
Death to Bullshit - spking
http://deathtobullshit.com
======
Animats
Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around.

America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything
else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up
demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising.

Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost.
For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many
prescription drugs, the advertising cost exceeds the manufacturing cost.

This is an argument for a tax on advertising. Advertising expenses should not
be deductible business expenses at all.

Note that neither Amazon nor WalMart advertises much, compared to other large
businesses. Target spends more on ads than WalMart does, although WalMart is
much bigger.

~~~
spacehome
The savings rate being low is insufficient to justify your claim that
advertising does not create net demand. It's also possible that people choose
to work more to afford more goods.

I see Americans working very hard when I feel they would get more life
satisfaction out of cutting expenses, primarily the big three: transportation,
housing, and food.

~~~
XorNot
You mean the 3 expenses that are entirely non-optional?

~~~
goodcanadian
Sure, they're non-optional in the sense that you will almost certainly have to
pay some money for them. However, I can readily admit that I spend more on
housing and transportation than I need to. Food is less clear; I know I can
eat cheaper food, but I don't want to compromise health. Eating out is rarely
for the sake of simply getting food, so I don't really count that in the
grocery budget. It is entertainment plain and simple which is, by definition,
largely optional.

------
shostack
As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a
living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if
it didn't work.

Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with
or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs
those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click
ads, share things, and otherwise generate more value and revenue for the
publishers than those that do not.

While the arms race to fight this stuff is commendable (I myself run at least
NoScript at home and it is beautiful), I can't help but think the only way to
win is to not play.

By that I mean coming up with revenue alternatives for publishers that not
only generate more revenue than this approach, but also provide a direct
incentive to not use these things.

If such magical solution existed, they would switch of their own volition.
Instead, they focus their efforts and dollars (and by extension the focus of
an entire industry that has been built on those dollars) on adding more items
to the list of bullshit.

~~~
rayiner
The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive
pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of
nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing
those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would
be economically efficient.

Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay
every person whose life experience is degraded by seeing a billboard for a
product they'd never buy, the equilibrium amount of billboard advertising
would go way down.

~~~
mindcrime
_If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose life experience is
degraded by seeing a billboard for a product they 'd never buy_

I've never found my life "degraded" by a billboard, even if it was for a
product I'd never buy. In fact, some of them are still useful, especially when
driving long distances on the Interstate. They're something to break the
monotony and give you something to think about, if only for a minute or two.
Some are downright funny/amusing, and others at least provoke a "I wonder what
that's supposed to mean" reaction.

"cognitive pollution"? That smells suspiciously like bullshit to me.

~~~
Dylan16807
You may welcome the billboards, but "cognitive pollution" sounds like a
perfectly good description to me. Something that disrupts your focus and is
forced on you as part of the environment rather than asked for.

~~~
krapp
> Something that disrupts your focus and is forced on you as part of the
> environment rather than asked for.

By that definition, anything outside of one's immediate focus and interests is
"cognitive pollution." If that's the standard, then it's so vague and
subjective as to be nearly useless. As forms of advertising go, I can't think
of many which are _less_ disruptive, or easier to simply ignore, than
billboards.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I've been thinking it over. Dang left an agreement, so the premise is worth
reconsidering. It seems like the problem was that billboards were a remarkably
bad example.

A better example might be alternative medicine. It's bullshit because it's
mistaken. It's a negative externality because it costs nothing to imply that
it works. And it's harmful because it can kill you.

Most cases of bullshit aren't as extreme, and I'm trying to think of some
better examples of bullshit that won't kill you but will degrade your life. TV
comes to mind.

~~~
krapp
Even tv is a problematic example. It's nothing more or less than a medium, and
that medium can vary widely in the quality of what it presents. You could
replace it with any other medium (film, radio, books, the internet) and have
the same effect. One person's bullshit is another person's popular culture and
creative outlet.

------
Encosia
Be sure to click the "Turn bullshit on?" link at the top-right for a chuckle.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
And the feedback form:
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QAbZ0qm1Q3SwT3Ane2ZLi7I_cjA...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QAbZ0qm1Q3SwT3Ane2ZLi7I_cjAWyrDc58IhDc_Zo0Q/viewform?c=0&w=1)

~~~
robert_tweed
The "are you sure you want to leave this page" alert is a nice touch.

------
afarrell
This page talks mostly about interface bullshit, but people are also tired of
content bullshit. To paraphrase from Harry Frankfurt, this is content produced
not to conceal truth, but without regard for for it whatsoever. If to lie is
to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it.

Producing bullshit is more profitable because it still attracts eyeballs (and
therefore ad revenue), but is much less costly to produce. Thats why the
presence of large amounts of ads, needless pagination, and interface bullshit
are a reasonable indicator of content bullshit.

