
84-Year-Old Gamer Has More Than 900k ‘Grandkids’ - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/style/shirley-curry-skyrim-youtube.html
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nexuist
I'm not the only one who thought this was going to be more of a Genghis Khan
situation rather than a PewDiePie, right...?

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jliptzin
No you're not.

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MrFoof
Not entirely surprising. My parents bought me a Nintendo because ... well,
they wanted one. I started on an Atari VCS 2600 because they got one while my
mother was pregnant. Two years old and all of us (sister included) would be
playing Missile Command, Clowns, Pac-Man or Centipede as a family.

I got things like Zelda, Metroid and R.C. Pro-AM because my father wanted
them. For years after I was sent to bed, I'd hear the hum and screeching of
R.C. Pro-AM coming from the living room. Or the sounds of Snake Rattle N'
Roll.

He's a bit frustrated with his mind going, but my father still plays and 100%s
Zelda games without looking for a guide. My mom spends a lot of time with
Roller Coaster Tycoon, Stardew Valley and recently FTL, but she still breaks
out the Wii for Virtual Console favorites of hers (mostly "black box" NES
games).

With a fixed income, video games are astonishing amount of entertainment per
dollar, and old games don't get, "less fun" over time. I still have all my old
games (and still play them) for that reason.

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dkroy
Wow, I did not expect clickbait to make its way to the number 1 spot on HN. I
would be curious to see if this was due to some someone gaming the algorithm
or people carelessly upvoting the headline. Though it is a bit funny that the
platform that clickbait is most prevalent on is part of the topic of
discussion. Youtube subscribers in this case = Grandkids in the title.

~~~
iso8859-1
Old users have not upvoted this, I recommend sticking to Hacker News Classic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic)

~~~
paulintrognon
Thanks for that hidden feature. And there's no ads aswell! Do you know what is
the difference in the algorithm? They just count "old users" votes? How long
do you need to have an account for to be considered old?

~~~
dang
It's the same algorithm as the regular front page, with the difference that
the votes are those by users before Feb 13, 2008. A long time ago! It wasn't
such a distant past when pg created it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271).

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jere
I can always count on HN to take an uplifting story, ignore its contents, and
complain about a perfectly reasonable headline.

Anyway, when was a kid I used to think retirement would be the perfect
opportunity to do a massive amount of gaming. I tend to not be that optimistic
since I worry I won't have the eyesight, memory, or even interest in my 80s,
if I even make it that long. It's pretty remarkable to see someone doing it
and doing it really well.

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paulintrognon
I recently heard a podcast in which a disabled lady, 76 years old, talked
about how she played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In real life,
she could hardly move, so it was her way of going for a walk. She would
wandered arround in the woods, or climbed mountains, just to enjoy the
sceneries. It helped her cope through her disablily. I thought it was a
wonderful way of using a game. :)

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wayneftw
What’s the opposite of flagging a post here on HN? Upvoting?

How many people does it take to get something flagged?

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em-bee
commenting on it. i saw a suggestion that moderators would remove a flag if it
had more comments than flag votes.

unfortunately so far this post only has 3 on topic comments. the rest are
about the title or the flag

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rvz
This title is starving for your clicks. Here's an accurate and honest title
that represents this article:

84 Year Old Gamer has 900k+ Online Followers on YouTube.

It's not really hard to strive for honest titles, but I guess clicks matter in
desperate times for the New York Times. What a shame for journalism there.

~~~
bookofjoe
OP here. Title I posted:

>84-year-old gamer Shirley Curry has 900k YouTube followers

I suspect if moderator hadn’t changed title to New York Times headline, it
wouldn’t have been flagged.

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scott31
TLDR: An old person does a thing that other people do, somehow this is
newsworthy and is presented with factually incorrect title, even on printed
media as "She Has 900,000 Grandkids and Fights Big Spiders"

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moron4hire
"Grandkids" is in quotes in even the original article's title, clearly
indicating it's being used metaphorically.

~~~
scott31
Not on the original one printed on Sept. 6, 2020 , Section ST, Page 4 of the
New York edition

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boomboomsubban
There could be typographic reasons for that, space matters more on paper.

~~~
onion2k
Or, maybe, the quotes are just there to tell you something, like the fact
they're not literal grandkids and internet readers need extra help.

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ur-whale
Not worth reading, but if you really feel you need to:
[https://archive.is/mBjOr](https://archive.is/mBjOr)

