1034: "Share Buttons"

[J Thomas]

When you accuse nerds of being elitist, claiming that you are a "regular people" yourself, you are engaging in reverse elitism. For some time now you have talked as if your ethnicity is better than nerd ethnicity. I find it vaguely irritating that you continue to do this on a nerd forum.

No, I don't think my "ethnicity" (*snicker*) is "better" than "nerd ethnicity" (*snicker"). What I'm complaining about here is a certain group of nerds who can't get over the fact that the Internet is not made for them, at least not anymore. I'm not bothered by nerds and I don't think I'm "superior" to them, but I am definitely against nerds who think the Internet should still be exclusive to nerds.

What's the point? Are you against people who think the USA should have been a monarchy? Are you against the powers that destroyed the 1848 communes? Why bother? Nerds who think the internet should be just for them have already lost, so why go after them? To rub it in? (I haven't particularly noticed those people. They just went right under my radar, but somehow they annoy you enough that you get trolled by them....)

Do I think I'm "superior" to them? Maybe. But if we boil down every single argument and/or opinion to "you feel superior to them", we won't get anywhere.

It seems to me that when we argue facts or theories, we can present our ideas and try to understand the other guys' ideas, and maybe we all come out with more than we went in with. You can't usually present things in enough detail to convince somebody who doesn't want to be convinced, but you might get an idea across to somebody who's willing to consider it.

But when we present our opinions, what result is likely? "This is my opinion. Here are the facts and theories that prove my opinion is right." "Your facts and theories are irrelevant. Here is MY opinion. Here are the real facts and the correct theories which prove MY opinion is right." And it goes from there.

It looks to me like you have been arguing mostly opinion, and you have presented theories to back up your opinons, and you sure do seem to feel like your opinions are superior to other people's opinions.

Maybe we won't get anywhere boiling down the arguments to that, but if I'm right where can we possibly get if we don't boil down the arguments to that? It sure looks to me like "My opinion can beat your opinion, and my justification can beat your justification, and my dog can beat your dog, and my dad can beat your dad".

I mean, "you are elitist because you think you're superior to elitists" is a completely pointless, counter-intuitive argument, an useless dead-end.

I agree. Being elitist because you think you're superior to some set of elitists is completely pointless and a useless dead-end, and pointing that out to people who don't want to see it is also a dead-end.

Wouldn't you be more comfortable among your own kind?

Maybe, but I don't like staying still and snug inside my comfort zone. I like to break out of it sometimes, you know.

What if you were to break out of your comfort zone by trying to understand other people's ideas sometime?

I've observed that, on the forums, you make a regular habit of pointing out flaws in the comics and arguing against people who like them. You seem to be holding your opinions as superior to those of the masses that like the comics. Doesn't that put you in the category of the "elitist people" and not the "regular people?"

If "having an opinion" or "expressing an opinion" is the same as "holding your opinions as superior", then hell, every human being does that constantly. I only think my opinion as "superior" in the sense that I believe in it more than I believe in the others; otherwise, I wouldn't have that opinion in the first place!

Yes, everybody prefers their own opinions since of course the opinions they chose are the ones they prefer. But consider a person who argues at length with other people that his opinion is better than other people's opinions, and argues as if he hopes to convince them. Doesn't it seem like there's something "special" about such a person?

Also my understanding, from reading a lot of Sir Mustapha in the past, is that he comes here largely in response to a confusion you are making. Randall's jokes are not nerd jokes. Some subset of nerds just sort of assume that to be a fact, and make a point of spreading XKCD everywhere to the point that somebody living in that culture at all is faced with it all the time. Similarly, although nerds populate the XKCD forums, the XKCD forums are not nerd forums.

I think you just hit the nail right on the head. In fact, I think that's exactly what I've been trying to say all this time: reading/liking xkcd is not synonymous with being a nerd or vice versa.

That's it? OK, fine. There are nerds who don't read xkcd, and there are non-nerds who do read it. Happy now?

The funny thing is, a lot of nerds get very annoyed by the fact that people in general make a lot of assumptions about you when they see you writing computer code. Some people assume that "you can fix my Internet"; but some other people assume that "Gee Willikers YOU LOVE XKCD TOO". Both assumptions are equally braindead and wrong.

Agreed. Those are stupid assumptions. I haven't noticed people come out and assert those stupid assumptions online, but let's say they did.

Somebody was wrong on the internet.

Is that what you've been going on about?

Somebody is wrong on the internet. http://xkcd.com/386/

Can you let go of it now?

[Trowis]

I don't understand how anyone can hate something that is optional and ignorable, I understand hating pop-up ads for example, although in this day and age it's your own fault if you still get pop-up ads, but share buttons, if you don't like them , don't use them, I'm not sure how dislike can escalate to hate in that kind of circumstance.

Humans can hate pretty much anything, for no readily discernible reason: people with different sexual proclivities, people with somewhat more (or less) money than average, people with a different shade of skin than ours, people with different magical beliefs or none at all, the French... OK, maybe there's a reason to hate the French. But hating things for no reason is one of those things that distinguishes us from other animals, so I guess we should cherish it as uniquely human, or something.

But even given that, share buttons aren't very likeable: they are part of the system by which websites like FB et al track people. Every time you land on a page with a share button its likely there's some cookie magic going on in your browser, keeping track of the frequency with which you visit http://www.girlsngoats.com (now I'm afraid to check if that url actually exists, although I guess rule 34 implies it does...) There are a couple of Firefox pluggins that help: Ghostery, Disconnect, and Disconnect Facebook are all useful if you don't want private third parties keeping track of your every move on the Web.

For what it's worth, I was willing to click.

NOTICE: This domain name expired on 03/11/2012 and is pending renewal or deletion.

[Ambroos]

Sorry to sort of necro this, but I just stumbled upon this through Google+ and thought of this comic right away:

http://i.imgur.com/tFSIz.png