

_why's best twitter posts - RyanMcGreal
http://favstar.fm/users/_why

======
Xichekolas
_"you seem to think i'm random, but i'm only psuedorandom. you would be
exactly this way, were you seeded at the very same time and place."_

If _why were to eulogize himself, I think this is what he'd say.

------
Jeremysr
I have this one engraved on the back of my iPod touch:

 _turtles and goats, turtles and goats, turtles and goats are filling up
boats._

(It was free so might as well.)

~~~
sho
Yeah, might as well ruin your iPod with that fucking _nonsense_.

Why the fuck is this bullshit being upvoted. This is how modern art gets
popular, you know? People "upvoting" IRL because they're tricked into thinking
it's good. Peer pressure. Social "proof". Sheep mentality. When if they saw it
in isolation, they'd realise it's just rubbish.

You know what? I can toss this shit out all day. Here we go, I feel an
epiphany coming on:

 _bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes are tickling my toes_

WOOOAH! That is, like, SO deep. Am I a genius yet?

update: Wait! More is coming! I am channeling the good shit!

check it out:

 _chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs are climbing the
logs_

That would look perfect on the back of any iPod IMO.

~~~
unalone
You're going to want to chill the fuck out, Sho. Want to know what's really
fucking nonsense? You telling somebody else that they're bullshit because you
don't agree with what they decided they liked. Also, you telling a bunch of
modern artists who've spent years doing their thing that their work is
valueless.

I've got news for you. Do you know what makes things valuable? The people who
decide to spend their money on things. That's it. It doesn't make things
necessarily _good_ , but what _is_ good? Some people genuinely think Damien
Hirst's dangling shark is good art. I don't. I think the concept's vague and
it's not worth the money it takes to produce. Ditto his diamond-studded skull.
But there's a gap from not liking something personally and deciding to devalue
other people because they like it.

Newsflash: It's a large world. If you don't like people who like lines like
that, avoid them. Don't waste your time bitching them out and snarking around.
It takes a pretty fucked-up person to decide it's worth making people feel bad
about themselves.

-

I used to feel the same way as you, back when I was the tender age of
eighteen. (My birthday was last week and I've decided to excuse any bursts of
maturity I've had on it; you and I know that's bullshit but it amuses me so
let me continue.) I was totally caught up in the Ayn Rand swing, you know?
Where people with worse taste than me were destroying the human race, I had to
preserve standards, etc., etc. The idea that everything is objective gives me
the moral right to insult other people if it means improving the human race a
little bit. Problem is, things _aren't_ all objective. You can monitor some
things about art, you can come to a consensus with people on how well-crafted
something is or how unique it is, but eventually you're just assigning
arbitrary values to complex things, and you're forced to let people decide
what they like on their own.

My big sticking point was _Twilight_. Shittiest book ever. I couldn't write
that bad if I tried. So I used to tell myself that I disliked people because
they were brainwashed by the modern culture that told them it was okay to like
Twilight. Kind of like your "sheep mentality" thing. Then I realized two
things:

A) The sort of person who judges somebody by what they read when that person's
not a reader is a douche.

B) There's a difference between judging somebody in their face, and making
private judgments that don't hurt anybody.

If somebody likes something, then let 'em. All power to them. Maybe one day
they'll change their mind. Maybe you can show them something you like better,
and that'll influence them along a new course. I was a counselor at Princeton
for the last month, watching over 13-year-olds who were into stuff like Two
and a Half Men, and I brought in Arrested Development for them to watch.
Gentle nudges.

In the end, society's an illusion. That's the big realization I made. I could
spend my life ranting against Twilight fans. Maybe if I'm good I could reach a
hundred thousand fans and make them feel bad about themselves, and I could try
and tell myself that I've made a difference. Problem is, I don't know those
people. I don't care about those people. They aren't a part of my life. So why
bother with them? It's a huge world filled with people who I'll like, and if
the human race doesn't implode (it won't) there'll be people I'd like in the
future, and it doesn't matter if they never take over the world because their
existence is enough.

Incidentally, I will offer the way my friends and I converse as a model to
you, since I think you need it. When we have disagreements about things, we
ask the people we disagree with to explain themselves. The awesome thing is
that by trying to rationalize the way your mind works, you both discover
things about yourself and about the things you liked but take for granted.
It's awesome dining conversation and nobody gets hurt.

-

I need to quote Tao Lin's article about the Virginia Tech killings, which was
a huge influence on me. The essay can be found at
[http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2007/04/crippling-
lone...](http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/2007/04/crippling-loneliness-
and-killing.html).

