"I, too, was a lonely intelligent child who knew the special horror, as most lonely intelligent children do, of thinking both very little and too much of themselves at the same time."
Article is worth it for that line. What an outstanding description of my childhood and likely the childhood of half this site's visitors.
Almost everything wrong with tech (at least socially) can be laid at the feet of what it's like to grow up as an overly smart over-educated nerd. If I were contracted by an evil genius to design a brainwashing program to turn kids into sociopaths, I'd just design something exactly like my experience in public school. There's a special kind of head fuckery that you get from being constantly told by adults you're superior while at the same time getting beaten, ignored, and humiliated by most of your peers. I spent most of my late teens and early 20s on a semi-deliberate quest to deprogram myself. I like to think I was somewhat successful.
This reminds me a lot of David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", where he goes on a Caribbean cruise full of retired people. (Highly recommended. The story, not the cruise.)
Don't read this looking for insights about Bitcoin, any more than you'd read DFW's article for insights about being retired. This is a fish-out-of-water story, and those kind of stories are best when they're about the fish itself, not about the water of lack of it.
I don't think you are. It is exceptionally well written and full of wit. Not all articles have to be like this, but in this case, this works and works wonderfully.
“John McAfee has never been convicted of rape and murder, but—crucially—not in the same way that you or I have never been convicted of rape or murder.”
This, unfortunately, is how most business'y events are, unless very corporate or govt-related. Just slightly less blatant. I really envy people who have this ability to filter it all out and still feel at ease.
I really enjoyed this article. It really captures the weirdness of this kind of event, and rings true to the bandwagon-crypto people I've met, with a bit of good-natured caricature added. She also writes very well about the role of women during the event.
As a Silicon Valley resident, it doesn't come close to what I've ever experienced in my day to day life: one of your typical suburban grunt worker at a big corporation how goes to work in the morning and goes home in the evening for family dinner and invites friends over on the weekend for BBQ.
> I knew about bitcoin only as an investment vehicle favored by several essentially sweet nerds close to my heart—and I knew, too, that cryptocurrencies are the pet untraceable funding model of the far-right.
The author really hasn't been paying attention if she failed to realize it is the pet funding model of drug dealers, ransomers, scammers, and money launderers, and only instead opted to use it to mock the political spectrum she doesn't agree with. This article is poor journalism at best.
I can't believe someone paid the author to go on this cruise and to write such shoddy work. I'm not a fan of the cryptocurrency space, but I had to stop reading this -- it was a Im-better-than-you hit piece to justify the paid trip.
The sentence that you quote is one in which she professes her ignorance about the subject. That should be sufficient to lower ones expectations about this being an academic paper.
> This article is poor journalism at best.
Not all articles need to be ProPublica investigative journalism. There's no shame creating well written, entertaining, lighthearted content, even if it's not 100% accurate.
Alt/far-right has become the ultimate boogieman for subjective "journalism". Mythical, faceless people who are simultaneously hacker geniuses and inbred neanderthals. Anything and everything that is not clearly within the approved Overton window must be part of this vast, conspiratorial underbelly.
The ultimate irony of labeling anyone ideologically different "*-ist" being itself a form of bigotry is lost on them.
I wasn't too offended by that bit. I checked out her source, and moved on. I think it's a pretty interesting piece - an interesting slice of life in a very strange time.
Since when has it been the case that the far-right are never drug dealers, ransomers, scammers, or money launderers?
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece precisely because she did describe the dystopian soup of all of the above that decentralisation and distribution has given us. If anything you should have walked away from this article with the realisation that, thanks to it all, we can no longer truly organize ourselves into such narrow little boxes of prejudice.
I'm guessing you didn't make it to the end of the article? I'll save you a tap on the back-button, and quote the part that I think you did yourself a disservice by missing:
"But it’s also the case that no amount of mathematics can delete human prejudice, and no ledger can logic away human cruelty. If the crypto community hasn’t realized that yet, it soon will."
This is probably the wisest thing I've ever heard anyone say, ever, who has had even the slightest contact with crypto-culture.
