#internet culture

From: Michael@cursor.so To: Kait Subject: Here to help

Hi Kaitlyn,

I saw that you tried to sign up for Cursor Pro but didn't end up upgrading.

Did you run into an issue or did you have a question? Here to help.

Best,

Michael

From: Kait To: Michael@cursor.so Subject: Re: Here to help

Hi,

Cursor wound up spitting out code with some bugs, which it a) wasn't great at finding, and b) chewed up all my credits failing to fix them. I had much better luck with a different tool (slower, but more methodical), so I went with that.

Also, creepy telemetry is creepy.

All the best,

Kait

I don’t know that we as a society are prepared for celebrity deaths at the rate they’ll soon come. The explosion of pop culture in the 80s/90s (literally cable TV at least doubled the number of people we consider “famous”) + the boomer cohort aging could mean multiple “names” a week.

“[Random AI] defines ...” has already started to replace “Webster’s defines ...” as the worst lede for stories and presentations.

It’s probably the most standard Twitter profile text outside of ostensibly nubile 22-year-olds who are “just looking for a guy to treat me right” — “Retweets are not endorsements.” Journalists, who are among the more active Twitternauts, like to pretend they exist outside of normal human functioning like judgment and subjectivity, and thus use this phrase to let everyone know that just because they put something on their personal (or corporate-personal) account, it doesn’t mean THEY actually think that thing. They’re just letting you know. It’s FYI.

It’s bullshit.

This is the ignore-the-obvious-fiscal-advantage argument that’s given whenever people wonder why the media focuses on inane, unimportant or crazy stories that even most journalists are sick of — sometimes even on air. We know that you posted the story about the celebrity because people will click on the link about the celebrity. It’s why the concept of clickbait headlines exist: it’s certainly not for the reader’s benefit. Journalists have ready-made reasons (read: excuses) as to why they post tripe, and the closest they ever get to the truth is “because people will read them.” . They’re just trying to inform people!

With the democratization of communication accelerated by the internet, “major media” no longer holds any meaningful gate-keeping role in deciding what people should know about. You can lament or celebrate this information as you may, but most would not argue with the truth of it. There are simply too many outlets through which you can acquire information, be it personal feeds from social media, websites, TV channels, magazines, etc. If someone wants to get their message out into the world, there are ample ways to do this.

Let’s take, for example, an American neo-Nazi group. Their message is that the white race is superior and other races should be subjugated/deported/killed. They might have a Twitter account, a website, a magazine, whatever. The main point is, none of these mediums have the ability to reach out to people. Sure, they can tweet @ someone and force their way in, but for the most part the way people interact with their message is through (digital or actual) word-of-mouth from those who espouse those beliefs, or by seeking them out directly.

But what happens when, say, a major party presidential candidate retweets some of their views? It by no means indicates that the candidate himself is a white supremacist or in any way sympathetic to those points of view. But it does give the jerks a voice. It lets people who may similarly not be white supremacists or sympathizers be exposed to that person, and provides them a vector to that information. Clicking on the Twitter handle to see the white supremacist’s past tweets opens the door. The person who goes through it is not automatically going to become a skinhead … but perhaps that Twitter user is adept at using misleading rhetoric and subtle innuendo to draw people down the path.

None of this makes it the candidate’s fault (or the candidate a racist [UPDATE: Except when it does, don't slow-walk that nonsense, Past Me]), but the root cause is undeniable.

So what does this have to do with the media? The sole ability any publication/outlet has is to determine what information they think their readers should know. They cannot make their readers know this information anymore than the presidential candidate or the racist twit can make anyone pay attention to them. All they can do is put the information in front of those who let them. It’s exactly the application of, “You can’t control what other people think, you can only control what you do,” only this time it has nothing to do with telling your child that some people are just mean.

