The header hero image at the top of the page. It's not what you're looking for though, it's just an illustration and doesn't really show off what the author is talking about.
Aside from HN I have no social media accounts, so a picture or two to illustrate what an "Instagram Face" is wouldn't hurt. I also don't care enough to actually look it up, so I suppose there's that too.
It'll be interesting to see how things pan out from all this.
The internet has only really been with us for a few decades, and yet has completely transformed the fabric of humanity, acting as a bizarre and extreme lens upon existing human traits.
At some point, logically, there has to be sufficient reaction to bring us back in line with what we came from. The "winner take all" effects from the internet are just too extreme to be feasibly sustained.
You can't have a happy society with such extreme gaps between rich tech people and everyone else living in tents or off what they choose to spend their money on. You can't have a happy society where the top 5% of beautiful men are paying people to schedule their calendar of tinder lays while other guys buy thot bathwater, or where the top 5% of women get all the attention and the rest wonder where their prince charming is who's been denied them from all this as they sadly pass 30 alone.
The fact is, a huge amount of bad has come from the internet. A seriously huge amount. And the opportunity cost of all that capital that went into enraged politics on twitter and inanity on facebook, that could've gone into medical research... At least we got Musk from it I guess.
It's a strange feeling. Being an active participant and facilitator in something that is clearly not naturally aligned with human happiness, only human progress. In the end, what choice do we have. This is our natural aptitude, and succeeding in it can mean the difference between living paycheck to paycheck and becoming financially free. So we're going to do it. We have little choice. But we can't say any of it is fundamentally good. At best we're peddlers of the neutral and inevitable.
Inevitability is the most important, least understood concept I think. You hear it expressed sometimes as 'great surfers need great waves.' (Of course 'great' leaves room for taste, but it conveys the right gist).
These forces are much larger than individual humans, or even humanity -- and yet we love to forget this and glorify the surfers as having, somehow, caused the waves.
Elon Musk was 'on it,' in a big way, sure. He clearly has exceptional wave selection, or maybe just tastes that aligned perfectly with a time, place, and kind of wave.
But the swells are coming, regardless of how you ride.
This comment reminds me of the many cautionary comments and sermons made during the advent of rock'n'roll, TV, and film. I think it's complicated, to be sure, but I'm not so sure everything boils down to a net negative. I feel like our ape brains just need to keep iterating, and, with time, we'll naturally find a sort of middle path between mindless dopamine addiction (e.g. constantly checking our phones for that crack-cocaine-like short term good feeling) and asceticism.
Like a lot of us here I grew up in the 80's/90's when television was going to destroy civilization and global nulear war meant we were all doomed. Now social media and climate change are the next horsemen of the apocalypse.
> You can't have a happy society with such extreme gaps between rich tech people and everyone else living in tents or off what they choose to spend their money on.
Doesn't really apply to EU. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, some doctors, etc are the (small-time) rich.
Most of tech people barely touch the upper-middle class.
I have a feeling we're just not a respectable trade.
"Rich tech people" is such a bizarre and mostly imaginary group to rail against.
> Doesn't really apply to EU. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, some doctors, etc are the (small-time) rich. Most of tech people barely touch the upper-middle class.
I think many people don't realize that we've so inflated our currency that you can be worth $2 million and still be upper middle class. Doubly true if you choose to deal with the extortionate taxes of California.
I'll try to respond, even though "lol" and linking an article isn't much to argue with.
I'm not worth that much money, though I do fine and have plenty of time to change that. I didn't have the SAT services or country clubs or private schools of your article. I went to an excellent school on a merit scholarship and not from entitlement.
You need to provide evidence for the middle class dying off. And you need to provide more than an opinion piece of rhetoric to substantiate your claim of a "10% aristocracy". Finally, you need to provide some evidence of why someone having more money than someone else is bad.
One thing I do agree with in your article: medicine and law are two state-sanctioned monopolies. I absolutely agree that the government ought to stop preventing competition. I also agree that the government should not prop up the financial sector or bail out any company, ever. Inflation is the biggest tax of all; great for finance and lousy for Americans.
From your article: "Let’s suppose that some of us do look up. We see the iceberg. Will that induce us to diminish our exertions in supreme child-rearing? The grim truth is that, as long as good parenting and good citizenship are in conflict, we’re just going to pack a few more violins for the trip."
I agree with removing government, but what's wrong with the way the top 10% of Americans are raising their children? What's the iceberg?