I'm not sure how you get "mock the political spectrum she doesn't agree with" from her accurately reporting here that it is used to fund a current political movement in the United States, using the name that movement chose for itself. This statement is purely factual. Now if she'd described it as "the favorite mechanism for American Nazi-wannabes incompetently laundering their Russian cash", that would have been mockery.
Yeah, she's literally, in that opening you quoted from, admitting to not having paid attention.
Does the later choice of focus on the connection between bitcoin and, to quote, 'libertarian-shading-to-far-right` thinking render the observations she makes, on a cruise catering apparently to many people of that mindset, invalid?
>> I can't believe someone paid the author to go on this cruise and to write such shoddy work.
This is how this level of journalism works: CyproCruise has a promotion budget. That budget includes "free" tickets for journalists. They offer these tickets to hip/cool outlets but, as this is a cruise, they need the name of the journalist before actually sending the ticket. So hip/cool outlet sends bio/headshot of the journalist they want to send.
She is admittedly short, petite, young and has cool hair. In her headshot she probably looks 22. Boxes ticked. Cryptocruise sees her both as another attractive female and, being misogynist pigs, thinks her incapable of doing any real damage. So she gets the ticket. Whether her bosses tell her they have paid for the ticket, or that it has been provided, we can never know.
Everyone got what they thought they wanted. Cryptocruise got another attractive female on their boat, and at a discount. News outlet got what they wanted: a colorful description of exactly how misogynist crypto has become. And we readers go our thing too: I actually read the entire article. It reinforced my understanding and assured me that cypto is not long for this world, at least in its current form. Everyone got their thing and made a few bucks doing so. That's how journalism works.
[Think of how awful the article might have been. Imagine if they had sent a 45yo hetero guy, someone who might have fallen in with a very different crowd on this boat.]
I generally enjoy articles like this but this one was a hard read. Something about the way the author jumps back and forth from people, events, ideas, internal monologues, to random facts about chairs.
Hopeless juvenile article which is all about the writer and her naive opinions. Wondering why this made it onto HN? Is there some nugget here I missed?
"For instance, in October, artist Kelly Donnelly released the feminist anthem “I Am She” using Ethereum" - has anyone heard of this? It's the first mention I can find.
Authors nowadays have the tendency to (ab)use their own articles as vehicle to talk about themselves -- and it's ever too often either completely unrelated to the content or some superficial, forced connection. It's quite annoying.
I know. Like when Mark Twain visited Germany in 1878 and then used his report ("A Tramp Abroad") to talk about his own feelings rather than objectively describing the fascinating arts and crafts of Prussia.
Typical example of poor journalism. Written to be sensationalist and carry a narrative that was already all decided before setting a foot on that boat.
I tried to enjoy this, but as writing it kind of flaunts "show don't tell." The author could have written half of this without ever setting foot on the boat. Like, it feels like she came in with her burns prepared beforehand, and only paid cursory attention to the people.
It talks a lot about shame and misogyny and abuse of power, but doesn’t actually report on any instances of it other than “they hired pretty girls to party on the boat”, which I can assume were consensual transactions those women engaged in voluntarily.
Where is the big dirt she keeps alluding to? Are we just supposed to hate them by default for being rich and white and male and schlubby and tasteless?
[+] [-] api|7 years ago|reply
Article is worth it for that line. What an outstanding description of my childhood and likely the childhood of half this site's visitors.
Almost everything wrong with tech (at least socially) can be laid at the feet of what it's like to grow up as an overly smart over-educated nerd. If I were contracted by an evil genius to design a brainwashing program to turn kids into sociopaths, I'd just design something exactly like my experience in public school. There's a special kind of head fuckery that you get from being constantly told by adults you're superior while at the same time getting beaten, ignored, and humiliated by most of your peers. I spent most of my late teens and early 20s on a semi-deliberate quest to deprogram myself. I like to think I was somewhat successful.
[+] [-] tlb|7 years ago|reply
Don't read this looking for insights about Bitcoin, any more than you'd read DFW's article for insights about being retired. This is a fish-out-of-water story, and those kind of stories are best when they're about the fish itself, not about the water of lack of it.
