Papeer logo
ExploreHubPricingPrivacy
https://web.archive.org

Delicious, delicious irony || kuro5hin.org

The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20090420073839/http://www.kuro5hin.org:80/story/2008/9/20/14025/0248

[[P]](https://web.archive.org/web/20090420073839/http://www.kuro5hin.org/print/2008/9/20/14025/0248)**[Delicious, delicious irony](https://web.archive.org/web/20090420073839/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/9/20/14025/0248)**

By debillitatus in Meta

Mon Sep 22, 2008 at 09:17:50 AM EST

Tags: k5, demise thereof ( all tags)k5

One of our more prolific users, localroger, recently posted a diary about how this online community of ours has failed.  In and of itself, this is not ironic or even remarkable; the perennial breast-beating that our community is dying is perhaps one of the more notable signature memes of our community.

No, the irony is in the fact that he based his claim around an essay which is actually an exegesis of the strengths of k5 --- a laundry list of what we are doing right.

To borrow a metaphor, yes, k5 is full of alligators, but they're in the moat guarding the castle.

Let's start with this:  Everyone reading this is here of their own free will.

None of us are getting paid to be here (notable exception being rusty).  We're all here because we want to be here, because we get something out of being here, because we find this place useful or interesting.  I, for one, find the place very interesting.  All the trolling aside, there is not one single place on the web where there is anything remotely like the level of novelty k5 has to offer.

Pretty much everyone who contributes here is an interesting character.  Some of us are interesting because we are doing interesting things with our lives and have a compelling story to tell.  Some of us are interesting because we have fascinating pathologies and find ever more intriguing ways to Fail at Life.  The Bee Guy is only one of a long list of people who fit in the former group; we can pass over in silence names from the latter (I'm sure some names are popping into your heads even now).

Yes, localroger, even you are an interesting character, although not at all for the reasons you think.

Moreover, k5 is easily the most innovative and novel places that exist on the internet.  No question.  If I had to list the 100 most intriguing things I've ever seen on the internet,  I have no doubt that 50 of them were here, and I don't even think I'd be exaggerating if I said 75 of them were here.  Cool shit happens here, and that's why we stay.

I simply cannot stress enough how remarkable our online community is in this regard.  If you doubt it for a second, read through the comments of a Slashdot story, and reflect upon how much insipid cheerleading and mindless drivel gets pumped out into every one of these threads.  The perfect example:  whenever a story including the word "correlation" appears, the first person to post "Correlation is not causation" gets 5'd. Every. Time1.  And Slashdot is one of the better places: if you want your brain to hurt, read a Fark or a Digg thread, or (holy Christ) a Youtube thread.

What one sees over and over in large online communities is that people who want to express themselves, but have nothing to say, just crapflood everything.  Now, the Shirky essay points out that this is a signature problem of large social groups and that the way to correct for this is that there needs to be a barrier to entry.  And Shirky is correct. Basically, it has nothing to do with intention or desire, it's simply that most people are themselves boring and don't want to see anything new --- they are perfectly happy to join an online community where everything thinks as they do, bleat the same points at each other, and then think that they had a conversation.

Localroger makes a point of reminding us that Daily Kos has way more visitors, and makes way more money, than k5 does.  Of course it does; it's popular for exactly the same reason Lindsay Lohan is popular.  It's completely and utterly vapid.

So, you might ask: what is it that makes k5 so interesting?  What is that high barrier to entry which keeps out the mindless?  And my answer is simple: the trolling.

Bear with me for a second here.  As Shirky points out, the problem with any online forum is the fact that it's so egalitarian, people give each other so much respect, it's open to all.  And therein lies the rub:  people with really stupid shit to say get treated with about as much respect as people with something interesting to say.  People who drone on about trivialities not only get as much face time as people who make concise and insightful arguments, they get more, because they're droning.  And, worse, people who take themselves too seriously, and who have cultivated a writing style which makes them seem like a thoughtful expert to most people on first glance, generate sycophantic followers.

That doesn't happen here.  Anyone who takes themselves too seriously gets taken down a peg by droves of critics.  The vapid is mercilessly mocked; the pontificators get dick jokes and suicide advice.  This does two things:

  • the "snowflakes" get run the fuck off and we don't have to hear the excruciatingly painful missives about "how they feel" about the war in Iraq, and the self-important bloviators get exactly the lack of respect they deserve.
  • it allows us to really feel each other out, to see what the other people are really like.  Anyone who has ever played a team sport knows this instinctively, but let me spell it out for the others:  hazing is the best way for a group of people to get to know each other and to cohere --- you learn a lot about someone in how they react to a joke about their mother.  You learn how seriously they take themselves, and how they see their relationship within the group.  The shotgun mouthwash jokes allow us to have that shared experience and to build that community.

