
Hell is Other People: an experiment in anti-social media - donohoe
https://hell.j38.net/
======
ThrowawayR2
Not to be pedantic or anything but that's an incorrect use of the word "anti-
social".

anti-social = disruptive or destructive to society
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
social_behaviour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour))

asocial = lack of desire to be social
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asociality))

~~~
cassiet
I’m not a fan of asocial, it sounds passive, ambivalent. I’ll keep using anti-
social for this, since anti-societal would be more apt for that concept.

~~~
matt_j
There's nuance to each of the terms. Asocial is what I would say an introvert
often is; avoids social interaction without necessarily wishing ill, perhaps
dislikes being in the company of others. Anti-social behaviour is disruptive
to others, perhaps violent.

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matthberg
This could use a (2013) tag.

There's a writeup here [0], basically he's creating a voronoi diagram from
friends' locations, as queried by FourSquare. With the voronoi diagram the
intersections of the lines map out points equidistant from the nearest
neighbors, which is what I'm guessing he's visiting in the video clips.

0:
[http://scottmadethis.net/interactive/hellisotherpeople/](http://scottmadethis.net/interactive/hellisotherpeople/)

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WilTimSon
I really don't quite get this nihilistic look at social media. Yeah, it can be
very annoying and it has plenty of downsides. But it also provides plenty of
information sources, often good ones, lets you connect to people easier. And
no, I don't mean the superficial connection, I mean getting to know someone,
exploring their interests and hobbies, meeting up in real life, etc.

While I don't get the appeal of sites like Foursquare or apps like Snapchat, I
think the real problem with social media is data harvesting. The rest - the
social aspects which many find vapid - are totally fine in moderation. It's
just that people, as always, took an idea to the extreme and corrupted it.

Even Hacker News has the bones of social media but, thanks to proper
moderation and good etiquette, it's not as divisive as most sites.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> I mean getting to know someone, exploring their interests and hobbies

That might have been true of the first decade of the new millennium, when
Last.fm was in its heyday, Goodreads was more popular, and Facebook had a very
different algorithm for its feed. But today, Facebook's interface does not
really highlight that kind of depth in your peers, and much of the younger
generation has moved to Instagram which is centered around the uploaded photo
and so misses out on those interests in life that are not so photographable.

~~~
WilTimSon
Facebook and Instagram are just the two most popular examples but stuff like
forums, group chats, reddit, Twitter, tumblr, they're all social media (or
social media-adjacent, I guess) and people make friends there all the time. I
do think Facebook might be beyond the point of no return but even Instagram
has these huge communities of people posting book photos or pets, which is
vapid but innocuous and harmless, at the very least.

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Ntrails
Every single stranger I developed an online based friendship with was a small
community. I don't _understand_ how you can do anything meaningful in a
conversation with 2000 people - but 20 people in a chatroom/forum/etc mucking
about? Sure.

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rchaud
Who still has Foursquare installed on their phone?

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Der_Einzige
Hey! That's my GitHub name! I'm down to work on this project for a bit to make
it better if you'd like.

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cryptoquick
Them: "Hell is Other People"

Me: Why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave?

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Analemma_
A much more correct translation of the Sartre quote would be, "Hell is the
Other", where "the Other" is a term of art in philosophy with a great deal of
nuance, but it's funnier to translate it as "Hell is other people", so we do.

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nfrankel
The original is: "L'enfer, c'est les autres"

As a French native speaker, "Hell is other people" is indeed how I'd have
translated it myself.

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blondin
i knew i heard it before!

that's my wasted youth :) iam. 1997. l'ecole du micro d'argent. hugely
recommended for true hip hop fans. the best from france.

~~~
severine
Not the best, because this is the best:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbcXNBMnVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbcXNBMnVg)

La Cliqua! ;)