[+] [-] mindfulplay|7 years ago|reply
I thoroughly got exactly what I wanted: the exact same shilling I expected from these fake-intellectual, tax-evading bros.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 55555|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wklauss|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindfulplay|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|7 years ago|reply
That’s a well crafted line right there.
[+] [-] thisismyusernam|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thetricia|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisismyusernam|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orasis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomVDB|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shshhdhs|7 years ago|reply
The author really hasn't been paying attention if she failed to realize it is the pet funding model of drug dealers, ransomers, scammers, and money launderers, and only instead opted to use it to mock the political spectrum she doesn't agree with. This article is poor journalism at best.
I can't believe someone paid the author to go on this cruise and to write such shoddy work. I'm not a fan of the cryptocurrency space, but I had to stop reading this -- it was a Im-better-than-you hit piece to justify the paid trip.
[+] [-] TomVDB|7 years ago|reply
> This article is poor journalism at best.
Not all articles need to be ProPublica investigative journalism. There's no shame creating well written, entertaining, lighthearted content, even if it's not 100% accurate.
[+] [-] 5trokerac3|7 years ago|reply
The ultimate irony of labeling anyone ideologically different "*-ist" being itself a form of bigotry is lost on them.
[+] [-] tjr225|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eamann|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|7 years ago|reply
I thoroughly enjoyed this piece precisely because she did describe the dystopian soup of all of the above that decentralisation and distribution has given us. If anything you should have walked away from this article with the realisation that, thanks to it all, we can no longer truly organize ourselves into such narrow little boxes of prejudice.
I'm guessing you didn't make it to the end of the article? I'll save you a tap on the back-button, and quote the part that I think you did yourself a disservice by missing:
"But it’s also the case that no amount of mathematics can delete human prejudice, and no ledger can logic away human cruelty. If the crypto community hasn’t realized that yet, it soon will."
This is probably the wisest thing I've ever heard anyone say, ever, who has had even the slightest contact with crypto-culture.
[+] [-] closetohome|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roguecoder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmreedy|7 years ago|reply
Does the later choice of focus on the connection between bitcoin and, to quote, 'libertarian-shading-to-far-right` thinking render the observations she makes, on a cruise catering apparently to many people of that mindset, invalid?
[+] [-] sandworm101|7 years ago|reply
This is how this level of journalism works: CyproCruise has a promotion budget. That budget includes "free" tickets for journalists. They offer these tickets to hip/cool outlets but, as this is a cruise, they need the name of the journalist before actually sending the ticket. So hip/cool outlet sends bio/headshot of the journalist they want to send.
She is admittedly short, petite, young and has cool hair. In her headshot she probably looks 22. Boxes ticked. Cryptocruise sees her both as another attractive female and, being misogynist pigs, thinks her incapable of doing any real damage. So she gets the ticket. Whether her bosses tell her they have paid for the ticket, or that it has been provided, we can never know.
Everyone got what they thought they wanted. Cryptocruise got another attractive female on their boat, and at a discount. News outlet got what they wanted: a colorful description of exactly how misogynist crypto has become. And we readers go our thing too: I actually read the entire article. It reinforced my understanding and assured me that cypto is not long for this world, at least in its current form. Everyone got their thing and made a few bucks doing so. That's how journalism works.
[Think of how awful the article might have been. Imagine if they had sent a 45yo hetero guy, someone who might have fallen in with a very different crowd on this boat.]
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zackbloom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olivermarks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepybrett|7 years ago|reply
So, it all lines up for me.
[+] [-] LandR|7 years ago|reply
I don't know why anyone pays attention to her.
[+] [-] roguecoder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atomical|7 years ago|reply
There weren't many ICO's that raised nine figures. In fact most of them had a cap far below nine figures.
[+] [-] hh3k0|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moreoutput|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warp_factor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amvalo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|7 years ago|reply
Where is the big dirt she keeps alluding to? Are we just supposed to hate them by default for being rich and white and male and schlubby and tasteless?
[+] [-] wz1000|7 years ago|reply