
RIP the Broccoli Tree - panic
https://kottke.org/17/09/rip-the-broccoli-tree
======
cableshaft
There's so many examples of this it's just so sad.

Joshua Tree on U2 album cover destroyed:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2971368/U2-fan-
pilgr...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2971368/U2-fan-pilgrimaged-
band-s-Joshua-Tree-outraged-finding-CHOPPED-California-desert.html)

Kids knock down 16 million year old rock formation:
[https://military.id.me/news/idiots-ruin-18-million-year-
old-...](https://military.id.me/news/idiots-ruin-18-million-year-old-american-
treasure/)

One man accidentally killed the oldest tree ever:
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-
accide...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-accidentally-
killed-the-oldest-tree-ever-125764872/)

World's most isolated tree knocked down by drunk driver:
[https://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/earths-most-
isol...](https://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/earths-most-isolated-
tree-only-one-around-250-miles-was-struck-and-killed-drunk-driver.html)

So sad how an act of stupidity by as few as one person can eliminate something
of beauty that's been around longer than tens, hundreds, thousands of their
lifetimes.

~~~
phlakaton
The lesson here, clearly, is: tall poppies get mowed. It is known. :-/

~~~
wavefunction
Who would mow their poppies? Other than the Dutch?

~~~
phlakaton
I learned it from an Australian. Go figure. :-)

------
schiffern
Note that it's a willow tree, so the vandal and workers may have "just"
unintentionally coppiced it. Far from killing the tree, some of the oldest
trees in the world are coppiced. Coppicing is supposed to happen in winter,
but it's possible this tree could survive.

Looking at the "before" picture, the tree might itself be a spray formed when
an older tree was cut.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing)

~~~
tptacek
The vandals don't care whether the tree lives or dies; they care that nobody
enjoys the tree while they have to be aware of it.

~~~
dmix
I believe the OP was referencing the city workers who coppiced the tree, not
the vandals who forced them to do so...

------
jplahn
This is tangentially related to something I've been struggling with for the
last year. I began getting into photography about a year and as an attempt to
surround myself with inspiration, I followed many of the top landscape
photographers on Instagram. While their images are beautiful and they tend to
position their photographs from the perspective of "environmentalism", I can't
help but feel like they've done as much damage as anything else.

Two examples come to mind. Last year, the USFS extended the lottery permit
season in the Enchantments by six weeks due to increasing popularity, no doubt
fueled by the incredible pictures of it littered across Instagram. Iceland is
a top destination for photographers (for good reason) and I traveled there two
months ago, no doubt influenced by the pictures I've seen. But it felt like
the country was beginning to get ruined by me and my fellow tourists.

It feels like we're beginning to lose the hidden gems as more and more
photographers rush to be the first. But even the non-hidden gems are beginning
to get exposed more and more often. But I see the same spots being visited by
all photographers and I don't see how they'll handle the continued influx of
people:

    
    
      * Banff NP
      * Dolomites
      * Iceland
      * Lofoten
      * Greenland
    

It's great that people are interested in seeing the world, but I'd say the set
of people that love photographing amazing locations and preserving them is
much smaller than the set of people that only care about the former. That
said, I'm probably more of a contributor to this than I'd care to admit.

~~~
KGIII
If you really like something, tell nobody. If you find beautiful waterfalls,
don't tell anyone. A great fishing hole? Keep it to yourself. A great diner?
Nary a soul should you tell.

I'm only slightly exaggerating.

In defiance of my above statement, I own this tree and it is my favorite tree.
The forestry service cored it and it's at least 220 years old.

[https://imgur.com/a/c2AVd](https://imgur.com/a/c2AVd)

~~~
fiblye
Living somewhere that's increasingly being overrun with disrespectful
tourists, I've been making a point of keeping my travels a secret as well.
I've found loads of beautiful spots and I take plenty of pictures, but those
pictures are all for my own memories. I don't show them to anyone since I know
I'd come back to a trashed location later. I recently went back to a small
town that had almost zero tourism not long ago, only to find hordes of
tourists and "X ︎LOVES Y" messages carved into walls and trees everywhere.

