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all 168 comments

[–]zergling_LesterSW 6193 184 points185 points  (27 children)

Interesting. Regarding wikipedia, IIRC most of those super-prolific editors weren't contributing content, but rather fixed wording, markup syntax etc, often heavily using bots (which explains one edit every four minutes). On the other hand, they still spend their entire lives on it, and do have an outsized clout in any discussions about controversies etc.

And if you read YouTube comments, you're mostly reading comments written by people like Justin Young.

That's something I'm particularly not sure about. There's also a lot of usual people commenting. Should be relatively easy to check, I think.


By the way, another related concerning thing about internet communities is the self-organizing part. With point prevalence of schizophrenia being about 0.3-0.5% (higher in younger communities such as reddit), you might expect a natural community of 200-300 people to have one crazy person on average.

A frontpage /r/pics post reaches the eyes of 10,000,000 registered redditors, including 30,000-50,000 schizophrenics. If it somehow speaks to them in particular, maybe even prompts them to organize in a particular subreddit, the result could be one hell of a rabbit hole for an unprepared normie. Our brains have not evolved to deal with self-selected communities where most people are actually insane.

[–][deleted] 51 points52 points  (7 children)

If you're making automated edits with a bot, it's required that it be operated under a separate account name. You're correct that a lot of these edits aren't necessarily content-creating, and some may be bot-assisted, but they do require a human hand pushing a button at the least.

[–]gwern 61 points62 points  (6 children)

That's only for fully automated edits. Semi-automatic edits can be run under your own account, no problem. If you are doing something like solving disambiguations, I can speak from personal experience when I say it's possible to do an edit a second usefully.

That said, you can still rack up a ton of meaningful content edits if you simply work at it regularly for a few years instead of spending your spare time, say, watching TV/streamers. I had, I think, well over 100,000 WP edits total (it's probably lower now since so many articles I worked on have since been deleted), and only some of them were semi-auto edits.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Semi-automatic edits can be run under your own account, no problem.

Yes, that's what I meant by:

some may be bot-assisted, but they do require a human hand pushing a button at the least.

[–]gwern 21 points22 points  (0 children)

My point was more that semi-automatic still makes it very easy to be 'super-prolific' and many of the super-prolific editors (such as myself, I think I hit the top 200 at one point) do do it in part by semi-auto editing. I never made it a huge part of my editing, but many do. Requiring a human hand pushing a button is not much of a constraint when you can do that once a second. (There are 86,400 seconds in a single day, after all.)

[–]TheTrillionthApe 8 points9 points  (0 children)

gwern! i f*ing love gwern!

[–]accountaccumulator 3 points4 points  (2 children)

What do you think contributes to articles being deleted if I may ask?

[–]partoffuturehivemind[the Seven Secular Sermons guy] 32 points33 points  (1 child)

Check out the "Targeted Individuals" community. Paranoid people sharing their delusions of persecution and affirming each other's. Fairly horrifying. Might still be helpful on net, though, because they do also discuss psychiatric perspecties on their issues that some might otherwise never hear about.

[–]danonjj 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Click on any of their profiles and read their comment or post history... its a DEEP rabbit hole of mental illness... thats a big Y I K E S how easily accessible it is to see behind the curtain and get an impression of how their sickness is affecting their lives.

[–]honeypuppy 25 points26 points  (3 children)

The last paragraph more or less describes /r/gangstalking.

[–]TakimakuranoGyakushu 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I thought it was strange, and then:

Rules of /r/gangstalking:

  1. No spamming, trolling, or name-calling. [except for \u\yoloswiggerton.]

[–]ElFitz 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Is this for real?

[–]duskwuff 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's a form of paranoid ideation that's likely to be linked to mental illness. Real people, real beliefs, but probably not-so-real things they're describing.

[–]nomadProgrammer 16 points17 points  (7 children)

A frontpage /r/pics post reaches the eyes of 10,000,000 registered redditors, including 30,000-50,000 schizophrenics. If it somehow speaks to them in particular, maybe even prompts them to organize in a particular subreddit, the result could be one hell of a rabbit hole for an unprepared normie. Our brains have not evolved to deal with self-selected communities where most people are actually insane.

You know there are tons of subs like this the_donald, incels, braincels, ricels, etc...

[–][deleted]  (6 children)

[deleted]

    [–]Everbanned 17 points18 points  (5 children)

    But by your standard, commenting on their comment reveals your own emotional over-investment. The irony flows both directions.

    Personally, I disagree with the standard you are putting forward. I think this topic of internet commenting habits has very obvious implications for online political discussion, and I don't think that drawing that connection makes either one of you "emotionally over-involved".

    [–][deleted]  (4 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]Everbanned 15 points16 points  (3 children)

      I think your reading of the intention of their comment is revealing. I read it as examples of communities which are emotionally over-invested self-selected echo chambers. Your instinctive response to the_donald being included on such a list seems to be a combination of "nuh-uh they're not incels" (which wasn't the point) and "they didn't mention r/politics too so this comment is an emotionally immature political attack". Yet your balking at their mention of t_d is apolitically motivated and above question?

      [–][deleted]  (2 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]Everbanned 7 points8 points  (1 child)

        The subject was "self-selected communities where most people are actually insane", which the parent comment tried to classify a particular political subreddit as part of

        Are you disputing that classification? Or disputing its relevance to this topic?

        [–]The_GASK 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        And he disappeared. Surprising.

        [–]koavf 0 points1 point  (3 children)

        fixed wording, markup syntax etc, often heavily using bots (which explains one edit every four minutes).

        Inevitably, tho I don't have any bots.

        [–]rnykal 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        whoa it's you!

