I wonder if there is a bit of survivorship bias in this article. Some kids grow up in a non-friendly environment, but develop the skills to deal with the adversity, and when they grow up, those skills become highly advantageous. Other kids whither and fall apart in such an adverse environment, suffer from low self-esteem, substance abuse, and other mental illnesses, and never get the chance to reap the benefits of being an outsider.
I think there is. I think they are just speaking from their own experience. They are an authority on their own life experience and know what they've learned but that doesn't generalize. Advice is only right for the right person at the right time.
> The best way to be liked is to just agree with everyone.
This view is incomplete. Human relationships are build on connections. You can create those connections by agreeing with people, but that creates a very swallow connection.
An example of connections is networking: you mingle in a group of people at an event and start or join conversations. Everyone at the event starts the shared experience of being there. After a conversation, you might find someone that works in the same city you do, that adds another connection. And so on.
Yeah I mean for starters the author appear to have been rich as hell from the very beginning. I’m sure that helps soothe the sting of being an “outsider”.
But I decided not to take the article personally because they’re not claiming something universal about outsiders.
I'm one of those people, being the odd man out, has both harmed me and allowed me to reap benefits. I can walk into most situations as the dispassionate observer, its really interesting being able to watch the world and understand which rules matter, and which ones don't.
Honestly does anybody NOT feel alienated in our current society? The US is overly hostile, we imported the whole world and all its cultural hangups with it. I mean if you're white people are shitting on you, if you're black people are shitting on you, if you're male people are shitting on you, if you're female people are shitting on you... like what exactly is this country FOR? Does anybody REALLY feel like they belong in America? Maybe the rich?
America is an alienating place but I don't think it's for the reasons you mention (they play a factor more recently, but alienation has been an American attribute for quite some time - See Bowling Alone by Putnam written in 2000.).
What has driven alienation in America? You could make the case for hyper-individualism and that plays a big part. The way our cities are designed also plays a role - mostly they're designed around the automobile which doesn't afford us opportunities to run into people we might know as we walk around. Cars are privacy bubbles that allow us to be isolated as we travel around. Look at a European city. There are often people just chatting on a corner or in a piazza - interaction happens much more often in those contexts because those cities tend to be set up in such a way to allow it to happen.
Finally, I think the American fetishization (for lack of a better word) of work plays a role. We Americans tend to define ourselves by the work we do to a larger degree than people in many other parts of the world.
Given the isolation that was already there in American culture, along comes social media and initially it kind of looked like it was going to help be an antidote to that isolation - I think a lot of folks wanted out of the isolation and thought that was going to be a way out. But it ends up often making it even worse - and definitely exacerbates the division between tribal groups. Our alienation causes us to want to identify with these tribal groups for a feeling of belonging and these tribes end up "shitting on" other tribes not aligned with them.
America is a big place. Being alive today allows us to be exposed to a multitude of diverse communities.
If you select a particular place or community at random, chances are, you won't fit in. But there probably is a group you DO fit into. The situation today is much better than our ancestors, who were born into a tribe, and were probably stuck living within that tribe.
I'm the only person in my extended family who has an artistic/creative personality. Fitting in in a small midwestern city was not an option. I find a few friends in college for a while but graduation separated us.
Fortunately, the internet made finding a community to belong possible. Since joining the furry fandom, I haven't been wanting for a place to belong.
The furry community is most of the reason I'm holding on these days. Support at a few key moments from Suspiciously Wealthy Furries (not really suspicious, just employed in tech) helped get my life sort of on track.
I am not in the US, but I'm a white male in Australia, so very similar culturally, and no, I don't feel alienated in the least.
So, I'm hoping you are not a white male, as I don't think we can have the tiniest inkling of what it feels like to be a minority. Even travelling in Asia, where we're clearly a minority, I feel like we know on a global scale that even though we may not be the majority of the population, we hold the majority of influence.
So, I don't think we will ever know what it's like. I have curly hair, and I remember my young nieces and nephews being terrified of me. They had never seen curly hair before (well, not a huge afro like I've got). That was my tiny sliver of a taste of being different. But I know, that is nothing, and we still have no idea.
>> Honestly does anybody NOT feel alienated in our current society?
> So, I'm hoping you are not a white male, as I don't think we can have the tiniest inkling of what it feels like to be a minority.
So GP is suggesting that everyone feels isolated, regardless of race or gender.
You reply with "hoping you are not a white male" to this observation.