~~~
Eupolemos
> If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it.

I believe "manslaughter" and "murder" should be switched around here.

IIRC, Harry Frankfurt argued that bullshit was _worse_ than lies, since it
corroded this simple but for-society-to-function-in-the-long-run incredibly
important distinction (or aspiration).

~~~
TeMPOraL
I like a quote by Steven Kaas:

"Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't
do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires."

------
Retr0spectrum
Reminds me of this site:
[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

~~~
AndyKelley
My site[1] looks like the site this site is making fun of. I tried using
bettermotherfuckingwebsite's CSS and it made it worse, so I stuck with no CSS.
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

[1]: [http://genesisdaw.org/](http://genesisdaw.org/)

------
superuser2
The vast majority of working adults in the US are employed in the making and
selling of things people don't need. A world without bullshit is total, utter
economic collapse. It's the end of capitalism. It's hundreds of millions of
people with nothing to do all day and no way to sustain themselves, an
inevitable civil war with the landlord class, and a revolution that manages to
install a government's that quite possibly worse.

Every piece of bullshit you see is how a great many people pay their mortgages
and feed their children. Casting them out to the street is unlikely to make
things better.

~~~
beagle3
> The vast majority of working adults in the US are employed in the making and
> selling of things people don't need. A world without bullshit is total,
> utter economic collapse.

There's little difference between "things that people don't need", and "things
that people may need but are done inefficiently".

In the late 19th century, you might have said that "a world with cars means
utter economic collapse of the whip-and-buggy-and-horse trades". And you would
be right - but that just means people (and jobs) are reallocated to more
useful stuff.

And that is what would (and should, but never will) happen if bullshit is
eradicated -- rather than total economic collapse. This kind of eradication
does not happen overnight - it takes a long time, and except for the
incumbents who are too happy with their share, everyone sees it coming and
adjusts accordingly.

~~~
superuser2
>but that just means people (and jobs) are reallocated to more useful stuff.

No one argues that bullshit is constantly being iterated on. But cars _are_
bullshit - i.e. we lived for a long time without them, and they needed to be
advertised to take hold. Now simply having a car is entrenched bullshit, and
the cutting edge is convincing people to buy expensive ones.

You don't need a car, but cars are necessary to facilitate the American Dream,
also sold to us by advertising in the 40s/50s, of living in suburbs. Home
ownership and the things that go with it are equally bullshit.

One of the first documented shifts in public opinion orchestrated by a PR firm
is America's belief that roads are for cars instead of people.

------
narrator
My way to avoid bullshit is to only read a very highly curated twitter feed.
Anybody who mentions a "big" news story gets booted. Like if it's on the front
page of the New York times, you get booted. I'll find out about it just by
looking at the random media device blaring mainstream bullshit from every
airport and doctors office waitimg room, so quit thinking you're the new Paul
Revere by retweeting. I value niche information very specific to things I am
trying to accomplish.

------
xd1936
This is great. Reminds me of Jon Stewart's speech that he gave on his last
show.

Video and transcription: [http://leoherzog.com/jon-stewarts-incredible-
bullsht-speech](http://leoherzog.com/jon-stewarts-incredible-bullsht-speech)

~~~
kristianc
I like, unwittingly or not, the incredibly bullshitty framing of the title of
that post.

------
jessaustin
_People 's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing_

Even though this proposition is in bold 20-pt type, no arguments were offered
to support it. It isn't obviously true, and indeed there are reasons to
suspect the converse. Dare I say it, but a bald emotionally-appealing
assertion of this sort seems sort of like... bullshit?

~~~
hiq
I recall only one person in dozens not having an ad blocker installed on his
computer (how painful it was). Also many people pay for premium accounts on
music streaming services instead of hearing ads once in a while. I think that,
when given the choice (which is sometimes a few technical skills away), people
would opt for less bullshit.

Of course that's only a valid argument when bullshit is not the main product.
I don't doubt websites such as buzzfeed and 9gag will keep on thriving.