        Sometimes I get too into reddit and end up spending all my free time on it and feeling shitty as a result; eventually I end up taking a step back, doing other things, and feeling better. I'm just curious if you've ever wanted to curb your Wikipedia editing, or if it doesn't really affect you like reddit does me. If you feel like answering, awesome, if not, thanks anyways for all the work you do maintaining one of my favorite websites!

        [–]koavf 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        I'm just curious if you've ever wanted to curb your Wikipedia editing, or if it doesn't really affect you like reddit does me. If you feel like answering, awesome, if not, thanks anyways for all the work you do maintaining one of my favorite websites!

        Never. It's always interesting to me. If I ever get "bored", I just move on to other Wikimedia Foundation projects because there's always something to do.

        [–]rnykal 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        well that's awesome that you've found something you enjoy so much, and something that helps everyone else! hope i can say the same some day lol

        [–]SeveredHeadofOrpheus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Our brains have not evolved to deal with self-selected communities where most people are actually insane.

        More importantly, our societies haven't. We're seeing the effects of this now.

        [–]surprised_by_bees 71 points72 points  (9 children)

        I'm Facebook friends with somebody who used to have the record for asking the most questions on Quora. His Facebook feed is mostly him asking questions, about half a dozen a day. They are exceptionally interesting and provocative questions, too.

        I think in this case, the quirk in his personality and the nature of the site were in perfect harmony. He is unusual, but in a positive way.

        [–]ari_zerner 23 points24 points  (7 children)

        Are his initials AKC by any chance?

        [–]surprised_by_bees 26 points27 points  (6 children)

        Yes, I'm not surprised someone recognized him by the description, hard to imagine a second AKC.

        [–]Eyeownyew 14 points15 points  (2 children)

        Dude I've been doing this since I was a child! I don't post my questions on Facebook, but I often text them to people and search for the answers on Google. I have done 5-10 (perhaps way more) deep dives on Wikipedia and other online resources every day since I was a kid. I have my complete Google search history downloaded from since I was 10 and that alone has nearly a million queries (many programming related which skews the statistics)

        Something that I absolutely love is the fact that the great majority of questions I ask have already been asked by the collective and have answers on quora or a stack exchange community. For the rest, there's many articles, videos, books and other resources detailing the answer. It's a gold mine for someone who's very inquisitive and connected with technology.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        What are some questions you asked that dont have answers ?

        [–]The_GASK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        When in doubt, 42.

        [–]MyAmazingDiscoveries 3 points4 points  (2 children)

        Yes, I'm not surprised someone recognized him by the description, hard to imagine a second AKC.

        I would LOVE to read AKC's Quora questions. Can you point me to this person's posts?

        [–]wheat-thicks 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        [–]Wenste 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        Wow, some of these questions are very low quality and click-baity. Definitely challenging the saying that "there are no stupid questions."

        But others are really good!

        [–]Stereo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        He sounds like an interesting friend.

        [–]AngryParsley 66 points67 points  (3 children)

        I agree with your overall point, though I think the comment to reader ratio on internet communities is due to the fact that most people aren't there for the comments. If you could measure the number of people who view the posts and the number of people who read comments, it'd probably be a ratio of 10:1.

        I think there's another thing skewing the numbers: People only tend to comment if their idea isn't already in the comments. It's easier to upvote someone who already said what you wanted to say than to write it again.

        It's like a sales funnel. People have to view the post, read some comments, find their opinion missing, then put forth the effort to type something instead of passively consuming more memes. Once you view it that way, 1-2% participation sounds accurate.

        [–][deleted] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

        Re: first paragraph. I'm not so sure. In many the communities I participate in, the comments often are the content. The actual post is just a kickstarter for the comments.

        I agree with the rest of your comment.

        [–]Easykiln 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        Err... I often don't read comments and post my own. I have a strong urge to share when I form an opinion for some reason. But then, I have a learning disability associated with the trait of oversharing.

        [–]Njordsier 121 points122 points  (12 children)

        I think a similar effect is why I've been so dissatisfied with Facebook. Most of the posts on my wall come from a small fraction of my friends: in particular, the most politically activist friends or the friends with the lowest inhibitions against sharing stupid memes. Of my approximately $DUNBAR_NUMBER friends, maybe 5-10 constitute the majority of the non-ad posts I see. This isn't Facebook's fault; even if they filtered out 90% of the content I don't like it would still constitute the majority of my feed, just because the people I care about the most or just interact with the most often in real life typically don't post anything. So I'm left the babies of with proud mommies who I met twice taking up a large fraction of my feed, and political virtue signaling from high school friends I haven't spoken to in years making up most of the rest.

        [–]PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIANhad a qualia once 66 points67 points  (11 children)

        I aggressively unfollow people on Facebook. It's made the experience actually vaguely valuable.

        [–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (1 child)

        I unfollow anyone on facebook who posts anything political, or anything that annoys me.

        My facebook feed now consists of a few people I'm *actually* friends with, who post once a month or so, and a few people I barely know who post pictures of their food. Oh, and a bunch of meme pages that I liked just to fill up space.

        [–]BeFlatXIII 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Nothing like trolling the comments of meme pages with “u mad bro” variants. I hope I eventually catch a permanent ban for that.

        [–]HarryPotter5777 25 points26 points  (0 children)

        Seconding this method. Facebook sucks, but so long as they let you keep unfollowing everyone whose content is awful, it really does improve markedly after the 100th friend you mute.

        (Ditto for Twitter - aggressively unfollow anything remotely uninteresting or drama-filled, put filters in place where necessary, and it's quite a nice place for short content aggregation.)

        [–]MoreDonutsIQ: 100±15 20 points21 points  (0 children)

        I tried that, it just made Facebook completely useless. Which is good, I deleted it from my phone and don't miss it.

