[davidwritesbugs]

His "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was the most unintentionally comical thing I read at the time. Like his lyrics and prose it was woefully pretentious & leaden. I also met him once. A more unpleasant, up his own ass, person I can barely recall.

[samothrace]

Checks out. I could barely make it past the first paragraphs.

"Like very few Americans of my generation, I come from the physical world. ...earning a living from things I could touch and smell."

What is the majority of the workforce doing, then? People working in fast food, welders, plumbers, carpenters, laborers, people working in slaughterhouses, janitors, cooks, waitstaff, the people working at the grocery store and gas station, people that stay at home and take care of their children? All of them are demoted from reality? Can't touch or smell any of that? Poor struggles in the city don't count?

I forced myself through several more paragraphs before I let myself post, but could barely keep my rolling eyes on the text. "We, we, we..." We were the toughest, the hardest, the roughest. The unstated implication being that the rest of us soft, inner-city, fake Americans could never relate to the realness. Blah, blah, blah. How about some humility, things have been pretty tough and unfair and extreme and real for a lot of people in a lot of places. People have real relationships and peculiarities wherever they might live.

I don't know, maybe the article goes further than that, but I couldn't force any more of it down.

[snozolli]

What is the majority of the workforce doing, then? People working in fast food, welders, plumbers, carpenters, laborers, people working in slaughterhouses, janitors, cooks, waitstaff...

While I think he's pretty obviously speaking to an audience of office workers, I'll point out that there's a significant difference between cooking or building something a thousand times per day and shipping it out versus seeing the ongoing function of something you made with your own hands.

I've worked in food service, and I've done metal fabrication as a hobby. I can say that I get ongoing satisfaction from using something that I've invented and built with my own hands, versus all those sandwiches and fried foods that I passed to customers.

I've occasionally lamented that I didn't pursue civil engineering instead of software. Most or all of the software that I wrote for companies has disappeared from the world. I believe that I would've taken great satisfaction from seeing a bridge or other infrastructure that I might've had a hand in creating.

[whall6]

No true Scotsman fallacy. Just because a cook does something multiple times a day doesn’t mean he or she can’t find pleasure in making each meal as high quality as possible.

[addaon]

That's not a real "no true Scotsman" fallacy. A real "no true Scotsman" fallacy rejects a counter-example, this was a strawman.

[snozolli]

No true Scotsman fallacy

Absolutely false.

Just because a cook does something multiple times a day doesn’t mean...

Strawman. Regardless, I can assure you that most food service work does not meet some Jiro Dreams of Sushi ideal.

[tinyplanets]

Wholeheartedly agree. As an American, I get SO tired of the "rugged American individual" narrative...

[block_dagger]

Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

[HerbManic]

I think he is saying Barlow is more of a Walter than The Dude. ,;)

[deepsun]

And apparently he wrote the Declaration from a World Economic Forum 1996 in Davos, hanging out together with all those "Governments of the Industrial World" he was bashing out.

[embedding-shape]

Great, anything else nonconstructive to add about the actual article, or you just felt like this was a good moment to try to put down another human for no reason?

[vinceguidry]

Gen Z needs to chill on this expectation of unrelenting positivity. Or I guess y'all can just keep vaping to deal with the stress.

[embedding-shape]

Not sure what Gen Z people you've met, but everyone I've met seemed depressed if anything to me. But also, don't really hang out with kids, so probably just the few I've met.

I don't care about it being positive or negative, but at least make it constructive and at least make it on topic instead of just spewing unrelated nonsense, but I guess it's hard for boomers to avoid posting their typical knee-jerk reactions publicly.

[vinceguidry]

> I guess it's hard for boomers to avoid posting their typical knee-jerk reactions publicly.

I use the phrase "there's a boomer in every room," to describe the phenomenon. Always taking up space, never knowing when to shut up. Always working out a way to make it about him. I'd say it equally applies to post author and the person you responded to. There's no teaching them otherwise, complaining is pointless, hence my response.