Before the internet, fame was usually something that required an investment in media access. Everybody knows about the big Hollywood movie because they paid for a lot of advertising/etc. A low-budget film could potentially be more popular if people knew about it, but the meager (or nonexistent) advertising budget usually guaranteed it would never[1] become famous.
This is what the internet changed. It's fundamental power is that anybody can publish because the network doesn't differentiate between "publishing" hosts and "consumer" hosts. All peers are supposed[2] to be equal in capability. The internet is media access. What used to require significant investment of time and/or money now happens to people regularly when they post something casually on the internet: they can become famous.
Unfortunately, our social norms are still adapting to this change. As this article shows, trivial posts are incorrectly interpreted and the author ends up wading through flames and insults. This is because what started as a casual post is now addressing an audience.
For a very good explanation of this type of change-in-relationship, I suggest watching "This is Phil Fish"[4]. As this is HN, many of you probably know the drama involving Phil Fish and his game "Fez", but tht doesn't matter because this video is about everybody who is not Phil Fish: the audience that supplies the projection, tokenism, and hatred that fuels the media when they want cheap hits/impressions.
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[1] I am ignoring the phenomena of some movies gaining a cult following a long time after their initial release for simplicity and questionable relevance (time).
[2] NAT has destroyed a lot of this equality, creating a situation where you have to get the permission of a 3rd party (port forwarding at the router, some centralized server, etc). If we allow this digital imprimatur[3] to continue to exist, then the internet has truly reverted back to "TV".
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TL;DR - just watch [4]
The internet has a serious problem with fame.
Before the internet, fame was usually something that required an investment in media access. Everybody knows about the big Hollywood movie because they paid for a lot of advertising/etc. A low-budget film could potentially be more popular if people knew about it, but the meager (or nonexistent) advertising budget usually guaranteed it would never[1] become famous.
This is what the internet changed. It's fundamental power is that anybody can publish because the network doesn't differentiate between "publishing" hosts and "consumer" hosts. All peers are supposed[2] to be equal in capability. The internet is media access. What used to require significant investment of time and/or money now happens to people regularly when they post something casually on the internet: they can become famous.
Unfortunately, our social norms are still adapting to this change. As this article shows, trivial posts are incorrectly interpreted and the author ends up wading through flames and insults. This is because what started as a casual post is now addressing an audience.
For a very good explanation of this type of change-in-relationship, I suggest watching "This is Phil Fish"[4]. As this is HN, many of you probably know the drama involving Phil Fish and his game "Fez", but tht doesn't matter because this video is about everybody who is not Phil Fish: the audience that supplies the projection, tokenism, and hatred that fuels the media when they want cheap hits/impressions.
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[1] I am ignoring the phenomena of some movies gaining a cult following a long time after their initial release for simplicity and questionable relevance (time).
[2] NAT has destroyed a lot of this equality, creating a situation where you have to get the permission of a 3rd party (port forwarding at the router, some centralized server, etc). If we allow this digital imprimatur[3] to continue to exist, then the internet has truly reverted back to "TV".
[3] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w
Thanks for that link, definitely puts a lot of what I have felt for a long time into a well thought out analysis.