The story is whatever the story is, and by printing a story in the newspaper, airing it on your broadcast network or pushing it to your audience via Facebook, your website, YouTube, etc., the publisher/creator is saying “This is a thing that is worthy of attention.” Especially if you’re not going to put any effort into context (which is what a retweet is), you’re explicitly stating to your audience that this is a thing they should know about. In an “attention economy,” with a surfeit of content and not enough eyeballs, getting someone to look at you goes a big way toward your winning (whatever it is you’re trying to win).

Thus, tweets like this:

Newsrooms insisting, "No, re-tweets ARE endorsements" have really said: we don't trust our journalists or our users. http://t.co/gX923Ej9rN

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) July 11, 2014

are actively missing the point. No one’s saying you absolutely believe 100% in whatever you retweet. But it’s disingenuous to argue that there’s no value to the original tweet by your retweet. Hell, if there wasn’t, there would be no point in your retweeting it at all.

As a person whose life is consumed by the digital world, this feels an exceptionally strange piece to write. I spend the vast majority of my day on a device, whether that’s a computer for work (I’m a web developer, no escaping it) or a phone/computer/tablet for whatever (likely cat-related) thing I happen to be internetting in my free time.

So you can understand my internal consternation when confronted with a situation that makes me lean toward limiting technology. I’m more than a little worried about technology, both for the reaction it’s drawing as well as its actual impact it’s having on society as a whole — and not just because three out of every four stories on every single news site is about Pokemon Go.

But we’ll get there. First, let’s start with something more mainstream.

Technology (and, more specifically, apps/the internet) are famous for disruption. Tesla’s disrupting the auto industry. So’s Uber. AirBnB “disrupted” the hotel industry by allowing people to rent out rooms (or entire houses) to perfect strangers. The disruption in question (for hotels) was that they no longer were the combination of easiest/cheapest way to stay in a place away from home. But there was also “disruption” in terms of laws/regulation, a fight AirBnB is currently waging in several different locations.

Some of these fights revolve around leases — many landlords do not allow subleasing, which is what some people do on AirBnB: Rent out a space they rent from someone else for a period of time. AirBnB asks that people confirm they have the legal right to rent out the space they’re listing, but there’s no enforcement or verification of any kind on AirBnB’s part. AirBnB thus, at least in some non-small number of cases, is profiting off of at best a breach of contract, if not outright illegality. Then there’s the fact that anyone, be they murderer, sex offender or what have you, can rent out their space and the person renting the room may be none the wiser.

And maybe these things are OK! Maybe it should be caveat emptor, and the people who ultimately lose out (the actual lessees) are the ones primarily being harmed. But that ignores the people who were just trying to rent from AirBnB and had to deal with an irate landowner, or the property owner who has to deal with the fallout/repercussions of the person breaking the lease.

The clichéd technical model of “move fast and break things” should have some limits, and situations where people are dying need more foresight than “we’ll figure it out as we go along.” Otherwise, how do we determine the appropriate death toll for a new tech service before it needs to ask permission rather than forgiveness? And before you dismiss that question as overbearing/hysterical, remember that actual human beings have already died.

But not everything is so doom and gloom! Why, Pokemon Go is bringing nerds outside, causing people to congregate and interact with one another. It’s legitimately fun! Finally my inner 10-year-old can traipse around the park looking for wild Pikachu to capture. Using augmented reality, the game takes your physical location and overlays the game on top of it. As you walk around with your phone, it uses your GPS location to pop up various Pokemon for you to capture. There are also Pokestops, which are preset locations that provide you with in-game items, located in numerous places (usually around monuments and “places of cultural interest”). There are also gyms in similarly “random” places where you can battle your Pokemon to control the gym.

