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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27471 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Luddites unite! Anyone else here not own a cellphone?

I don't even own a dumb-phone. If someone wants to talk to me IRL, I insist there be no electrons involved. It goes without saying I'm not very popular :(

wait, how do you actually make that work? Do you just tell people to come knock on your door at any time? Do people actually do that?

I'm not very popular even though I do my best to reach out on social networking. If I didn't have a cellphone I'm pretty sure no one would ever talk to me except my fellow drunks at dive bars.

My wife basically arranges all my/our socialization. From my perspective, people just randomly show up and leave. I login to the motte when I'm waiting for the code to compile.

I do own a perfectly modern smartphone and use it, but with the practiced disdain of someone who refuses be beholden to it. I make a point of not using it in human company, and I absolutely will chide anyone who pulls out a phone mid-conversation. I often leave it at home when I go out, so as to travel lighter and not be disturbed. I have every app except the nominal "phone" muted at all times, and even that is muted at night (lest some annoying robo-call wake me).

Humans are tool-users. I just insist on not being abused by my tools, and I try to remain independent of them. Hell, I even regularly spend a few days with my glasses off just to make sure I can function without them. I sometimes go out barefoot to make sure I'm not shoe-dependent. I'll spend a few days without coffee to spite the addiction. And so on. I'm sure this is all just pontless eccentricity and won't ever do me much good, but I grant myself these little things.

I own a dumb-phone and keep my cell in a box for when I need to use it for GPS/internet/etc in some situations (like when travelling).

In such circumstances, the mods have the option to remove a comment entirely. This seems like an honest, harmless mistake, so I'll let it slide. Ideally you'd be the one deleting and re-pasting your message elsewhere, but eh.

I thought about it, but then I didn't think the right people would find the PR subthread.

I tip my Amish hat to you, but no, I am nowhere near as disciplined as you are.

This doesn't belong in the Culture War thread, at least not with a lot more added to an and some attempt to make it relevant to the culture war

How embarrassing... this was intended as a reply to @WhiningCoil's post https://www.themotte.org/post/2277/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/352249?context=8#context

I never understood how other people make this mistake, but now I realize it's due to a number of confusing interface features. (Or at least they are confusing to this Luddite...)

Mods/Zorba: Maybe the following interface changes could help:

  1. change the button text for posting a reply from "comment" to "reply"
  2. remove the ability to make top level posts when you are not "at the top level"; for example, in the link above there should only be the ability to reply since I am "zoomed into" a comment, and not the ability to make a top-level post, since no one should be doing that from the linked page.

I'm pretty sure I could submit a PR that makes these changes if you all are too busy, but I forget where the github repo is at.

I forget where the github repo is at

It's linked in the menu at the upper right corner of the page (under your profile image).

Thanks. PR submitted at https://github.com/themotte/rDrama/pull/748

Arguably the most luddite guy here busts out a PR to fix a minor site annoyance in a matter of hours. Incredible.

The Ludditism stems from spending so much time on the computer for work... but here I am on a Friday night replying to a forum post instead of doing luddite things...

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