
Netflix and Ch-Ch-Chilly - geodel
https://backchannel.com/the-internet-really-has-changed-everything-here-s-the-proof-928eaead18a8#.vrhmwhsi2
======
enthdegree
Really interesting content, it is fascinating and somehow heartwarming to see
a picture of an environment like this one. Unfortunately this is in stark
contrast to the narrator, who at times seems like a total jerk. Why be so
snarky to the photographers? They're just trying to do their job! I have to
admit, I had to stop reading and start skimming when I got to this line:

> I consider asking the boys if they appreciate music beyond the norm, maybe
> bebop or grime or chiptune, but luckily realize the ridiculousness of that
> line of questioning. So instead I ask about their favorite rappers. They
> amass a respectable list: Kendrick, Wiz, Jeezy, Kanye, Juicy J.

There are many more lines just like it scattered throughout the article, and I
hope I do not have to explain why they leave a negative impression of the
author. I am sorry Mr. Sorgatz but your culturally-savvy, hard-edged
commentary makes me feel like you are a phony.

~~~
mysterypie
The line you quote seems completely innocuous to _me_. If he actually asked
teenagers if they like bebop or grime or chiptune, I imagine the answer would
be something like, "Uh, noooo, I don't listen to anything weird" or "I don't
know what those are." So he asks a safe question about rappers. The writer is
explaining his thought process in a lighthearted way.

We both read the same thing, but I like the author and you dislike him. Which
is really interesting, because this is a totally uncontroversial article. It's
funny that subtle choice of words have hugely different effect on different
people.

~~~
alexilliamson
I read the comments before reading the piece, as one tends to do, and I
started out on the side of the narrator being pretentious, if that's the best
word to describe enthdegree's feelings on the conveyed tone. Interestingly,
however, I am now most the way through the piece and am strongly identifying
with the narrator, have warm fuzzies, and completely trusting of his or her
good intentions.

Maybe I should start reading posted content more often, rather than reading
only the comments?

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Not that it matters a lot, but isn't this pretentious:

> Every spring, around 20 new kids don graduation caps, celebrate their
> nascent adulthood with a class party in a rye field, and return to the farm
> the next day to plant corn or milk holsteins.

It's like milking holsteins and planting corn is inferior to complaining about
it. As if the author is the only one smart enough to complain.

~~~
strictnein
I take that as just an honest description of what happened.

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drewg123
Interesting read.

I grew up in a rural town just outside the suburbs of a US rust-belt city. I
had a similar experience, but not nearly so severe. Luckily for me, the
suburbs were a 40 minute drive, and we had access to 2 metro areas worth of
radio stations (thanks to being across lake Ontario from Toronto). So I not
only heard the talking heads thanks to CFNY, I saw Depeche Mode, New Order,
etc in concert with my high school friends.

The point I was going to make is that I just returned to the town for the
first time in 20 years (my parents moved away in the mid 90s) due to a family
vacation to Niagara Falls. I was AMAZED at how little the town had changed. If
I squinted, I could be back in high school in the mid 80s. The only real
differences were some of the shops had changed hands and the cars were newer.
This is in stark contrast to the places where I've lived in my adult life
(Raleigh-Durham, the Bay Area, Virginia) where things change at a rapid clip.

------
gilgoomesh
Photog2 (aka Andrew Spear) really is "annoyingly good at his job". I
especially liked the disheveled gaze of "Rex Sorgatz on West Lake outside
Napoleon" in contrast to the author's cheery, preppy profile picture.

~~~
bshimmin
The photographs really made this piece for me. The church is fantastic.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Agreed. That's a tricky shot and he nailed it.

The piece was a little too rambling for me, but the mix with the good pictures
made it all work.

~~~
econnors
What parts of the picture make it tricky? Is it balancing the roofing with the
whites of the building/snow?

Genuinely curious, I don't know enough about photography to tell what shots
would be hard to capture.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
The tough part about that shot is, imo, figuring out what you want to do.
You've got a white church all alone with a black roof on a white background.

There's not a lot of information in the scene. It's way easy to burn out big
hunks of the image and try to grab some contrast in the boards of the building
or in the roof.

What I'm guessing he did -- and this is only a guess -- is take a multiple-
exposure shot and then do some magic post-production. But instead of trying to
pull more information out? He left it mostly a wash, with only the roof having
detail. (I'm thinking he pumped that up a bit)

This makes your eye struggle to find information and meaning in the walls of
the church, or the surrounding land. You see the roof, it is interesting, so
you assume there are other items of interest there. But there isn't any --
which nicely tells the story of a remote community that's timeless, the gist
of the writing.

He formed the shot in an original way to have the viewer's mind play into the
theme of the text, while still making a nice image. Very cool.

ED: Actually the more I look at it, the more I like it. It's almost like he
used a gauze of soft focus on one of his shots, with the church in focus and
everything else just a little blurry.