Is k5 a failure?  Not at all.  If you're reading this, it's because you're here, and if you're here, it's either because you have something interesting to say, or want to read something novel.  And it is that way because we chased off all the chaff.

---

1 - example thanks to Vampire ZAMAZ

The Internet is subject to selection pressure.

If it lives on the Internet, it's successful in its niche.  If nothing can overtake its niche, it's wildly successful.  Can anyone imagine anything twisted enough to replace k5?

Kill yourself.

--

Never mind, it was just the dog cumming -- jandev

sausalito is most certainly smoking imperial russian dick like a heroin addict smokes the pipe -- sausalito

did u ever piss on bonitas face? did she cry afterwards, by herself in the bathroom, ashamed as you masturbated in the next room listening? -- Jobst of Moravia

a snowflake AND stay here?

  • You're A Mother To Us All by MichaelCrawford, 09/21/2008 03:51:33 AM EST ( 3.00 / 2)

    • Dude by Scrymarch, 09/21/2008 07:53:09 AM EST ( 3.00 / 5)

      • some of you by nononoitaintmebabe, 09/23/2008 09:41:48 PM EST ( 3.00 / 3)

So who here Fails at life the worst? ( none / 1) ( #8)

by nlscb on Sat Sep 20, 2008 at 06:27:57 PM EST

haha nlscb! ROFL, etc ... etc ...

Some of the "Failures" I'm not sure I can take seriously as failures. Lemonjuice seems like someone just making stuff up, for example.

Except for Baldrson, I never really have come across a failure here, at least one who stuck around long enough to take our abuse.

Comment Search has returned - Like a beaten wife, I am pathetically grateful. - mr strange

One of the reasons I (mostly) lurk here is the sheer beauty and elegance of the trolling and flaming. This community has elevated both to an art form. I can't help but admire it.

--

Prisoners! Seize each other!

+1 fp a good old time k5 circlejerk ( none / 1) ( #26)

by lostincali on Sun Sep 21, 2008 at 12:05:54 PM EST

"I have a raging and unquenchable thirst [for turgid gay penis], and have had it for most of my life." - Michael fucking Crawford

  • eh by khallow, 09/21/2008 02:40:41 PM EST ( 3.00 / 4)

Anything to push down that postDigifail crap ( none / 1) ( #28)

by undermyne on Sun Sep 21, 2008 at 12:17:58 PM EST

that is corrupting the FP. The fact that story posted is very strong support for argument that k5 is dead. I have had two stories that got more votes (below threshold) that didn't post. But there is no liberal slant/censorship by any of the admins on this site .

"You're an asshole. You are the greatest troll on this site." Some nullo

There seems to be a lot k5 self-reflection since the k5 surcharge for user accounts.

Going through the stories of only a couple years ago shows most of the users that commented then no longer lurk here. The ghetto would rollover every few hours then too. It seemed to peak out around the time somaudlin et.al was around.

Also since Jan 2006, a score of 70 was required to make FP, now of course it is more than half that. A real popular story would post in a couple of hours. Now it takes most of the 36 hour limit.

Queue amusement came when an occasional spammer posted something in the edit queue. That provided lots of entertainment. Now even that is gone.

Taking a look at Google Trends and Alexa show that even slashdot readership has declined during that same period. I thought that would never happen. It appears to be declining at a steady rate too.

I think a big reason for all this is not the trolling that goes on here but the fact there was an emergence of sites like digg, boingboing and wider use of newsfeeds. People that were less interested in trolling but more interested in tech news etc simply moved on.

The trolling fields are riper at myspace and facebook but it is too easy to do last I checked. The hard part is finding a good bulletin board to troll. Lately though election bulletin boards have been fun.

Just my two cents

Shut the fuck up hillbilly. - Ruston Rustov/LOBSD/etc THE Microcephalic.

I like you, I'll kill you last. - Killer Clown

The ScuttledMonkey: A Story Collection

The verdict: ( 2.14 / 7) ( #36)

by gr3y on Sun Sep 21, 2008 at 10:27:38 PM EST

Your vote (0) was recorded.

This story currently has a total score of 21.

So, basically, I don't care. Your submission and localroger's are both an order of magnitude greater than my apathy threshold. My policy is to vote meta to section, but the recent stark hatred for localroger is sad and pathetic, considering the sources are a bunch of passive-aggressive, compulsive, meta-masturbators who would be unable to form a coherent sentence in the presence of the person they claim to detest if the Internet didn't exist to shield them from the consequences of their actions.

I don't pay any special attention to what localroger says because he's notorious and the impact of that notoriety is present in everything he says, like crawford, but localroger is the site's resident furry, and everyone feels safe beating up on him, even the useless and pathetic few who simply can't resist following everything he says with a fucking rebuttal.

You fucking fail it, "it" being having the capacity for original thought.

I am a disruptive technology.

Your vote (1) was recorded.