And no deaths! (Yet, probably.) But just because no one is dying doesn’t mean there aren’t still problems. Taste-wise, what about the Pokestop at Ground Zero (or this list of weird stops)? Business-wise, what about the Pokestop near my house that’s in a funeral home parking lot? You legally can’t go there after-hours … but Pokemon Go itself says that some Pokemon only come out at night. What happens during a funeral? There’s no place where businesses can go to ask to be removed as a Pokestop (and frankly, I can imagine places like comic book stores and such that would pay for the privilege). And who has the right to ask that the 9/11 Memorial Pool be removed? Victims’ families? There’s an appropriation of physical space going on that’s not being addressed with the seriousness it should. Just because in the Pokemon game world you can catch Pokemon anywhere doesn’t mean, for example, that you should necessarily allow have them popping up at the Holocaust Museum.

I would like to preempt arguments about “it’s just an algorithm” or “we crowd-sourced” the information by pointing out that those things are useful in their way, but they are not excuses nor are they reasons. If you decide to crowd-source information, you’d better make sure that the information you’re looking for has the right level of impact (such as the names of boats, or in Pokemon Go’s case, the locations of Pokestops). Some of these things can be fixed after the fact, some of them require you to put systems in place to prevent problems from ever occurring.

In this case, you can cast blame on the players for not respecting the law/common sense/decency, and while you’d be right, it shifts the blame away from the companies that are making money off this. What inherent right do companies have to induce people to trespass? Going further, for some reason doing something on “the internet” suddenly cedes rights completely unthinkable in any other context. Remember the “Yelp for people” that was all but an app designed to encourage libel, or the geo-mapping firm that set the default location for any IP address in the US to some Kansan’s front yard. These were not malicious, or even intentional acts. But they had very real affects on people that took far too long to solve, all because the companies in question didn’t bother (or didn’t care) about the real effects of their decisions.

At some point, there’s at the very least a moral — and should be legal, though I’m not necessarily advocating for strict liability — compulsion to consider and fix problems before they happen, rather than waiting until it’s too late. The proper standard probably lies somewhere around where journalists have to consider libel — journalists have a responsibility to only report things they reasonably believe to be accurate. Deadlines and amount of work are not defenses, meaning that the truth must take priority over all. For places where the internet intersects with the real world (which is increasingly becoming “most internet things”), perhaps a similar standard that defers to the reasonably foreseeable potential negative impact should apply.

Technology is only going to grow ever-more entrenched in our lives, and as its function moves closer to an appendage and away from external utility, it’s incumbent upon actors (both governmental and corporate) to consider the very real effects of their products. It (here meaning “life,” “work” or any number of quasi-existential crises) has to be about more than just making money, or the newest thing.

We’re all pretty much in agreement that racism is bad, yes? Even most casual racists will usually accede this point, right before clarifying how their racism isn’t actually racism. Or something.

But what, then, to do with the people who say bigoted things (be they related to race, gender, or whatever)? The easiest path would be to simply ostracize them, mock them, or otherwise diminish their roles in society. And this gets done all the time! (Ask Twitter.) And sometimes those (publicly, at least) repent of their ways and pledge to do better in the future, and life goes on.

And sometimes those people are dead.

(Please note: The views represented in this piece are intended to apply only to those who have already died. For living authors/comedians/people of note, it's a whole different situation.)

Woodrow Wilson is in the news again, because his name adorns the Princeton School of Public Policy and International Affairs. Wilson — the 28th president, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a president of Princeton University — was also unequivocally, unquestionably racist. Because of this fact, Princeton students have demanded that Wilson’s name be taken off all programs and buildings.

Again, the easy path is simply to take his name off the building. But how do you erase a president from history? For that matter, how do you justify removing the name of the man who dreamed up the League of Nations (the forerunner to the United Nations) off of a school of international affairs? A man that won what is considered the biggest prize in human history (the Nobel Peace Prize) because of his work in international affairs?

To wit: how do you separate the man from his work?

I just finished The Secret History of Wonder Woman, a book more accurately titled The Secret History of the Creator of Wonder Woman, that dovetails quite nicely with this debate. William Marston was a failed psychologist/moviemaker/entreprenuer/inventor who created Wonder Woman.

