> What makes the pleb filter such an entertaining addition to online Discourse is that it's a ready-made kafkatrap, a perfect concept for trolls and shitposters to weaponize
> The pleb filter is not just a fun tool for trolling, it also offers a great opportunity to show off one's smarts.
> It is genuinely challenging to truly appreciate the talent and artistry that goes into bullshit—Armond White (perhaps the greatest bullshitter of our time) is himself a pleb filter, perhaps the ultimate one. Some are liable to react with horror, but I think it's a game worth indulging in.
So I think the author is studying trolling and having bad taste as a game, essentially. I think it is not really very difficult or interesting to come up with winning strategies for a game that everyone else is not interested in or even aware they are playing.
> a recent study finds that "bullshit ability is associated with an individual’s intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more intelligent". The pleb filter is not just a fun tool for trolling, it also offers a great opportunity to show off one's smarts.
> It is genuinely challenging to truly appreciate the talent and artistry that goes into bullshit
Makes me think of how a lot of the best coders I've seen online can be found at /r/shittyprogramming and a lot of the worst at /r/programming
My dad actually deeply resents the invention of Google, because now everybody can check and realize he's full of shit. He only appears smart to people who don't know anything about the topic, and now everybody knows he isn't.
I couldn't follow this wandering essay too well but it seems like the author is trying to invent a whole philosophy to justify liking weird things. You can just like weird things. It's okay.
I think it's good for the soul to practice being genuine, open yourself up to trusting your own judgement. You'll survive even the most mundane abstract dada colorfield art exhibit if you just trust yourself that a blue canvas is not interesting and everyone else is just as bored as you. You'll also be able to watch Freddie Got Fingered and admit that the movie's fun has a 20-minute half-life. Once you get past that hurdle it's easy to talk more, and that's what all these social in-groups and whatever really care about: having people to t̶a̶l̶k̶ bullshit with.
I like the last section, especially the part about reckless ambition that's not contrarianism but a vision beyond old standards.
Not being on the front page of google or app stores is a filter. Having an etiquette guide and having your noobie comments hidden by veteran users is a filter. Having an older style interface that puts off mainstream users is a filter. You come to HN for a reason, don't you? All the topics on HN could be on topic for /r/technology, but we are here instead.
Look up a subreddit that relates to book genres. 95% of it will be identically worded recommendation threads and all of them will have the same books mentioned by responders, in an endless loop, forever. The askers are tourists who will never return or contribute meaningfully. That's what it looks like to have no filter.
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? We've had to ask you more than once before, and it looks like you've been continuing to do it regularly. That's not cool and we eventually have to ban such accounts.
WTF? We've cut you an unbelievable amount of slack over the years but if you flout HN's rules this flagrantly, I don't know what you expect us to do. Do you want to be banned?
It was a joke, a parody of how often HN itself acts as a pleb filter, specifically about telling people to "go back to Reddit", and it got flagged... two days ago. Mea culpa for trying to be humorous in the no-humor zone.
The commentariat already punished me. The system worked as intended, I paid a misdemeanor fine of karma for a misdemeanor offense, and I made a number of better comments since, and we should all have moved on by now. This wasn't something you needed to step in on.
Karma in general is a poor metric of quality, and the way that downvotes are being gated from users not catering to popular opinion pushes out these voices that may not necessarily be fringe, but just unpopular at the time. This is a feedback loop, and only creates environments where people do not feel comfortable speaking out.
Why is the Iliad's catalogue of ships a pleb filter? IIRC it was just a fairly boring instance of a primarily illiterate culture's historical record keeping, not unlike the "X begat Y" in the Hebrew Bible. Is TFA claiming it is excellent literature masquerading as repetitious trivia? If so, a better example imo would have been the chapter from Moby Dick which is solely devoted to the whiteness of the whale.
> Every great artwork is a fascist revolt—a form of revolt that, alas, does not fit very well into our æra.
Only pleb writers feel the desperate need to replace "era" with "æra", and such, grasping at every available bootstrap that might pull up their perceived social rank.
I think it is almost impossible to differentiate between liking something as a pleb filter and merely liking something most don’t. When you position your opinions as superior to another's, whether they are opinions on widely liked or disliked things, that is always in bad taste
> The pleb filter is not just a fun tool for trolling, it also offers a great opportunity to show off one's smarts.
> It is genuinely challenging to truly appreciate the talent and artistry that goes into bullshit—Armond White (perhaps the greatest bullshitter of our time) is himself a pleb filter, perhaps the ultimate one. Some are liable to react with horror, but I think it's a game worth indulging in.
So I think the author is studying trolling and having bad taste as a game, essentially. I think it is not really very difficult or interesting to come up with winning strategies for a game that everyone else is not interested in or even aware they are playing.