being a lainon

I'm not certain what board to post this on. I'm curious what people think about being 'lainon' as a certain type of mindset or a certain type of person. I think there are few people who are truly lainon. maybe 1,000. I think it involves being introspective, intelligent, having a deep understand of lain culture, being unique is also important. I think it might also be a type of lifestyle, to see the world for what it really is in your eyes, not what other people think. What do you guys think?

>>7874 I think you are mostly correct, and I appreciate your emphasis on the fact that lainons are still all very different, and that this doesn't have any bearing whether they are considered as such or not. However, the number is certainly higher than 1000 if we're talking about the world. I think we all fall into a trap (we includes I, as I am guilty too!) where we imagine ourselves as uniquely alone, and while it may be accurate for many of us, the truth is there are other people like yourself out there; the problem is that you cannot peer into the depths of ones personality easily, especially since a lot of us are quite guarded. To give you an example of what I mean, a surprisingly common interest among net people is pre-modern English literature. But the average person is barely literate, and Shakespeare is all Latin to them. Just where in the world are all the people interested in pre-modern English? The other day, I found an answer; right next to me on the train carriage. A late-20s man in the last third of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And he looked over to me with total indifference, unaware that I dabble in Middle English reading myself. I swear the lainons are out there and are not so uncommon... but they all hide too much. We need a lainon signal... Personally I think the signal should be randomly slipping 'is like kicking dead whales down the beach' into conversation.

>>7874 Nowadays, lainon is just a /g/ orientated 4channer in dark mode with a hacker aesthetic. Maybe a bit more coherent? Otherwise, typical imageboarder mindset. Self-aggrandizing narcissism, mockery of normal users, and light sociopathic tendencies with a clear empathy deficit. Lainons consider themselves intelligent but this is overestimation at best. Usually, they are some kind of anarchist or right winger of the /p*l/ variety and filter everything they see through the lens of their dark mode channer culture and political sophistry. Lainons get off on being different, but they are actually very normal tech geeks with paranoia. In the past, it was much the same but maybe more anarchic and lulzy and left leaning. There isn't really a lainon mindset different from anywhere else on the internet, just an aesthetic they all buy into.

>>7879 I don't know, even now this place doesn't seem that filled with poltards. The anarchy and self-learning are still here. Lains seem to be more like the cute quiet type who try to get things done by themselves instead of the ones who blame everyone else for their problems :)

>>7874 I see it as pretty similar to the vision of what a hacker is in http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html . Read that, imagine that kind of person and tack on one of those fastman screencaps. That's an (ideal or stereotypical) lainon for me.

>>7880 its a place full of weirdos, austists, freetards and nerds and all of these people tend to have fringe political beliefs in one way or another. We have racists and egalitarianists, communists and libertarians, anarchists and monarchists, and people who just don't care that much, but very few liberals or conservatives. How much is interest in DIY outside of computers/electronics a pervasive trait here ? serious question. I know I'm 'into' it but most of the folks I've met IRL from here are clearly less into it than me.

recently learned about the "highly sensitive person" concept or SPS, which is where you are significantly more sensitive than average to chemical and sensory inputs. it is supposedly 20% of the population but feels like the population on lainchan is much higher. but maybe this is just projecting. lots of people on lainchan seem to prefer quiet activities and having a more generally chill attitude in general, and avoiding highly disruptive environments. think that there is a higher rate of panic attacks and psychotic episodes here too that is what happens when you have too much stress. >>7879 >>7880 have been here since the site started and noticed some of the culture shift but the old culture isn't completely gone either it feels, you need to focus on the threads and parts where its present and good rather than engage with attention-seeking newbs from rule 6 locations, reddit, X: The Everything App, or wherever else. I've seen a few different terms in use to refer to lainchan users: lains, lainons, lainanons, lainf@gs, laintroons, etc. I think the word lains is the oldest and i use it to refer to the oldest users and lainons to refer to newer ones. the word lainanons is the most fun to say but mostly use it refer to new users.