------
interesting_att
I was just thinking yesterday how inundated we are by ads these days. You see
ads on television, the radio, the internet, billboards, public transportation,
sports stadium/jerseys, magazines, guerrilla marketing, product-placements and
celebrity endorsements, and not to mention PR (which is just advertising by
other means). Talk about mental pollution!

~~~
Killswitch
So I got my start in ad based websites. If it wasn't for ads, I would have
never really gotten into what we do. I'd have done something away from the
internet because I never grew up with a computer and wasn't fascinated by them
as a young child.

So because of that, I had always been in favor of ads. Not as in I'd plaster
my site with ads, but if a site displayed ads, I would endure them because if
I wanted the content that's the trade off. Otherwise I could find similar
content somewhere else.

Then The Verge's article about slow browsing came about, and the retorting
articles about things and I realized ads have gone way to fucking far.

17 years I have been online. 17 years I had never installed an ad blocking
plugin or anything. Last month I installed uBlock Origin and turned it into
blacklist mode.

I still feel sites who have ads in place that aren't intrusive and annoying
deserve to be displayed, but sites like The Verge, or CNN or anything like
that which blast you with 300 requests where 90% of them are ads. Or sites
where ads become more important than the content; These sites get instant ad
blocking enabled for them.

It's time to take a step back.

~~~
munin
> So I got my start in ad based websites. If it wasn't for ads, I would have
> never really gotten into what we do.

I got my start in computer crime (chasing the crimes that others committed)
and if it wasn't for others committing computer crime, I would never have
gotten into what we do.

Should I be in favor of other people committing computer crime?

~~~
Killswitch
Except one is illegal and one isn't. I'll let you figure out what's wrong with
your argument.

~~~
ionised
Legality is unfortunately not an indication of something being right or
desirable.

~~~
Killswitch
No, but comparing apples and oranges.

------
nkurz
As a couple other posters mentioned, be sure to try out the understated "Turn
bullshit on?" link on the upper right of the page. It really sells the point.

I sort of hoped that after clicking "I am a racist" to dismiss the "Like us on
Facebook" page, that the popup chiding my brazen admission would have hijacked
the OK button to post my admission to all logged in social media sites.

But unfortunately Brad seems to be to honorable for that, even after people
doubly-confirm that they want the bullshit. And counter-to-reality, the
pulsing read "Turn this bullshit off" link works as advertised.

------
nickledave
Worth reading the follow-up post: [http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-
bullshit/](http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/living-with-bullshit/) He's not
against ads. He's against shitty ads that piss off customers.

Anybody know if there actually are any studies that show that these ads (1)
help businesses attract clients and (2) do so without alienating more clients
than they attract? Or are they all just for businesses that don't care about
keeping customers anyways (e.g. weight loss fads)

~~~
prawn
Good ads generally require more effort and investment. On some occasions,
companies will try to look cheap and affordable with shoddy ads, but generally
shoddy ads come from tightarse clients trying to DIY or hiring average
designers, etc. Or because that's what's been tested to be more effective with
their audience.

Companies often take the cheap approach because they're cautious about the
return they're going to get, don't know any better, are cheap themselves and
don't appreciate design.

------
segphault
I couldn't help but notice that the blog associated with the site (linked at
the bottom of the manifesto) is hosted on Tumblr and runs all of its offsite
links through Tumblr redirects so that the clicks are all tracked. Surely that
qualifies as exactly the sort of bullshit that this person is inveighing
against.

------
andyidsinga
see also, the book, "On Bullshit"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit)
)

This book should have a spot on everyone's desk in hard copy. Use it as a
coaster, walk around with it in the hallways, take it to meetings. No need to
preach from it though - its very presence will be enough of a sign to others
re: your tolerance levels of the amount of bullshit stinking up the current
situation.

EDIT: BTW, I do indeed have a copy of On Bullshit, but I use "The Elements Of
Style" (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style)
) book in the exact same way as I suggested above for On Bullshit. I think
they are two sides of the same coin :)