We all know that if GP is a white male, his comment borders on white supremacy. He's saying we've lost what makes America great, and it's all because we opened our borders and gave up cultural homogeneity. What a racist xenophobe! Good on you for calling him out!
But if GP is a woman of color, the US being a hostile place makes so much sense. And of course she's trying to figure out who the country is really for, because her experience makes it feel like it's not built for her. It's so brave to be asking these tough questions and challenging the system.
Also, are you a white male? Why do you even feel that it's ok for you to weigh in on this topic?
The way I see it, your "hoping you are not a white male" comment is culturally expected, and you said it anyway, even though we both know it causes acceleration of conflict.
Maybe you're a right-wing accelerationist, but I suspect you're not, which makes your comment even worse, because you're reinforcing their narrative unintentionally.
I think that is why IAmWorried is actually worried.
The idea is to destabilize society by accelerating disruptive societal change.
At the far extremes, this looks like mass shootings or bombings with manifestos attached.
On the right, the theory is that a white ethnostate will surely emerge to bring order if the country is thrown into chaos along racial lines.
On the left, it looks very much the same, except what will surely emerge is an egalitarian utopia once those white fascists are out of the picture.
In practice, a lot of these ideas successfully filter into the mainstream because they're being pushed by propaganda networks that seek to damage western democracy.
Importantly, if the propaganda can convince otherwise well meaning people to subtly ingrain "white male == bad" into the language and attitudes, that benefits accelerationists.
White supremacists want you to say that white people are the problem. It legitimizes radical ideas like "replacement theory".
It's also why things like the Rittenhouse trial are so volatile. If he's acquitted, one side will further radicalize. If he's convicted, the other side will further radicalize.
Even if you honestly believe that white males are the source of all the world's problems, labeling it as a white male problem will produce further radicalized white males.
I'll grumble that the Rittenhouse trial is nothing to do with said accelerationism. Said volatility is solely because of the media trying to flay him to push their views, regardless of the evidence.
What else can you say of a clown parade where the prosecution witnesses all corroborate the defense's position and the prosecution decides to insinuate that silence implies guilt. Or, with the spirit of Jack Chick watching over him.
>“Isn’t it true when you would hang out with Dominic Black you’d play Call of Duty and other first-person shooter video games?” prosecutor Thomas Binger asked Rittenhouse on November 10. “And those are games in which you use weapons like AR-15s to pretty much shoot anybody who comes at you, right?”
Only the identity police do. Most of us don't care.
I'm not my race, sexuality, or gender. I'm what I aspire to, what I enjoy, what I dream about, and who I associate with.
Turn off Twitter, social media, and the pessimistic news. They're toxic vortices that thrive off negativity and create a distorted, untrue picture of the world.
I was alive before the internet. I've never really watched much tv.
And I don't have the time to tell you how much that sucked. You are stuck in whatever place you happened to be, especially as a child or not having much money. If you can't find folks to accept you, you are just cast aside.
I*m not sure how walking in sunshine was supposed to help me when folks assumed I was lesbian and freaking avoided me (they were half right, but I didn't deserve this). Or followed me around laughing, saying "She's soooo stupid!". And so on. Every. Single. Day. I finally made friends, and people would ask them why they were friends with me.
But yeah, I'll go off and walk in sunshine and everything will be OK.
On the other hand, I got older and found folks on the internet that accepted me. I could finally talk to people while being myself. I am in a stable relationship thanks to this (and moved countries: While some folks are anti-immigrant, more accept that I'm a bit weird and/or will explain social norms if I mess up).
My post above was general advice for dealing with media negativity. It seems to have attracted folks with serious issues who may/not need professional help. If y'all thought a walk was supposed to magically fix that level of adversity, well… unfortunately you're mistaken.
That said, perspective is more powerful than your post allows.
Now I'm tired and still in the exact same situation. Everyone I know is still overworked, underpaid, and has no time or energy to socialize. All social activities still require driving on gas that's $3+/gallon on top of everything costing money.
Excuses are like assholes, everyone's got one. No need for a house. I don't have one, but I do have walkability and sufficient solitude, aka freedom from the boob-tube and associated neuroses. They were choices I made, prioritized over material things.
This is how I felt before I moved to a place with a lower cost of living, yes, I still need to drive everywhere, but at least I'm not miserable all the time. The pace of life slowed down once I got off of the coast.