> My grandparents never lost faith in the limitless possibilities of a life free from government.
Yes, good.
> But in their last years, as the reserves passed down from the Colonel ran low, they became pretty diligent about collecting their Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Unfortunately true. Everyone wants his handout, just take away the other guy's. Cut medicaid and increase farm subsidies, says one side; remove agricultural tariffs and more food stamps from the other. Let's get rid of both. Nobody gets to steal the wealth of another.
> regressive sales and property taxes.
You'll have to sell me on why "regressive" taxes are bad. As far as I'm concerned, here's how to fund the gov't: total expenses / number of adult citizens = each citizen's bill. Send it to everyone and everyone pays the same amount. This makes a lot of sense: within the stuff government ought to do (keep the peace, uphold property rights, and enforce contracts), no one gets significantly more in services than another.
> The income-tax system that so offended my grandfather has had the unintended effect of creating a highly discreet category of government expenditures. They’re called “tax breaks,” but it’s better to think of them as handouts that spare the government the inconvenience of collecting the money in the first place.
This is disingenuous; stealing less money is not an expenditure.
> None of them can afford to live around here... In 1980, a house in St. Louis would trade for a decent studio apartment in Manhattan. Today that house will buy an 80-square-foot bathroom in the Big Apple.
Move elsewhere. I choose not to live in an uber-expensive metropolis of the "coastal elites" because I don't want to spend that much. Sounds like St. Louis is a fine place to start looking, especially with the advent of remote work.
> Local zoning regulation imposes excessive restrictions on housing development and drives up prices.
Yes. Zoning is stupid. The state has no right to tell a citizen what he may or may not do with his property.
All this amounts to roughly a hundred pounds of fine whine. One having more than another is not an issue except for envious people who wish to steal their wealth through the club of the state.
> You need to provide evidence for the middle class dying off.
Well, the demographics themselves might be elsewhere (or not), but the graph in the article does show the 90% doing worse. Especially if one equates "middle class" with "being able to afford health care and to go to college without being saddled by crushing debt".
> And you need to provide more than an opinion piece of rhetoric to substantiate your claim of a "10% aristocracy".
No, I don't think so, this isn't a research paper.
> Finally, you need to provide some evidence of why someone having more money than someone else is bad.
I don't, if only it was so easy !
> Send [the government bill] to everyone and everyone pays the same amount. This makes a lot of sense
No, it doesn't, I'm surprised that there are still people that would even think that - and how exactly are you going to tax homeless people that way, huh ?
Yep, like 80% of tech people don't make as much as the average doctor ($270k+). Of course this is ignoring the opportunity cost of the extra education. Same applies to top lawyers and bankers.
>Doesn't really apply to EU. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, some doctors, etc are the (small-time) rich.
Lawyers aren't doing that great anymore thanks to so many people jumping on the bandwagon and I'd be very wary of AI not completely revolutionizing court anytime soon, considering most of it is rule evaluation. Regarding doctors, aside from dedicated specialists and dentists, they also aren't doing that hot given the effort and sacrifices they make. The other jobs are self-explanatory: they have a long history with money, so money should be the least of their problems. If anything, I'd wager a self-employed tech person working as a senior dev or a consultant will do much better than any of those at an earlier age, and self-employment as a tech person would be much easier than any of those (aside from maybe a lawyer?).
Aside from that, most of these people I'd generally consider upper-middle class. Moving to the upper class only seems to happen if you invest or become an entrepreneur / self-employed, and even then its unlikely. Most people in upper class were born in that state, raised with a huge advantage and require less effort to stay upper class than someone else getting into the upper class.
I would probably retire, before I reached that kind of salary as a Software Engineer in Germany (especially as a foreigner from a post-communist state). There's a very hard glass ceiling here.
Alternatively I could highly increase my chances (and quality of life) by jumping the border to Switzerland.
> You can't have a happy society where the top 5% of beautiful men are paying people to schedule their calendar of tinder lays while other guys buy thot bathwater, or where the top 5% of women get all the attention and the rest wonder where their prince charming is who's been denied them from all this as they sadly pass 30 alone.
This is so reductive of human relationships. You’re basing your entire worldview on what happens on Tinder and Instagram. That’s not the world, not even close.
I'll preface by saying I don't agree with epicgiga's position. But... that is one of the weirdest videos I've ever watched. Between the mickey mouse imitation, the odd costuming, the bizarre props, and the funny lighting, I made it only about five minutes in. Why couldn't this person have just written a normal article? It's almost always faster to read than to watch a video, anyway.