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I tend to agree with Geoff Pullum: [http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-
Stupid-Grammar/2549...](http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/25497) when it comes to Elements of Style.

~~~
andyidsinga
I once* wrote a whitepaper that was horrible. My boss at the time urged me to
get a copy of elements of style, skim it, then try to fix the paper.

Section II (looking at my copy in front of me), which discusses composition,
was most useful as my paper was chock-full of techno babble, needless words
and lacked consistent design from section to section and paragraph to
paragraph.

* (this is an exaggeration on the extreme low end :) )

------
icanhackit
Perhaps it's a solved problem. Must it be framed as a binary thing where
there's either bullshit or no bullshit? What if there's a middle ground: those
who find bullshit interfaces and/or bullshit content abhorrent use tools to
improve it or completely avoid it, while those who aren't the wiser continue
to go along with it?

You want to argue that bullshit content is what's keeping people uninformed? I
say no, it takes a certain innate sense to rise above the natural flow of
misinformation. Some people can only be guided by rhetoric - they make their
decisions based on consensus in their local network and too easily trust
people who claim to stand for it.

What we have is a war: between those who guide the senseless and those who
exploit them. Take your pick.

------
tpeo
I believe this submission vindicates, to some degree, the 'nostalgia' for
pre-2012 internet that was so condemned in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960730)

------
jordanpg
This isn't just about advertising. It's equally about bad or distracting
design.

But ultimately it's about concentration. I believe, for the most part, that
multitasking is a myth. When I am reading something difficult, or that I would
like to remember in detail later, I need to focus on it exclusively and read
it without interruption. That means ad blockers, print view, etc.

> As the landslide of bullshit surges down the mountain, people will
> increasingly gravitate toward genuinely useful, well-crafted products,
> services, and experiences that respect them and their time

This sounds like wishful thinking to me. Marketing and design are surely down
to a psychological science by now.

~~~
themodelplumber
> Marketing and design are surely down to a psychological science by now.

Really? I just read an article about how Apple is intentionally avoiding a
traditional social media presence as a part of its marketing strategy. So does
the science work like, "if you are rich enough to buy out several independent
nations, do not use social media for marketing?" Or what?

And as a designer myself, I have to say "science" applied to design has a bad
reputation among designers [1]. I put the word in quotes because true science
is an interest of mine. And if one day in the future the application of
science to design is solidified, hopefully this means fractal design software
will rise from its current "American Idol without Simon Cowell" state of chaos
to become part of the Adobe Creative Nebula, or whatever it's called by then.
Because right now, the golden mean and fractals are just a couple of the
millions of tools in a very intuitive toolbox, and they seem most likely to
underwhelm when used alone as part of some grand demonstration of science
meeting design.

So: If there's a science to all of this, by all means elucidate.

[1] [http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-
google.html](http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html)

~~~
ddingus
Apple tends to serve people looking for a high value experience and who will
pay for ALL value added, not just portions.

Product quality, user interaction, control (and yes, that is value added to a
lot of people who don't want to know stuff and just have tech work for them),
etc...

Compare two pieces of technology on specs alone, and a lot of value is
ignored. This is what is behind your average, "Apple computers cost too much"
argument. The buyer of an Apple computer sees value in the OS, environment,
packaging, design, etc... and they are willing to pay for that value too.

Others do not value those things, seeking only to get technology features at a
lower price. To them, it's all fluff and margins play out accordingly.

Avoiding traditional social media is very likely part of that high value
experience. People who don't want to be bothered or who want to run a little
outside the mainstream mass means, ways, paths, pick up on that and it's
likely working for Apple.

Consider two companies, both delivering a similar product. One competes on
price, the other value added. The always low price company will do a lot of
volume, but will also see very thin margins. The one delivering lots of value,
properly positioning it, and asking to be paid for it, will do less volume,
but see much higher margins.

Both companies will have to maintain all the infrastructure needed to service
the market.

Apple is extremely well capitalized and this is part of why they are. Apple
does the work others do, but does it well and with design sensibilities and
experience goals that people will pay nicely for.

No need for a massive social media campaign. Those who see that value will pay
for it easily. And it's not hard to miss, given the alternatives.

------
davemel37
This is by far the most ironic discussion in HN history! To be fair, i cant
back up that statement with evidence...but wait, none of the comments here or
for that matter content in this death to bs website are backed up by anything
other than personal opinions and anecdotal theories.

You would hope that a rallying cry of Death to BS would invoke a slight bias
towards withholding BS and focusing on facts that make a difference.

Do I agree that there is way too much noise online? Yes, but complaining about
it is as noisy as things come!!!

------
cm2187
On the slogan "Death to Bullshit!".

General de Gaulle's comment on a similar slogan: "a vast programme".

------
rythie
Unless we start paying for online content, this is going to not only continue,
but get worse.

------
tkiley
One person's "bullshit" is another person's "positioning", and positioning is
arguably one of the most important communications skills for founders.

I sympathize with the author but I'm not really sure what to make of this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Positioning is still bullshit, and just because something is an "important
communications skills for founders", doesn't mean it's good, especially for
ones on the receiving end. A lot of things that go as standard marketing
practice would earn you a punch in the face if you did it to a friend and they
found out. It's ironic how we turned lying to each other into respectable
occupation.

------
webXL
It sounds like the author resents having to compete for attention with
"bullshit", but I'm not sure if there's a realistic alternative. You're going
to throw out the baby with the bath water I'm afraid.

As for advertising, paying for entertainment and information with some time
and attention is not really bullshit. It's a voluntary exchange, and both
sides would not engage if they did not have some inclination that they would
be better off than without the exchange. There are other things you can
exchange for entertainment and information, and you can completely opt out.

------
paulsutter
Don't miss the "Turn on bullshit" link in the upper right corner.

------
russell
Another piece of bullshit that I am running into with alarming frequency when
I click on search results that leads to a local newspaper like the Des Moines
Register is that it pops up with a request for a subscription. If I cancel the
request, the story appears but with the text replaced by white rectangles.
That's just rude. I'm from out of town, for god's sake, I just want to read
one story. The New York Times or the San Jose Mercury are more respectful.
They give you 10 stories a month.

------
andyidsinga
in the list of BS items, have to disagree a little with inclusion of
"captchas, QR codes"

..these seem useful. I must be missing some nuance re their bullshittyness -
can anyone elaborate?