        [–]cactus_headProud alt.Boeotian 9 points10 points  (1 child)

        I did that but I think I ended up unfollowing everyone and now I only see sponsored content and other crap like that.

        [–]johnwcowan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        My straightforward solution to that problem is to never have followed anyone on Twitter in the first place, and to use my Facebook account only to look at pages that other people direct me to by URL, never my own page.

        [–]brberg 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        I've unfollowed some of the worst offenders, but I keep some people followed specifically for culture war rubbernecking.

        [–]MoNastri 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        I do this too, and can report the same.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        why unfollow instead of unfriend? or say, create a new account and friend with just those you want to interact with. or, not have facbeook?

        [–]PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIANhad a qualia once 9 points10 points  (0 children)

        • Everyone around me uses Facebook Messenger for communication.
        • In the case of close friends and professional contacts, unfriending can communicate something harsh that unfollowing doesn't.

        [–]haroldp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        If I was to disagree with OP at all, it would be to say that it is facebook's fault. There is something about the platform that just always makes certain kinds of discussions turn acrimonious. I am friends with nice people who's company I enjoy, and with whom I can argue about politics in a good-natured way, anywhere but facebook.

        I like them and don't want to unfriend them, but I do have to un-follow them, or I'll have to kill them. :)

        [–]wulfrickson 55 points56 points  (17 children)

        Speaking of literal insanity, I remember in a long-ago CW thread, someone (/u/cimarafa?) mentioned re-watching all of the prominent Gamergate YouTubers from 2014 and noticing how basically all of them, on both sides of the issue, were dealing with serious mental illnesses, just because those were the people to care enough about video games and have enough difficulty with other aspects of their lives to be willing to make hour-long videos about video game journalism. I have to agree with this person that having large portions of the Discourse dominated by people with mental illnesses severe enough to interfere with their daily functioning is probably not good.

        [–]fruitynotesnot rationalist just likes discussion 27 points28 points  (0 children)

        This applies to so much more than Gamergate (unless you just meant you noticed it from GG, because I don't think I'm saying anything novel at all). Anyone that emotionally invested in a single topic almost certainly has a higher-than-average chance of having issues elsewhere.

        I'm pretty rusty on my gamergate history, I was only exposed to it via some of the gaming podcasts I would listen to on my multi-hour commutes, but I think it may have been particularly bad because there's essentially two screens for people to pass through to participate in gamergate, the other being the gamer part. I mean absolutely zero disrespect to anyone in saying this, but I would not be surprised at all if people who identified as gamers were more likely to have mental health problems as well. So you have a subset of a subset, ie enthusiastic gamers who are also heavily emotionally invested in games.

        Or maybe that's just one screen because gamer is so large a label as to not mean anything. Or maybe there's no point in subdividing gamers into the types of people who play artsy emotional social commentary games and those who play shootshoot games; after all my top 2 favorite games of the past 5 years are Firewatch and Doom 2016, albeit I don't actually play that many games and am not a gamer.

        Or maybe I should shut up and stop being an armchair psychologist.

        [–]percyhiggenbottom 10 points11 points  (13 children)

        It's not like there's anything new about this, Sapolsky talks about shamans being mentally unbalanced, Luther had bad OCD, the mentally insane probably have had disproportionate effects on culture all throughout history, mostly through religion, where "hearing voices" is not a bug, but a feature.

        [–]Asquil 4 points5 points  (12 children)

        Luther had bad OCD

        That actually explains a lot.

        Also, I think insane people had quite a large impact on art as well. Van Gogh ans Salvador Dalí are easy examples, but in general good art requires a new perspective, and I think being insane can help with that.

        And I don't know if I want to call people on the autistic spectrum insane, being one myself, but I'm pretty sure they contributed a lot to science.

        [–]Rumhand 6 points7 points  (8 children)

        Idk about Dali.

        His work can be weird, sure, but he managed to commercialize it in a way Van Gough never could.

        Maybe he just managed to keep his oddities compartmentalized, but that in itself is pretty high-functioning.

        [–]divergio 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        According to a documentary I saw recently, most of Dali's commercial success was due to his partner, Gala. Broadly speaking she handled the business side, allowing Dali to float around a bit detached from reality.

        [–][deleted]  (6 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]Rumhand 2 points3 points  (2 children)

          yes DALI was okay normal ask anybody

          I meant what I said, and I did not make any reference to his normality. I mean, you could make the argument that he was "normal," as Surrealists go. Corpus Hypercubus is edgy and transgressive, but so's Magritte's The Rape. Or Duchamp's urinal fountain.

          What I'm concerned with is Dali's perceived insanity. Was Dali crazy? Like a fox, maybe. He had a brand (first art, secondly himself) and he knew how to sell it. And he sold it like a two dollar whore. Along with other products, back when he did literal commercials. He had accumulated over $10 million by 1970. Who cares if the art is weird- if that's insanity, sign me the hell up.

          You want a crazy artist? Try Van Gogh. He cut of his goddamn ear after a falling out with Gauguin, and gave it to a woman at a brothel. Also he maybe heard voices? It's unclear. Also, the whole dying penniless thing. Real mental illness isn't always fun and marketable.

          Edit: This came off harsher than I intended. I just dislike the assumption that creators of surreal or bizarre art must somehow be either insane or on drugs (or both). For every 80's Stephen King or Grant Morrison there's a Frank Zappa or a Cyriak.

          [–][deleted]  (1 child)

          [deleted]

            [–]Rumhand 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            No worries. Nothing rustled but some jimmies.

            I don't even think the original post is wrong, as such, there's definitely a line between genius and insanity/mental unwellness. Or maybe we're more willing to overlook oddities in high-status creatives?

