Charles Taylor, the philosopher, covered much of this about twenty years ago with far less snark and buzzwords. I strongly recommend reading The Ethics of Authenticity. It’s all about the trend of individualism and how it precedes social media by...centuries.
I think the whole thing is bogus from the start, the 'social media' idea I mean. These are companies.. they're not here to make culture or societies.. they're parasite leeching on your human needs.
When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.
> When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.
I think I have seen the same argument about anime conventions. The idea is that a trend starts with a small group of passionate people, as things get bigger and more popular, followers arrive. Followers are not really passionate, they just jump on the bandwagon, but will leave and jump on another bandwagon as the thing gets less trendy. With the followers come people who will try to profit on them since they represent a sizable market. Among the "exploiters" are former members of the original group, who see a find a way to monetize their passion, taking advantage of their deep knowledge of the field.
So the idea that "people start to profit and the game is over" is mostly right, but the dynamic is more complex than just having a small number of people ruining it from everyone else.
And it is not all bad. While the community is less genuine, it is also more productive, if anything, just from the sheer numbers.
As someone who runs a small anime convention, there's a long tail of anime conventions that just barely sit in the black, unable to pay much to anyone. Those only really exist as passion projects.
I staffed several amateur anime conventions 10-20 years ago, as a volunteer. No one was paid, except when we needed licensed professionals, passion projects obviously. In the early days, we even showed fansubs (illegally of course). During that time, things became more professional, organizers started caring about copyright laws, I witnessed the rise of large, commercial events, and an explosion of small, amateur events followed by their gradual downfall.
I am among the ones responsible for that downfall. Simply, I moved on with my life, I stopped staffing, then I stopped attending, and so did the friends I made there, except for a few of them who somehow turned it into a job. The "new generation" is certainly passionate, but they have less to offer, simply because most of it is mainstream now. They don't have the budget for doing big things like the big commercial players, and they can't ignore copyright because owners actually care. As a result, their events are more like private clubs, for those that still exist.
On the bright side, we now have anime licensed and even produced in the west, we get to see major personalities, coming straight from Japan, and many things that were unthinkable when we started out.
> And it is not all bad. While the community is less genuine, it is also more productive, if anything, just from the sheer numbers.
And it’s basically just a natural and recurring cycle:
Phase 1: Novel thinker creates something new
Phase 2: Early adopters pick it up
Phase 3: General public joins in
Phase 4: Early adopters get crowded out by newcomers and turned off by lack of ‘authenticity’ and either retreat to obscure niches or leave in search of the next trend
I'm not sure the lack of 'authenticity' from newcomers is an actual phenomenon, or at least not as universal as people make it out to be. One can be authentic in joining a community after it's no longer a niche only hipsters know about. D&D, for instance, has gotten much greater visibility thanks to Youtube and Critical Role, but the new fans seem just as passionate and creative as the old fans.
The assumption seems to be that only the early adopters care, but that seems unnecessarily elitist.
It's probably nothing new either. Even on boards people complained about waves of newcomers... spirit comes and go. The thing is when the wrong part of society turns it into a regular materially beneficial event it loses it's edge.
>I think the whole thing is bogus from the start, the 'social media' idea I mean. These are companies.. they're not here to make culture or societies..
Nonetheless, they do. Medium is the message and all that.
That's kind of true. You obviously know the reasons why it should be true, but consider also (the "kind of" part) the fact that there's stuff like mastodon, like small hobbyist forums, unpopular telegram groups & channels that don't sell ads, imageboards with a couple hundreds of users. They appear because people (the users, not so much the owners) need them. And they are (at least sometimes) loosing to FB/reddit/twitter, because there's at least something (even if that "something" is the network effect) that these Companies are better at providing.
Which means, that even if they only want to be companies, they (unfortunately for all) indeed are the "social media" in some sense. Sometimes even borderline with "essential infrastructure".
> When a new trends starts organically, it's all impulsive and genuine, then people start to profit on it and the game is over.
What you describe is simply the nature of a trend, it's happened with everything from modern Occupy movements to the teachings of Jesus. Something original and authentic becomes stale after it's been repeated a million times over.
The problem is with trends themselves, the original idea is authentic, but then it passes like a wave in the frenzy of a "trend".
