
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution - rbanffy
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
======
peterburkimsher
Discussion from 2018:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487)

And 2015:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751)

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joe_the_user
This is one of those article so riddled with the cliches that people normally
believe anyway that's truth is hard to measure. Not saying it's wrong _but..._

Either an article that gave some objective measure of these things would be
interesting or a book that gave a lot of anecdotes and details around a
particular phenomena like this might worth the read. But for an article like
this I can only shrug.

~~~
zozbot234
I mean, you'd expect some heavy cliches seeing as it's describing a pretty
well-known social phenomenon - usually called entryism. And the _really_ sad
thing about it all is that it isn't even sociopaths doing it. It's your
average "cool" kids, basically MOP's who are just a tiny bit better at the
popularity-contest game. Actual sociopaths wouldn't know what to do with your
average geeky subculture, even one where the normies have started to show up
pretty heavily. So the "filter" is working quite well actually (it's one of
the things that attract savvy normies to geeky subcultures in the first
place!), it's just not _nearly_ enough.

~~~
joe_the_user
_I mean, you 'd expect some heavy cliches seeing as it's describing a pretty
well-known social phenomenon - usually called entryism._

Yes but the point is that the things that people think they already know and
understand are the things whose truth we should be most dubious about. These
kinds of reactions _could_ just as much be our own automatic, reflexive
sorting of people into in and out groups rather than the way things are
actually happening at any one time.

------
twic
Isn't this just Crossing the Chasm seen from a different angle?

~~~
ItsMattyG
Underrated comment.

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paganel
Really interesting article as I've seen this at a second degree level for one
of my friends.

She was really a "fanatic" (as the article names them) for some "geeks" until
the number of "mops" started getting larger and larger and at some point I
guess the "sociopaths" also showed up, and the New Thing became the Lite Thing
(and I'm imagining that in another 2-3 years it will be run into the ground by
said "sociopaths", milked of everything that they can).

It's interesting that at some point said friend was indeed offered the role of
a "actual service worker" (to quote the article), presumably by one of the
"sociopaths", but she refused it. At that moment I couldn't understand why
("my friend really likes this Thing! why isn't she willing to get more
involved with it and even get paid for the privilege?"), but reading articles
like this one I can understand why that happened and why the decision she took
was for the best.

Later edit: Because I've seen the subculture mentioned in the article's
comments, I might as well also mention it here, that is that the New Thing for
my friend was in fact a local EDM variant (if you follow ResidentAdvisor
religiously you've probably heard of it by now).

It would also be interesting to hear from people a little older than me and
who have lived through those times how exactly the same thing happened to the
punk scene back in the '80s (at least I suppose that's when punk became
mainstream and the "sociopaths" took control over it). A similar history for
grunge could also be interesting, even though I guess Cobain's suicide
precipitated some things.

------
techer
Bob Dylan: LAST THOUGHTS ON WOODY GUTHRIE

The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl

And play games with each other in their sand-box world

And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools

That run around gallant

And make all rules for the ones that got talent

And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent

but think they do

And think they're foolin' you

The ones who jump on the wagon

Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style

To get their kicks, get out of it quick

And make all kinds of money and chicks

[http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/last-thoughts-woody-
guthrie/](http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/last-thoughts-woody-guthrie/)

------
mjfl
I think the main issue is that you are not entitled to compensation for being
really into something. If you want to receive value that you create, you have
to consciously extract it. A _small_ portion of the population is extremely
uncomfortable with this: those with high trait agreeableness. The author is
probably a member of this population. These people need to suck it up, or find
a less agreeable partner to work with them and help them get money / get laid.

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jancsika
> The muggles who invade and ruin subcultures come in two distinct flavors,
> mops and sociopaths, playing very different roles.

Alternative theory-- subcultures _already include_ at least one sociopath and
get ruined when sunlight exposes the ways in which they abused others in the
subculture. (And probably also the ways in which apologists helped them to
cover up the abuse.)

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buzzkillington
>A slogan of Rao’s may point the way: Be slightly evil. Or: geeks need to
learn and use some of the sociopaths’ tricks. Then geeks can capture more of
the value they create (and get better at ejecting true sociopaths).

That sounds a lot like what's happening to open source. Mops are happy that
they get things for free, creators are living on starvation wages, sociopaths
at the cloud companies are making hundreds of billions.

>At best you can charge them admission or a subscription fee, but they’ll
inevitably argue that this is wrong because capitalism is evil, and also
because they forgot their wallet.

Yes, open source mops to a t.

~~~
traverseda
Although notice here that it's the cloud companies making hundreds of billions
off of free labour, not the "mops".

If your take away from that is "we need to charge people money for open
source" instead of "use less business friendly licenses like the AGPL" you
should really ask yourself why you're doing open source in the first place.

We don't really need more SaaS freemium open source stuff.

~~~
buzzkillington
Yes? That's the point of the article.

The mops nickle and dime you to death "Why aren't you using the MIT license?
The GPL isn't really an open source license. How can it be about freedom when
it forces me to do things?".

The psychopaths just extract all the value.

At any rate all the current open source licenses are meant for the 80s or 90s.
Freedom zero is only for people, not corporations.

The only sane license I've seen for the modern world was this rework of the
MIT license:

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any natural person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software to other natural persons without restriction,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit
natural persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the
following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

------
desert_boi
> Subcultures were the main creative cultural force from roughly 1975 to 2000,
> when they stopped working. Why?

I suspect the author was 25 at some point in that range of time. It's hard to
keep going when an essay starts out that way.

~~~
vermilingua
Care to explain why that would impact the essay?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Subcultures are young people's game, and something you usually grow out of.

~~~
vermilingua
But if subcultures are dead, and the author was a young person in their
heyday; would they not be perfectly qualified to write a postmortem of sorts?

~~~
Avamander
But they're really not dead, they're just different. Writing a postmortem on
something that isn't dead is difficult.

~~~
paganel
Further down the author acknowledges that subcultures are not in fact really
dead, but that they’ve lost the cultural importance they had between 1975-2000
(to use his time interval). Which I think it’s a fair point to make.

------
PaulHoule
A cynic would say that Stan Lee was the ultimate sociopath: a real creator,
but also a self-promoter and all about the Benjamins in the end.

~~~
StefanKarpinski
According to the article, that would classify him as a genius. Which checks
out.

