Just yesterday, I walked by a soccer field with some young kids playing a game. They were using a mini-goal, parents were standing around, their gear didn't fit very well, etc. But they were having a blast.
And it occurred to me that this is what real sports looks like. Just playing a game, having fun.
In that moment, all the hyper-athleticism, hyper-competition, money, etc. of modern sports just seemed so ... absurd? Perverse?
Anyway, it just felt a bit parallel to this article. It seems like there's a lot of human experience that is better when it's not some ultra-refined extreme version of itself.
And why do we celebrate the fact that 3 human beings that are running 100m at full speed and coming perhaps 0.1s of each other at the end line should be hierarchized in gold / silver / bronze? This is stupid and anti-sports
Human beings capable of such feat are just equally as good as each other, there is no hierarchy
> A personal website has affordances which encourage you to create something that you couldn’t otherwise create anywhere else
In this sense, would MySpace with its extensive customisation count more as a personal website than a social website?
I wonder if this is why SpaceHey is doing so well. A month ago enumer8 wrote here on HN:
> "It was partially the customisation aspect that drew me in at the beginning, having that much control over my profile... reminded me of what I loved about being online
> "Having a little corner where I can just go and blog/post bulletins about things I'm thinking about... feels really nice."
As the famous blogging platforms are getting older, I've seen a couple posts here about people celebrating their 15-year or 20-year blogging activity. In a sense, for those who have been comfortable with blogging platforms, this piece makes a lot of sense and also relates to these texts I've seen. Thanks for sharing!
Publishing content on a global public network that is regularly indexed and archived seems like quite an intimidating space to share anything too personal. Maybe the pattern of presenting ourselves through pseudonymous and artificial identities is one way in which the medium has shaped the message.
Just yesterday, I walked by a soccer field with some young kids playing a game. They were using a mini-goal, parents were standing around, their gear didn't fit very well, etc. But they were having a blast.
And it occurred to me that this is what real sports looks like. Just playing a game, having fun.
In that moment, all the hyper-athleticism, hyper-competition, money, etc. of modern sports just seemed so ... absurd? Perverse?
Anyway, it just felt a bit parallel to this article. It seems like there's a lot of human experience that is better when it's not some ultra-refined extreme version of itself.
Exactly!
And why do we celebrate the fact that 3 human beings that are running 100m at full speed and coming perhaps 0.1s of each other at the end line should be hierarchized in gold / silver / bronze? This is stupid and anti-sports
Human beings capable of such feat are just equally as good as each other, there is no hierarchy
> A personal website has affordances which encourage you to create something that you couldn’t otherwise create anywhere else
In this sense, would MySpace with its extensive customisation count more as a personal website than a social website?
I wonder if this is why SpaceHey is doing so well. A month ago enumer8 wrote here on HN:
> "It was partially the customisation aspect that drew me in at the beginning, having that much control over my profile... reminded me of what I loved about being online
> "Having a little corner where I can just go and blog/post bulletins about things I'm thinking about... feels really nice."
* https://spacehey.com
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41423275
Absolutely agreed on this. We should all “embrace our mediocrity” and create things as we like — music, essays, art, etc.
It’s an innate human quality to be creative, so we should focus on that rather than external validation from like/upvote counts.
As the famous blogging platforms are getting older, I've seen a couple posts here about people celebrating their 15-year or 20-year blogging activity. In a sense, for those who have been comfortable with blogging platforms, this piece makes a lot of sense and also relates to these texts I've seen. Thanks for sharing!
> The medium shapes the message.
Publishing content on a global public network that is regularly indexed and archived seems like quite an intimidating space to share anything too personal. Maybe the pattern of presenting ourselves through pseudonymous and artificial identities is one way in which the medium has shaped the message.