Don't forget Guy Debord who was writing about this in 1967.
"The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than "that which appears is good, that which is good appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance."
"False choice in spectacular abundance, a choice which lies in the juxtaposition of competing and complimentary spectacles and also in the juxtaposition of roles (signified and carried mainly by things) which are at once exclusive and overlapping, develops into a struggle of vaporous qualities meant to stimulate loyalty to quantitative triviality."
JSTOR and the Harvard press needs to just go away. As someone who does IT for a university library in Germany JSTOR access is just ridiculous, even ignoring their fees.
I think it's genuinely ridiculous; academics working on really important topics for the current age, from society, to legal theory, to anthropology, to novel engineering are gatekept by publishers. I've wanted to read the full text to a paper I thought I will gain a lot from, something I can cite in an argument, something to enrich me and make me think. I can't do that, because I don't have access to the paper/book/whatever. At best, I have access to an inconvenient quarter of it on Google Books. I can't buy it for less than 60 euros, sometimes much more.
I genuinely think that the fact academic work is hidden inside ridiculously expensive books and publisher paywalls is a reason why some people have given up on trying to change the world. They literally can't afford access to the tools that will support them or they can argue against.
The independent researcher is at best five years behind current theories, and at worst dead.
In a sense some may find this more of a band-aid than anything else, but I've found 95% of the book I want to read are available through libgen[0] and close to 99% of papers through sci-hub [1]. Sure enough, the book referenced in the great-great grandparent to your post is on libgen and I now have a PDF.
It really is unfortunate though, that there are a great many books one can only get a physical copy of for many times what they originally cost.
I wonder if you could take payments in bitcoin to print out epubs/pdfs of books in high quality, bind them, and ship them to people. The bitcoin's to avoid the copyright ninjas; you could try to silk-road the whole operation. It'll be easier once we have better drones and automated cars.
Honestly, I'm more inclined to just mail someone some cash in exchange for their services printing/binding/mailing the book back. Seems a little more straightforward than transferring bitcoin and having a noisy drone drop a book on my lawn. Plus, why would I want all my transactions on a public ledger? ;)
I'm great with it! Thanks for pointing me, though my point was more general, I suppose - unfortunately libgen doesn't have everything, hence my 'five years' remark :)
Everything you say is true, but an additional part of the problem is that books/papers/whatever tend to lag behind thinking and discussion by 1 to 5 years too. If you’re not an insider, it can be extra hard to have a voice in the conversation.
I think anonymity or pseudonymity is the differentiator here. Things like Facebook have never been authentic because they're so welded to your personal identity, if your colleagues and family can find you then I think you're always going to be posting through a mask.
For me, the point of the original article wasn’t how to be authentic in theory or why people try to be, but how are people trying and what are some of the ways that seem noteworthy?
And I think it’s really interesting if there is really a social undercurrent, especially in new generations, that political and social engagement is futile, and instead people are trying to invent new disengaged futures.
I don't even like texting. Email is a letter replacement. Call me and pickup when I call, or GTFO.
Faceblock, Twatter, Instaglam, Discard, Snapper, TikTak, LinkedOut can all listen to the flushing sound of me deleting their advertising monetization. "Buh buh all of your Ivy and Pac12 associations that made you look important on a résumé." Too bad, I haven't talked to most of those people in years anyhow.
That's weird. I mean, you do you, but if this is a popular opinion, I had no idea. On the contrary, I'm mildly annoyed when someone calls me to say something that could've said over the text.
And I don't think of it as a personal preference: async information exchange is objectively less intrusive, which is why it should be preferred when possible (which isn't always the case, because it's also objectively less fluent). Unless you are some girl I'm mindlessly infatuated with, I'm probably not waiting for you call all day long, so when you are forcing me to interrupt whatever I was doing, because you are calling to say something as simple as "so, you asked me about X the other day, the answer is yes" or to ask a simple question without any follow up (or, my favourite: a courtesy call with no actual information exchange): I'll be polite, of course, but I'll hate you.