This story currently has a total score of 30.

You're the straw that broke the camel's back!

Your vote put this story over the threshold, and it should now appear on the front page. Enjoy!

Chickens don't give milk

I've been kidnapped and held prisoner. As part of my torture, I'm being forced to read and post at K5.

Information wants to be beer.

This is an old idea ( 2.50 / 2) ( #43)

by waxmop on Mon Sep 22, 2008 at 11:21:42 AM EST

This place is a goofy old coelacanth. It will survive forever, but it is largely irrelevant to the rest of the web.

Sure, the trolls scare off the idiots. They're like the jackals in our ecosystem. But the trolls are insufficient to keep this place from turning into a desert. This place also needs really smart people writing well-written articles, and easily 80% of those people are gone.

I don't think the trolls scared them off. This site just didn't fight hard enough to keep them. Rusty stopped innovating the plumbing behind the site. The CMF fiasco didn't help.

Consider this: if you just finished a 1000-word article of really good content, why post it exclusively to k5? Maybe in 2001, k5 was a good option. But why now? Why not post it to your blog, then promote it on reddit, digg, and a dozen planet sites? You'll get way more page views, and people can still discuss your stuff in an external forum. It doesn't matter if you want publicity, adsense $$$, or just a noble discussion of ideas. K5 is no longer the best means to any of those ends.

The k5 idea of a community-based filter was great. Way better than the slashdot approach. But that idea is old hat now. Everybody does that.

--

there are few things more badass than a lost cause. nailgun

How is 4chan a replacement for kuro5hin?

I like it there ( none / 1) ( #50)

by mirko on Mon Sep 22, 2008 at 02:49:36 PM EST

I love the subject line flamewars, the open goatse adoration and the fact neither Slashdotters nor Diggers will haunt there.

But at the moment I don't have much time to write, as I'm already busy helping your fellows educating Amuritans...

Free Art online

Wrong on three points: ( 2.80 / 5) ( #51)

by Liar on Mon Sep 22, 2008 at 03:12:50 PM EST

"The vapid is mercilessly mocked." This is incomplete. All things get mercilessly mocked whether it's warranted or not. You may not get snowflakes, but neither do you get any pillars or respectability who endured our trial by fire... they got mocked and moved on too. Anyone with something to offer would offer it to someplace that appreciates it. You're left with the lowest common denominator. The very rare piece of good content is the exception that proves the rule: this place tolerates any behavior: even good behavior!

"it allows us to really feel each other out" No, it doesn't. It forces you to don a strawman persona because anything which might get to the heart of the matter would be poisonous to discuss in this environment. That's not discussion. It's posturing.

"it's either because you have something interesting to say, or want to read something novel." There's many people without interesting things to say but they'll say them anyway. Fewer people actually read than you think--a given entry isn't to have one's pearl of wisdom shared but provides an opportunity for people to hear themselves talk. Any given posting is a coathook on which people can build their solipsisms and they frequently do. Also, like hanging out at the 7-11, there's many people who are just killing time and K5 is as good a place as any. I'm not sure that's really praiseworthy, just like 7-11s. I think this means that I now have to imagine rusty speaking in a Pakistani accent.

I admit I'm a Liar. That's why you can trust me.

why does everyone pile on localroger?

the litany of his horrible "crimes" are no worse than any of you other cocksuckers

so what's the big deal with localroger? it has to be some sort of other issue going on here. what has he done? the animosty displayed towards him goes way above and beyond the call of duty for the typical low grade animosity here

why does localroger leave so many of you turds with your kill switch set on full retard?

I'm making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NYC

what's all this ( 2.50 / 6) ( #67)

by osm on Mon Sep 22, 2008 at 09:39:23 PM EST

about alligators with lasers mounted on their heads infesting kuro5hin?

-------

hot chicks

  • Sharks by rusty, 09/23/2008 09:16:32 AM EST ( 3.00 / 3)

As I noted in my last diary (over a year ago), K5 used to be an awesome place to get new ideas and angles on things.

That would be circa 2002-3.

I keep K5 in my RSS reader for nostalgia nowdays.

I'd like to get back into posting online. I've been working on a blog. I know that K5 isn't the place to post this kind of thing any more. There's no point.

cries

If I'm attacking your idea, it's probably because I like it

Lancaster, to be precise. It seems somebody thought I was important enough to pay me on rather short notice to fly across the Atlantic and put me up for a week to make sure their mechanical thingy works right.

There is no surer proof that this site has failed than that not one but two back to back attacks on me by the same stalker have hit the top spot, one a lame copypasta mod that doesn't make sense and isn't even funny and now this one which attempts a Robotslave-like reframing of an obvious point in such lame fashion that calling it out is almost comically redundant.