Moving costs money that's hard to get when you already can't afford life, and further isolates you until you get integrated into the new community. It's a risky proposition. A lot of people who find themselves homeless got there by moving without being prepared for the other end.
Yeah, I prepared for moving for a bunch of years before I moved. A bunch of years, as miserable as I was in Seattle, moving away from my safety net was scary. I'm much happier in Dallas, thats as much weather and how different people are here.
> does anybody NOT feel alienated in our current society?
<raises hand>
> does anybody NOT feel alienated in our current society?
I do not feel alienated.
> Does anybody REALLY feel like they belong in America?
I do.
> what exactly is this country FOR?
It's for people who want their fundamental rights guaranteed so they can do whatever they choose to do, like be a rock star, build rockets to go to Mars, race motorcycles, write poetry, etc.
It's not for people who want cradle-to-grave security and want someone else to make all the decisions for them. Nor is it for people who want to run other peoples' lives.
I think we still need to fulfill the promise of the New Deal and the Great Society, the Great Society specifically failed because of programs constructed in haste by men with too little knowledge of the real world in which those programs would need to function.
We have a huge and growing poverty problem, one the Democrats and Republicans seem to be ignoring, we have to ratchet down misery level, a failure to do so imperils our democracy in the long run.
If people don't have resources all the freedom of choice in the world does little good, because you have too few options to chose from, too few paths to take.
The entrenched poverty problem started with the Great Society. (The poverty rate stopped declining in 1968.)
The US has never had more opportunity for people than today.
Example 1: anyone can get an MIT education for free on the internet.
Example 2: anyone can reach a worldwide market, for free, via the internet, and using Amazon.
Example 3: anyone can make a movie, and distribute it to the world on youtube, for free.
Example 4: anyone can start a band, make their own music, and distribute it worldwide for free on several platforms.
Hundreds of thousands of destitute people are trying to get into the US to take advantage of American opportunity. What do they know that Americans don't?
They can't do any of those things if they have to work two jobs to keep a roof over their head. There is a point where if you're of average intelligence and ability you can't try harder because all of your try is consumed by just getting by.
The US does indeed have tons of opportunity, I'm a high school dropout, who is now an engineer. Thats an American success story. But I'm luckier than most because I got real lucky in the intelligence department. For a long time, I thought I was an average guy, no smarter than anyone else, then I went out and did complex system design, and then had to write the training material and train the users when I was done, and only then I could see something I hadn't before. I'm frankly smarter than half of the population (and so are basically 100% of the people who use hacker news). People like us will find some form of opportunity when there isn't any obviously available.
I'll rebut your answers:
Example 1: to make use of that free MIT education, you must be of above average intelligence, more importantly, you must have time not consumed by meeting your daily essential needs.
Example 2: you must have some product to sell, one that you can make and sell in volume, there are other sites that allow handicrafts, but its hard to make a living off of handicrafts, and its a big leap to go from individual production to serial production in a factory without capital.
Example 3: you must have talent for doing something worth watching, otherwise it doesn't make money.
Example 4: same as example 3, though, perversely, if you're really really bad, you can actually make money, but being that level of awful is a talent unto itself, and most people are not willing to subject themselves to that level of humiliation.
We have massive issues with access to the legal system by the poor, we've extended the cult of personal responsibility to the extent we now just blame the poor for being poor. We also treat debt like a sacred obligation, if your wealthy its easy to discharge debts thru bankruptcy, not so much if you're poor.
I wrote a huge paper about this with a friend of mine last summer. Please take the time to read it, and I think you'll understand more about why I feel so passionately about this.
Talent is way overrated. Talent is good for 1%, the rest is training to upgrade your skills. Of course, if you never try, failure is 100% guaranteed.
BTW, I know some very successful people who aren't that smart. Being smart just means you learn faster. Not being smart doesn't mean you can't learn skills that are in demand.
You must have natural gifts, talent, to sing, to act, to dance. No amount of technical training will turn a tone deaf person, or a person with a poor natural voice into a great singer.
> You must have natural gifts, talent, to sing, to act, to dance.
No, you don't. I was involved in competitive ballroom dancing when I was young. I have way below average talent at it. I only learned the stuff very slowly. But over time, with a lot of time spent practicing, I actually did get tolerably good at it.
Then there is singing. Neil Young, Stevie Nicks and Astrud Gilberto are talentless, but hugely successful, singers. I remember the scorching reviews Nicks got when she burst on the scene, with her "raspy", "unpleasant" voice.