The early comics (authored by him, before his death in 1947, were chock-full of progressive feminist ideals: WW solved problems by herself (never waiting for Batman or Superman to save the day); She actively refused marriage to her boyfriend; Her female friend, Etta Candy, on several occasions helps WW subdue her male foes.

The feminist ideal manifested itself in more obvious ways, too: WW shows a young boy the important role of women in history, WW helped the namesake of her alter ego out of an abusive relationship, and the earlier comics even included an insert printing of “Wonder Women of History,” a four-page adventure chronicling the lives of women such as Florence Nightingale, Susan B. Anthony and Helen Keller. Sounds like a pretty cut-and-dried case of progressive values that deserve to be lauded.

Of course, I wouldn’t have included it as an example without a very large “but." Marston married his wife, Elizabeth Marston, in 1915. He had an on-again, off-again relationship with Marjorie W. Huntley that his wife knew about — and lived permanently (along with Elizabeth and, infrequently, Huntley) with Olive Byrne, whom he presented with golden bracelets as an “anniversary gift”. (The bracelets are the inspiration for WW’s, and are thought to have symbolized their private “marriage.") Byrne’s role in the triad was to raise the children — eventually, two of her own and two by Elizabeth.

There’s nothing inherently wrong or bad about their living arrangement, of course — peoples’ private lives are their own. But one is forced to at least ponder the impulses for creating WW by a man who publicly claimed — in 1942, no less — that women would rule the world after a literal battle of the sexes … as he was financially supported by one wife and had a second at home who was tasked with taking care of the children. It’s entirely possible that Byrne desired this life and had no problem with it. It’s also possible that it’s the only arrangement Elizabeth would agree to.

Then there are the many, many instances of bondage WW undergoes, undergirded by Marston’s belief that women were naturally more submissive than men. But it was OK, because men could learn submission from women, who would rule over them with their sexiness: The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society.

So was Marston a feminist? Or was he a sex-craved submissive longing for a dom? In either case, how does that change Wonder Woman? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. Authorial intent is absolutely important for discovering the reasons why something is written and for discerning its influences, but ultimately the work itself is judged by the individual reader.

It absolutely can make a difference in how the work is read (in that an individual will bring their own prejudices and biases just as they do in every instance of human reason), but only as much as the reader wants it to. Cultures and mores change. The esteem historical figures are held in wax and wane when they’re looked at with eyes that have seen the impact of past ignorance.

Some, like Christopher Columbus, are doomed to be relegated to the bigot wing of history because their accomplishments (finding a continent the vikings discovered hundreds of years earlier) are overshadowed by the way they accomplished them (indiscriminate slaughter and enslavement of indigenous people). Others, such as Abraham Lincoln, get their mostly exemplary record (freed the slaves!) marred by simply being of a certain time period (“... I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”) and adopting a progressive stance (for the time), but still not getting all the way there.

That’s a good thing.

Historical figures and events are never as black and white as they’re presented in history classes. Shades of gray exist everywhere, just as they do in your everyday life. We present them simplistically for a variety of reasons, but nobody’s perfect.

So what do we do with Wilson? It’s never wrong to have a debate, to illuminate the issues of the past and the present. As to whether the name gets removed ... meh? Honestly, if the students are the ones who have to use it and they care so much, why not change it?

Buildings will ultimately crumble, institutions ultimately fail and time marches inexorably along. The best we can do is respect the past while always remembering that the needs of the present outweigh those of the dead. Events happen, with real consequences that need to be considered. But, ultimately, people are rarely all good or all bad. They are, after all, people.

Frustration is a natural part of doing ... well, anything, really. Especially when you're picking up something new, there's almost always a ramp-up period where you're really bad, followed by gradual progression. You know this. I know this.

It's kind of obvious to everyone who's ever played a sport, an instrument or tried anything even remotely skilled. There's room for natural talent to make things a little easier, of course, but even LeBron James went through a period (much earlier and much shorter than the rest of us) where basketball was something new he had to get good at.