~~~
mysterypie
Keegan, AI-based image analysis that's on the front page of Hacker News right
now, also liked the photo:

[https://keegan.regaind.io/p/XlF3k_kKSMqjacY8minUhQ](https://keegan.regaind.io/p/XlF3k_kKSMqjacY8minUhQ)

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runj__
Why don't I read more articles like this? I always enjoy it, instead I read
some inconsequential piece about nothing. This was great, personal,
journalism.

~~~
Mathnerd314
It reminds me of a Jack Reacher novel, minus the fistfights of course.

In answer to your question: HN has stories like this every day, maybe you
haven't scrolled through the 2nd/3rd/4th pages enough?

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MrZongle2
I really enjoyed reading this.

I grew up in Spokane, and graduated from high school there in the late 80s. At
the time, the place seemed just as boring and backwater as Napoleon...though
it retrospect it was far from it. I was eager to get out and go to "real"
places, so I joined the military. I saw new states, countries, _continents_.

I still went back to Spokane, though. Up until this year, I had family there.
My mental map, however, was frozen in the early 90s; 1993-94,
specifically...the year I lived in town after getting out of the Army.
Subsequent visits to Spokane over the next 20 years became increasingly
jarring, as that city moved on but the image in my head did not.

In that respect, I envy the author because sometimes a lack of change can be
comforting. The fast-food place where I worked my first job for two years?
Demolished. The same for movie theaters where I took dates, pizza parlors and
bowling alleys where I hung out with friends. That's progress, of course, and
if Spokane hadn't changed at all that would probably be even more disquieting.

After reading the article, I think the residents of Napoleon may have the
advantage over the rest of us "big city" dwellers. While modern technology has
made it into their world, they still have developed interpersonal skills that
a close-knit community fosters. In my neighborhood, in contrast, I barely know
my neighbors. We all have Netflix. I've worked on sexy, shiny things in my
career but as the cutting edge has moved on, they've faded away; folks in
places like Napoleon are more likely to focus on hardy things that _last_.

Small, remote towns have obvious disadvantages but I think sometimes their
benefits are overlooked.

~~~
nkurz
_Small, remote towns have obvious disadvantages but I think sometimes their
benefits are overlooked._

I'm probably blindered by my asocial nature, but I strongly agree. "Internet
culture" is often considered synonymous with urbanization, but improvements in
communication and delivery make rural living (at least in the developed world)
much more appealing.

For me at least, technology removes the need for proximity. If I were
incubating a technology company and working with a small team, a small town in
the Dakotas would be an ideal location. Yet so far as I know all of the
incubators are encouraging companies to base themselves in expensive (and
distracting) urban areas.

Assuming you have an idea, and a small team, and need a place to implement it,
what are the actual disadvantages to a rural location? Sure, maybe bustling
cities are great for generating new ideas, but what startup has ever been long
on time but at a lack for ideas?

Veering off in analogy, my guess is that there is probably a correspondence
between those who like "open office layouts" and those who want to live in
dense cities. Many productive engineers prefer offices with doors, and fewer
distractions. Am I wrong to associate "rural life" to a "an office with a
door"?

------
flomo
The second picture perfectly sets the mood for this piece.

The 1970s Plymouth Sapporo in the foreground (a rebranded Mitsubishi Galant).
Haven't seen one of those in decades, and this one is rustless. Behind it a
1990s Chevy Caprice, a 20000s Chevy Impala, and then the grain elevators. It
is the land that time has forgotten.

------
feintruled
Fascinating article. I would have expected that modern technology would tear
old fashioned communities like this apart, but it can actually enable them to
survive. People don't have to leave to see the world, it comes to them.

~~~
tempodox
Reminds me of the Tao Te Ching:

    
    
      Not venturing out-of-doors, one may know the world
    

Having technology actually support this is fascinating.

------
imjk
I'm really glad the editor was insistent that he have a professional "photo".
Those photos were beautiful and affective.

------
nkurz
The photographs look hauntingly familiar. I lived for a few years in a mirror
image town just across the South Dakota line an hour due south. Some stray
thoughts:

The area was mostly settled by "German-Russians". These were Germans who moved
to Russia under Catherine the Great, and then re-immigrated to America in the
late 1800's:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Germans).
German was the primary spoken language in the area until World War Two
(1940's) when it became too politically unpopular to continue. Which is to
say, they made it through World War One before making this change.

Pheasant hunting is probably the primary activity that brings visitors in to
this part of the country. Pheasants were introduced from Asia about the time
the German-Russians came, although they nativized faster. There is lots of
public land available for hunting, much of it enrolled in the Conservation
Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep land out of production and often
opens it up to public access:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_Reserve_Program#E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_Reserve_Program#Enrollment_Procedures).

The town's approach too "development" was different than other parts of the
US. Primarily, they were concerned with tearing down houses before they became
dilapidated, or worse, "bought up by some California trucker passing through
who'll move in with his Go-Go girlfriend" (close to exact quote). You could
(and still can) buy a very nice house in town for less than $50,000, or a
livable fixer-upper for much less. There's probably better potential for being
a remote technology worker now than when I was there trying to do it by
dialup.

I was back a couple falls ago, visiting from California for pheasant hunting.
The town I was in looks exactly like the photos in the story, enough so that I
wondered at first whether Napoleon was a pseudonym. Visually, it was almost
identical to how it had been when I was last there a decade before. I had been
wondering how much impact the internet has had on the culture, and this
article gives nice insight. Thanks Rex!

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bryanlarsen
"no drags to cruise"

Strange. That was the only daytime form of entertainment for a large portion
of the teenage population of towns like this: driving up and down Main Street
and in front of the school, either showing off your car (your status) for the
girls or showing off that you have a girl in the passenger seat.

------
nl
Maybe next time someone on HN claims that FB is dying among teens it would be
possible to point them at this story.