~~~
good-citizen
i'm confused too. Why are captchas bad? captchas are absolutely neccessary to
fight automatic signups by bots. Are you saying just let the bots win?

------
a3n
On the flight/product plus insurance pattern, if it's difficult to cancel the
insurance, I wonder what the effect of cancelling the entire _product_
purchase would have on this problem. Just cut to the chase, pull back _all_
your money, leaving a nice, obvious "fuck you" in the resulting vacuum. That
is, assuming they haven't inserted the same bullshit cancellation for the
purchase itself.

------
mojuba
Can't say how effective this campaign can be, but I'm glad QR codes are now
officially included in the list of bullshit. Can't agree more.

~~~
reinhardt
Are QR codes still a thing? Or were they ever a thing? Dunno, my brain seems
to filter them out automatically, I rarely notice them.

~~~
Canada
I just used one to board a plane. It worked well, that's no bullshit.

~~~
mojuba
I think it was probably an unjustified replacement for a simple bar code in
your case. I check in using bar codes usually :)

~~~
Canada
I know you're joking, but if you were told to write a ticket system today,
what would you choose?

QR codes are an international standard, have plenty of good libraries to
generate and process them, can store more information, have excellent error
correction, and easily scan from odd angles.

Other types of bar codes... not so much.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#Types_of_barcodes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode#Types_of_barcodes)

------
SandB0x
Now _this_ is cheap populism I can get behind!

