The refusal to try something just because it’s popular.

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11 points

I do this sometimes but typically more because I want to see if people still think it’s good post-hype.

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1 point

It’s social signalling, and it’s supposed make the curmudgeon seems better than the common rabble and therefore high-status.

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11 points

That is a reasonable explanation of people who announce their refusal to participate in a fad.

What of the people who just ignore the fad, without publicly declaring their refusal?

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1 point

This is something I do, so I’ll take a crack at it—though, bear in mind, it might be total bullshit.

It’s a defense mechanism. Many popular things are—in my estimation—objectively terrible. Every time something utterly devoid of merit (and often actively detrimental to the public good) is generally agreed to be a popular sensation, the connection I feel to my fellow human beings takes a hit.

I want to believe in people—in society. But I’m clearly a judgmental sob. So maybe by avoiding the popular things, I’m trying not to further my own alienation.

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Fuck pickleball.

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5 points

I played pickleball in secondary school for gym. I’ve had enough of it for you.

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3 points

So it wasn’t just me?

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3 points

For me, it’s kinda the other way around. I’m often the sort of person that does exactly that, refuse to try something exactly because it’s popular.

Why? Well, when everyone around you is doing a certain popular thing (let’s think like video games or sports, but could be anything really), I sit on the sidelines and realize it’s becoming an addiction for them, and I’ll literally count the years my friends and others waste away partaking in that addiction.

Don’t ask me how many years I watched friends waste playing Call Of Duty. For me, I like to mix it up, a different hobby or project or whatever almost every day.

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15 points

If you’re enjoying your time, it’s not a waste.

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3 points

You do have a point there, I’ll give you that 👍

My skills, projects and hobbies just tend to be a bit more diverse than people that seem to get stuck in ruts.

Sure, sometimes I like playing games. Sometimes I like fixing stuff. Sometimes I like modding and inventing stuff. Sometimes I like programming. Sometimes I study mathematical theories. Sometimes I like riding BMX flatland.

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1 point
*

I’m the same except I don’t have productive hobbies like you. I refuse to do things which are popular. Not all but most things. I don’t refuse them because they’re popular but when I feel they’re popular for no reason.

I refuse to use Instagram, tiktok because they have no reason for me. I don’t posts pics or videos of mine on the internet and content there is largely trash. But I use YouTube.

I refuse to watch mainstream movies and series because for some reason I don’t like watching humans act. But I watch anime.

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45 points

I’ve never understood why everyone has their phone out recording at large public events. Surely someone is going to post a video of the event and you don’t need to be recording it

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13 points

People want to share their own perspective. And everyone thinks that maybe their video will end up being the one everyone else watches.

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39 points

The worst is when it’s a highly televised event (e.g. fireworks), so it’s already being recorded in 4k by pros, drones, etc.

Nobody will ever watch your crappy phone recording, including you.

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8 points

Because I’m not paying $15 for access to the “professional cinematic experience” (aka access to their DRM-infested meh edited cut), or recording it on TV laced with ads and annoying people who love to hear their own opinions every 60 seconds. It’s the same reason people sneak food into movie theaters or steal music. Fucking the man.

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2 points

My secret is just sneaking the movies directly onto my hard drive and watching snuggled up in bed. This one weird tip has saved me tens of thousands!

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10 points

I prefer to live special moments with my own eyes instead of staring at a phone screen the entire time.

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3 points

Usually when I record something like a band playing, I point the camera and then watch the stage with my eyes. I also make sure the camera is not visible to anyone behind me, because that’s annoying.

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3 points

Same, I put my phone at chin level so I’m not blocking the person behind me. I also record only 1 minute max, just as a memento that I was there at that show.

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7 points

I realized this a while ago. I was always watching the event through a camera lens, and like you said, it was rarely worth the effort.

Now I’m more likely to forget to take any photos.

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4 points
*

I recently went to a live event at night and I noticed how many people didn’t take the time to wipe their lens to avoid giant streaks in the image.

I have a theory that social media makes it hard to put time into just about anything that you might consider art. You get a constant feed of the best quality art that the internet has to offer, so when you do take the extra minute or two to figure out your settings, wipe their lens, and actually try and take a good picture, the chance of taking a good picture is still pretty low because phones still just aren’t that good at taking pictures.

I brought my DSLR to the event and even with the much larger lens, getting enough light was pretty tough. The few pictures I did take on my phone just didn’t really have a good sense of scale due to the lens’s fixed focal length. Don’t even get me started on aspect ratio.

If you spend those few extra minutes and it still doesn’t look like what your friends are posting to their social media because they’re loading it with filters, why not join the crowd and do exactly that. Put in zero effort and let the filter fill in the gap of making it look interesting, even if it doesn’t look good.

What you did do is show all your friends that you did something interesting, which a few hundred to ten thousand or so people might see that for a couple of second before scrolling into the next 400 things they’ll see that day in their feed.

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154 points

people that have more money than they could ever spend trying to accumulate more money

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16 points

It’s an addiction for some. For others, it’s like a security blanket. For others, it’s a source of power.

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62 points

When I go to poor countries I tip/donate well beyond what I’m told is normal, because $10 or $20 is nothing to me, but potentially more money than they’ll earn in days/weeks. It always makes them so happy.