            Or maybe we want our creatives to be atypical somehow. Like, it's not as a compelling a story somehow if Cyriak seems like just a quiet dude who's really skilled with AfterEffects, but can somehow still create goddamn masterpieces.

            Maybe Dali really was on to something - Maybe we want our creatives to be characters in their own right?

            To not just be crazy and/or do drugs, but to be drugs.

            Whatever that means.

            [–]HlynkaCGhas lived long enough to become the villain[M] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            While there is currently no rule against "bumping" old threads I have to ask; Is there a particular reason you chose to make this comment now?

            [–]overtmind 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Not the person you replied to - but it likely has to do something with teh HN post about this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827

            [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

            Sounds like your saying anyone that makes large contributions to society is either insane or autistic. Who else would care enough to try to push it forward ?

            [–]Asquil 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            I did not say that. See my wording - "can help with that", "contributed a lot" - I never implied exclusivity. It might sound pedantic, but stuff like this matters to me - I'm not putting painstaking effort into my hedge words just for you to ignore them.

            Anyway, curiosity, ambition, and wanting to advance humanity are very much sane values. And without a good dose of sanity, one cannot really contribute anything at all.

            Although some degree of nonconformism definitely helps too.

            [–]CommodoreQuinli 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            In order to really embody those sane values one must make some insane sacrifices in their own lives. I do think the people who work hardest at improving are world are a little insane, in the best connotation of that world.

            [–]Solmundr 3 points4 points  (0 children)

            I can't think of any pro-GG Youtuber for which that's the case, but I wasn't heavily involved so it's possible I'm missing prominent personalities and/or major life episodes thereof. (I'm thinking Sargon, IA, Thunderfoot, etc.; but the more I think, the more I realize I probably wouldn't know if any were dealing with a common mental illness -- though I sort of think I'd have heard about schizophrenia or the like.)

            [–]Whatevs_frack4crack 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Today I was just reflecting on a online forum that I used to spend a lot of time on. It had a dedicated community of about 40 people. I would say the most prominent 10 were basically suffering from some mental illness and using the forum as a support group.

            [–]Deku-shrub 34 points35 points  (0 children)

            I run my own wiki for transhumanism, https://hpluspedia.org which has been going for 3 years now with me having written 2/3rd of its content.

            I also do other major wiki editing as well.

            I would replace the word 'insane people' with 'obsessives' though. :)

            [–]viking_ 66 points67 points  (3 children)

            Speculation: Some of these "people" are actually one account used by multiple people, ala Nicolas Bourbaki. The name used may exist, and the real Grady Harpy may even be part of the group. But I doubt one person is actually buying and reading 8 books per day.

            [–]91275 54 points55 points  (1 child)

            It's unclear if they actually read the books.

            One sf author tried to test it..

            And apparently Harriet Klausner thought it unremarkable that the book featured a 'Klausner index' of speed-reading.

            [–]kornork 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Alastair Reynolds is great!

            [–]lmericle 18 points19 points  (0 children)

            Consider also the inverse: 1 person, multiple accounts.

            I have a couple to separate out my reddit experience and keep politically charged things away from more hobby-related or academia-related stuff. Perhaps other people do this also, and either 1) only comment with one or a couple accounts, or 2) never comment with any of them. Judging by the numbers, I must be the rare bird that comments with most of them on a semi-regular basis.

            [–][deleted] 33 points34 points  (1 child)

            You've hit on something that is both important and interesting.

            I'll push back though, slightly, on the matter of Wikipedia. I used to spend an unhealthy amount of time editing it, and I'm pretty familiar with the eccentricities of its power users. It's true, most of Wikipedia is written by a surprisingly small number of people. And the interactions between those people are just fucking nuts. But the crazy thing about Wikipedia is that somehow, it works. It's written and maintained by lunatics and the conflict resolution process is enough to turn a sane man loony, but it works.

            Somehow, it works. It shouldn't, but it does. Every person involved in the process is bonkers and the process itself is bonkers and it works.

            And there's something to be said for that.

            [–]eliatic 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            the interactions between those people are just fucking nuts.

            As you might guess if you try to learn how to do any editing task from the "Wikipedia: [help on doing something]" articles.

            They're so "complete" and so full of WP-jargon that they are worthless ... easier to find a page that does what you need.

            [–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (2 children)

            The majority of books are written by much less then 1 percent of the population. There is no escaping this.

            [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            same for pretty much everything where a few people wind up in place due to the power law - from road sign designers to mass murderers

            [–]percyhiggenbottom 25 points26 points  (0 children)

            OT but I found this post to be very Scott-like. It would work well as a short post on the main site, both in tone and content.

            [–]qualia_of_mercyIQ 9 50 points51 points  (5 children)

            You shouldn't apologize for this statement, and even the word "insane," because it's important and true.

            We really, really are putting ourselves in the position, thanks to unpaid, gamified social media, where the people who have the biggest voices in setting the national conversation are at best a bunch of unrepresentative obsessives and shut-ins and are at worst maniacs. This is not helping.

            [–]swyx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            not convinced. even before social media, national conversation has been set by unrepresentative people. we are mostly sheep.

            [–]mactrey 1 point2 points  (3 children)

            Even before the rise of the internet and social media those who set the national conversation were unrepresentative obsessives. You have to be a particular kind of crazy to, say, run for office (Joe McCarthy), or run an influential art collective (Andy Warhol), or be a member of a countercultural band (Metallica maybe?). At least those guys weren’t shut-ins I suppose.

            [–]qualia_of_mercyIQ 9 2 points3 points  (2 children)

            At least those guys weren’t shut-ins I suppose.

