The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their image. They might have an interesting angle on the story, or they might just be saying trivial things with beautiful prose. In any case, there is a lack of diversity in general -- discussions are driven by the worldview of a few.
That would be an argument for lurkers to make an effort, even if, like this comment, it's just a barely-formed idea.
Edit: "molding the discussion" -> "molding every discussion"
i started getting downvoted a lot. since then, i've become much more of a lurker and have remained logged-out.
to me it's obvious, and necessarily the case, that the conversation happening is not representative of my views because i'm not sharing them. it's not worth it to me to contribute to the conversation, and get embroiled in an accidental dispute.
my views are my own, and i don't need to spend a lot of time sharing them at other people in order to live a satisfied life.
the internet, like the real world before it, is not my own space... and to the extent that i exist in it, i'm happier going my own way and not encountering lame-o jerks.
But even without voting mechanisms, nasty replies are just as bad or worse, so the general trend of chasing off the people who see things a little differently seems pretty universal to me.
The most interesting point to me in TFA was the 99.8 - 0.2 - 0.0003 rate of lurkers, commenters, and prolific commenters. It's the 0.0003% who obsessively comment (or edit or play games or whatever) all day on anything and everything that I don't understand. I actually think 'insane' is not an unfair commentary on their behavior. They very often drown out the 0.2% who participate but not obsessively, and are often rewarded with special recognition and even 'untouchable' status on various sites.
It's tough to get lurkers (like me) to speak up and shift the discussion when the emotional cost of doing so - arguing, being downvoted, getting defensive, being ridiculed - seems to make the effort simply not worthwhile for the individual. Not only on the web, but also in the office, at Thanksgiving dinner, at a cookout, etc.
One of the examples in the post, Ninja, reportedly earns $500,000 per month for that twelve hours a day of streaming. So.
Indeed it does. And the "insane" label to the engaged is even more apt there.
Are you saying that internet commenters have a monolith "worldview" that could be referred to as "the worldview of a few"? I'm not saying you're saying this, but that's what I read.
Inequality comes from nature, wether it's wealth or contribution on Reddit like sites.
the 98% works in that case too: there are many people who might benefit from your comments but don't interact in any way, so you sometimes may deem the costs worth it (like now).
some people (1) have a compulsion to speak, (2) don't feel as much cost from (online) admonishment, and (3) have enough wherewithal to experiment with ideas and presentational approaches. (i'm sure there are other qualities, but these are some).
on another tangent, social cohesion requires that a certain number of people incur the social costs of calling out bad behavior. that seemingly tends to be power law too, since the number of people who don't mind the social costs are quite low. even many law enforcement officers (whose very job it is) care a lot about what other people think and won't always act against self interests when necessary.
In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking advice from them. This means entertainment shapes the viewer-listener's interpretation of reality to better fit the model of reality to which storytellers subscribe, but I'm pretty sure that's not a desirable outcome in the long run.
In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said we only ever tell young people about the good parts of marriage. We hardly ever explain to them that it has its ups and downs, that it isn't "broken" if suddenly the lust isn't there like it was in the beginning. She presented the argument in a much more cogent manner, but in any case, if you believe her to be right, then this seems like a specific (important!) example of this broader trend.
There are countless others out there who go on to live perfectly happy lives with perhaps much more useful advice to us, and who would arguably be a better influence overall – you just don't hear about them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-...
We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...
Are we sure it's any different for other topics?
Also, as for media and marriage I feel like more media is about bad marriages than good ones. A common theme might be falling in love and getting married but a movie about people already married seems rarely about things going well. Or maybe I just have a selective memory.
There are lot of confounding variables, though. Sex could be down because both men and women have to join the workforce, people live with {their parents for longer, with roommates} because rent is expensive, technology lets parents keep tabs on kids better, etc.
EDIT (to reflect your edit, I believe):
> Also, as for media and marriage I feel like more media is about bad marriages than good ones.
I think that's exactly her point. We only ever talk about "falling in love" and "break up". How many songs can you think of that talk about a resilient relationship? Better yet, how many songs can you think of that talk about a relationship in the past tense and say it was great?
I was thinking about this yesterday. An interesting project would be to filter every top 100 song in the past century for love songs, then look at how many stories are predominantly in the past vs. future tense, and then how many of those say good vs. bad things about the other person in the relationship. My hypothesis is there's most forward-looking of those songs talk about the wonders of love, and the past-looking songs talk about how shitty the relationship was and how they're glad it's over.