 _If you think someone else's writing is 'shitty,' 'terrible,' or 'bad' and
you think this seriously, as if the writing were objectively 'shitty' or
'terrible' (which means you believe if anyone likes the writing they
themselves are 'shitty' and 'terrible'), your existence is a distortion of the
universe that causes more pain and suffering. Many people like Gary Lutz. Many
people like Stephen King. If you type, "I dislike Stephen King," that is a
fact. If you type, "Stephen King is horrible," that is not a fact, it isn't
anything; it's you saying either, "I am the only person who exists and my
opinions are actually facts," or "I am the entire universe and the universe is
not indifferent but actually makes value judgments on specific things within
itself without defining a context and a goal."_

 _A person's writing comes from their brain. It is who they are. Some people
have very sad facial expressions and when they talk their voices tremble and
maybe they have a deep voice or respond mostly with one-syllable answers or
maybe they don't speak and don't make eye contact. That is who they are, most
people would say. If you met that person you wouldn't say, "Your facial
expression and voice are horrible, you have no talent. You have no talent for
the pitch of your voice. You are talentless and horrible and unoriginal. Your
voice and facial expression are very bad. You should stop doing those things
and releasing your terrible shit onto the world. Maybe you should try
something else, instead of existing. Maybe you would be good at something
else, like not existing." Most of you would not say that about a person's
idiosyncrasies, a person's 'personality,' etc. But most of you would say those
things about a person's writing, if you didn't like it._

 _A person's effect on the world is their 'art,' that is who they are. How
they move, release noises, arrange their room, write their sentences, give
their poems line breaks, etc._

 _People laughed at Cho Seung-Hui's voice and other people (and people
currently, on the internet) said (are saying) his writing was 'horrible,'
'talentless,' 'embarrassing,' etc._

 _"You have no talent," means "I am the only perspective that exists and I
judge you and you are not good," which is a meaningless statement if a context
and a goal is not defined._

-

But now let's throw all that peace and tolerance bullshit aside, right? You
don't care about that stuff. You care about being the Voice of Reason, telling
that motherfucker Jeremysr just how valueless his decisions are. Well, here I
come, experienced practitioner of art, to tell you that _your_ lines were
bullshit and that _why's was a gorgeous bit of nonsensical prose.

First, we'll establish the existence and artistic defense of nonsense poetry.
I submit that Green Eggs & Ham, despite being absurd and rather redundant, is
in fact a piece of art, given the context of Seuss's stories. On its own it is
still a defensible piece, but in context it is something great by my
standards.

In order to determine the context here, we have to take a look at _why.
Luckily, HN has provided buckets of context for us. He was a brilliant
programmer, and at the very least an enjoyable writer, artist, and musician.
His stuff is appreciable even for those of us that don't like the absurd - the
Chunky Bacon foxes are quite funny, his writing style in the (Poignant) Guide
is probably the best I've come across in programming guides, and his music,
while bizarre, is nuanced and fun. So we have to assume that _if_ _why wanted
to be clever in a less absurd sense, he could have been, and that he is an
experienced enough person to be able to decide for himself which styles he
prefers.

Now look at the context of these other Twitter posts.

"trying to reading dhh’s articles on himself, but his website is so drenched
in axe body spray that it has more of a tear gas effect."

"my lady, this poorly rendered page marks you as the whore of internet
explorer. i mean that in a way that is both graceful and degrading."

"until programmers stop acting like obfuscation is morally hazardous, they’re
not artists, just kids who don’t want their food to touch."

So he's proven himself to have a certain command over words. We'll assume,
then, that he's not a hack trying to trick people into liking him, that people
like him for perfectly good reasons.

Therefore, the line in question:

"turtles and goats, turtles and goats, turtles and goats are filling up boats"

is a piece of nonsense lyricism, no more, no less, but appreciable as such.
While I wouldn't put it on my iPod - mainly because I don't like engraving
things - Jeremysr's putting it on his is not the downfall of society.

Now, let's look at your two attempts at mockery. We'll ignore that you lack
the context of being a genius artist and that the only credit to your name is
that you like being an asshole online who bullies other people.

"bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes, bitches and hoes are tickling my toes"

We'll ignore that your entire form is derivative of _why's form, without any
innovation whatsoever. Your line is broken and messy, primarily because of
your use of the word "bitches", which slows down everything, and "tickling",
which is hideously unflowing. (See, these are objective criticisms based on
the form of the words themselves. I wouldn't call people fucking nonsense if
they liked your line, but I wouldn't be surprised if they preferred _why's.)

