"Edward Snowden's favorite brand of chicken pot pie"
"Kim Dotcom braids his hair!"
"Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of regular!"
"Elon Musk buys three rare white leopards!"
Do you really like to argue by ridiculing others this much? There hasn't been a story even resembling anything like this, people have actually upvoted things they found interesting.
More links means more people are writing about it. This is good.
It does not mean more people writing about the actual issues, it means more people writing about irrelevant details of these people's lives like Edward Snowden's girlfriend's blog. That's the point.
Nobody's saying don't post thoughtful opinion pieces or details about legislation or court cases or anything else actually having to do with the issues.
You can claim that most or all of the posts that have appeared on here are relevant, but they aren't all relevant. That's why this post that we're commenting on exists and has gotten upvoted; the quality of those posts has been abysmal.
And your response is not to argue the point but to basically tell us to shut up. Thanks for contributing.
No, my point is that people are upvoting articles they find interesting, which might not be the same things that I find interesting, and I'm ok with this.
I find the personal stuff in a story like this quite interesting, btw.
Of course there's a lot of duplicates and posts with similar information in them, but is that such a big issue? I think people who are flagging posts because they think it's sort of the same as another article is basically abusing the system.
Good lord, there was something up here this morning that talked about the pizza and fried chicken Snowden had for his birthday. Before that, it was 'his girlfriend's a pole dancer and here's the cache of her deleted blog'.
This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press interviews, and doing whatever else he could to make the story all about him, and for some inexplicable reason y'all want to shove the knife in deeper and twist.
> This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press interviews, and doing whatever else he could to make the story all about him
Really? Because I don't think "the goal" is to get detailed articles written up in blogs that will show up on Hacker News, I think "the goal" is to get the story out to as many people as possible and raise its profile in hopes of influencing governments.
And you have to understand the way that the press works. They've already WRITTEN a story about PRISM... so they can't write another one, because it's not "new". However, they CAN report on the daily movements of this guy, Snowden. And they can publish every interview he gives. And each time they can (will!) review just what it is that he revealed.
I think that, intentional or not, Snowden has successfully managed to bring media attention to this issue in a way that previous efforts had not.
Yeah, really. Just anecdotal, of course, but from my own conversations with (and eavesdropping on) normal people around my town, it's clear that some people know who Snowden is and are following his travels but they don't have the slightest clue what he revealed. 'Some military secret to the Chinese' is the best guess I've gotten so far.
I tend to think he knew they would find him and he preferred to be famous and hopefully talked about when they did. He wanted to control what he could of how he might be presented to the public. He probably also did not want to disappear one day with nary a word about him or spoken by him ever again. He wanted change. He risked a lot for it.
I don't think he risked it so he could do a few interviews. The fame and media attention is a tool.
Stop being a douche with crap examples of posts that would never be on Hacker News; let others have their own opinions. Click and upvote the links you find interesting?
Right because I meant those as serious examples of what has appeared here and not humorous, satirical exaggerations meant to highlight the irrelevance of the actual articles which get posted by extreme comparison.
Also, calling me a douche for expressing an opinion shows that you are clearly a very intelligent and thoughtful person so I am very interested in your well considered opinions on important matters. I'm sure you contribute a lot to not only this community but the world as a whole with that keenly honed intellect of yours.
While I don't agree with the name calling, I do agree with the sentiment. None of the articles being upvoted are even close to as absurd as your examples.
The example I keep seeing is people complaining about his flight itinerary. It isn't irrelevant, not even close. The fact that China allowed him to leave is very interesting. The fact that Russia has allowed him to enter is very interesting. If they let him leave and eventually make his way to Ecuador, that will be interesting as well. This is a window into the relationship being the US and China and Russia, and it turns out those relationships are very important. If you think this stuff is irrelevant, you aren't paying enough attention.
> Why not let the others here decide what they think is interesting
Weird that you cannot spot the contradiction here.
Why not let others here decide what they think shouldn't be here instead of upvoting crap posts? Other people are abusing the upvote button by voting for content that should not be here.
We do not have a downvote button. Major news is allowed here.
This is an active story that a lot of people is interested in, and this means that a lot of posts about it is upvoted.
Shouldn't the flag button only be about things that are not allowed? Not as a way to remove things you find not interesting?
The issue here is that the upvoting is democratic. One person flagging posts based on his opinions (and as you can see in this thread, your opinions are not the same as others, imagine that!) and them getting completely removed because of it is not democratic.
If you don't like things, don't upvote them. They get upvoted because others like them. How can this be so hard to understand?
Your opinion of the quality of the posts here is not what should decide what posts others read!
How about- and I know this is shocking- we find a balance.
A balance between nothing and tabloid.
We're dangerously close to tabloid currently. Lots of irrelevant articles, lots of speculation and opinion, and the real stories are hidden in the noise.
I still think about 80% of the Snowden articles are worse than useless -- they're actively hiding the 20% of articles that are worthwhile, that we should all be reading.
But hey, I guess diverting our attention to the pointless bits of the story is an effective diversion tactic /conspiracy
This is a story that people are upvoting because they find it interesting. It is also a very active one, where new interesting information is coming up all the time.
And "Edward Snowden's fate is grim" so we should stop caring about him? I'm glad to not see this story go away, and I am actually understanding the issues better because of the articles about it here.
It wasn't that rigid. The dishes dichotomy is likely some indication of a person's conscientiousness and most the observations are merely an extension of that. Also, it was all prefaced with this: "Please note, I’m being a little silly here. Don’t take me too seriously. I do believe doing the dishes is beneficial, but I got a little carried away in how I explained things. Please forgive the slightly humor that attempted poorly to employ."
Read the fine print, we set the twitter geolocation for your tweet, if you have geolocation on.
Isn't it kinda fun, to have sent a tweet from Russia? Just imagine you're standing in a big square in St Petersburg with a proud rainbow flag, inviting Russians to Stockholm!