Extra credits for whoever buckets the data by decade to see if the trend has shifted.
No. I'm saying that each person has a worldview, which is the aggregate of their life experience. If a small set of people drive most discussions, then the discussions are (mostly) a reflection of their perspective only. Maybe these perspectives are diverse enough, but it's hard to know.
Me too, I suppose.
This has not been my observation, at all.
It still amazes me how deeply titles shape discussion. Most of what you read on the internet is by insane people reacting to titles.
There has been a transition from culture being produced by members of one's community/village/family to culture being produced by professionals for money.
Stories and songs of the past were just as unbalanced and insane as stories and songs of the present. (Both in terms of being fantastical and showing only one side of complex emotional situations.) People grounded in the reality of making living things grow, keeping animals alive, and fixing their own houses and equipment most often understood those stories for what they were. What magic such people believed in was often closely tied to feelings of belonging and community. Gatherings of people often have such magic feelings, but this is quite a real phenomena of human social organization.
Now, there is less of such intense community, and we are bombarded by more commercially produced culture than we could possibly consume, made by people who often live lives of exaggerated imbalance, enabled by what our ancestors would have considered the phenomenal wealth of modern resources. What's more, so much of what we're given as non-fiction also fits into this model by varying degrees.
When Rome's military went from citizen soldiers to full time specialist professionals, the misalignment of incentives between the specialists and the citizens was the subtle, long term root of many problems. I think there is such a misalignment with how human civilizations in general produce culture.
I think this phenomenon may be a "Great Filter" answer to the Fermi paradox. We might not only be swallowed up by Virtual Reality, but also by the purely mental constructs of our own fantastical narratives, as we abandon more and more of the creature connections with nature which keep us grounded in reality.
(Plato. Cave. Shadows.)
That’s why if you want to be informed about the world you shouldn’t watch the news and just read books.
This thought often crosses my mind in particular when I consume media that is more 'psychological' in nature. Much of the time I can't shake the feeling that no matter how convincing the characters and their 'inner life' is presented, we're still ultimately seeing a projection of the writer themselves.
Sometimes I notice how certain characters seem richer than others, and usually these characters are obviously closer to the writer's own life. Perhaps this is why slice-of-life shows seem to do well (Atlanta, Better Things, Louie), because they're just the writers writing about themselves.
Or when I read a Dostoevski novel, I can't help but wonder how much of these character's inner lives are really just thinly-veiled versions of Dostoevski's (and, considering my love for his novels, probably my thoughts are 'compatible' with his).
What makes all this worse or more complicated though is that especially for television as a media, there are all sorts of pretty serious constraints. A show needs cliffhangers, ideally every episode, and at least every season, and unless you're on Netflix, you need mini-cliffhangers before every ad block. I imagine that's got to have some significant effect on the story.
I rather like this article by David Foster Wallace that sort-of goes into all of this: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction).
The content is there, by lesser known figures and lurkers alike. It’s just hard to discover. You need to stumble upon it by accident, instead of by a deliberate process like consuming the top upvoted posts.
There are a couple of other steps beyond the actors/producers usually, particularly for mass media -- there are the owners, or funders who ultimately choose what becomes mainstream; and there's the use of psychological manipulation (advertising, marketing) to direct them to "want" (or accept) what is offered.
There has to be accounting for vagaries and fashions of the time but with those constraints those deciding the parameters for which productions are funded wield immense power.
In more controlled, personal settings my favorite response along that vein is "what factors did you consider that led to your conclusion?" It's a less offensive, more roundabout way of telling someone that their assertion is questionable that also betrays their thought process.
I think this is less because most of us are 'sheeple' and more to do with how we have some (huge) low-level bugs that can be exploited in particular configurations. We care, but our heuristics can steer us wrong. Marketing/PR/propaganda as a way to exploit these things, and the scientific study of these things really kind of scare the crap out of me when it comes to my hope for the future of humanity.
I always wondered why USA places so much focus on the Presidents wife? I'm not an American but I know more American leaders wives than I know spouses for all other country leaders together... Isn't that insane? I've never heard anyone talk about spouses of leaders in other countries. Do you know who Merkels husband is? Did you ever hear about David Cameron's wife?