            That's the important bit. Yeah, Warhol was eccentric, but he was capable of interacting with other human beings in person as part of making a living. The internet and social media put people who are incapable of this in charge of our culture.

            [–]mactrey -1 points0 points  (1 child)

            First of all, it’s not prima facie obvious to me that having your cultural gatekeepers be extroverts and narcissists rather than introverts and autists is inherently better, so you’d have to explain that claim to me.

            Second, the cultural gatekeepers of the past - the well-connected politicians, celebrities, and writers - haven’t gone anywhere. They’re still here, still setting trends and having cultural impacts. We just now live in a world where in some online spheres the shut-ins can have a cultural impact as well. So I f you tire of the behavior of reddit power mods or StackExchange power users there’s a whole world of local politics, celebrity and political news, broadcast television, etc. that has remained largely untouched by the grubby hands of the introverts and losers. So I really don’t think we have much of a problem on our hands unless you get most of your information and interaction from one or two websites.

            [–]qualia_of_mercyIQ 9 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            So I f you tire of the behavior of reddit power mods or StackExchange power users there’s a whole world of local politics, celebrity and political news, broadcast television, etc. that has remained largely untouched by the grubby hands of the introverts and losers.

            Except they get their information from the grubby hands of the introverts and losers, and make decisions based on that. The results of years-long battles between crazy people over where to put a comma in a Wikipedia article turn into the front page of the Washington Post. And the results of insane obsessives scouring Twitter for badthink get writers fired and silenced.

            [–]HarryPotter5777 14 points15 points  (1 child)

            Does anyone have experience interacting with (or being) one of the people who generates content at absurdly high rates on the far end of the power law distribution?

            I'm probably in the top 0.1% of internet content producers, but I don't think that's enough to give rise to anything qualitatively similar to the Justin Knapps or Grady Harps of the world. Curious if people who have experience with this sort of internet-prolific person notice commonalities beyond "they sure do spend all their time on X".

            [–]reini_urban 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Well I never spoke to Harry Potter personally, but apparently everything is possible in the Interwebs. You are famous!

            [–]sodiummuffin 11 points12 points  (0 children)

            I've thought about this before in the context of politics. As traditional elitist one-to-many communication is supplanted by the grassroots peer-to-peer communication of the internet, the barriers to making yourself heard are increasingly just talent and the sheer amount of time you devote to promoting your cause. That potentially goes a long way to explaining why left-wing activism and politics are increasingly dominated by the concerns of the internet social justice community and why the candidate with /pol/'s creative efforts and message-setting behind him won the Republican primary.

            At the same time the old media sources aren't really functioning as a refuge either, because they're generally following the trend for some combination of reasons (distribution methods that mean you can pander to a niche better instead of appealing to everyone, changes to the pipeline to become a published journalist/article-writer, internet-developed memeplexes simply becoming effective enough to be influencing journalists just like they influence other people and social/professional groups).

            [–]greyenlightenment 10 points11 points  (8 children)

            The most prolific writer in history is believed to be Charles Harold St. John Hamilton , who wrote 100 million words in his lifetime. The English version of Wikipedia has 3.6 billion words. So it's possible for just a couple hundred people to write Wikipedia. But other sites such as Facebook and twitter, which have millions of active users, the distribution is not nearly as skewed.

            [–]aeschenkarnos 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            Charles Harold St. John Hamilton

            AKA Frank Richards, probably most famous for the Billy Bunter books. I read those in my teens, and at the time found them funny, though they are very much an artifact of their time and wouldn't survive modern cultural sensibilities. (Though they are surprisingly anti-racist. Bunter's racism is always presented as a negative character trait that other characters decry.)

            [–]syllabic 0 points1 point  (6 children)

            I don't think that's representative because I type over 100wpm and I highly doubt Charles Hamilton could write by hand that quickly. Even if he had a typewriter it is much much slower than a computer because of carriage returns, erasing mistakes, replacing paper and even just the added time/lag from the mechanical arms of a typewriter moving back and forth. I've never gauged how many total words I've typed into a computer but I think over 100m is not an unreasonable estimate since I've been doing this for over 25 years.

            [–]Droideka30 5 points6 points  (0 children)

            As this what if? article points out, writers generally aren't limited by how fast they can physically write or type, but by how fast they can think of what to write, i.e. their "storytelling speed." Maybe if you're writing stream-of-consciousness or something else so simple you don't need to think about it, the physical limitations of the medium will affect your speed. Otherwise, it's not really going to matter whether you're on a computer or a typewriter (assuming you have an editor).

            [–]greyenlightenment 2 points3 points  (4 children)

            6000 words a day for a year for 50 years will do it

            that is 400 per hour and 6.7 per minute (assuming 9 hours of sleep and other stuff)

            he used a typewriter so that helped versus doing it by hand

            [–]syllabic 0 points1 point  (3 children)

            Thats about one hour of computer use which I will absolutely destroy on an average day

            I'm not spending the entire time on the computer typing at maximum speed, and I'm also not even the most extreme example of a shut in computer nerd. I'm sure there's some high volume people in chatrooms and maybe twitter etc who have blown past 100m words several times. I'd be willing to bet in the internet and computing age there are people who have written billions of words.

            [–]MoNastri 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            There's a pretty big gap between the 100m mark and "billions of words", like a year vs decades, but otherwise I buy your general point.

            [–]syllabic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Someone should run a bot against the accounts of some of the biggest karma farmers on reddit and see how many words they have written

            [–]benkitty 33 points34 points  (3 children)

            The power law is well studied, and by itself not terribly profound. You can see on this wiki page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment ) that scientists as early as the early 1900s found that preferential attachment networks / graphs naturally exhibit power law phenomena. In other words, in situations where "the rich gets richer", such as most popularity contests where benefits come from ranking, you should expect a power law.

