YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Naive me joined other commoners to express aghast surprise at how stupid and clueless our leaders were (are!), completely clueless to the idea that perhaps we were (are!) being managed and that our rage burns off energy in a mostly harmless manner.

> With a less deferential and increasingly aggressive media landscape, the strategy of "Never complain, never explain" was abandoned by Prince Charles (the future King Charles III) and his wife Diana, Princess of Wales, in the 1990s.

This maxim doesn't work for government, because they have to justify what they do because they are the ones trying to steer a country though very slack and unconnected reins.

The odd bit about the royals is that they are meant to be largely apolitical. They are supposed to be focused on charitable works, opening infrastructure and generally promoting togetherness.

This kinda worked because it meant that we don't have to pretend to like politicians. Great Britain (yes, not UK because its complex) gets to detach the pomp and circumstance from a political movement, allowing honours, events and occasions to largely be free of politics (despite honours being entirely political) This is why flag shaggers are so weird, its fine to like your country, but getting dressed up in a flag for anything other than sports or getting shitfaced is not the done thing. If you're gonna have a fight, at least do it over something tangible, like which ever football club your dad grew up near.

The bit that worked about the royals is that they were a mystery. We don't know who they really are (you rarely want to know everything about a person, because people are generally messy and ugly close up)

Frankly I don't want to know that harry and william fell out. I have no opinions on kate and megan. I am sure they are nice people, and moreover I couldnt give a fuck about what race one of them is, I'm not american, so why do I fucking care?

I just want posh grandad to say nice words to me at state occasions.

I also want that nonce andrew in jail.

ANYWAY

don't complain don't explain only works if you are only ever trying to bring people together. as soon as you trying to divide and conquer you have to explain.

And generally other wrongdoing by powerful.

During the peak of his popularity you would find Huberman protocols or Huberman factoids repeated everywhere on the internet, including HN. There was a sharp drop off after the revelations. I can’t recall the last time I saw someone someone repeat a Huberman podcast factoid here, which is remarkable after he was so popular.

In the Huberman case it was compounded by how much he was embracing and repeating non-scientific ideas that sounded good on social media, like reducing everything to being about dopamine or making crazy claims about how you could do things to “raise your dopamine” that were not actually supported by research. When his personal dramas were exposed it became an opening to discuss how bad his podcast had become and I think many listeners woke up to that fact when shaken by the realization that not everything about Huberman was as it seemed.

He has been able to continue podcasting to an audience of die-hard fans, though. These people never totally disappear because a core audience worships them and will ignore everything inconvenient to their worship.

Peter Attia went through a similar downfall after several increasingly bad scandals were revealed, culminating in him getting caught associating deeply with Epstein. He tried to make a public statement about distancing himself from Epstein after discovering Epstein’s crimes, but there are public emails between Attia and Epstein where Attia asks Epstein about how he’s doing after Epstein became national news. That backfired everywhere except the core audience of Attia worshippers who now just get angry whenever anyone brings up the Attia-Epstein connection. It’s wild that Attia was one of the few Epstein associates who continued contacting Epstein so much (which went into court records and became public) after he became publicly known as a trafficker. And yet there are hardcore Attia fans to this day.

The royal family has obviously fallen apart entirely as its human foibles have become evident, and in modern society it is almost impossible to hide.

I agree, but believe we’re now in a regressive society, moving as fast as we can to repeat history, investing vast resources into effortless propaganda machines.