------
pudo
Lovely. An anti-bullshit manifesto that talks about "experiences" and "the
rise of" various things. I'm sold.

~~~
chestnut-tree
It's true: a lot of bullshit could simply be eliminated with plain English.
And the technology field (from development to design to UX) is overflowing
with inflated writing and unnecessary jargon in articles, blog entries, design
guides, and documentation.

A specific example relating to UX: I always point people to this gov.uk design
guide as an excellent example of clear writing that is easy to understand.
It's not perfect, but it avoids being too wordy and I think it's a good
example to emulate

[https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-
design/resour...](https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-centred-
design/resources/patterns)

------
mbesto
All of this "bullshit" exists because it works.

What's amazing is that the author pays his own bills as a result of such
bullshit existing. The companies he's consulting to don't magically make money
from nothing.[0]

[0] - [http://bradfrost.com/web/](http://bradfrost.com/web/)

------
halotrope
Well actually I like the "bullshit" on pages (that being of course, an
exaggeration) because it makes it far easier to filter pages that have content
with a low signal to noise ratio. I think content consisting of only bullshit
with low substance is the far worse disease and it seems to spread just as
quick.

------
qwtel
> Now this is cheap populism I can get behind!

This is the lowest ranked comment right now, but I think it is great, and I
want to rephrase it in a way that maybe more people can appreciate it (and
hopefully doesn't get me downvoted like crazy)

So the reason I take offence at "advice" or a movement like this (not sure
what it's supposed to be) is that it makes the speaker and everybody who
associates with it look incredibly good, while it is barely bothering to offer
any proof as to why it is actually good advice.

I am aware that this sounds cynical and I beg you to resist the temptation to
downvote and/or ignore this comment. Instead I'd invite you to ask yourself:
Could this argument have something to it despite the fact that it's pretty
uncomfortable?

Going on, why does getting behind this make us look good? It shows that:

* we are not ignorant of questionable business practices in our field

* we don't prey on the (intellectually) weak in order to sustain our businesses

* we value ideals like craft more than money (ignoring that most of these practices are not driven by greed at all but are the only way to ensure the survival of some companies, which brings me to the next point, that)

* we are not afraid to "stick it to the man" (even though "the man" is probably a complete strawman and we don't have to fear any real retaliation for expressing this opinion)

Now there is nothing wrong with advice that makes us look good per se, but is
it also good advice?

> People's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing

Again, this may sound good, but it could have been said at any point in time
and be true, the question is: Is it diminishing faster then new ways of
bullshitting arise?

And maybe it is not diminishing at all. Take gambling for example. It is
obviously "intentionally deceptive or insincere" in that it won't make you
rich, it is in fact mathematically proven to make you lose money, yet people
seem to have gambled for thousands of years and will probably go on to do so
for thousands of years to come.

The attempt of linking bullshit to Sturgeon's law is also pretty weak IMO.
It's not like anybody set out to put something in the bottom 90%, it's what
happens to, well, 90% of things, and it's not at all clear that it was BS that
put it there. In other words: Naively looking at the top 10% and saying: "None
of those is doing BS" does not mean the lack of BS got them there. All it says
is that "In the top 10% you don't have to BS (because you can afford not to)",
or even just "BS doesn't get you any further in the top 10% (and that's why
nobody is doing it)".

Finally, Buzzfeed is certainly in the top 10% of "lighthearted entertainment
on the internet" and it is BS (and only BS) that got them there, because
that's the kind of environment that "lighthearted entertainment on the
internet" is like. No amount of shaming will change anything about that (but
would still make us look good, so produce some quality content over there
already!).

tl,dr: Be aware of advice that sounds good. People will like to offer it even
when it is not practical at all, or only under very specific circumstances,
that may not apply to you.

------
ris
I find it hugely ironic that the author hosts the site's blog on tumblr, the
king of user-signup-driving no-we're-not-going-to-give-you-an-rss-feed-we-
want-you-to-join-our-service-to-subscribe.

~~~
eqyiel
I don't disagree with you but you may be interested to know that tumblr blogs
do have RSS feeds:

[http://blog.deathtobullshit.com/rss](http://blog.deathtobullshit.com/rss)

~~~
ris
!

Thankyou!

------
bksenior
It's funny. This page strikes me as the height of bullshit.

It's basically a manifesto written by an individual interested in being
another absolute arbiter of taste. It completely ignores the nuances,
relativism and circumstance of how people internalize ideas, make decisions
and generally connect.

It even go as far as to say that it is the reason why being a great engineer
or creator of things is am anti-pattern for NOT ultimately adding something
worthwhile to society.

There is no absolutism to quality of ideas or structure of communications.
Their is genuine hard workin taking what you create and weaving into people
days and narratives.

This manifesto will one day embarrass it's creator with it's naivety when they
are older and more experienced.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
You use a lot of big words without actually saying anything.

~~~
lovemenot
I generally agreed with your parent, and think it worth repeating. So I'll
take your comment at face value and attempt to paraphrase.

Their problem with the article is that it makes the wrong assumption that
everyone _should_ be able agree on what does / does not count as bullshit.
Including, recursively, the article itself.

In the past and in places many of us prefer not to go now, there were
"arbiters of taste" who were able to influence many people's thinking by
representing themselves as "the truth" (you know - the one without the
bullshit).

We now live in a more open marketplace of ideas which, most likely, your
parent is happy about. He / she would not like the article's author, nor
anyone else, to resume such authority. They likely believe that though
bullshit-everywhere might be true, it is still a price worth paying for
diversity of ideas.

------
blattenshitser
Yeah let's get rid of trackers and unnecessary bullshit. After, of course, I
load my Google tracker and accompanying LOBSTER font.

<link
href='[http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster'](http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster')
rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

~~~
TeMPOraL
Lobster font is probably for the "Turn on bullshit?" page mode. I recommend
testing it, it makes the site look properly modern.

------
stabilo
Here's one he omitted: "We take security seriously..."

------
tripzilch
Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's beautiful!

------
majani
On Opera Mini, the bullshit button doesn't work...

------
ilaksh
War propaganda is very prevalent in US media.