            I think recently there is a bit of back tracking, since after Facebook gained popularity we do see mounting evidence that a lot of these networks are not truly scale free (power law), but actually heavy tail: https://www.quantamagazine.org/scant-evidence-of-power-laws-found-in-real-world-networks-20180215/ . The good news is that social graph theory continues to be an active area of research. There's also a fairly large body of research into games and systems built on such networks. I haven't looked into the literature recently, but you can take a look at this popular textbook as a starting point: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/

            I think what is more interesting are the implications for platforms and institutions that rely on these networks. When your business model, political structure, or infrastructure depend on a network that is inherently power law (e.g. Votes from traffic on Reddit), that may seriously provide perverse incentives. I think there needs to be a lot more research and public awareness, especially since so-called democratic or meritocratic systems are not merely gamed/exploited these days, but they are structurally built to not incentivize equal participation.

            [–]sample_size_1 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Why does it matter whether its truly "scale free" or just long-tailed? Still means that few people contribute most of the content.

            [–]HelperBot_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment


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            [–]darwin2500 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            What are the odds that these numbers are mitigated by account sharing (ie 'power users' are actually groups of a few or many people using the same account)?

            [–]chlorinecrown 9 points10 points  (1 child)

            Does this make anyone else think about Age of Em? I feel like these are going to be the people replicated a billion times.

            [–]Asquil 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            I shudder at imagining what a billion of these people could achieve.

            [–]mooseburger42rhizomatic mythopoet 8 points9 points  (0 children)

            Woohoo, I've transitioned from lurker to loony!!!!

            [–]Freilingme smart dis many 6 points7 points  (0 children)

            I don't really know what to do with this observation except to note that it seems like it's worth keeping in mind when using the Internet.

            Everything comes back to Moloch. It's almost become required reading to be in my circles, since I refer to it so much. The grand theory of why things go to shit. Not so revolutionary an idea, except it's so well written it packs a punch,

            But it's a message many people haven't heard, outside of communities like this. Many people do consume social media uncritically, without regard to the author's intent. Not that they're at fault for it - media creation is not only much more diversified, but the reader is now consuming dozens of sources instead of one at a time. This counting would have sounded absurd in 2008, but look now at the ubiquity of the habit of treating comment sections as the real "meat" of an article.

            Despite many people being raised with smartphones, the "new" social media - the type where the user-side is heavily monetized and automated - is still relatively new. And people are showing their illiteracy in consuming it intelligently, as shown by snap-judgments on short comments, or inexplicable credulity for extreme opinions. IMO this is the next big shift that will turn anyone unwilling to learn it into a dinosaur.

            [–][deleted]  (8 children)

            [deleted]

              [–]Sluisifer 20 points21 points  (7 children)

              The 'autists', I think, tend to stick to smaller communities and frequently migrate away from things that get popular. Most of the kind of community that you would associate with BBS/listserv/early-internet seems to stick to traditional niche forums, blogs, and is only occasionally present on popular social media like YouTube and Reddit.

              I think it's fair to consider the outlier/abnormal community of prolific participants as a distinct group.

              [–]Terakq 9 points10 points  (6 children)

              The 'autists', I think, tend to stick to smaller communities

              Like this one?

              [–]PM_ME_UTILONS 12 points13 points  (5 children)

              I'm sure this was surveyed before, and we're only like 10% diagnosed spectrum, versus 1% background. Similar scale of effect to transwomen but with a higher background rate.

              All numbers approximate at best.

              [–]aeschenkarnos 9 points10 points  (1 child)

              There'd be a penumbra among us of self-diagnosed, undiagnosed/oblivious, and in-denial for both autism spectrum and transgender. Possibly up to another 10%.

              [–]GavinSkulldrinker 7 points8 points  (0 children)

              The stench of 'sperg clings to us.

              [–][deleted]  (2 children)

              [deleted]

                [–]PM_ME_UTILONS 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                There's a joke that we're evening out the gender imbalance one transition at a time.

                I think Scott or somebody speculated about why that might be in a medically plausible way, I can't recall the theory.

                [–]SpaceHammerhead 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                It follows from the correlation autism has with transgenderism. A community high in one likely has high amounts of the other. Here is an Atlantic article on the connection:

                https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/the-link-between-autism-and-trans-identity/507509/

                [–]monistowl 2 points3 points  (4 children)

                But... Only 20 books a year? I'd rather be nuts.

                [–]MoNastri 3 points4 points  (3 children)

                In my country the median adult reads one book a year. Twenty is plenty high for the general population. Spaces like these are the only places I feel "normal", even subpar, which I like anyway because wallflower preference and all that.

                [–]monistowl 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                Only outing myself as a nerd, no disrespect meant.

                [–]MoNastri 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                No disrespect intended! Just had something to share. :) I read roughly a book a week myself (as a shut-in nerd I feel like that's on the low end tbh)

                [–]monistowl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                a book a lifetime is more than most humans ever got! we are so damn lucky :)

                [–]zaxqs 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                How is this different from any kind of content creation? There's always more content consumers than content producers.

                [–]Bamarific 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                Creation has always been the province of outliers.

                Has every creator--from Grady Harp all the way back to God--been insane?

                [–]GeneralExtension 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                maybe 20 books a year, tops,

                If you read a book every day that's 365 in a year (366 on leap years). Every weekend gets you 52. Those are scale factors of about 18 and 7, respectively.

                20.8k reviews since 2011

                20,800 / 7 = about 3000.

