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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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The Beautiful People are in Charge Just Like Everywhere Else.

I don't have anything terribly insightful to say about any of this. It's just another entry in the ongoing process of what I've mentally termed internet gentrification or nerd cultural appropriation. I attempt not to get bent out of shape over these things, lest I tip over into the "ugh, normies..." nerd-hipster trope but this article resonated with me. I miss the pre-Dice CmdrTaco-era of Slashdot (fuck Beta!). I hate influencer culture and every YouTube video telling me to "like and subscribe". There used to be a commenter on SSC whose entire schtick was something like "Everything is a popularity contest and all is lost" and he's starting to make sense to me. Moloch will have his sacrifices.

I appreciated the article, but it is a little funny watching Millennials reinvent the Eternal September.

One thing that the essay suggested to my mind is that maybe I should think more about how the Internet and academia have co-evolved in the last ~50 years. The geekiness of American universities was eroded first by athletics, but later--and much more powerfully--by credential inflation in the job market. The essentially "democratizing" process of expanding college from perhaps 5% of the population to nearly 50% has had similar effects in higher education as democratizing the Internet has had in online spaces, with popularity crowding out capability as the primary measure of success. Increasing competition for "top spots" without proportionally diversifying the availability and character of what gets recognized as a "top spot" has injected all sorts of crab-bucket distortions into both systems. But the Internet's development arc has moved much more quickly; if the analogy holds, then watching how the Internet develops from here may be informative as to the future of academia. Which I do not find encouraging.

Guess I will just have to hope the analogy is bad...

The geekiness of American universities was eroded first by athletics, but later--and much more powerfully--by credential inflation in the job market.

Universities have always been jock and job factories. It was probably worse a long time ago than today, when favoritism was more rampant in the Ivy League (such as gentile favoritism). Despite democratization, top colleges are more exclusive and competitive than ever. The student body today is probably smarter and more meritocratic, some affirmative action notwithstanding, today for top colleges compared to 50 years ago. More college demand means more colleges. The overly competitive job market tracks increased competitiveness seen everywhere in life.

Yeah, I thought about that as soon as I hit comment. Everything old is new again.

I'm increasingly finding my solace by avoiding the Internet, except for very curated spaces like this place.

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