In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?
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Notes -
Many years ago, I hang out on an IRC channel, another member of which was a gay guy in his early thirties. He was pretty cool, one of my friends from that channel became close friends with him. He had a Facebook page, instagram, posted frequently, people I did not know would comment to his photos referring to some shared experiences etc (this was during the time when using Facebook was still cool).
Then, after a slip in opsec, it turned out that the whole guy was completely made up by another channel member, a 19-year old girl who spent 3 years creating and maintaining his persona close to every single day, alongside with a dozens of other accounts dedicated to make him more real, and of course her own actual persona.
What was her motive?
She disappeared as soon as she was discovered, and then reappeared a couple of years later, said she is sorry about the whole thing, but refused to discuss it any more. Others didn’t pry, because after a few years has passed, people didn’t care so much.
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