                If we figure 300 days a year (82% of a year's days), that's about 10 books a day. That sounds way more do-able if you a) focus on short stories, or b) omit long books, like Lord of The Rings. If we imagine a short story is 1,000 words, and go with a), then they're reading 10,000 words a day, and 3,000,000 words a year. (And writing reviews.) I think that's a very, very, low bound on how much they read. One could argue that such a prolific reader might be a great reviewer - they've read enough books they know what's good - or just compare how many people 'like' their reviews compared to the average reviewer's.

                [–]Honsoku 2 points3 points  (3 children)

                If you define insane as “behavior dramatically deviating from normal”, insane is actually pretty close to the mark. I would call them crazy, but that is really only adjusting the magnitude, not the vector (insane has connotations of complete disconnect with reality, while crazy at least has a tenuous grasp). It isn’t just what is written on the internet either. Most people at or near the pinnacle of success are crazy.

                 

                As success (in this context) are outcomes that are significantly deviant from the norm, the lead-up to success must also be significantly deviant from the norm. You can boil down success into the composite of three factors: talent, motivation, luck. Talent is innate abilities. Luck is all the things that break correctly (the environment). Motivation is the drive. Hyper successful people typically have a lot of all three, or at least an extraordinary amount of two. Someone with a lot of talent and luck but no motivation is unlikely to do enough to matter. Someone with a lot of luck and motivation and no talent will only succeed until their luck runs out. Someone with a lot of motivation and talent but no luck is likely to toil away in obscurity, never getting that big break. It is only the presence of all three in significant quantities that allows someone to reach and sustain ‘household name’ or higher levels of success. Extraordinary behavior requires extraordinary motivation. As motivation increases, its effects bleeds over into the rest of their lives.

                 

                So how does that make them crazy? There are two factors; level of motivation and the success itself. For a lot of people at or near the pinnacle, the motivation approaches (or is) all-consuming. People at that level consistently work 12-16+ hour days. As you would expect, most people would burn out extremely quickly with that intensity of focus. The only way not to burn out is to be utterly obsessed with what you are doing, therefore, crazy.

                 

                Success itself also turns people crazy. The more successful you are, the more distorted your feedback becomes, which pushes people away from “normal” thinking. Various factors, such as lackeys, media attention, change in social networks, power, the insulating effects of money, etc all screw with that action/consequence feedback loop that regulates our behavior. This is also why Cthulhu always swims left.

                 

                So not only is most of what you read written by crazy people, most of your leaders, innovators, celebrities, creators, and historical figures are also crazy. The lunatics are already running the asylum, and we put them in charge.

                [–]coldriverstone 0 points1 point  (2 children)

                i'm familiar with the Yarvin reference, can you elaborate on why the success feedback loop drives cthulu left?

                [–]Honsoku 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                One of the big effects of progress is to reduce negative repercussions from incorrect decisions and increase the safety of the average individual. So compared across time for a progressing society, people in the relative future get (on average) weaker/less negative feedback and navigate lower risk environments than people in the relative past. As the cost of incorrect decisions goes down and enforcement/discipline on a societal/personal level is a cost vs. benefit trade-off, the individual and societal constraints on behavior slacken. People literally become more liberal. This can also be looked at as safer environments are less punishing of 'aberrant' (deviation from ideal) behavior on both a personal and societal level.

                Relatedly, this weakening of feedback pushes the balance away from avoiding false positives and towards avoiding false negatives. Additionally, there are knock-on effects from population density and trade that push people leftwards as well.

                [–]coldriverstone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                ok i follow, thanks for taking the time. this makes a lot of sense.

                [–]holllaur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                On Reddit, it's probably because mods constantly exert power trips over who can post and who can't.

                [–]jpmcglone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                Isn't this true about pretty much everything produced in all of the world?

                Most of the work done in the world is done by a very small number of people. I don't think it's a percent either. More like a square root.

                You give me a team of 100 people and I bet 10 of them will be doing most of the work.

                [–]Electrical_Resource 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                My stepdad has been sitting behind his computer for 12-14 hours per day, commenting and moderating some economic opinion forum for the past 10+ years. I just checked his account and his last submission was one hour ago, his profile has 2500+ pages and 60k+ submissions and comments. He is a former professor, 67, retired now and literally does nothing else during his day. If he wasn't living with my mom he'd be homeless. And yes, I think its a little insane.

                [–]erkelep 7 points8 points  (6 children)

                And if you read YouTube comments

                ...then you are making a big mistake.

                I'll let myself out.

                [–]pursuitofexcellence6 20 points21 points  (5 children)

                This meme might have been true in like 2008 but nowadays YouTube comments have some of the most constantly inventive humor accessible anywhere and regularly make my day

                [–]Terakq 16 points17 points  (2 children)

                For me it's a very mixed bag.

                • Often the first 1-2 comments are visible when I load a video on my laptop or tablet, and they sometimes spoil the video or just repeat the punchline of the video
                • Almost all of the discussions in the comment sections of videos that are remotely political are middle school-level or worse
                • Almost all of the jokes and memes are extremely obvious and dumb; often a lot dumber than even /r/AskReddit pun spam
                • But occasionally, there is a comment (often just 1-3 per video, if any) that is so hilarious and perfect it almost makes up for all the other bullshit

                I still think on the whole it's a huge dumpster fire, but there are amazing zingers sometimes.

                If you want more consistently inventive and interesting humor, try 4chan and similar communities.

                [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                Is there a subreddit or something that curates the best comments?

                [–]Freilingme smart dis many 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                /r/Freiling has consistently insightful content.

                [–]russian_proofster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                It depends on the video. Go to a clickbait channel and open one of the trending videos, reading the comments will give you cancer.

                Go to a more niche one, and the comments will be equal to non-default subreddits.

                [–]addamssonThis is still much better than if it were much worse. 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Mine too.

