[o10449366]

These comments are boring and increasingly common on HN. On almost every discussion of Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook you'll find comments like these expressing faux incredulity at the prospect that some users find these services valuable. You may not be the target market, but it really isn't difficult to understand why they're popular with minimum effort. At best, these comments convey laziness and an unwillingness to understand other perspectives. At worst, they're often used to assert moral superiority over others that use such "useless" products and services.

[JoeAltmaier]

True it was a lazy comment. But we can easily imagine a world without these services, and it would be almost entirely better. That takes no effort at all to understand that point of view either.

[o10449366]

I couldn't disagree more. Given how popular these services are they're obviously providing some form of utility otherwise they wouldn't be used. Regardless of what kind of utility these users derive, I'm betting the vast majority of them would disagree with your claim. You may think the world would be "better" (whatever that means), but I'm guessing you don't use these services so what difference does it make to you?

[JoeAltmaier]

Yeah heroin gets used too.

There seems to be a cognitive gap here: on one hand acknowledging these widespread comments from folks with no use for these services, and then insistence that everybody uses them. At the risk of repeating myself, its trivially easy to see the point of view that they're not useful to a large portion of humanity. The irony is thick.

What difference does it make to me? Nothing, except pointing out contradiction. A hobby of mine.

[o10449366]

You can't equate a service not being useful to a large portion of humanity as meaning that it's a net negative on the world. That was your claim, but it's not qualified in any way whatsoever or immediately obvious what your viewpoint is when ambiguous descriptors like "better" are used.