Your second one:

"chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs, chickens and frogs are climbing the
logs"

Here you have a not-completely-awful flow, but it's not the same as _why's.
Whereas his words all sound from the same part of the tongue (tərt, fəll, and
the long o of goats), yours come from three different sources (chəck, frãg,
clim), breaking up the pacing when sounded aloud.

Meanwhile, conceptually _why's got something and you don't. While chickens and
frogs are animals I don't have a hard time seeing lumped together, turtles and
goats - beyond sounding nice, and triggering something that feels purple in my
mind, likely because of the echo in the word "turtle" - are a more bizarre
coupling, linked together only because of how they feel sonically. By ending
with "filling up boats", he implies something on a grander scale than
"climbing _the_ logs". In fact, I can't see instantly how you could correct
your own attempt, because while "filling up boats" implies necessarily that
there are _many_ goats and turtles _completely filling_ these many boats,
yours doesn't have an end in sight. _why's statement is terminated at the
completion of the boats' fillings. There is a logical conclusion inherent in
his wording. Your statement, meanwhile, has no termination, and no meaning.
Where are these logs? We know the boats are on a body of water, and that they
will likely sail off. Logs I imagine at once a farm, a mountainous trail, and
my next-door neighbor's cleared-out back yard. That's dissonance in my mind.
It doesn't work.

It takes a lot of work to break down something simple that's created by
reflex, but it's possible, and when people look at lines like _why's, their
minds go through a similar process trying to create a mental response.
Nonsense is harder than you'd think. There are rules to it like there are in
anything. Having actually put some thought into _why's line, I like it more
than I did before I decided to defend it. There're a few things going on there
that I appreciate more now.

-

tl;dr: Hacker News is not the place for you to be an asshole. No place ought
to be the place for you to be an asshole, but if you're going to try and be a
cunt on Hacker News, you've got to deal with people who're a lot more
experienced than you who have kindness in their best interests.

~~~
Jeremysr
Thankyou. :P

I don't even have the whole line on my iPod, to be candid. I had to whittle it
down to "turtles and goats\nfilling up boats" to make it fit. It's really just
a reminder of _why and his words, although I have always liked that particular
line. I've found it running through my head on occasion, like a song stuck in
my head. (This happens to me with many words and phrases, most recently
"alabaster M&Ms")

Now why don't we discuss my iPod wallpaper?
<http://viewsourcecode.org/forum/why-wallpaper.png>

(Next up: I take you all downstairs to my basement where I spin you some old
Thirsty Cups records of mine.)

~~~
unalone
This is a detour from the current ongoing conversation, but what are the
Plastic Cups?

~~~
stephencelis
I think he meant the Thirsty Cups, _why's band:

<http://www.last.fm/music/The+Thirsty+Cups>

------
sutro
_when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than
ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create._

Inspiring. And antithetical to his recent actions, which are surely more
destructive than creative. Yet who among us is not a contradiction? Like Walt
Whitman, _why contained multitudes.

------
mechanical_fish
_what makes me such a lousy programmer is that i can excuse anything by saying
this isn’t so bad— i myself am a much bigger hack than this._

------
dylanz
Awesome posts.

You know, the entire internet is abuzz with _why news right now, but... why?
Sure, he deleted his internet presence. It's probably a healthy thing to do
once in a while. Like spring cleaning!

He's still alive people! He's probably happily riding a unicorn into a misty
valley full of friends. Or, he could be camping.

~~~
noodle
i couldn't help but think of this exchange when i saw all of the _why things

 _\- Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the
personification of an action?

\- Then what died? Who are you mourning?

\- A point of view.

Cain, Elbis O'Shaughnessy, and Abel, in Sandman: The Wake_

~~~
dylanz
That's a great exchange. Thanks for sharing that!

------
TimH
His top post is one of my all time favourite tweets. Often quoted.

------
ssn
Also interesting, posts faved by _why:

<http://favstar.fm/users/_why/faved_by>

~~~
troystribling
This one cracked me up "It's all coming to a head. A sharp, pointy head. With
tiny little eyes." <http://twitter.com/chrisrhoden/status/1574388823>

------
tomkinstinch
A video is online for the talk he delivered at the Art+Code conference at CMU
earlier in the year: <http://www.vimeo.com/5047563>

------
polos
To all of you caring so, so much:

Man, you're really waaaay to virtual already...

Go get some life contact!!

P.S. This english computer culture really is able to fool us too badly, making
us aliens _on_ _our_ _very_ _own_ _planet_...

