But here we are, sitting on HN voting up the most ridiculous non-useful articles. HN is often full of sensationalist entertainment news - endless appstore policies, iPad raves/rants etc. Why this is dead, why X is a Y killer. Endless rants about privacy.
We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"
The problem is "news." Without sensational news—without ephemera, in other words—the concept of "news" crumbles. We don't need to know the ongoing developments in stories that don't affect us personally, but we still crave to. If humans were stripped of this urge, this and every social news site would be reduced to magazines, publishing only after-the-fact analyses of completed narratives.
Maybe a way to start doing this would be telling people that they are dumb.
The past couple weeks I've been thinking that people are ok with small/short/quick news because it makes them think they have figured out the whole thing. Maybe they are satisfied that they've learned something, or maybe they think it is enough.
I think folks are overestimating their ability to put loosely connected ideas into something bigger. You get a little here, a sprinkle there and you're cool with that.
It's like a fast food for the brain. You're constantly satisfied, almost by the second, because you're supposedly "learning" something.
But I don't know. My train of thought stops there. I don't know how to strip people of this urge.
We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"