I seem to remember a Rusty who had a rather different vision for this site, more like the K5 of 2003-4 only getting bigger and better. Instead, at the very point when he needed to take Shirky's prescription and tighten access he did the very opposite. Thar ain't no gators thar mateys! (I was flying on Talk Like A Pirate Day, so humor me.)

Saying that K5 is something other than crap right now is rather like the practice of "retroactive trolling." See, it's not a failure, it's supposed to look this way. Yeah right.

Before K5, I used to write the occasional trunk essay mostly for my own amusement. I always write mostly for my own amusement. But after A Casino Odyssey I realized that other people did sometimes find my musings amusing, and I started writing some of them down that I might have passed on otherwise. That's how the Plant stories, all of Passages after the original, the Trinity story, and pretty much everything else I ever put up here came to be. There was a point when I had the idea, and before K5 I would have shrugged and thought cool but not worth it, but after K5 I thought about it a bit more and fleshed it out and maybe eventually wrote something.

I am back to pre-K5 mode. As for why I am still here, it is partly because of something none of you shitheads ever seem to figure out about me, which is that I am fascinated by negativity, death, violence, and destruction, and the trainwreck that K5 has become is a thing I can no more pull away from than I can remove rotten dot com from my favorites.

But that doesn't mean I will necessarily put much effort into it while it is in this state. As pretty much everyone else who ever contributed anything worthwhile has also apparently decided, for various reasons.

Two and a half years ago I promised my wife I'd find a way to build her a house that would be safe in "tornado alley." That started an odyssey every bit as fascinating to me as the casino based one, and every bit as illuminating.

Nowadays when that creative impulse strikes, I'm much more likely to head to the garage and try refining my methods. Using measurements and controls which most in the alternative housing movement don't bother with, I have made a true breakthrough in the use of paper/cement mixtures to make large structures. To give a sense of how great a breakthrough it is, I am seriously thinking of building a boat instead of a house as a demonstration project. It will be just as strong, about the same stiffness and weight, and one tenth the price of a similar vessel made of fiberglass foam laminate. You don't even want to know how much cheaper and stronger this method would be than conventional building construction.

There was once a time when I would have been sure of announcing my eventual success here. That seems unlikely now. There was once a time when K5 earned the attention of people with ideas like mine. There was once a time when Rusty proudly said he was glad to have us and hoped to grow our ranks.

Meanwhile, I think I will have another Guinness.

And that is what is so great about the internet. It enables pompous blowhards to connect with other pompous blowhards in a vast circle jerk of pomposity. -- Bill Maher

I've figured out a pretty clean cut way to get 5's:

When a new story comes out, post:

FTA: ""

It's easy as that. Now when I get bored, I farm mod points using that formula and downvote all of the other bullshit 5'd posts.

K5 is truly incredible.

Before TV, more people listened to radio, before radio you had reading... but not more.

Problem with the internet, and computers in general, is that up until very recently you had a television with words on it. That attracted a certain crowd. Now you have the YouTV and everybody's not so secret porn stash. Thus, now you get a crowd of people who don't give a rats ass about reading what anyone is writing.

Furthermore, those that have been all up on this shitpile since back in the day, and aren't hiding out in Gnu Mailman mailing lists, have evolved their writing style to be abhorrent in an effort to entice people to read. Otherwise, why wouldn't people just skim it? Do you really think you'd be dropping dick jokes on a forum in 98 without looking like a total fucktard? No, it was a gradual collective devolution mixed in with an onslaught of newbies who write to the web with their thumbs on a phone, 255 character limit.

I agree that K5 is interesting, I'm still here, I've been here all along. But other than to announce personal projects in my diary which get a good lollercoaster beat down from various trolls. Oh, and that one time I wrote a front page article on trackers, I'm not part of the community. I read and enjoy, some of the funniest stuff along side the weirdest, but I don't know any of you personally. And do I want to?

The article holds some truths to be self-evident. I agree with a lot of the article. But the 7-11 analogy in the fierce debate above this reply somewhere is on point. The site is a point of leisure, not a point of reference.

Some guard dogs protect junk yards, not everyone lives in a castle.

This place is a castle made out of chicken scraps, and the alligators in the moat are fat and multiplying.

And someone would pay $5 for this? ( none / 1) ( #164)

by lukme on Sat Oct 25, 2008 at 02:23:52 PM EST

I am flabbergasted this site would be worth more than free.

Your arguments about hazing are completely off base, in that all hazing will do is to actively diminish the diversity of ideas to a minimum.

The metaphor of a castle guarded by alligators was a nice hook for this article, however, the actual metaphor should be the mound of dirt guarded by a quagmire with gnats and leaches (sounds like most of Maine - if you disagree with me, hike Katahdin in June).

At this point, I am agreeing with localroger, that is, I will have another guinness.

-----------------------------------

It's awfully hard to fly with eagles when you're a turkey.

with your own penis! lol!