Fascinating. Can't think of another story that captures the nuance in coming of age for the average 90s futurist kid.
The fact that this was written in '98 is interesting too. Seems like every generation goes through this journey. A bright optimism followed by intense disillusionment and then reaching a compromise and balance with their visions of the future and the complex realities of life.
I wonder how Gen Z will respond to their trial, especially in the hyper-competitive world where everyone wants to be a "founder".
Imagine the meanest dumbest thing you ever said at 19 or whatever.
Now that's a part of a permanent record that could come back to haunt you well into your thirties. I often shake my head whenever I hear of a story of someone who wrote something nasty as a teenager on Twitter or something, and as an adult their life is ruined over it.
Like we all didn't say stupid mean things in our youth. Now it's just easier to broadcast it all over the world.
With Social media the only winning move is not to play
I used to worry about this, but I realized that at some point, it will cease to matter. When everyone has dirty laundry, no one does, and the guy with none seems fake. We’re just in the one or two decade window where deepfakes aren’t prevalent yet and people still get outraged over stuff they read on Twitter. I give it another 10-15 years, tops.
Future startup business idea? Reasonably scandalous fake social media posts, enough to seem real but not enough to truly exclude you from anything.
Not getting married used to be cause for ostracism. Having child out of wedlock. Having long hair as a male!
There will always be busy body haters who find a reason to exclude you, to elevate themselves above you. They are fucks. And unless you want to be one of them, are utterly ignorable. Most people worth knowing, don't care.
Fall Or Dodge In Hell is the book referenced and it's a loose sequel to REAMDE. (Which is a really fun techno-thriller novel that explores what happens when ransomeware locks up some very bad people's computers.)
Cryptonomicon is a fantastic fictionalization of Alan Turing and breaking the enigma code combined with a cool story about what encryption can do in the future.
Snowcrash is probably his most famous and is very cyberpunk and awesome. (Not my favorite of his though.)
The novel is called, "Fall, or Dodge in Hell." It's probably even better if you know some of the characters from previous novels, but I haven't read his other stuff yet and still enjoyed this one. It's a sprawling story that seems almost like he duct-taped several manuscripts together to stuff them all into one novel. However that's not a reason to not like the book so much as just an observation that many of the side-tangents could have held their own as stand-alone stories.
Hmm. Well said. I've not been able to put my finger on what bothers me about a few of his novels and that's a good description of it. REAMDE was long also but didn't really suffer from that. I think it made Seveneves unreadable (for me).
The Diamond Age was another Cyberpunk thriller. It and Snowcrash were fairly tight novels without endless tangents and I think I like them best of his novels I've read.
Recent example of this is a girl who was singing 3 seconds of a rap song on snapchat as a 15 year old which included the N word. 3 years later she was cancel cultured on twitter and had to withdraw from her dream college she got into. not defending this, just a data point
Without commenting on what was fair or not for that girl, what I took away from The NY Times article about it was just how much racism was blithely floating around the school and the community.
Forgive me for not trusting the NYT to be a reliable source of how much racism happens inside a specific school in an article designed to drive outrage about racism.
Why not? Are you saying you distrust the folks who were interviewed?
Did you read the article? If so, what then was your take on it?
[EDIT: um, also, I believe it is right and ethical to feel outrage about racism, so I appreciate journalism which points it out and discusses it. And; the article was a lot more nuanced than “driving outrage about racism.” That’s a pretty shallow interpretation - the article is clear about the complications of the kind of “outing” that occurred and shared multiple views about it. I think maybe your implication was that said racism does not exist in this case? Feel free to explain more about what you meant :)]
Hello. Keeping to ourselves is 1 choice given circumstances or rn. "Nasty thoughts" are (1). point of discussion. 2). Curse language; language you evolve from and comprehend further. 3). Other points of learning online. 4). Right now however, its personal image. Going by film, shows rn and you can see questioning of self.
Some fear, but also jealously. My mom gave me some old pics last year, and there are maybe 20-30 of me being a kid with my friends. I would love to have more, but they were lost to time. Of course, to your point, the pics that should have never been taken have also been lost...
The fact that this was written in '98 is interesting too. Seems like every generation goes through this journey. A bright optimism followed by intense disillusionment and then reaching a compromise and balance with their visions of the future and the complex realities of life.
I wonder how Gen Z will respond to their trial, especially in the hyper-competitive world where everyone wants to be a "founder".