What happiness I would make with a billion…

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56 points
*

And that’s why you’ll never be a billionaire. See how that works out?

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20 points

I don’t think that’s the reason. It is part of it, but the main reason you’ll never be a billionaire is that you would need to take from people.

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5 points

Nah, that’s not why. A billionaire can give millions away without any impact on their life.

There are two paths to becoming a billionaire. The first is to hit the Goldilocks zone of a good product with mass appeal, good distribution and to have significant ownership of it. The second is to already BE rich. Most billionaires are the second one.

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7 points

When I went to Puerto Rico (same country, poorer area) my wife and I went on a guided paddle boarding ride that included him teaching us how to paddle board, then paper boarding, we met a couple wild manatees who came right up to us, then we went snorkeling. I believe he did groups of up to 6, but there were 2 no shows and 2 empty spots so it was just my wife and I for a 2 - 3 hour trip and was an absolute blast. I don’t remember how much it cost, probably $60 - $100 each range. At the end we tipped him like $40 and it looked like he was going to cry. I honestly thought tipping that much on a guided tour like that was upper end of normal, but his reaction made me think he doesn’t usually get tips like that.

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22 points

Some species of chimps beat other chimps that horde to the detriment of the group to death

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-3 points
*

.

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4 points

This is just a nature fact.

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2 points

Mr Crabs: I like money 💰

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18 points

It’s not about the money; it’s about the power.

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2 points

We stay hungry, we devour.

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1 point

Real life incremental game!

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2 points

I think there’s a number of different aspects to this that could put it in context.

Yes there are a few obscenely wealthy people, like a dozen in the world, for whom it’s just a game and pretty meaningless. For the remaining merely wealthy people:

Your means increase as you move through life and your responsibilities, commitments, and tastes also increase. I might earn 6 times what I did when I was 20, but now I’m supporting a family et cetera. This same dynamic effects wealthy people in a similar but different way. People tend to live beyond their means. Someone making several million a year might end up with a few holiday homes, a mistress or something, a bunch of truly expensive hobbies (like… a horse stud farm or something). They might realise they’re “wealthy” but unless they earn a bunch more money they won’t be able to race their horse in qatar or whatever thing they desperately need to do to validate themselves.

Another aspect I’ve heard of, is that wealthy people are often anxious of losing everything. If you have a business that earns millions, it’s sensible to worry that the market might change and suddenly it’s worthless. This is the reality for the majority of businesses that are not publicly traded. As in, great grandpa formed a company that made squillions of dollars selling woollen socks during the first and second world war, but by the 80s it was really just ticking over paying wages and by the 90s it was insolvent. It’s natural to want to consolidate your position by buying some other company that makes hats or whatever.

The vast majority of people only accumulate enough wealth for their own lives. Once you’ve reached that point where you really couldn’t reasonably spend the wealth you’ve accumulated, then you’ve probably already switched over to accumulating wealth for your progeny. Lasting generational wealth is more or less impossible unless you own a country or something because your progeny increases exponentially, and their lavish tastes increase, and their ability to make sensible financial choices decreases.

Finally, you don’t end up with more money than you could ever spend by being satisfied with however much money.

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1 point

I think it’s easily understandable honestly. They got to this point a certain way and it’s become habit and a source of their power which they strive to increase. At a certain level of wealth it also just increases by itself.

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8 points

Watching reading videos.

I also enjoy these, but what on earth is that about? We have videos of someone’s face telling a story, we have videos of things happening for us to see (real and fake), why are stories read aloud while the words appear on the screen so interesting?

Also, we have access to the websites where these stories are coming from. This is the part that does make sense to me, I often miss those certain comments that make the best stories… So it’s like a best of the best compilation to watch the reading videos.

But still, why? Why is a reading video the preferred way to find these cherry picked posts and comments from Reddit and Tumblr. Wouldn’t a Best Of collection of screenshots or reposts do that job?

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10 points

In a similar vein, reaction videos. I don’t understand why anybody wants to watch somebody watch a video and do over the top “reactions”.

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7 points

That one makes more sense to me, when someone is prone to para-social relationships, it’s a way to make fake internet friends. We are meant to get to know people around us by how they react to things, so this type of video is meant to exploit that

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1 point

I don’t watch a TON of these things, but I do enjoy them from time to time. The two bits I enjoy the most are vicarious rediscovery of something I enjoy, and getting a very different point of view on the same thing.

Generally when I watch these it’s stuff like “Classically trained musician listens to Megadeth for the first time”. I get reminded of some bits that I’ve grown accustomed to, and sometimes get a whole new perspective on something I’ve been enjoying for years.

I will say, I don’t get “Youtuber reacts to other youtubers reaction to some twitch streamer breakdancing” or “Gymrat listens to ABBA for the first time”.

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2 points

I don’t watch these myself, but I have a friend with dyslexia who enjoys them because she struggles with reading for long. She says that an actual human reading them and chatting about the content is more entertaining than the robotic text-to-speech aids she uses for other things.

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48 points

Going to church by choice. That shit is boring.

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4 points

Though I don’t go now non-Protestant or high church is significantly more personally and religiously entertaining. Garage band Protestantism is the bane of my existence

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