~~~
KGIII
I can relate. I live in Vacationland. The nearest village largely exists
because of tourism. I'm a bit more remote.

------
ierolastic
So many things about that are depressing, like, why would someone cut into a
tree like that, and why would they decide that, if one of the trunks is gone,
the whole thing needs to be decimated? Both are completely absurd.

~~~
2bitencryption
since this entire topic seems philosophical, I'll go down this path --

someone is sitting at home, feeling worthless, like their life is pointless
and they could disappear without anyone noticing.

but there's this tree everyone likes. people notice this tree. because you see
lots of pictures of it, people must visit it often. it's a confluence.

if you were to, say, scratch your name into the bark, people would notice. you
would have made some difference on the world, for better or worse.

if you were to cut a branch down, people would DEFINITELY notice. people would
think about you, when no one would before. even if the thoughts aren't
positive.

in other words, to not feel so small and meaningless.

~~~
sydd
Or rather 3 teenagers got drunk, and wanted to do something whats "breaking
the law" or "pissing off hipsters" or "really punk". and cut the tree.

~~~
aeze
Which is really the same thing, if you think about it.

~~~
rightos
​

~~~
crusso
Actually, yes. Some friends tend to magnify the insecurities that a
lonely/insecure person might feel.

What is doing something on a dare besides a play to battle the insecurity of
being labeled a "coward"?

------
JoblessWonder
I honestly thought this was going to be about some sort of sorting algorithm I
hadn't heard about until it was already outdated.

------
sizzzzlerz
Last year, in Death Valley National Park, in a place called the Racetrack
Playa (home to the moving rocks), some excrement-brained jackasses, drove
their vehicle onto the playa while it was wet from a recent storm. The tire
tracks they left will be visible now for possibly centuries ruining for
visitors what was a pristine environment. Staking their naked, honey-coated
bodies on top of an army ant anthole might not be enough punishment.

------
chrissnell
My most favorite hobby is taking long-distance off-road trips in my old Land
Rover Defender with my buddies. We go to places far off the beaten path,
taking the smallest and least-used doubletrack trails that we can find. I've
written [1][2] about these on some of the popular forums for this stuff and
post a lot of photos. People often ask for GPS coordinates of the great
campsites that we discover but I never, ever give them out and I'm
purposefully vague and sometimes deceptive about their actual location.

This story is why.

Like the saying goes, call something paradise and kiss it goodbye. I blame the
people who publicize these places as much as I blame the people who fuck them
up. The assholes of the world cannot be trusted with beauty. They will always
defile it or love it to death.

[1] [http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/146545-The-
Owyhee](http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/146545-The-Owyhee) [2]
[http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/112686-Northwest-b...](http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/112686-Northwest-
by-Ex-MOD)

~~~
macintux
> I blame the people who publicize these places as much as I blame the people
> who fuck them up

I think that's a questionable apportionment of blame.

------
sevensor
Lest we blame the internet, attacking beloved trees is nothing new:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Oak_(Austin,_Texas)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Oak_\(Austin,_Texas\))

~~~
distances
I agree that the perpetrator needs a punishment, but nine years is a very,
very long time. Around here few first-time murderers need to sit that long.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Agreed that nine years is probably (not knowing all the details)
disproportionate.

But the Wikipedia article mentions the tree is sacred to the Comanche.
Compared to what he would have endured at their hands hundreds of years ago,
had he been caught by _them_ , he's lucky :)

------
mastazi
The thesis of the article seems to be summed up in the last paragraph:

> our collective attention and obsession, amplified by the speed and intensity
> of the internet & social media, tends to ruin the things we love: authors,
> musicians, restaurants, actors, beloved movies, vacation spots, artists,
> democracies and even a tree that became too famous to live.

I think this is an important point. Yes public attention and mass media
existed before the internet but we all know that modern social media has
changed the way notoriety and reputation work. I agree with the author because
I think that, for example, in the world we had during the 80's or early 90's
Justine Sacco would still have a job and the US Presidential campaign would
have been different.

------
campground
This is only tangentially related, but the story of Kiidk'yaas, the Golden
Spruce, cut down in 1997 as an act of protest, is fascinating:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiidk%27yaas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiidk%27yaas)

[https://thetyee.ca/Life/2005/08/03/GoldenSpruce/](https://thetyee.ca/Life/2005/08/03/GoldenSpruce/)

------
briantakita
This is an apt metaphor over how, when hegemonic, the cultural forces of
Globalism cut away the branches of local culture, leaving a stump representing
what the local culture once was.

Of course, if this were an act of coppicing, it's a renewal of sorts, and the
tree will once again grow, more robust than ever, as the Phoenix rises from
it's ashes.

------
nvusuvu
One more vandal ...

[http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/harvey_updyke_poiso...](http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/harvey_updyke_poisoned_toomers.html)

------
totally
If you're bummed about Broccoli Tree, you might want to make some quality time
to spend with your favorite (extant) tree.

Nothing lasts forever, folks. It's all going to be over before you know it.

