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Jake

Idle Thumbs 131: Real Life

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I'm pretty sure it's being aggressively, sensitively sincere about things previously enjoyed only through ironic detachment.

 

Five years ago I could've sworn that the definition of hipster was someone who only enjoys things through ironic detachment if he admits to enjoying things at all. At this point I think the word's only universal meaning is trendy person I find annoying.

 

(Also they all use Ruby and node.js)

 

I enjoy how the Thumbs forum definition of hipster seems to focus on SF, as if Portland or Brooklyn or Lower Manhattan aren't also pegged as "hipster meccas" all the time and way too much. Seems to have contributed a specific software development flavor to their characterization.

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(I think that's just because she works in software. At least, I think I remember that being the case!)

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The only actual definition of hipster I've ever heard that made sense to me was "someone who makes you insecure about your own sense of whatever you consider cool". Because it explains why

 

  1. No one self-identifies as a hipster.
  2. Everyone hates hipsters.
  3. No one can agree on what they are.

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One of my best friends acknowledges he is a hipster and doesn't give a fuck and I mock him relentlessly for it.

 

The important thing to note about hipsters is that... they also hate hipsters.

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I was very careful to not offer an exclusive definition of what a hipster is for just that reason: no-one fucking knows what a hipster is anymore!

 

It used to be, back in the before times, hipsters were people who were busy sacrificing their financial security to do what they loved, and so they'd wear thrift store stuff because they were trying to look how they wanted on a limited budget. And then like fifteen years ago the posers started moving in from the emo subculture, so you had a collision between people whose only unifying feature was that they were true to themselves, and people who had spent no time building a self to be true to. Then something somewhere went horribly wrong, and the whole situation metastasized; if it turned out there was no subculture left and hipster just meant 'dresses funny' I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

 

I'm sure this episode of Idle Thumbs is marvellous.

 

's like goths in that respect.

 

Funnily, every single goth and emo I've met in real life has been a real stand-up person.

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I'm pretty sure it's being aggressively, sensitively sincere about things previously enjoyed only through ironic detachment.

This is a succint description of a thing I do.

Being a hipster can be awesome by the way.

I know because I am both a hipster and I'm awesome.

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Funnily, every single goth and emo I've met in real life has been a real stand-up person.

 

Having been a goth, I can tell you that the main measure of a "real" goth at the time was:

  • denial that they're a goth
  • weak chuckle when faced with the "where were you when we sacked Rome" joke 
  • surprisingly cheerful demeanor
  • knowledge of the lyrics to "This Corrosion" or http://www.achewood.com/?date=07062004 

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Speaking of Steam trading market: Dota 2 courier from early days sells for THIRTY-EIGHT GODDAMN THOUSAND DOLLARS

 

Valve also once hired a dedicated economist to study this stuff. He no longer works there, I believe, but I thought that was kind of amazing when I heard about it back then.

 

 

yeah, and he wrote a couple of cool blog posts about it, here and here. the second one is more about actual economics, i remember finding it interesting when i read it. it's recommended reading for anyone who cares about how the steam marketplace works, or rather how it's turned out

 

There is also an interview with him, in podcast format, at econtalk (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.html) if you are interested.

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What makes me sad about seeing people taking pictures of everything (food/sunsets/music concerts/google automobiles/themselves) with everything (phones/tablets/watches/google automobiles) is that those pictures eventually sit on some hard drive or server somewhere, and require power for that data to be written, and read, and stored, and eventually that's what we'll have left. The aliens will come down and see this dying husk of a world and think: "I wonder what this was like before this horrible virus of a species destroyed it"

 

Gleep: "I bet that this planet was rife with a civilization that lived and breathed and experienced and loved!"

Glorp: "We have their data storage mechanism! It is full of a record of what they did - oh wait, apparently there was a lot of sepia-toned fake-polaroid sunsets and boutique cupcakes" 

Gleep: (alien equivalent of frowning)

 

Guys, it's ok to take some photographs for rememberin' some stuff, but also let's make sure the ratio of Stuff Done and Experienced / Stuff Photographed is way, way larger than 1.  

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I wonder if the desire to commoditize our experiences is specific to our society or if it's inherently human.

Wait til we can live-stream and archive sleeping-dreams. It'll be pretty wild.

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A) I wonder, too. I wonder how you could go about testing this. I think that we, as a culture/society place too much value on taking and sharing photos and videos, and we put too much self worth into "likes" and "re-tweets" and "favorites," but when I write this down it makes me look and sound like a cartoon old man.

 

B) Great! Now instead of just having to sit through someone's boring explanation of their "crazy" dream, we're going to have to see a grainy weird video of it. I wonder if we'll ever be able to understand brain chemistry in a passive enough way to record thoughts and dreams. I have a feeling (hope?) that we're a long way off. 

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Guys, it's ok to take some photographs for rememberin' some stuff, but also let's make sure the ratio of Stuff Done and Experienced / Stuff Photographed is way, way larger than 1.  

 

I realized this myself when I lived in Greece for half a year and took over two thousand pictures that I have never once looked at again. I now never bother taking pictures of anything, unless it's going directly into a text for a friend. Mercifully, everyone else I know is obsessed with exhaustively documenting every moment of their life, so I still have about as many pictures on Facebook as the next person, they're just all other people's stuff that I'm tagged in.

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A) I wonder, too. I wonder how you could go about testing this. I think that we, as a culture/society place too much value on taking and sharing photos and videos, and we put too much self worth into "likes" and "re-tweets" and "favorites," but when I write this down it makes me look and sound like a cartoon old man.

Reputation within hierarchy and acceptance by our peers have always been important to humans. I think "likes", "re-tweets", and "favorites" are just extensions of smiles, high-fives, and laughter in a high-frequency response text-medium.

 

B) Great! Now instead of just having to sit through someone's boring explanation of their "crazy" dream, we're going to have to see a grainy weird video of it. I wonder if we'll ever be able to understand brain chemistry in a passive enough way to record thoughts and dreams. I have a feeling (hope?) that we're a long way off. 

 

 

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/

 

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I'd be pretty stoked if we could externally visualize dreams, cultural repercussions be damned.

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I spent a good part of my childhood convinced there existed a technology to capture the dying thoughts of a corpse, which mostly manifested in attempts to think chaste and positive thoughts whenever I felt my life was in danger.

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I spent a good parts of my childhood convinced there existed a technology to capture the dying thoughts of a corpse, which mostly manifested in attempts to think chaste and positive thoughts whenever I felt my life was in danger.

I bet you still do it to this day.

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Guys, it's ok to take some photographs for rememberin' some stuff, but also let's make sure the ratio of Stuff Done and Experienced / Stuff Photographed is way, way larger than 1.

I used to think this way, but now I see it as somewhat of a false dichotomy. Since I started regularly taking pictures of things, I find myself a lot more consciously realising that hey, this moment is great and worth remembering. The extra analysis loop of 'would this make a good photo' has the secondary effect (for me at least) of making me also continually take stock of things and gaining a greater appreciation of them than if I was just going on autopilot, as it were.

This is of course completely besides the social media thing which I frankly have very little interest in.

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I used to think this way, but now I see it as somewhat of a false dichotomy. Since I started regularly taking pictures of things, I find myself a lot more consciously realising that hey, this moment is great and worth remembering. The extra analysis loop of 'would this make a good photo' has the secondary effect (for me at least) of making me also continually take stock of things and gaining a greater appreciation of them than if I was just going on autopilot, as it were.This is of course completely besides the social media thing which I frankly have very little interest in.

that's a good point. Whatever gets your synapses firing.

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