There are various schools of thought on how to approach this: Some believe people should be allowed to develop at their own pace and just enjoy the activity; others believe that screaming things at children that would make drill sergeants blush is the best way to motivate and/or teach them. Personally, I think the right approach falls somewhere in the middle (though toward the non-crazy side), depending on age, experience and what the person in question wants.

**All of which is a long-winded way of saying that a not-insignificant number of people who play videogames online are absolutely terrifying human beings. **

When I get the chance lately, I've been picking up and playing Rocket League, a game best described as "soccer with cars that have rockets in them." From a gameplay perspective, there's a decent amount of strategy involved that combines soccer with basketball. The single-player AI is pretty easy to defeat, though it does allow for a nice ramp-up of abilities and skills. Then there's the online portion.

Before this month, there were just random matches you could join (from 1x1 up to 4x4) and play against other people. Some of those people are clearly wizards, because they fly around and use the angles to pass and score from places that I would have trouble even mapping out on paper.

In this initial period, the random matches I joined (which is to say I didn't join any guilds or teams, just random online play, so there's some bias there) were mostly fun, occasional blowouts (in both directions) that often involved no more chatter than the preset options ("Great pass," "Nice shot," "Thanks," "Sorry," etc.).

Then, with an update this month, Rocket League rolled out rankings. Now you can play "competitively" in a division (stratified tiers to ensure that people of like ability play against one another) and receive an overall score of your skill level. And boy do a lot of people seem to think it's somehow indicative of their worth as human beings.

I play where everyone starts, in the unranked division. You start with 50 points and win/lose between 6-10 points per game you play, depending on the team outcome (important note). I currently bounce around the mid-to-upper part of this unranked tier, which is probably pretty accurate (I'm OK, but have moments where I screw up).

For the first few games I played, it was interesting watching the different skill levels (from brand new or just-out-of-single-player to pretty skilled players) interact with one another fairly frictionlessly. There'd be some frustrating boneheaded moves that might cost you a match, but it generally appeared to just be accepted as part of playing on a randomized team. When I played yesterday, though, things seemed to be getting ugly.

The first two matches went fine — a win, a loss. Then I got a string where I was teamed up with what one can uncharitably describe as spoiled babies.

In unranked play, the first one happened when I came out too far forward on defense and let a goal go by. Unquestionably my fault, which is why I shot off a "Sorry" to my teammates. "Fuck don't miss the fucking ball," was what I got in response.

We had another goal scored on us during the vagaries of play, as happens, because the other team was better than us. That's when my teammate got mad. "God you're terrible. You must be doing this on purpose."

Which isn't bad, as internet rantings go. It just caught me off-guard. He proceeded to score relatively soon after that to tie things up, and I flashed a "Nice shot!" to him. "fuck off, [gamertag]."

Um, OK.

In the very next match, we scored a quick goal to go up 2-1 when someone from the other team asked if they had removed a feature (he used more obscenities than my paraphrase). He then proceeded to rant about the "shit physics implementation" and how "he totally had it 100% locked-in."

Of course, given that he was typing all this while the game was still going, his team wound up giving up a few more goals, but his point definitely got made.

After an uneventful game following that, the last one involved a (clearly) new player whiffing on defense, and three players from both teams proceeded to disparage the player with accusations of "trolling" — losing on purpose — to the point where he just literally stopped playing. His car just remained motionless on the field.

It's easy to sit back and wonder about why they take it so seriously — "it's just a game" — but that's a simplistic answer. I have no problem with taking games seriously, and there's no reason to prevent people from getting (appropriately) upset when something bad happens.

It's that modifier, though. "Appropriately." I'm not going to take issue with obscenities (or grammar). This is objectively a bad way to play games. Because, of course, you can't earn points if you don't win. And regardless of how bad (or new) someone is to the game, it's almost always better to have an additional player on the field trying to help you win. It's bad strategy and tactics to just heap abuse on poor players — a fact the game understands, which is why one of the preset communication options is "No problem."