If you want to ask or tell me something short: send me a text, I'll read and respond in 5 minutes, so that I don't have to interrupt what I'm doing right now. If it isn't short and you are too lazy to type: no problem, send me a voice-message. If you just want some chit-chat: ask me to go grab a beer (via text). If it's complicated and we'll need some back-and-forth, we should call each other, but I'll appreciate if you'll send a text/voice first, asking me to talk over the phone about X. And only if it's URGENT you call me right away. And because it's just sensible thing to do, when you are suddenly calling me, I'm already assuming it's URGENT: in fact, that's the only reason to answer you when you are calling, and not to call back when I'm in the mood. So when it turns out that it really wasn't, you are already an asshole, even if I don't show it.
I think your multitier "How and When It's Okay To Talk To Me" document only seems like a good way to interact with others if you ignore that they are also people with preferences and time constraints, and that communication is _between_ two people, not just _to_ you. If you take those things into account, you start to sound like a person who thinks others should tailor their actions to your whims, and thinks other people are the assholes when they don't follow your unspoken rules.
Async communication by txt not only avoids interruptions to what Im currently doing (often difficult programming / analysis tasks) but also. with txt there's not the expectation of immediate answers like there is with voice. With txt I can reference material (code, results, calendar) and or think deeper about a response, consider angles and second order effects and THEN respond. This leads to much deeper conversations and more well thought out execution.
I see a call as rude generally, because what its saying is "Stop what you are doing, give me all of your attention and talk to me about my topic right now, and answer me right now" and 99.99999% of the time, nothing is that urgent
I have the same preference you do, but I recognize that efficiency is not the sole purpose of a conversation. Asynchronous text conversation lacks a direct interactivity that many people value, and it is often useful even when the topic isn't time-sensitive. For example, this conversation wasn't pressing, but imagine how much more smoothly it would have run if we were talking while waiting for a meeting to start. You get that interactivity from a call; you don't get it in text messages.
Your argument is that the conversation would have gone more smoothly had it been direct, but there's no way I would have been able to enumerate my position clearly without having a minute or two to think about it above, type it out, make it clear again, and then explain all my points of view.
So it's likely a direct conversation would have NOT been as smooth, because I wouldn't have been able to state my thoughts clearly all at once, trying to satisfy the immediate responses that direct, realtime voice calls require.
I have also found that by not taking immediate calls then I dont get those annoying, reactionary type phone calls of people asking me things they:
- Could have thought of themselves had they stayed inside their own head for a moment
- Could easily type into google and get a faster answer
- Stopped getting calls from those people that fill their calendars and days with pointless busy-work, convinced that they are productive because of the noise they generate.
- My friends can type basically as fast as they talk, so there's not really a speed issue, the only person that still voice calls me is my grandmother, because she's too blind to see the mini keyboard
By that same reasoning, you should probably avoid talking to people in person, too. Maybe you should carry around a copy of Krick's statement, shush people who try to talk to you, and give them a copy.
If you think that sounds rude and bad, maybe reconsider your approach to conversation when it's not face-to-face — because that's how it comes off to a fair slice of the population.
> On the contrary, I'm mildly annoyed when someone calls me to say something that could've said over the text.
And I'm just as annoyed when someone keeps sending me texts when a 5 minute call would have been far more efficient. If we have sent more than 3 back and forths in text, it's time to switch to a call.
For me, the twenty-somethings are terrible about this. They are just absolutely allergic to voice communication.
It really depends on the context. I like having a history of things that are important, and I got more than enough information to keep in my head already. Actively processing voice on someone else's tempo over a crappy mic often leads to mistakes, and the lack of history forces me to ask again when I inevitably forget. Also, the fast-paced nature of voice tends to make people neglect nuance which may be important.
Your idea of efficient may vastly differ from someone else's.
> Actively processing voice on someone else's tempo over a crappy mic often leads to mistakes
On the flipside, text-only conversation often simply doesn't include that nuance at all. I can't count the number of times I've completely misunderstood someone's tone over text when it would have been blindingly obvious over voice. Key and Peele even did a skit about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naleynXS7yo
Voice and text have different strengths and weaknesses as communications media. Both are appropriate in different situations. I will admit, however, to being somewhat "allergic" (as another commenter put it) to voice, probably to an unreasonable extent, because I selfishly value my ability to focus on what I'm doing right now instead of giving it to someone else for a couple of minutes.
