{"id":39967,"date":"2013-09-27T07:30:29","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T13:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/?p=39967"},"modified":"2013-09-26T21:22:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-27T03:22:58","slug":"meet-the-internets-most-hated-typist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2013\/09\/meet-the-internets-most-hated-typist\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Internet&#8217;s Most Hated Typist"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve spent any time on Reddit, or any of those meme sites out there, then you might\u2019ve seen a picture of <a href=\"http:\/\/imgur.com\/ENeBi\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">a guy pecking away at his typewriter on a sunny day whilst sitting on a park bench<\/a>. Seems like a rather innocuous photo, if a little odd, but surprisingly, it elicited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/nyc\/comments\/ygfv7\/spotted_on_the_highline\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">a huge amount of negative comments on Reddit<\/a>, such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI see this as pathetic. If this was some sort of performance art, it would be one thing, but it\u2019d be the worst piece ever. This is just some ***hole trying to look ironic. I mock him and other people because of the ridiculous set of standards they set for themselves.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIf you think this picture is bad, just imagine what kind of overwrought tripe is on those pages\u2026\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cSome days, I really want to be a bully.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI have never wanted to fist fight someone so badly in my entire life.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In an article titled \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theawl.com\/2013\/09\/i-was-a-hated-hipster-meme-and-then-it-got-worse\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything<\/a>,\u201d the person in the photo \u2014 a man named\u00a0C.D. Hermelin who started \u201cbusking\u201d his writing skills\u00a0in order to earn some extra money after arriving in New York \u2014\u00a0recounts his experiences of being a popular Internet meme, and what it was like to have his image and persona taken wildly out of context and ridiculed.<\/p>\n<p>That, however, changed a little bit when\u00a0Hermelin entered into the fray. He joined the Reddit thread and began to provide some context that was lacking in the photo:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I took the bait, eventually, and commented myself. I\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/nyc\/comments\/ygfv7\/spotted_on_the_highline\/c5vlcaw\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">explained<\/a>\u00a0that it was me, that I was not just bringing my typewriter to the High Line for the hell of it \u2014 it\u2019s pretty heavy, for one, and for two, I don\u2019t really like writing outside. I explained that I was writing stories for people. In my explanation of my cause, it became just that \u2014 a \u201ccause.\u201d I knew, from the smiles on people\u2019s faces when they saw me out typing, that I was out in the world as a positive, day-brightening entity. Bashing me was like hating on an ice cream truck.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, people agreed with me. After I posted, the message board thread\u2019s climate changed immediately. Not unlike real life, people were complimentary and kind. Many people deleted their mean comments \u2014 one person was so embarrassed for threatening to smash my typewriter that he apologized to me, and then went through and started trying to make other haters apologize.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, interacting with the person behind what had been a faceless meme brought out the humanity in others. The Internet can bring us together in ways that no other medium can, but it can also drive us apart and disconnect us by making it easy to dehumanize each other. It\u2019s all too easy to forget that behind that e-mail address, that Twitter username, or that photo on Instagram, is another human being crafted in the image of God, with their own hopes, joys, struggles, and triumphs.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s much more to\u00a0Hermelin\u2019s article than his experiences on Reddit \u2014 he was also subjected to criticism in another online forum \u2014 but what is especially interesting is how Hermelin\u2019s experience opened his eyes to how others are so easily dismissed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A few months later, when Christy Wampole wrote\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/11\/17\/how-to-live-without-irony\/?_r=0\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">an essay<\/a>\u00a0for the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0bemoaning hipsters and their devotion to irony, I couldn\u2019t help but feel empathy for all those tossed onto the web as pitiful avatars of hipsterdom. Wampole had inadvertently joined the ranks of Internet commenters who make vast, sweeping judgments based on careless observation. It was a strange experience to watch the Internet\u2019s vitriol encapsulated as a call to action \u2014 a call for dismissal, really \u2014 from the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>. When I hear someone labeled as a \u201chipster,\u201d I make sure to have the opposite response. I take a second look. What Wampole, and a whirlwind of Internet commenters don\u2019t understand is, usually, the hipster label is a compliment, a devotion to a self-evident truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hermelin\u2019s article is an encouragement to look beyond labels, which, more often than not, are tools of dismissal and dehumanization. That\u2019s easier said than done, however, and even moreso on the Internet.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hermelin&#8217;s article is an encouragement to look beyond labels, which, more often than not, are tools of dismissal and dehumanization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1223,"featured_media":39970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,1484],"tags":[1626,1513,1164],"class_list":["post-39967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-general-culture","category-ofthemoment","tag-hipsters","tag-reddit","tag-social-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Meet the Internet&#039;s Most Hated Typist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hermelin&#039;s article 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