Religions did their best to reign this kind of inequality and unhappiness in. Catholicism might have done it best at one time, but threw it all away in a fit of politically correct trendriding during Vatican II. Islam is the only thing left that hasn't bowed to the regressive personal barbarism of market world.
I think that you're probably spending too much time on the Internet if your model of romantic/sexual relationships is primarily based on what happens on a few apps/discussion boards. I don't mean that as an insult, just an observation of a trap that I think is easy to fall into.
In the real world pretty much everyone I know (say early 20s through late 30s age group) might have had the odd partner from Tinder or similar but the majority came through interactions in the real world like interest groups, work, the pub, extended friendship groups, etc.
In my experience of having used Tinder for a few days to see what it's all about it feels like a shitty digital version of going to a nightclub, which aren't going anywhere soon.
The answer to "I'm bad with social things" is to go and do social things, not to move about pixels on a phone.
It will be interesting how this works out long term. People may get bored of the constant competition or it may end up like the people from the 60s who switched from “love and peace” to “greed is good” a few years later. Maybe in 20 years plastic surgery is totally normal and required.
I’m definitely noticing that I am getting old and stubborn. I probably should dye my hair like a lot of people my age but I don’t want to although it really makes people look much younger.
It’s already happening right now to some extent. But I highly doubt this trend will include the more educated and the less narcisistic, and on top of it, trends come and go in cycles and generations learn something from them. The not so good part is that the collective memory is relatively short, otherwise we’d learn more from history.
Whenever I see these kinds of stories about ridiculous mass trends, I think ‘This is the kind of stuff my kids will rebel against.’ That gives me comfort.
Hacker News spends half its time making fun of moral panics and half its time participating in them. Who cares if people want to have plastic surgery or injectable treatments?
I don't think surgical enhancements are inherently bad, but if the reason they are getting them is because social media is having a negative impact on people's self-esteem then I think that's worthy of discussion.
Alcohol is bad for you.
Pot is probably bad for you (I don't really know)
Feel free to not use any of it.
I noticed when social media started to have an impact on how I feel, so I almost stopped using facebook - It's difficult to ditch it altogether because sometimes I need access to dev panel.
I unfollowed everyone on Instagram who is not my immediate friend, anyone whose posts are obviously fake nonsense and not genuine moments. I need these to stay in touch with my old friends, see what's happening in their life. I don't need this to see where some C@#$@ drinks their cosmo today.
I care because I don't want everything to turn into a race to the bottom with the little gremlin on the side laughing as he continues to sell tools for a premium, yet some groups seem to be hell-bent on getting people in this rat race and ostracizing the people who won't conform.
I wouldn't care as much if it didn't constantly become harder and harder to find other like-minded people. People don't seem to enjoy not having their phones out, not photographing everything, not optimising relentlessly. The world of today is wearisome.
Would you please clarify your meaning? I seem to be missing a lot of context. Race to the bottom of what? Selling tools to do what? People who won't conform to what?
Easiest way to clarify is through an example. Disclaimer: it might be a poor one.
That same thing is already happen with plastic surgery in South Korea. You can opt not to do it, but especially as a girl, you're giving yourself a disadvantage. Watch a few generations go by and poof, suddenly its the new standard. Now what became a disadvantage might as well be what takes you out of the race unless you take the plastic surgery route anyway. Meanwhile, the only people who benefit from this are the ones at the top of the race, and the companies performing the surgeries. It might go so far that the people who don't have plastic surgery become ostracized for looking weird.
A similar thing happens in many forms of sports. Somewhere along the line, it became much easier to create and use steroids, and steroids have already shown to have an insane effect without any training necessary. Steroids are an odd example as they are proven to potentially be harmful, but realistically, how are you going to compete against someone using steroids and training the same amount, without taking steroids? Doping in cycling might be the best example: many of these substances can make cyclists endure for much longer, so either everyone needs to take them for it to balance out the playing field, or no one does. You can't say "its up to you", as there's no way you'll be able to compete against someone with a similar amount of training, but juiced up. A ace to the bottom here would be to allow doping, and subsequently, and new drug that would eventually come up.
And some people, like myself, would rather not have such somewhat intrusive operations become the new norm.
> And some people, like myself, would rather not have such somewhat intrusive operations become the new norm.