                [–]gscs1102 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                Your main point is very solid, and this is extremely interesting. Thank you for posting this - I can't say I'm all that surprised, but it needed to be examined and explained. I can't help but react to the 20 books a year thing, because while I totally agree it is very abnormal statistically to be reading more than that, it's by no means bizarre. I definitely spend too much time reading and forgo other normal things because of it, but I work full-time and am functional and I've gone through periods where I read a book a day. I am a very fast reader, which helps. I'm pretty sure at least half of Americans read no books per year, so this is very anomalous, but I am always surprised at the number of people who tell me it is beyond unreasonable or unrealistic to read even 20, or act like reading even 50 books a year is a superhuman feat. Some people just really like to read. This is largely unrelated to your post, as in any event, what the reviewer is doing is definitely crazy, and your implication is fair. Most people would never go beyond 20. But I just find it odd that it is thought of as so inconceivable that I comment on it when it comes up in some way.

                [–]SgtBrutalisk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                Sorry to burst your bubble but Grady Harp seems to be a promotional account that publishes authors' blurbs. There might be a real person behind the account but all he's doing is copy/paste and adding a 2-sentence paragraph at the end essentially stating, "Great book! Grady Harp".

                [–]fuboso we read and we watched all the specially selected news 9 points10 points  (4 children)

                It seems rather unfounded to describe people as "insane" for this. How about "hobbyist" or just "fan"? Some people watch sports; some people play video games; some people read and review books.

                [–]lazydictionary 22 points23 points  (3 children)

                I think abnormal might be a better term

                [–]cbusalex 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                "Abnormal" might even be too strong a term. The possible space of human activity is so large, we're all likely to be extreme outliers in some category or another, especially if you're going to look at categories as specific as "writing book reviews on Amazon.com", or include activities like Twitch streaming that people do as a profession.

                Is it abnormal for someone to prepare more meals in one day than most people do in a year? Not if they're a cook.

                [–]aeschenkarnos 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                Obsessive?

                [–]sample_size_1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                statistical outlier is the less-judgey but also tautological version of 'abnormal'

                [–]curiouskiwicat 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                We spend our time on social media websites made by people like Mark Zuckerberg and get all our information from people like Larry Page and Sergey Brin...

                [–]Njordsier 19 points20 points  (0 children)

                There's a pretty big difference between getting information from people and getting information from an algorithm devised by those people.

                [–]Stereo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                It’s not only online behaviour though, the same curve exists offline. If you join a running group, you’re more likely to meet people who are really into running, because this is what they do. Or you’re more likely to meet an alcoholic in a pub, because being an alcoholic means they’ll spend more time there than the average person. You’re more likely to find people who like music a lot at concerts.

                [–]holllaur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                This could be because most mods are on power trips, and delete or downvote whatever they want.

                [–]Eh_I 0 points1 point  (1 child)

                I have always believed that insane is a corruption of the non-existent word in-same meaning they are not the same. They are "different" or "radical" or don't compute because they are not rational = irrational (meaning the ratio of how they are compared to how the sane=same ones are can't be computed.)

                [–]tuseroni 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                sane comes from the latin word sanus, it shares the root with sanitation, and means healthy. insane means unhealthy or unwell as the mentally ill were considered unwell (it's also why the mentally ill were places in sanitariums)

                [–]Praetor6 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                The outliers set the tone and the 99% reverberate.

                [–]plumbubulis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Clearly these people aren't real and the singularity is in the past not the future.

                [–]fuck_your_diploma 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Wow. Just wow.

                [–]Fucking-Usernames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Umm.... So, behaving in non standard ways its wrong, then? What is "common behavior" according to you?

                [–]bstachenfeld 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Whenever I post on reddit it gets deleted. I always thought it was a plot... 🤷‍♀️

                [–]jonathancast 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                None of this is new with the Internet.

                It's surprising that it's still true with the Internet only because the Internet was supposed to be an egalitarian democracy. But anyone who understands division of labor understands why that was never going to happen (and why the Internet's financial model is, therefore, completely broken).

                [–]ChanceBowl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Interesting statistics, completely wrong conclusions.

                First of all, how you define someone as normal? Is someone dedicated to make wikipedia (probably with help of bots) a better place is insane? What about musicians? Actors? Film makers? The hell, what about gastronomy? The truth is that this "insane" people are just make most valuable content. That's probably shocking for "normal" people, since most of them used to think, that they can do everything at least as good, as those "insane" people (if they only want to, but they obviously don't, because of fear of defeat).

                In other words: in highly connected and globalized reality it is not surprise that average person consumes fruits of labour of thousands of other people. Does everyone of those thousands of people has 100 different jobs? No, they specialise in one thing.

                Focusing on anomalies like top 0.01 % users of most edits doesn't help to see this.

                [–]tylercoderA Walking Chinese Room 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                I think we should run a few tests with twitter usage metrics since the whole place is full of people who seem to live there 24/7 only to bully other people and say insane shit.

                What mental disease would that be? schizophrenic-psychopath?

                [–]Mr21_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                Wow! so this is the kind of guy we see in Mr. Robot, there is a guy so respected on Wikipedia then sometimes he just edit something and nobody check because of its reputation, and this leads to some social engineering.
                https://www.reddit.com/r/MrRobot/comments/3inqfp/its_no_wonder_wikipedia_is_never_accurate/

                [–]lowlandslinda -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

                There's no definition for "insane" people in the DSM-IV or DSM-V. What are you trying to convey here? Some of these people might be addicted or autistic (obsessive preoccupations is a characteristic of autism). But others like Ninja are probably in it for the money. Working long hours doesn't make you insane; otherwise a lot of Americans would be and most people during the industrial revolution would be. Some of these people may also be using bots, they may even be employed by an intelligence agency.