

The Fierce Idiocy of "New" - ChrisXYZ
http://www.philalawyer.net/archives/the_fierce_idio.phtml

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michaelkeenan
I think the problem is partly a coordination problem. I want to read what
everyone else is reading, so that we can talk about it together. I could read
_War And Peace_ , but I would have no-one to talk about it with. But I know
everyone else is reading what's new.

There are other ways to coordinate, though. Book clubs, for example, often
pick non-new books to read. Maybe solutions should concentrate on the
coordination problem. I could imagine a version of Hacker News that bans all
material published in the last month, so that it is only for timeless
classics.

(I am not claiming that coordination is the _only_ cause of this phenomenon.)

------
antiform
The reason that short, frequent publishing is so pervasive on the web is that
you have to compete with everything else on the internet that is shiny,
flashing, and begging for your attention. I think that we, as humans, have a
predilection to focus on real-time updates, on what's happening NOW. It is the
only reason that I can possibly understand the success of things like Twitter
or Facebook status updates.

Furthermore, there are so many benefits to publishing frequently that it's
hard to argue against it. For instance, if you publish frequently, you will
have a better Google ranking, be seen as an "active" member of the community,
get more links on social news sites that link submissions to URLs, constantly
show up in peoples' RSS readers, etc. Also, if you write a long, substantive
article, many people will not take the time to read it. Most will just skim to
see if there's anything interesting, and if they don't find anything, they
will leave.

Also, if you want to make money on the Internet, it's something that you need
to do daily, or at least very regularly. Dollars follows peoples' eyeballs,
and peoples' eyeballs follow constantly updated content. I can't think of an
example off the top of my head of a blogger, videoblogger, etc. making a
living by posting infrequent posts but I can list a couple dozen people that
make very good money with either gawker-like blogs on certain topics, a
regularly updated promotional (video)blog, or through advertising dollars on
popular YouTube channels.

I know in my rational mind that it is probably better to read content-rich
articles on the web, but my reptilian mind is constantly drawn to the new, the
hot, the now. Until somebody finds a solution, there will always be a short
battle with myself every time I fire up Google reader or think of checking HN.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
this helps explain the predominance of constant new solutions for solved
problems. novel trumps tried and proven.

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tdavis
The entire race is heading in the wrong direction, I feel. The best sites I've
ever visited were ones where I got linked to an article or essay and found
myself stuck on the site for an entire day, reading multiple years worth of
archives. Sites like paulgraham.com, joelonsoftware.com, actsofgord.com, and
the now-defunct myboot.com are still etched in my mind, even if I originally
read them 5+ years. Hell, I kept coming back to myboot.com for _9 years_ ; he
never did post chapter 24 of _She Hates My Futon_ GODDAMNIT _!!!_

~~~
jrandom
I had forgotten all about _She Hates My Futon_! He never finished it?

That's... that's just awful.

~~~
tdavis
Yes. How do you write a good story like that then just _not_ finish it. For
_nine years_.

------
jseliger
Funny I should see this now, as I just came to Hacker News to submit my own,
tangentially related essay, "Blogging and seeking out what should be
remembered": <http://jseliger.com/2009/06/14/blogging-and-seeking> . Book/lit
blogs seem to have a somewhat more balanced repertoire than the noisy sites
shouting "new! new! new!," but they're hardly immune from crowd-following.

~~~
fallentimes
What's interesting to me is how fiercely competitive the "new!" or "now!"
market is - many of the content sites and the newspapers & magazines focused
on it are dropping like flies. How much room is there if everyone's reporting
or commenting on the same thing?

Also, the example he gave, Cracked.com is notorious for linkbaiting, which
isn't a bad thing. Even if people are only viewing new content when they visit
the site, at least the old articles have a higher chance of showing up in the
SERPs later on.

------
brandnewlow
People are always into new stuff because there's a chance something new might
be good. When something's "old" and you haven't heard about it, odds are it's
because it isn't any good.

So people are deciding that the odds that something unknown could turn out to
be good are better than the odds that something known could turn out to have
been misjudged by their network of contacts and info sources.

~~~
absconditus
I have not found this to be the case. A great many things are obscure because
they don't appeal to a large audience. This does not make them inferior. Let's
take music for example. The first Broken Social Scene album is superior to
most of the albums that were released this week, but there is a good chance
you haven't heard of it before. There are hundreds of great old books which
you likely haven't read.

A secondary point to be made is that simply knowing of something doesn't mean
that you know it. You are probably aware of at least a dozen old great books
and haven't read them.

~~~
brandnewlow
Agreed. But this article is talking about the miserable masses of people out
there, not the exceptions who go hunting for the absolute best stuff.

I see his point, but he's basically just lamenting human nature.

------
GavinB
New is extremely important in art. If people weren't willing to give something
a shot because it's the new, it would be impossible for debut art to get a
foothold, and as a result _the old stuff wouldn't be as good_ because we
wouldn't recognize and reward new artists.

Processing new releases into our culture is the way that we form that culture
in the first place and make progress.

If we don't keep an eye out for new voices, we'll be stuck with the old ones
forever. It's _really hard_ to break through as a new arrival, why would you
want to make it even harder?

------
jonsen
I just received an old used book in the morning mail, Dijkstra's A Discipline
of Programming. I've bought other classics. Some are available online, a.o.
here:

[http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=SERIES11430&type=series...](http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=SERIES11430&type=series&coll=ACM&dl=ACM)

Great thinking is not new.

------
fallentimes
And now there's a lot of hype centered around real-time [1][2] so expect this
to continue even if in many cases it's a bit ridiculous.

[1] [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/ron-conway-to-focus-
ang...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/ron-conway-to-focus-angel-
investments-on-real-time-data/)

[2] twitter.com

------
bartl
The focus on "New!" Isn't all bad. It can mean something innocuous like
"Here's something you probably haven't seen before..."

Of course, this is bound to degenerate into behaviour of hunting for scoops,
in a hope to discover a new trend before it gets popular...