100% agree. People can do what they want to their own bodies, but I think it's a foolish idea. I can't offer you an easy solution, as there really isn't one. Sports are "gated areas" with committees overseeing entrance conditions. People agree to these rules to play. Not so for surgery; the only option would be to ban it which would be unconstitutional, impractical, and a staggering government overreach. However, you might be interested in reading more about positional arms races (the economic term for what you're describing). College is a good example: enough people try to set themselves apart by getting a degree that the degree becomes the expectation, becoming an additional cost that no longer provides any benefit. https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wilwilehe/54.htm
I first thought about his back in 2012-2013, when two of my female colleagues at the time decided to tattoo their eyebrows. I realised at that point that tattooed eyebrows create a bigger chromatic contrast when digitally photographed and posted online, hence the appeal.
The people I know who have done this (called microblading) were putting on their desired eyebrows every morning with makeup. Now they save themselves 10 minutes and worrying about getting it right every morning.
There’s nothing new about Instagram or even photo retouching.
And more importantly, the idea that people want to modify their appearance to look more attractive is incredibly old. Just check out your local natural history or art museum, all the ancient art is mostly jewelry (although I’m sure that’s affected by survivorship bias).
I guess the article might be a nice explanatory thing to enlighten someone who has their head in the sand and has never seen social media.
Yep, suddenly it's a problem now that poorer people can participate, whereas the rich and powerful have been doing this for centuries if not millennia.
I'm not sure whether that makes it good or bad in this case, but mainstream activity is different from fringe activity, even if the thing done is the same.
My mom was incensed in the 60s when her freckles were erased from her school photo -- our family is far from aristocratic. And fwiw, I still have the same frustration with photo filters to this day.
Yes, in some senses, but completely different in others. The availability of it to nearly everyone, and the sheer volume of content are unprecedented. It's also way more visual. Photos used to have the constraints of being developed and printed on paper. You might have a hundred photos of you in your life. Now we have that many in a year. All of these things impact societal expectations, which impact individual behavior. Sometimes it's a harmless impact, but it's a new ballgame to be sure. And it doesn't have to be a drastically different game for wellbeing to be dramatically altered for the worse.
I don't know whether you read the whole thing or I had my head in the sand, but I found it to be very enlightening and new to me. Procedures that are not permanent, that will fade over time, yet give you a physical progression towards a current ideal (be it Instagram Face or whathaveyou).
Comparing that to Make Up was very relatable and way more insightful than any other article on Instagram Face.
To me, saying there is nothing new about Instagram, is like saying the combustion engine is the same thing as fire. I can see what you are saying on one level, but this company and its impact on human users was bought for a billion dollars. There is something new here.
A YouTube series I’ve been enjoying recently talks about the amount of FaceTune and photoshop which goes into influencer photos: https://youtu.be/eJvQ0Ml1v6I
He has a similar series on facial attractiveness which is interesting as well.
This is just another area of life where everything becomes fake. Similarly we have fake overprocessed food, fake news, fake history, fake personalitie, fake medicine etc.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadThe internet has only really been with us for a few decades, and yet has completely transformed the fabric of humanity, acting as a bizarre and extreme lens upon existing human traits.
At some point, logically, there has to be sufficient reaction to bring us back in line with what we came from. The "winner take all" effects from the internet are just too extreme to be feasibly sustained.
You can't have a happy society with such extreme gaps between rich tech people and everyone else living in tents or off what they choose to spend their money on. You can't have a happy society where the top 5% of beautiful men are paying people to schedule their calendar of tinder lays while other guys buy thot bathwater, or where the top 5% of women get all the attention and the rest wonder where their prince charming is who's been denied them from all this as they sadly pass 30 alone.
The fact is, a huge amount of bad has come from the internet. A seriously huge amount. And the opportunity cost of all that capital that went into enraged politics on twitter and inanity on facebook, that could've gone into medical research... At least we got Musk from it I guess.
It's a strange feeling. Being an active participant and facilitator in something that is clearly not naturally aligned with human happiness, only human progress. In the end, what choice do we have. This is our natural aptitude, and succeeding in it can mean the difference between living paycheck to paycheck and becoming financially free. So we're going to do it. We have little choice. But we can't say any of it is fundamentally good. At best we're peddlers of the neutral and inevitable.
99%
Inevitability is the most important, least understood concept I think. You hear it expressed sometimes as 'great surfers need great waves.' (Of course 'great' leaves room for taste, but it conveys the right gist).