But at the same time, I've often found that someone older who didn't grow up with easy text-based communication will use a phone call when a text would have been more than sufficient, and this can be quite irritating at times. I suspect it's in reaction to this that younger people tend to avoid voice communication even when it would probably be a better choice.
> I suspect it's in reaction to this that younger people tend to avoid voice communication even when it would probably be a better choice.
The other problem is that "voice" is social interaction--text isn't.
So many people are stunned when I can call up someone professionally and ask for a favor and they're happy to oblige. To which my response is generally: "When was the last time you spent friendly time talking to your people?"
People are normally starved for interaction with people who give them friendliness and even a modicum of respect (Generation Text in particular is really bad about snark--newsflash: once you become 25 years old, only your buds think snark is funny--a lot of professionals just find it annoying. Funnily enough, if you're really good at returning snark, Generation Text finds it equally annoying.). Covid has made that hellaciously worse--people desperately want to bend my ear for an hour or more when I have a 5 minute request. And I'm normally happy to let them.
I don't regard this as a "waste of time" as so many in Generation Text do.
The argument against texting, for me at least, is that it’s more intrusive (constant interruptions for unimportant things) and interactions end up being less and less meaningful.
Turn off notifications. Text is inherently asynchronous letting you answer when you can. Phone calls that aren’t for a conversation are much more intrusive.
This is a generational thing. If you’re over 30-35, you treat texts as asynchronous. If you’re under 30, you assume someone who hasn’t responded within minutes is dead.
Exactly. Texting gives control to the receiver on how and when to respond. Calling takes away that control.
I wish voice messages were more common though. In iMessage you could simply place your phone near your ear and start talking to send a voice message. I don’t see many people use that or even aware of that.
It’s not feature full. It’s not easy to rewind or fast forward. You can’t change the speed of the memo. If your phone switches tilts - horizontal to vertical, usually the memo is lost.
Those aren’t what is keeping iMessage memos from being used however they frustrate me as I have gotten used to Otter.ai and Telegram years earlier.
Out of curiosity, do you even eschew notifications to yourself? Calendar reminders, todos, that kind of thing? I allow some notifications, and I find these quite valuable personally.
Messaging apps that were popular in the early 2000s had fairly sophisticated concepts about how available a user was at any given time. That seems to be absent or significantly degraded in most of what's popular now.
I want to be able to indicate my availability or lack thereof to any of my regular contacts before they send a message, indicate how urgent a message is when sending it, and control what level of urgency triggers a notification (with an option to put urgency limits on specific contacts if they misuse it).
Probably because they're mobile and disconnected most if the time, so they don't have to advertise your availability status periodically. In the 2000s they mostly advertised that the user was away from the terminal. Nowadays one has the terminal in their pocket. Some of the old IM systems have a mobile status now. The busy status was ignored successfully then as it is now.
The busy status, at least in some clients affected what sort of notification the recipient got. My phone does have a global do-not-disturb function, but it doesn't notify the sender, and the only real bypass for it is a voice call.
I want to be able to pre-notify all senders that I won't be replying quickly so there's no confusion. In an ideal world, I could set this in one place on my phone or desktop and the 8 different chat apps I use would all get respect it. Of course SMS can't support it, but nobody who has anything important to say to me would send me an SMS.
Would you be content with chatbots, a sex doll, and living in an undersea bubble? If so (I doubt it), great, go for it.
If not: don't answer, silent mode, or power off, or appreciate human contact when you do. If people are "calling too much," it's because you failed to train them how to interact with you. And, now you're resenting their assuming it was okay because you were too "nice" to be honest. Instead of mind-reading, communicate (edit: communicate your preferences of communication) perhaps. It's probably you, not them. Sorry, bud.
Edit: Let's inquire curiously rather than name-call or get snarky, because that degrades the site and discourages understanding.
You really didn't provide any objective reasons for why it should be your way (I did). You are just projecting your (quite questionable) preferences onto others.
I'll go again: there are 2 modes of interaction, sync for urgent stuff, async for everything else. If I'll go silent mode, I won't be answering ANY of your calls, even if you'll die when I don't pick up right now. You won't be able to choose between sync and async.
