directly negatively effecting me. I'm at lunch with them to talk and eat with them and they are ignoring me. It would be the same if you went out to lunch with someone 20 years ago and instead of talking to you they took out a notebook and started writing, or they simply stared out the window and completely ignored you.

Still not... Thinking is expensive... The problem is an economy one... You are basically consuming instead of creating... So the term "Zombie" I think is accurate, this is the new religion, the way of getting people think away of your first and main problem in life... life it's finite, what should you do to make it worth it. There are several things here, according to [1] getting people from just fit to society to have a character, and this is mine: to have an idea of life requires a process of evaluating and suffer, this is both expensive and not pleasant, and we are machines of pleasure. Just think about twitter... how many totally articulated ideas you can get on the tipical facebook post size? now shrink it to 140 chars... substract the space for hashes and you get vomited something someone else said.... No discussion, no food for your brain. Of course you may agree with this with inversely proportional occurrence to this statement to how much you like to analyze things...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration

btw, as much as I hate to think this, HN is our FB. I'm not answering or working on the answer to the question, what great thing should I do with my life here... just the small immediate gratification...

it's not just about the cell facebookers

I think you and the article raise some good points. I guess I'm vain enough to think that when I take someone out to lunch I expect at least the majority of their attention. I won't fault them for replying to a text. But if you're browsing Twitter/Facebook/whatever while I'm trying to have a conversation with you, I'd naturally be annoyed as I think anyone would. Wouldn't you? I'm surprised that the older gentleman would say something, though.

I agree with you but "if you're browsing Twitter/Facebook/whatever while I'm trying to have a conversation with you, I'd naturally be annoyed as I think anyone would" just isn't relevant to the situation at hand. One of my main problems with the article is that the author projects the "this person must just be browsing twitter/fb and getting ZERO VALUE FROM ANYTHING THEY ARE DOING AND MUST BE UNHAPPY". Why does the possibility of this even enter the authors mind, let alone turn into a certainty?

Another great example of someone on HN trying to be the smartest most critical person in the room. You totally missed the point of the article.

Huh? I think if you really want to make the "smartest most critical person in the room" argument, it might be for the guy who snarkily told off someone using their phone while their mom had cancer. But yeah, you're totally right, its not him, its me for even daring to propose that, hey, maybe instead of another rant on these damned kids using their cellphones, just stfu and let people do their thing. The constant judging while having no idea wtf you're talking about (your post here is a case in point) is getting really old. But I'll let you get back to, you know, putting down someone elses point in an attempt to feel like the smartest most critical person in the room. :)

The author of the article is supposing that those incessantly using their phone are brainless zombies, preferring their phone to the lives around them. They didn't miss the point of the article, but rather, provided a great counterpoint.

Is anything ever "bad" for you? Even the worst thing can occasionally produce a positive outcome, by your logic we should leave them all alone just in case.

I don't even understand what you're trying to get at here. Because I believe that it is inappropriate for someone to interrupt other people's dinner because one person is using their cell phone I must:

A) Think that NOTHING is bad. B) We should leave everyone alone, even if they are doing the worst thing.

Do you want to just start over with this point maybe? Seems like you maybe didn't think at all before making it the first time so I thought you might want another shot.

>Do you want to just start over with this point maybe? Seems like you maybe didn't think at all before making it the first time

Thanks for being rude.

Your point, as I understand it, is that since there is one good use case for texting while eating, we should not discourage people from texting while eating in general. That is pretty clear from your post.

My counter point is that there are many things that have one good use, but are still bad overall. Following your logic, we should not discourage those things either, at least if we wanted to stay consistent in our application of logic. Considering that even most bad things have occasional positive side-effect, and following your logic we would end up not discouraging anything ever. Clearly that is not a desirable outcome, therefore I think your logic is flawed.

If you think I was being rude and you were not, there is simply no helping you.

Nope. My point is that when you see someone texting or on their cell. YOU DONT KNOW WHY THEY ARE DOING IT. Projecting a "they must be wasting their time, UGH I'm surrounded by brainless zombies" is utterly insane. My point is that instead of freaking out at people around you using their cellphones, maybe just don't freak out and project actions and emotions on people and mind your own business.

How you took this to mean "you think nothing is ever wrong" is well beyond any stupidity I am able to comprehend. Sorry if that was rude, but it is also true unfortunately.

You're the only person who talks about interrupting strangers, as the author of the article has only suggested interrupting friends, and only close ones at that.

Which can mean nothing but "I see nothing as bad". Perhaps just hold your hands up and say "yeah, I'm wrong, stupid point, nevermind" versus continuing to argue no matter how wrong you are. It's like a modern day disease. Complete inability to admit you're wrong to strangers on the internet after you attempted to be an asshole for no reason. Congratulations I hope you're able to continue making yourself happy this way.

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