~~~
mark-r
Most trees last far longer than people. But of course that's only on average.

------
euske
Does anyone look at this from an economic standpoint? I think this is just an
(unfair) form of taxation for being famous. Someone or something became too
famous. People want a "cut" of the fame (in this case, it was literally the
cut, ha ha). It's interesting to think how we can redistribute this type of
"wealth" among people. I can think of Twitter replies or blog trackbacks as a
primitive way to achieve it, but what can the society/government do?

edit: economical -> economic

~~~
dredmorbius
That's an interesting question, and plays into some things I've been thinking
about across a number of domains.

There's the role of fame itself, which is related to, but not the same so far
as I see, as _power_. Both are ordinal -- it's a _lot_ better to be the _most_
famous vs, say, the 10th most famous, in ways that having only, say, $90
rather than $100 isn't. But there's something you're giving up for fame --
particularly privacy and autonomy. There's a _risk_ to it (and there are
numerous artists, politicians, and businesspeople who've been attacked,
kidnapped, or murdered).

In biological evolution, there was a stage at which the first carnivorous
organisms appeared. Before that, it was pretty much OK to let it all hang out,
and just sort of slime around on the seafloor, munching on plants. Afterward,
defences (and some offences) like shells and pincers and teeth emerged. You
needed to _protect_ yourself.

And while such defenses still exist, most animals now _don 't_ have heavy body
armor. It's _too_ heavy, and _too_ cumbersome. There's hide and fur, tails to
swat away annoying things. But also social habits -- the grooming behaviours
of primates and other animals in particular. "I'll pick parasites off your
back if you'll pick them off of mine." Standards and norms of behaviour.

The problem of _too much_ fame, _especially_ for lifeforms which aren't aware
of the problem or cannot defend themselves (or move or hide, as with trees,
hell, even rock formations), is one that's been around for a while. It
definitely pre-dates the Internet as mulitiple posts here note. I've run
across items about geotagged images of rhinoceroses, or of rare plants, or
other treasures.

There's this item from a few days ago:

[http://e360.yale.edu/features/unnatural-surveillance-how-
onl...](http://e360.yale.edu/features/unnatural-surveillance-how-online-data-
is-putting-species-at-risk)

As for how to deal with the problem socially, I think that may be the role of
taboo. That's taking the matter _beyond_ economics to an extent, as taboo puts
an infinite cost or price to doing a thing.

------
geoffreyhale
"Very soon after, it was decided by some authority that the vandalism meant
the entire tree had to come down." Huh? Why?

------
drawkbox
Just like The Giving Tree from Shel Silverstein realized. Sometimes we take
things too far.

------
nouveau0
Why would they bring down the whole tree if it's just vandalized?

------
leyth
This looks to be intentional. I hope those vandals get caught.

------
poorman
Prime example of the observer effect.

------
estomagordo
Mother fucker.

------
ArchReaper
Why is this on Hacker News?

~~~
golemotron
Before clicking I expected the link to be about a data structure.

~~~
kreetx
.. and someone else thought hacker news was about the lumber industry.

Seriously though, even though not related, this was a good article. I guess it
goes without saying that if you care about something then don't obsess over it
publicly too much, since the ruiners /will/ come.