These forces are much larger than individual humans, or even humanity -- and yet we love to forget this and glorify the surfers as having, somehow, caused the waves.
Elon Musk was 'on it,' in a big way, sure. He clearly has exceptional wave selection, or maybe just tastes that aligned perfectly with a time, place, and kind of wave.
But the swells are coming, regardless of how you ride.
Doesn't really apply to EU. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, some doctors, etc are the (small-time) rich. Most of tech people barely touch the upper-middle class.
I have a feeling we're just not a respectable trade.
> Doesn't really apply to EU. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, some doctors, etc are the (small-time) rich. Most of tech people barely touch the upper-middle class.
It's the same in the United States.
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-sta...
I'm not worth that much money, though I do fine and have plenty of time to change that. I didn't have the SAT services or country clubs or private schools of your article. I went to an excellent school on a merit scholarship and not from entitlement.
You need to provide evidence for the middle class dying off. And you need to provide more than an opinion piece of rhetoric to substantiate your claim of a "10% aristocracy". Finally, you need to provide some evidence of why someone having more money than someone else is bad.
One thing I do agree with in your article: medicine and law are two state-sanctioned monopolies. I absolutely agree that the government ought to stop preventing competition. I also agree that the government should not prop up the financial sector or bail out any company, ever. Inflation is the biggest tax of all; great for finance and lousy for Americans.
From your article: "Let’s suppose that some of us do look up. We see the iceberg. Will that induce us to diminish our exertions in supreme child-rearing? The grim truth is that, as long as good parenting and good citizenship are in conflict, we’re just going to pack a few more violins for the trip."
I agree with removing government, but what's wrong with the way the top 10% of Americans are raising their children? What's the iceberg?
> My grandparents never lost faith in the limitless possibilities of a life free from government.
Yes, good.
> But in their last years, as the reserves passed down from the Colonel ran low, they became pretty diligent about collecting their Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Unfortunately true. Everyone wants his handout, just take away the other guy's. Cut medicaid and increase farm subsidies, says one side; remove agricultural tariffs and more food stamps from the other. Let's get rid of both. Nobody gets to steal the wealth of another.
> regressive sales and property taxes.
You'll have to sell me on why "regressive" taxes are bad. As far as I'm concerned, here's how to fund the gov't: total expenses / number of adult citizens = each citizen's bill. Send it to everyone and everyone pays the same amount. This makes a lot of sense: within the stuff government ought to do (keep the peace, uphold property rights, and enforce contracts), no one gets significantly more in services than another.
> The income-tax system that so offended my grandfather has had the unintended effect of creating a highly discreet category of government expenditures. They’re called “tax breaks,” but it’s better to think of them as handouts that spare the government the inconvenience of collecting the money in the first place.
This is disingenuous; stealing less money is not an expenditure.
> None of them can afford to live around here... In 1980, a house in St. Louis would trade for a decent studio apartment in Manhattan. Today that house will buy an 80-square-foot bathroom in the Big Apple.
Move elsewhere. I choose not to live in an uber-expensive metropolis of the "coastal elites" because I don't want to spend that much. Sounds like St. Louis is a fine place to start looking, especially with the advent of remote work.
> Local zoning regulation imposes excessive restrictions on housing development and drives up prices.
Yes. Zoning is stupid. The state has no right to tell a citizen what he may or may not do with his property.
All this amounts to roughly a hundred pounds of fine whine. One having more than another is not an issue except for envious people who wish to steal their wealth through the club of the state.
Well, the demographics themselves might be elsewhere (or not), but the graph in the article does show the 90% doing worse. Especially if one equates "middle class" with "being able to afford health care and to go to college without being saddled by crushing debt".
> And you need to provide more than an opinion piece of rhetoric to substantiate your claim of a "10% aristocracy".
No, I don't think so, this isn't a research paper.
> Finally, you need to provide some evidence of why someone having more money than someone else is bad.
I don't, if only it was so easy !
> Send [the government bill] to everyone and everyone pays the same amount. This makes a lot of sense
No, it doesn't, I'm surprised that there are still people that would even think that - and how exactly are you going to tax homeless people that way, huh ?