P.P.S. Fred Astaire can't sing, either, but his songs are marvelous. There's that famous early review of him: "can't sing, can't act, balding, can dance a little".
Astrud Gilberto, Neil Young, and Stevie Nicks, are all extraordinary talented people,
Gilberto is quite talented, both in delivery and as a composer, but her delivery is amazing, and she has songwriting skills, mostly, she had the advantage of being pretty, and a very capable singer, and someone who was novel.
Neil Young is a talented songwriter, and a master guitar player, his vocal skills are secondary to his skills as a songwriter, and guitarist.
Nicks does have an unconventional voice, but with a phenomenal power to her voice. That's just natural.
And Astaire? No one would call him a great singer, but he was one of the best and most talented dancers of his era, the same goes for Gene Kelly, while they were stylistically very different, they were fantastic dancers, their singing abilities were secondary to their abilities as dancers.
The key for all of these, if you have a radio face, and a great voice/talent, you're probably not finding commercial success (not in the modern era - thought there are exceptions), if you have an average voice/talent and a really pretty face/body, you might find commercial success. If you have an average voice/talent and an average face, you're more than likely, not going to find success.
All four examples you listed had something extraordinary about them.
Giberto, Beauty - and an average talet, Young, an extraordinary talent and an average face, Nicks, a unique voice, and an extraordinary face. Astaire, a multi-talent, and a handsome man too.
They are not talented singers, but they were able to compensate for that.
Fred Astaire, handsome? I don't think so. He's short and very thin. But he is very elegant and charming, which more than made up for it. He is very aware of his body language and uses that to maximum advantage. If you passed him on the street, you'd never conclude he was handsome.
P.S. I've encountered a few hollywood celebrities off camera. The surprising thing is how ordinary they look without the hair, makeup, lighting, costume, etc.
> a phenomenal power to her voice
Oh come on.
> a unique voice
You may not remember her early reviews - "raspy", "unpleasant". I do. Her first album was a complete flop. The only reason Fleetwood Mac took her on was because the band was on the ropes and Buckingham demanded they give his girlfriend a spot.
> had something extraordinary about them
They all worked their ass off, which you confused with talent.
When I eventually got tolerably good at ballroom dancing, people who didn't know me called me "talented". ROFL.
I am much too young to remember her (Nicks) reviews, her popularity, most of it, was before I was born.
But I find it interesting that two of the people you highlighted as having no talent are known for being songwriters as much as performers, or actors as much as dancers. In any case Nicks songwriting talents helped propel the groups success, and her vocal abilities were a pivotal component of their sound, and quite arguably a driver of their success.
Incidentally, most great male dancers are shorter, its an aid in becoming great at dance. Both Kelly and Astaire were under 6', 5'7 and 5'9 respectively - yet both were considered handsome men by the standards of their time, in part yes, because of movie magic.
And yes, I grew up near Los Angeles, when Angelia Jolie steps out to Starbucks, she while pretty, does not look like a great actress of the screen, she looks like a nice looking woman stepping out for coffee.
Yes, those people also have or had talent - and as a side note, Karen Carpenter is grossly under appreciated, like hugely so. Her voice is so pure and clear, and I think it's because of the music she sung. She was also a really great drummer, and she considered herself a drummer first, and a singer second.
I agree with Aloha. You still need a certain level of intelligence to work in tech. I have friends who struggle with concepts that are almost too easy for an average tech worker.
A friend of mine taught remedial algebra at the University of Washington. She related to me that if she wrote on the board:
x + 3 = 5
and asked what `x` was, the students would fall over in a quivering heap and say they had no idea.
If, instead, she wrote:
_ + 3 = 5
and asked them to fill in the _, they all had no difficulty with it. The problem was not that they couldn't grasp the concept, it was that at some point they latched onto the notion that algebra was hard, and `x` meant algebra, and that was the end of that.
Have you noticed the hundreds of thousands of totally destitute people flowing over the border, and becoming successful in America? According to your philosophy, that should be impossible.
I’m not sure at this point if you’re trolling or you actually have a very rosy view of immigrants being successful. Many of them have two jobs or working as delivering person and barely making minimum wage.
Yes, they're also smarter than those being left behind. We are literally stealing those countries best and brightest stars.it's generally good for us, and bad for them.
I interact with the folks 'being left behind' every day in my day job. It's direct observation. Do you have an observation of your own?