So who is pushing that story? Why is Michelle still in the spotlight? Why was she ever in the spotlight? Why does anyone cares what she thinks?
Note, I didn't say that everything professional culture generators produced was fundamentally wrong and poisonous and would instantly result in your mental and spiritual death.
Those who actively pursue the role do a good job of staying in the limelight. For example, Michelle spearheaded a number of projects like her shift to require more nutritional school lunches.
It's an interesting position, and I wonder how things will be for the first first husband, if it happens and it's not Bill.
At the risk of sounding ignorant, do most other countries require their president-equivalent to live in a government building? If not, perhaps that’s a contributing factor?
Agree, to the extent that we consume that media for purposes other than entertainment. I would argue that most of what entertains us is created by "insane" people, and that's ok. Same about art.
This is actually why disinformation works so well. Many people are consumers. A handful of people create content. Everyone has an expected behavior in a rather fragile system. If an organized group comes in and acts in a way that is outside of the system norms, they can very much control the dialog.
I did a project on this during my Masters. [1] Reddit has an option to display your upvotes and downvotes publicly. About 2% of users have this option enabled. I scraped a random sample that I found from the torrent of all Reddit posts and comments. I looked at pairs from that set that shared common votes and the highest pair was from /r/the_donald. This behavior is what allowed it dominate the front page for so long. When most users are just voting on 1 or 2 things per page, and someone else comes along and votes for every post they see, it can greatly affect what is displayed.
When you have a small set of people controlling a conversation, they can manipulate what a huge number of people consume. Social media is an incredibly effective propaganda machine!
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/82ylpv/_/d...
On the other hand part of the reason he seemed like such an outlier might be because the consensus he seemed to deviate from was itself driven by outliers.
It also helps that she wrote a #1 NY Times best-seller that everyone is talking about[0]. Maybe if you read it you will understand what makes her so special.
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⁰ https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Michelle-Obama-ebook/dp/B079...
I stopped using reddit because of this. I've no idea about the credibility of the authors, their intentions and their motivation. When I'm listening to someone's opinion, I'd like to know more about them, so I can decide for myself how seriously to take it.
As a counter-example, I find the "editor's picks" comments on some New York Times articles to be high quality and quite diverse. But that model, of course, doesn't scale.
In terms of fostering discussion, the comment voting is a silent killer.
Perhaps this is why poets are to be banished in The Republic.
???
This is the thing though, books are media too.
Also published for clickbait-y reasons.
It sounds like everyone's out suggesting methods for people to avoid using their critical thinking skills. There's no way around it, if you consume media, ANY media, you have to consume it with an almost deeply skeptical eye nowadays. It's just the world we live in, everything from music to books, and from video games to news paper articles, is riddled with bias. Using your head in such an environment is unavoidable, assuming you wish to take wise and measured actions based on the state of the world around you. If wisdom is the goal, reading books, or watching Al Jazeera is just no substitute for exercising your brain cells.
I refuse to believe that you honestly believe that.
54-year-old black women from the South Side of Chicago who go to Princeton occasionally get an interview in a local magazine and enjoy fifteen minutes of something that if you squint might pass for fame. If they fight a high-profile court case, they may get a two-paragraph Wikipedia article without a photo. To go further they need to become federal judges, or achieve a comparably prestigious position.
Women who marry a President of the United States automatically get on the cover of national magazines and have their Wikipedia page protected from non-logged in editors. If they're accomplished and eloquent as well, sure, that's a bonus.
Humans absolutely require a narrative surrounding anything with which they consider themselves associated with. It’s vastly superior to that being one provided by you versus one invented for use by those who know you.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-...
I have certainly seen this shift in culture creation to professionals within Christian communities in the US. The modern megachurches (2000+ attendees) are rather different culturally from the small community churches of the past (~150-200 members). The shift has coincided with increased political polarization (e.g., Jerry Falwell and his relatively early megachurch) and personal isolation.
So the news you read isn't necessarily the most accurate take (you could argue it's almost never the most accurate take), and there is often a tremendous amount of bias that most people never know exists. A disproportionate number of stories come from a small but motivated group with an agenda. Those with no agenda don't care as much about getting their perspectives distributed
This isn't a novel observation, but i still think most people take news at face value more often than they should.