If I'm not in the silent mode: it's a courtesy to you, and you should treat it respectfully. Since I don't know if it's urgent when I pick up, I'm trusting you to make the right choice between urgent and non-urgent (because, again, if I don't trust you to make the right choice, you won't be able to interrupt me when you really-really, oh-god-please-make-him-to-pick-up, really need to interrupt me). If you abuse it, you are an inconsiderate asshole, and not a "cool social guy, who is fun to talk to: I must be, because I've never heard people say otherwise!" If you abuse it too much, I'll be forced to tell you that you are abusing it. Which is not a polite thing to tell, and can be considered an act of agression, which is why many (most, perhaps) people will be hating you with a smile, instead of telling you that. That's why they'll resort to a seemingly more polite, but actually less productive act of passive agression: they'll actually go into silent mode (maybe for your phone number selectively) and you won't have a choice between sync and async anymore.
And, let's be clear: everybody (me included) wants their emails, calls, texts, anything to be answered immediately. The fact is that it's not always convenient for the other guy because he has both other texts/emails/calls, and unless he is a sales agent, also has stuff to do besides talking to phone (actually, no: even sales agents aren't on the phone 24/7). Ignoring that simple fact is being an asshole, not a custodian of "nearly forgotten the true and only art of real™ human interaction". Sorry, bud.
Or maybe a text message is just a much more practical and less disruptive form of communication with, you know, another human being. You're being quite judgemental on other people and ascribing behavior just because they happen to communicate in methods that you find inappropriate. Not very constructive.
Not OP, but of course not. But the text message with that other person is not the end of the interaction. It is a coordination effort. "What time are you going to be here for dinner." "6:30." Then the actual human interaction in person happens.
I know you are downvoted, but what you said is 100% true. Maybe could do without the first sentence; but otherwise it’s spot on - if one doesn’t like talking on the phone for x queries, then they should be able to tactfully communicate this and others will appreciate it. Bottling it all and then getting frustrated that people don’t follow our preferred communication style is only our fault.
Good for you. I grew up in the eighties, and if I couldn’t remember your phone number you probably weren’t my friend. I’m okay with the same rules now. Twitter and Facebook are the Internet equivalent of Skid Row - a bunch of hobos fighting over a bottle of thunderbird. The only winning solution is not to play.
About 20 years ago, I used to say: "People are like dung beetles... fighting over balls of shit." Might've been live, pirated HBO George Carlin-inspired.
How about a nice game of chess?
I wouldn't demonize the very poor as addicts; drunks, sure. A dry hobo is likely to whip your ass and mine at chess. There are a good fraction of sane, teetotaling, drug-free hobos who are merely poor and itinerant without magical bootstraps.
Agreed - in fact the term hobo just meant a traveling worker back in the Great Depression and most hobos would take offense at being characterized as deadbeats - they were in fact out to make an honest living for themselves in the face of considerable economic hardships at the time. I was just being whimsical as to the mental picture I get whenever I think of all the craziness on social media.
I'm along this spectrum, but not nearly so far away.
I like chat programs used as email - that is, non-real-time. I have lowered my anxiety a lot by realizing that texts are not realtime in my life 98% of the time, and to treat them accordingly: Checked on upon occasion. Don't stress about whether the person on the other end will be upset if you don't get back right away.
Planning something? Need someone right away? Set the expectation of response beforehand or just call them.
Textual for details, and not for human clarification. It's often a terrible idea to wrestle in emotional or clarification contexts without hearing or seeing someone else in realtime.
Attention is a finite resource that ought to vary with actual urgency; hopefully, with fewest emergencies.
I don't exist at your beck and call. Text me and respect that I have a life beyond hanging on the telephone, or I don't care to distinguish you from the billions of autodialers who are the only ones still rude enough to make such demands on my time.
BTW, cute misspellings. Little jugs got big ears, I suppose.
Well, no... but depending on context you might have to deal with it. Privately people can do whatever they want, in business, the customer gets to decide. I work as a consultant, if a customer prefer a phone call, then I pick up the phone. If I'm busy a co-worker answers.
In a previous job I was the customer, and I refused to do Skype meeting, because I didn't want to spend 10 minutes figuring out why audio wasn't working. If you didn't want to call me, then I just took my business else where.
I found most of my business communications naturally moved to email. The few hangouts seem to mostly be time wasters, people that reach for the phone before they start thinking.