How do you draw the conclusion that I believe there is a lack of opportunity? My parent comment says I believe there is tons of opportunity, if you have the right innate skills.
If you'd read the document I linked, you'd see that my concerns have nothing to do with a lack of opportunities, but rather that we don't provide sufficient tools to people to take up those opportunities. Furthermore, we put structural barriers in front of people based on their income level to achieving a modicum of financial security.
I know personally many immigrants to America arriving here with nothing, not even knowing English, and yet becoming successful businessmen, and many became independently wealthy.
Millions of destitute people are trying to get into any developed country - not just America - because life in the developing world is even worse. This doesn't mean the US is doing great.
>It's for people who want their fundamental rights guaranteed so they can do whatever they choose to do, like be a rock star, build rockets to go to Mars, race motorcycles, write poetry, etc.
>It's not for people who want cradle-to-grave security and want someone else to make all the decisions for them. Nor is it for people who want to run other peoples' lives.
America is only for people who agree with your politics, gotcha.
I don't care if you believe in Communism with all your heart. But if you try to turn the US into a Communist Utopia, I doubt you'll find fertile ground.
An odd non-sequitur, as I never mentioned Communism, much less professed a belief in it. I also don't see a lot of people trying to turn the US into a "Communist utopia."
Exactly. The working poor want good health insurance, affordable college, paid time off, a pension/retirement, home equity, a safe neighborhood, passive income, a few yearly vacations, etc. Basically what me and all my friends and family have.
But whenever the income divide comes up in personal discussion otherwise smart people imply the working poor wants the private island, rockets, lambos, and yachts of billionaires and that could destabilize society.
Absolutely. You can never win with comparison, you can only lose.
Am I rich? Arguably, yes. Am I richer than my neighbors? Not sure. But if I were, then we move to, Am I richer than anyone in my city? State? Country? World? When you climb, when you get to the point that you win the comparison game, you realize that you were only comparing yourself to a subset, and there's a bigger pond to play in... in which you're currently one of the losers.
A less cancerous comparison (but by no means good) might be to approach this from a statistical/distributions point of view.
What quantile of the population do I belong to? Still a comparison, but you set the bounds early. If you have to do the damn thing, whether by quirk of personality or impulse, at least make it explicit.
>I mean if you're white people are shitting on you, if you're black people are shitting on you, if you're male people are shitting on you, if you're female people are shitting on you...
I mean, that's still better than when America was just white men shitting on everyone else.
Or to put it in less snarky terms, this is what happens when all of the demographics in a society have the ability to express themselves and wield social and political power, rather than just one.
That's what the woke policies that aim to divide society get you. The question is, how many people are falling for that narrative? I'd wager most people don't care at all if they're not listening to mainstream and social media.
To be fair that’s probably what equality looks like. We are nowhere near equitable levels of being shit on between blacks and whites or men and women though.
This is a very rosy view of rural America, to which I am a frequent visitor. Just a few dysfunctions off the top of my head:
- Reactionary politics were born in rural America, urban America is just catching up these days.
- The value system of rural America is dismissive of nerdy/intellectual pursuits, and so it drives out talent that was already enticed by the opportunities present in cities.
- More broadly there is a kind of pride in being very separate/distinct from the other parts of America, but it seems pretty shallow to me -- the emphasis seems mostly to be on the material trappings of "ruralness" (being a farmer, having a big truck, wearing camo patterns), and not on the values themselves.
- And perhaps rolled up in politics, but I feel the need to call it out because I sense it on display in your comment: An eagerness to play the victim to the rest of America. "It's just those city folks that cause all our problems."
First, I am glad you found a place that suits you. I grew up in a suburb adjacent to a major city up until high school, then I moved to the rural midwest. As a minority, I found it near impossible to fit in. All of my beliefs, from ethnicity-based to city-based, were misaligned to the general consensus of the rural mindset.
Sure, there was open space and generally it was green or pale yellow from the corns, but it was a terrible place for a young mind. I didn't like football or wrestling and I didn't love confederate flags on pick up trucks. The general take was that I was an outsider not to be friends with. Eventually, I made friends but I can still hear the "he is okay, he is like a white [insert minority]" from adults and people at school.
This was in the late 90's and early 2000's before Fox and CNN doubled-down on extreme views. People in rural America hated immigrants just as much then as they do know.
Having different "likes" doesn't mean a place isn't peaceful or calm. My OC was that the larger cities are where the insanity has been happening for almost ever.
