Notices by Passenger (passenger@kolektiva.social)

@hakan_geijer

One might answer your point about "not sure where you're going" by pointing to a lot of subcultures which are slowly dying out because they're not attracting enough new people to replace the slow dropoff to inactivity of the older people. They never quite go away but they drop below the threshold to have viable social spaces.

This would probably also be true in a better non-capitalist world! Society changes and people move on from things. Even in an ideal anarchist society the kids will still want to invent new stuff that their parents aren't into.

My experience is that a thriving growing group is one that's being constantly flooded by new people, and a healthy group is one that does that while retaining existing people, both by preventing burnout and by removing missing steps and abusers. A non-thriving group doesn't have as many new people coming in, which paradoxically means that the average experience of its members rises and they get better at the thing that they do.

I think this is where a lot of the superiority complex comes from: "we unicyclists are far better at unicycling than the aerials people are at aerials, why is it that our spaces aren't doing well and theirs are?" This in turn leads to policing and hypervigilance and many other shitty behaviours that make it even worse.

But of course capitalism complicates this by treating every subculture both as a market to be sold to and also as a product that can be sold to others.

Is that where you were going?

@hakan_geijer @abolisyonista

The point about overlapping subculture in-references and how they affect gatekeeping and the sense of belonging. I'm going to have to think about that more.

I'll check out Clowncore, thanks for the rec.

@hakan_geijer @abolisyonista

Don't see it, it's not good. Spielberg knows how to make movies, but even the best director can only work with what they're given.

I really like your point about siloed subcultures, each unable to understand that they're in competition with one another. It immediately makes me think of meme crossovers, those ones where you have a meme that references (for example) both Warhammer 40,000 and My Little Pony, or whatever. Those crossovers often, if they're done well, become the most popular memes.

This makes me think of musical crossovers, the way classical nerds and metal nerds both get really hyped about crossing over with one another, but nobody likes it when jazz nerds do the same.

I haven't considered this point properly. If you have then I'd love to hear your thoughts.

@hakan_geijer @abolisyonista

Yeah that's a good point.

In the specific case of Ready Player One, I think there's an aspect of conquest there. A book aimed at "our" subculture being made into a movie is good because it shows that "our" subculture is getting some notice. That book being made into a huge Hollywood movie directed by the biggest-name film superstar director of all time, proves that "we" won the culture war. "Our" subculture has conquered the mainstream.

Critically, though, it's still a subculture. A lot of nerds got really annoyed by the way that the Marvel superhero movies invited everyone in and made superheroes just another part of the mainstream. Superhero movies weren't just for "us" any more. By contrast, Ready Player One is very definitely not trying to invite everyone in. It remains a subculture film, just one that elevates that subculture above the mainstream.

I hadn't considered it before, but I wonder if this means that the reference-heavy nature of Ready Player One can be understood as gatekeeping to prevent absorption by the mainstream? A gamergate sort of thing?

@philip_cardella @mekkaokereke

While I am proud, as an IWW member, that we were always a union with no race bar and gender bar, I am sad that that is something to be proud of.

@AnthonyJK

There's a South African joke about a guy who fights off a dog that's attacking a little girl. A local journalist interviews the hero and he confesses that he's Zimbabwean.

The next day the news headline reads: "ZIMBABWEAN IMMIGRANT KILLS LITTLE GIRL'S PET IN FRONT OF HER EYES."

@AnthonyJK

Here in the UK, the fash have been talking about it as "wokeness and diversity caused the ship to go astray."

These fash commentators have a weird job: they have to take current events and force them into their preexisting talking points, no matter what happened. It's the perfect job for people who want to exercise great implementation creativity while avoiding any conceptual creativity at all.

@ned

The word "purple" comes from the ancient Greek "porphura", referring to Tyrian dye, which is what we would today call "red." (It's roughly #990024.) The word has sometimes also been used to describe arterial blood, which is also usually considered red.

Basically, we've been confusing the two colours for as long as those words have existed.

@Adam_Cadmon1

Interestingly, there has been some research on this. Among suburban people in the UK, satisfaction ratings with the cops are significantly lower after an encounter with them than before. (The only public service of which this is true.) This suggests to me that people love the fantasy of narcing on their neighbours, but then are disappointed in the result.

@aral

Denial is, after all, a common response to powerlessness.

@hakan_geijer

I'm phobic of dogs but I do feel the call of the second part.

@simulatedchollas

Same liberal: "The Democrat Party shouldn't listen to leftists. Who else are they going to vote for, Republicans?"

@dalfen @aral @noondlyt

I remember when Microstrategy, a then-respected analytics company that made one of the best data visualisation packages at the time, decided to go all-in on bitcoin. When the fad collapsed, it almost wiped them out, and very few analytics people take Microstrategy seriously any more.

Large companies like IBM or Facebook can get away with going in on bad tech. IBM bet heavily on blockchain and Facebook bet heavily on metaverse. Both survived the experience. Likewise, Microsoft will probably survive their bet on LLMs. Mozilla might not.

This is a problem because the world might not have needed Microstrategy, IMHO it does need Mozilla. Allowing Tableau to dominate doesn't harm the web itself; allowing Chrome to dominate does.

@hakan_geijer

Honestly sometimes it's nice to spend time in the aesthetics of a world which is fallen, and doesn't have anyone responding to that fall with denial or palingenesis.

@AnthonyJK @timo21 @scottsantens

Remember that the American concept of "Protestant work ethic" is racist. It was made up to blame poor recent-immigrant Irish, Poles and Italians (who are mostly Catholic rather than Protestant) for their own poverty.

@girlonthenet

Someone who will betray others for you will betray you for others.

@futurebird

Anti-intellectual is indeed not the same as stupid, far from it. I think a lot of people miss that anti-intellectualism is very common in tech circles, where it takes the form of contempt for the humanities and a worship of (rather than understanding of) science.

"We've solved human civilisation!" they say, ignoring the writers who tackled the problem centuries before and warned them of the mistakes they're making.

"We've built a machine god!" they say, ignoring the researchers who understand the thing well enough to explain to them that no, they haven't.

I've noticed that a lot of this sort of tech person is also a fan of Trump (or his equivalents in other countries.)

@Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs

Tesla?

@Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs

Tesla Motors is a car company. It makes cars with a notably poor build quality which have doors that don't open, windows that don't seal, and batteries which set themselves on fire.

I am attempting to generate humour by implying that Tesla's cars fit the pattern that was identified above.

@Salty @KimSJ @srtcd424 @thomasfuchs

I have. A girlfriend, back when I was a kid, was obsessed with that movie (even though we were too young to watch it.) It's a good movie although I think it's irresponsible in how easily it allows itself to be misinterpreted.