Love the line about calling. People in this thread dont get it - if you're going to triage me against your other priorities, and if you dont care enough about our friendship to try to pickup when I call - you're not really a friend. We can still be friendly, but you're too self obsessed and 'busy' (in the inorganic, modern sense) to really be a friend
When I'm very busy or focused, and then a friend calls, I don't want to sound short and perturbed, and I don't want to answer just to plead "I'm too busy right now". This is what voicemail is for, and so long as the call is responded to in relatively short time then no foul has occurred.
I'd be leery of "friends" who want attention and interaction on demand. Only my wife has that right.
'try to pickup' - totally hear you on the voicemail thing. If you're consistently too busy to take any calls from any social contacts, you're too busy to have a deep friendship anyway. We can still be friends, but never having real substantial conversations is going to he a limiting factor on how deep that goes.
If you're married, of course you should prioritize your immediate family - a lot of people get more distance on existing social relationships or lose track of friends at that stage of life for that reason. It's not really a bad thing, it is what it is - the loss of an active friendship.
I find talking on the phone to be excruciating. I'm fine in person but there's just something about the phone. It's like jerking off a quarter-inch dowel-rod with a pair of salad tongs. Cosmically awkward.
I love texting. And email is basically texting.
I'm thinking of getting one of those wrist phones so I can voice-text everything.
It keeps the spacetime continuum together with personal branding, consultant think-pieces and virtual cocktail hour networking while scanning the universe for a more important person to elevator.
Telemarketers have really ruined phone calls. No one under 40 is using them anymore unless they're expecting a call from a potential employer--the only reason in the past decade I've ever "waited" for a phone call--and I'm noticing more and more job postings will reach out to you via text or email first.
I really hoped that Clubhouse would corral all the hardcore narcissists away from all other social media, but it's made them worse, they spend all their time on Twitter bragging about how they're on Clubhouse now. Pathetic.
So far I only ever hear about clubhouse on hn. Though I'm not really on social media much. I just checked the about page and it actually sounds like a neat idea - voice based chat forums, where new people have to listen for a bit and be given permission to talk from those already talking. Doesn't sound like it's about gaining likes or showing off or inanely talking about yourself. I don't know if it's any good or if the world needs yet another social media platform but it sounds more suited to genuine conversation than quite a few of the current big social media services.
The problem is there’s no search or Filtering. You mostly just see the big rooms. Which means you’re never going to talk when there’s 1000 people in the room and Bill Gates is talking. Clubhouse unfortunately isn’t what you described thinking. It could be! But isn’t.
Also the initial roll out allowed certain people to become pseudo super users who are leaders of many clubs.
Also, the follower count is still a huge metric. Even more of one because there is no like.
The antisocial social club most def raises the Jolly Roger flag against "social" media. ;-]
At some point, I just want a private platform that is paid for using microcredits, no ads/data harvesting, requires verified named people with faces (improved communication quality), connections only stay alive if you actually interact with them IRL, doesn't automatically share everything with everyone in a single context, and doesn't promote dangerous behaviors for likes/shares. The only purpose of hidden rating tags (in lieu of likes and shares) should be that a viewer's own incoming content gets slightly prioritized. Oh and no instant notifications, no news link sharing/"retweeting", no messaging or chat (there's email), and a user only gets to look at it twice a day. Basically, solve many of the societal and social problems FB exploits and creates.
How many times have you googled an obscure error, to find no answers?
And then after some time... you solve it, and want to add a comment or make it easier for the next lost soul...and its non trivial.
I would argue for a large amount of problems that are interesting to people doing practical things, you want to allow drop ins to your community.
How you keep the riff raff out is then unsolvable.
I have this idea I’m rolling around and to make it non-capitalist it does need to be funded in some way.
Assuming this product fulfilled a human need what is the financial paradigm shift (I mean, who pays for anything these days?)?
Nawh, I always get permission before playing on grassy turf and never speculate if an incomplete course would still be playable. Next, I'd never win a beard-growing challenge. Finally, he has way, way more cash in his wallet; so if you ever need to break a 20.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674987692
Social media is no longer authentic so you’re seeing a slowly growing backlash against it.
https://seoulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/charles-tay...