People can be unhappy anywhere, but also people can learn to get along anywhere too... unless there is a riot side your house, or a shooting next door. These are outside your personal influence.
No it isn't. People in rural America assume that if you're in rural America then you already believe the exact same things that they do, based largely on skin color. Try living there and going against that grain and see how "peaceful and contented" they are.
Sure, I'd agree with that. It's one thing to have grievances, it's another thing to be infected by a victim mindset where your grievances are always top of mind, keeping you from taking an accurate inventory of yourself, keeping you from doing what you can to improve your situation in life (and by extension your community's position in the world).
I think they would, but mostly just because of selection effects. There aren't so many minorities in rural areas, and the ones that end up there probably had better-than-usual reasons to end up in rural parts.
I've lived in rural areas and they would say that when you get called "the good colored folk" by the white people in the area that there's a reason for that "good" description and it's not because they believe in racial equality.
it's difficult to imagine parts of the world being different than the part of the world you live in and/or the depiction of the world portrayed by the media.
Spoiler alert: I have done this and they disagree with you.
Look, everything is contextual -- your rural area may be superior in some respects to the ones I've been to. But you also shouldn't assume that your experience is universal.
Edited to add: if you haven't been to a big city in a while, you should take a trip. They're not generally the hellholes you've been led to believe by right-wing news media.
In my experience rural Americans tend to live in abject terror of just how fine they would feel were they treated as they treat minorities and it is compounded by a deep down understanding they are already the minority, it just has not arrived there yet.
I wish I could alleviate their fear. Given the opportunity, people are people, good & bad do not stratify in any meaningful way along the arbitrary lines that get drawn.
I used to live in rural America. I don't any more. There are reasons for that.
Cities usually kill people by ignoring them until they die. Exceptions are so rare that they become the stuff of history books.
The big upside of cities is that nobody cares enough about you to actually hate you. If you're running away from something, that can be pretty inviting.
It can be nice in big cities too, maybe a little harder, but still pretty easy - all you have to do is remove social media and the clickbait/outrage web and life becomes pretty normal.
I'm not sure it does. I see weird people in the subway most days, I see all the time people that look like they spend all their day being outside - doing nothing, there are people making noise at 2 am on a week night, there are people going at crazy speeds on the street, at night or during the day. I feel like lots of people have some kind of weight on their shoulder, and/or one or multiple things bothering them a lot. Sometimes the atmoshpere feels a bit tense and everyone seems a little crazy.
I think it's a bit reductive to put all that on social media and the web. People are packed together in cities, sometimes you smell piss while going to and getting back from your job, sometimes people make noise when you want to sleep, it's hard to see nature, it's hard to be alone, it's hard to escape the noise and the light, public transportation can feel suffocating, the air isn't clean, it's very hard to have space to grow some food or practice some hobbies.
Most of it is "normal" in that many people live like this. However, I feel like all that I mentionned has a negative impact on my mental health, and on the mental health of the people around me. One that could translate to people being more aggressive, more tense in general.
> I feel like lots of people have some kind of weight on their shoulder, and/or one or multiple things bothering them a lot.
With very few exceptions, there’s nothing healthy or normal about living in chaotic, densely populated urban areas with high crime and endless noise, air and light pollution. In addition, there’s nothing natural about needing to work a bullshit job just to survive.
People ought to really start asking what is being afforded exactly when it comes to making city life “affordable”.
> With very few exceptions, there’s nothing healthy or normal about living in chaotic, densely populated urban areas with high crime and endless noise, air and light pollution. In addition, there’s nothing natural about needing to work a bullshit job just to survive.
That's how I feel too. The only difference is that where I live the crime rate here is not that high. But the rest is the same.
> I see weird people in the subway most days, I see all the time people that look like they spend all their day being outside - doing nothing, there are people making noise at 2 am on a week night, there are people going at crazy speeds on the street, at night or during the day.
There's various levels of not belonging - this one is the best version of it and is basically an outsider perspective. Not belonging and not wanting to belonging are great, but when you don't belong and want to belong, not so much. Being actively prevented from belonging is even worse.
I was just wondering, are there disconnected internets that i can join? I d rather stay in a limited sector that is not overpopulated and oversaturated with the mainstream, even if it has huge downsides. Just like how biology uses membranes to build the useful stuff , i think we need harder borders between internet communities to increase the variance. Everyone moving around like a giant mob and lashing at each other in universal platforms is not productive. I wonder what kind of tech is needed to begin the great internet fragmentation.