Lawyers aren't doing that great anymore thanks to so many people jumping on the bandwagon and I'd be very wary of AI not completely revolutionizing court anytime soon, considering most of it is rule evaluation. Regarding doctors, aside from dedicated specialists and dentists, they also aren't doing that hot given the effort and sacrifices they make. The other jobs are self-explanatory: they have a long history with money, so money should be the least of their problems. If anything, I'd wager a self-employed tech person working as a senior dev or a consultant will do much better than any of those at an earlier age, and self-employment as a tech person would be much easier than any of those (aside from maybe a lawyer?). Aside from that, most of these people I'd generally consider upper-middle class. Moving to the upper class only seems to happen if you invest or become an entrepreneur / self-employed, and even then its unlikely. Most people in upper class were born in that state, raised with a huge advantage and require less effort to stay upper class than someone else getting into the upper class.
Alternatively I could highly increase my chances (and quality of life) by jumping the border to Switzerland.
This is so reductive of human relationships. You’re basing your entire worldview on what happens on Tinder and Instagram. That’s not the world, not even close.
Basically, I suggest that you watch this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0
In the real world pretty much everyone I know (say early 20s through late 30s age group) might have had the odd partner from Tinder or similar but the majority came through interactions in the real world like interest groups, work, the pub, extended friendship groups, etc.
In my experience of having used Tinder for a few days to see what it's all about it feels like a shitty digital version of going to a nightclub, which aren't going anywhere soon.
The answer to "I'm bad with social things" is to go and do social things, not to move about pixels on a phone.
I’m definitely noticing that I am getting old and stubborn. I probably should dye my hair like a lot of people my age but I don’t want to although it really makes people look much younger.
I noticed when social media started to have an impact on how I feel, so I almost stopped using facebook - It's difficult to ditch it altogether because sometimes I need access to dev panel. I unfollowed everyone on Instagram who is not my immediate friend, anyone whose posts are obviously fake nonsense and not genuine moments. I need these to stay in touch with my old friends, see what's happening in their life. I don't need this to see where some C@#$@ drinks their cosmo today.
That same thing is already happen with plastic surgery in South Korea. You can opt not to do it, but especially as a girl, you're giving yourself a disadvantage. Watch a few generations go by and poof, suddenly its the new standard. Now what became a disadvantage might as well be what takes you out of the race unless you take the plastic surgery route anyway. Meanwhile, the only people who benefit from this are the ones at the top of the race, and the companies performing the surgeries. It might go so far that the people who don't have plastic surgery become ostracized for looking weird.
A similar thing happens in many forms of sports. Somewhere along the line, it became much easier to create and use steroids, and steroids have already shown to have an insane effect without any training necessary. Steroids are an odd example as they are proven to potentially be harmful, but realistically, how are you going to compete against someone using steroids and training the same amount, without taking steroids? Doping in cycling might be the best example: many of these substances can make cyclists endure for much longer, so either everyone needs to take them for it to balance out the playing field, or no one does. You can't say "its up to you", as there's no way you'll be able to compete against someone with a similar amount of training, but juiced up. A ace to the bottom here would be to allow doping, and subsequently, and new drug that would eventually come up.
And some people, like myself, would rather not have such somewhat intrusive operations become the new norm.
100% agree. People can do what they want to their own bodies, but I think it's a foolish idea. I can't offer you an easy solution, as there really isn't one. Sports are "gated areas" with committees overseeing entrance conditions. People agree to these rules to play. Not so for surgery; the only option would be to ban it which would be unconstitutional, impractical, and a staggering government overreach. However, you might be interested in reading more about positional arms races (the economic term for what you're describing). College is a good example: enough people try to set themselves apart by getting a degree that the degree becomes the expectation, becoming an additional cost that no longer provides any benefit. https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wilwilehe/54.htm
HN isn't one person, so this is a good thing.
Yet by the end of the article she is admiring women who had the procedure done and avoids looking in the mirror as much herself.
It's just semipermanent makeup.
There’s nothing new about Instagram or even photo retouching.
And more importantly, the idea that people want to modify their appearance to look more attractive is incredibly old. Just check out your local natural history or art museum, all the ancient art is mostly jewelry (although I’m sure that’s affected by survivorship bias).
I guess the article might be a nice explanatory thing to enlighten someone who has their head in the sand and has never seen social media.
I'm not sure whether that makes it good or bad in this case, but mainstream activity is different from fringe activity, even if the thing done is the same.
Comparing that to Make Up was very relatable and way more insightful than any other article on Instagram Face.
Writing this good never tires me.
He has a similar series on facial attractiveness which is interesting as well.