It all essentially comes down to treating other humans as humans. I'm not casting broad aspersions about gamers, teenagers or even teenage gamers. Just a note that digitizing all interactions seems to have the broad effect of dehumanizing interactions, unless specific tactics are employed.

I don't know how to educate these people — I'm just someone flying a car around in a videogame. But I made my attempt. After the reprimand for complimenting the guy on his shot, I decided to help the only way I could: I chased down an errant shot by the other team and knocked it in our goal in overtime.

My girlfriend says it was a little petulant — I disagree, but not too strenuously. I broadcasted a message after the shot: "No matter how bad your teammates are, it's better to have them then not."

Is the guy going to change his actions? Probably not. But at least there was some negative reinforcement (losing ranking points). Maybe next time he'll at least keep his frustrations to himself. That, in my books, counts as a win.

I've been poring over the Craigslist jobs postings for the tri-state area and beyond, applying to anything that seems like it could fit. A week or so ago, an ad popped up for I Can Has Cheezburger, creators of the ever-popular LOLCats and the FAIL Blog. They were looking for an editor for a new site and – despite being dangerously under-qualified – I decided to apply.

In addition to the standard resumé, they also were looking for a commentary on what constituted Internet culture. Always interested in tackling a challenge, I attached my resumé and sent them this cover letter:

Oh hai! I herd u was looking for an online editor with managerial skills that don't make people scream, "you're doing it wrong!" I may not have the devilish good looks of Domo-kun, but if there's on thing I do know it's how to navigate this vast series of tubes we live and dream in.

Fresh-faced, eager and straight out of college, I've spent the last two years as an editor of The Daily Evergreen, the student n00bzpaper at Washington State University. I've been evaluating and selecting writing talent for that entire span, the last year of which was spent at the top, overseeing daily production as well as the editorial staff. Though I don't have three years managing an editorial staff online, I do have more than two years experience working in an online-only environment, as a freelance editor, web designer and independent contractor.

The question of what Internet culture is requires two answers - what netizens know it to be, and how it's perceived by the outside world. While it's easy to festoon any Web site with gratuitous "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep, he waits" quotes and whatever quasi-meme happened to hit 4chan in the last week, the true Internet culture requires referencing those means in a meaningful way. The best, most recent example was using the Konami code in the search bar on ESPN's redesign, which resulted in unicorns popping up all over the page. It was an Easter Egg - you had to know the Konami Code, it required a bit of looking around or just guessing in order to find it, and it had a cute result that didn't really affect anything materially. In addition to cohesion, the other requirement for Internet culture is honesty.

The Internet, with its freewheeling band of private investigators who have nothing better to do than hunt down frauds, requires a brutal engagement with the material. Unless someone's willing to commit wholeheartedly, there will be some mistakes (allowing people to call "shopped!" or "fake!") that come through. I think it's why people find the Internet so fascinating - a medium that allows for the most anonymity of any publishing model ever created still allows us to see people at their weakest, their most vulnerable and (by virtue of the first two things) their funniest.

I don't have a whole lot else left to say, other than to wish you luck in your search and if you have any questions feel free to e-mail back at this address or call me at (425)299-4683. Though I'm currently living in Pullman, I'm more than willing to move back to Seattle.

I have no ending for this, so I'll just hope you'll click this link to have Keyboard Cat play me off - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI.

They were extremely nice and responded back with a personal note that let me down gently, but also mentioned a position as a moderator they had open. And though I was sorely tempted to be able to put "I Can Has Cheezburger" on my resumé, I ultimately had to disqualify myself from consideration, since I'm still looking for something in journalism.

Regardless though, most fun I've had writing a cover letter in a long time. Plus, I got confirmation that I did in fact RickRoll the editor of the FAIL Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger. That's gotta count for something, right?