There isn’t a lainon mindset. Lainons like to think they are better than others. That they are special, countercultural, underground whatever. They are just your garden variety channer. Very ordinary and regular but have made themselves out to be different when they are not. >>7880 Well, even anarchy and self-learning have been co-opted. Pretty much everyone is into some form of self-directed learning these days. Its bankrolled and sanctioned by corpos and governments. DIY has been co-opted. >>7881 Eric Raymond is a corporate flunkie. He’s the furthest away from a hacker mindset as you can get. His whole shtick is that a hacker is someone who makes software according to his corpo bankrolled philosophy.

>>7884 >lainons think they're better than others >that they are special >that others are horrible >unlike me >I'm not stupid like every other lainon is >I think everything even anarchy and DIY have been co-opted well, aren't you special

>>7881 why this book so pretentious? >it's cracking it's cracking ryeee IMHO, hacking it's like lifestyle, mindset, but cracking it's one type of jobs for hackers.

>>7882 So im based and fringe now aaaaaannnndddd i get to have actual representative political power. Centrism and compromise is so rad

>>7884 What is a hacker for you? Don't know much about the guy, saw this article when I was 16 and it stuck for me. Maybe you can point out something you find not quite right in the text. >>7887 Haven't been around long but i assume it was a widespread annoying stereotype like with all subcultures back then

>>7900 The article isn't all that bad. Just remember Raymond has his own anti-Stallman cooperate backed idea of open source and the background messaging of that article is a hacker is someone who follows Raymond's ideas of open source. >What is a hacker for you? See the mentor's manifesto in phrack. I'm not a hacker anyway by any definition. I think the word has slowly lost its meaning.

>>7901 I've read it before and thought that the manifesto was lacking something, but it does have the attitude, the method and the environment- the essence of it. It's pretty good. This is how I thought about it in terms of it losing it's meaning. There are systems. Computer systems. They can be interacted with. They serve a purpose. This is their link with reality. More they are used, more they spread. More purposes. The noosphere becomes saturated, like when a tea bag is placed in a hot cup of water. It then becomes oversteeped and there is no more water to innundate. Still, the core of the system is only in the bag. Hackers can exist only inside a system, as they use it to exploit itself. Where there is a clear difference between something inside and outside the system, there is a clear difference between a hacker - and non-hacker. Where the Wired both exists outside reality and is closely interlinked with it, the definition of hacker both dissolves with the surroundings and exists as an essence in and of itself. This essence, the hacker as a concept, now exists outside of computer systems, but is more vague and difficult to understand, to cultivate without computer systems as an environment and tool - there can be no hacker without them.

>>7902 I want to say first of all that I'm not a hacker or anyone experienced with tech. I have an outsider perspective. As a technological object, the computer destroyed the principal of reality. The line between the meatspace and the Wired has become very blurry. In this electric environment, the constant flow and consumption of media and information leads to words rapidly change meaning and their use. In times gone by, the word 'chair' referred to an object. A word like 'hacker' doesn't seem to refer to any one thing anymore. In the 60s through to the 80s, hackers were guerrillas of the tech age. Suddenly, computers and telecommunications were something more accessible to ordinary people and underdeveloped enough as a consumer appliance that people could mess around and exploit them. So you had people who would toy around with this stuff out of general interest mixed in with countercultural suspicion of authority and and emphasis on sharing things, making do with what you have available. Another element was rejecting that idea of productivity (the idea that you have to build stuff that has a clear financial use-value) and finding unconventional and strange ways of using/reusing a piece of technology against the obvious function that piece of tech was solely designed for. But hacker has also been claimed by cooperate people and governments who've tried to create their own astroturfed hacker culture that serves government and business interests complete with the rebellious anti-establishment aesthetic. Hackerthons, the whole makerspace and maker culture, the way DIY and hobbyist scenes get claimed by thinly veiled neoliberals. Someone like Naomi Wu gives off a cyberpunk hacker image, but this performance masks the absence of any profound reality. Hackers were hyped up by the media, and the media image slowly replaced the 'real' hacker culture it was based on. You now have clones who model themselves on these pop culture stereotypes and these are often backed by financial and political interests. It becomes impossible to tell apart fake from genuine. Everything is now mixed up. I feel like a lot of lainons fall into this corrupt mixture.