I think it's also a good example of why it's important to make your voice heard, even if it's as simple as commenting on Reddit / HN. Having informed public discussions requires that informed but disinterested (i.e. unbiased) parties make their voices heard.
Every once in a while I imagine something anxiety inducing about them, or catch a glimpse(and more often than not a positive one) in the automatic reply emails Reddit likes to send me. Sometimes I will look back at the thread, if I really want to know.
But I don't use these platforms to converse, even though I will happily make a reply to an existing thread. They are both too fast and too slow to be conversational. I use comment threads as a writing prompt instead, and by ignoring external feedback I don't experience pain from them, even though some of the time this might result in someone asking me something and never hearing a reply. If my idea is good, someone copies it and I see it in a later thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Brewer
Really? I'd guess that most past-looking songs take a more mournful angle than an angry one (especially in the past century, what with the various wars), although that could just have to do with my sampling bias.
> I refuse to believe that you honestly believe that.
I'm offering one explanation for why she is more in the spotlight than the wives of foreign presidents. I didn't say being married to Obama wasn't a factor in her popularity. Read again.
"Riddled with bias" doesn't make sense to me. Any book - one about maths, as much as one about the world - is written from a point of view. This is the "bias" that phrases like "riddled with bias" seem to suggest can - and should be - completely eradicated. But the decision what to include in a book, what to exclude, for example, is a personal one. (It's why committees have a bad name.) All we know of the world is how it appears to 'biased' individuals. There's no eliminating the human factor, and the desire to do so seems to me futile and misconceived.
"...every mind has a new compass, a new north, a new direction of its own, differencing its genius and aim from every other mind; as every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character. Whilst he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him in a new path, and, the more it is trusted, separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call this specialty the bias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. ...A point of education that I can never too much insist upon is this tenet, that every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and that it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path, with more or less variation from any other man’s. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it; learns to be at home with himself; learns to watch the delicate hints and insights that come to him, and to have the entire assurance of his own mind. And in this self-respect, or hearkening to the privatest oracle, he consults his ease, I may say, or need never be at a loss. In morals this is conscience; in intellect, genius; in practice, talent; not to imitate or surpass a particular man in his way, but to bring out your own new way; to each his own method, style, wit, eloquence." - Emerson, Greatness
This outlook is alien to me. I'm quite the opposite; I'm happy reading and judging anonymous comments purely on the strength of the argument being made there and then (although I don't ignore the background and history of a commenter when that is available to me).
Not attacking your point of view; just very interesting to see an approach described so different to mine.
She was almost as much part of the Obama presidential image as her husband.
That ain’t peanuts.
The point is: the hurdle to contribute or even create is quite high, no matter if it's on the internet or in the "real world".
Stackoverflow is not a magic community, they have guidelines otherwise their content won't work so well. Same goes for Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, either you know how these sites work and what is expected or your content gets downvoted and eventually removed. Even HN works like this.
So yes, then there is a small percentage of users that took the hurdle to internalize how things work. It's much easier actually when you do it regularly. In fact I used to be Wikipedia contributor but I gave it up because it's time consuming and frustrating. If you're not a frequent user, you can correct orthographic errors, anything else is pointless unless you're a writing genius/journalist.
Nobody ever complains how insane they are working 10+ hours a day for an unstable job and oftentimes bad salary.
The author's definition of insane is stuff such as having read a lot of books, posting a high mumber of edits in wikipedia, or streaming videogaming for a profit.
That's not clickbaity. It's simply wrong.
Focusing on the most arguable assertion, the wikipedia user who has on average an edit per 4 minutes for pretty much the last decade. Based on my personal experience, it's very easy to reach that sort of rate due to wikipedia's auto-edit features, as it only takes a single click on a link to submit an edit.
For example, you can revert a vandalism submission by clicking the revert link, you can mark an article as stub by clicking on a link, you can add a post to a category by clicking on a link... You can even post a warning on a user page by clicking on a link. Each of these actions count as an edit.
This means that if you happen to stumble on a user who posted a joke on a set of articles, in the half minute it takes to revert all vandalism submissions and warn the user to not repeat that you will contribute tens of edits, which can give you easily a rate of 100 edits per minute.
Does that count as insane?
I only look through the post history of someone if I feel they have a particularly interesting outlook, or if they're batshit crazy and I'm a bit bored.