You just refuse to participate. If you want an exclusive club, leave the non-exclusive ones. Back to blogging instead of the social media mob. And much more actual face-to-face interaction instead of interacting via an online platform.
I dont think they are, they are open to basically everyone. It's more likely other-language forums, where language acts as a barrier for participation for outsiders.
There's gopher where there is still quite a number of interesting posts. There's also a more recent network called gemini which is gaining in popularity.
I also find it valuable…it’s part of the difference between an immigrant mentality and an ex pat mentality.
The third culture insight explains a lot. My life, my mother’s life…
A couple of things didn’t match my experience:
> Then my move to San Francisco in 1999. Definitely an outsider without the Stanford or Berkeley or Ivy League
I definitely don’t understand this unless it’s some weird sf thing. I live in the Vally and it’s not like this.
> “you’ll never belong in Silicon Valley because you are way too international”
Also feels weird to me. I’d guess that 2/3 of the adults in my Palo Alto neighborhood were, like me, born overseas and quite a few had a parapitetic background like the author (and me).
About half the people I know in leadership roles in Silicon Valley came from Stanford and Berkeley. About half of the senior designers I know came from the D School. Heck, basically all senior leads on Palantir's Gotham platform came from the same Stanford fraternity. Startups in Silicon Valley are profoundly parochial in their membership.
Given the authors biography and work in the VC / startup ecosystem, isn't "not belonging" just... normal? There's probably one blog post per denizen of San Francisco and surroundings on the internet by now about how different they are.
Eccentricity is basically performative at this point, I've seen a lot of people just trying to be edgy to get attention in the sector.
Honestly I think if you're actually looking for advice fitting-in (although not mindlessly), being conscientious and reliable serve the average person better.
As a retired tech person who is also one of the author's Third Culture Individuals, I couldn't agree with this sentiment more.
The Bay Area startup scene is the most sheltered and identical group of people I've ever worked with. It's why I finally turned it in: I just can't stand them. My zip code in Oklahoma is substantially more diverse in any type of way you can think of except superficial ones.
As it turns out everyone acting like they're "open-minded" or "edgy" or "innovative" does not suddenly become true if it is universally parroted. It's an open joke for people who exist outside that system.
Funny that when Vancouver was a 'backwater' as the article refers to it was when it was much more affordable and a lot less crowded. In other words much nicer to live in. Now the costs exceed the value of living there, which is diminished due to overcrowding, as well as real estate speculation and crime driven sky-high housing costs, and I know it better than most here.
> Funny that when Vancouver was a 'backwater' as the article refers to it was when it was much more affordable and a lot less crowded. In other words much nicer to live in.
There’s no getting around it: increases in population density yield diminishing returns on quality of life. Returns may even turn negative if population density spirals beyond that which the natural ecosystem can support.
Quality of life must be balanced against human population growth. Life is expensive — my fear is if we don’t intelligently limit the number of humans alive, soon only the ultrawealthy will be able to afford having a reasonable quality of life.
> Funny that when Vancouver was a 'backwater' as the article refers to it was when it was much more affordable and a lot less crowded
Fewer people wanting to live their and those who do being less willing to spend a lot to do so is pretty much the definition of a backwater, so, no, its not really funny.
> Now the costs exceed the value of living there
To you, perhaps, but if that was generally true compared to the time you are comparing it to, fewer people would be paying the price to live there now than then.
I've always felt on the fringe of whatever group I was associated with. Honestly it doesn't feel that great. But certain times I realize I'm connected to a lot more people, and diverse people than those who are in the center of these various groups. I also feel like I have more integrity, don't have to sell my soul just to belong. YMMV
You get used to it. After a while, you prefer it, in no small part due to having that outside perspective that is all too valuable in realizing how bad groupthink is.
This is interesting to read and very relatable for me. Not white enough to be white, not hispanic enough to be hispanic. Caught shit through out high school and college for looking different though. Left my home town and moved around. Never quite felt at home in SF but now I was to different for my home town too and it doesn't really feel like the place I belong anymore. I'm not where I should I be or what Im part of. I don't even really feel relatable to being American either.
I guess I do feel somewhat contrarian too at times and never really got into hype and pop culture either, maybe that's why. That was interesting to see the article say.
I'm not really sure what to make of it. Im not sure I really like this perspective though, where its some benefit that helps you optimize your life or make better business decisions.
