It's less that Woodstock was pure and more that it was idealistic, and ... mostly, the idealism held / didn't break.

Altamont wasn't necessarily bad. But reality intruded to an extent it hadn't at the earlier festival.

The idealism of the 1960s stumbled heavily when it hit the Real World. Communes often proved to be unsustainable, tremendously unequal, and microcosms of the outer world of The Man that they were intended as an antidote / counterpoint to. Collective and cooperative organisations folded. Or evolved --- Whole Foods didn't simply out-compete many local and regional "natural food stores", but often bought them out.

It's not possible to simply wish (or mission-statement) away human behaviour and it's darker nature. I'm not sure if Mark Zuckerberg really believed that most people are good and privacy was obsolete, though those are principles he said and promoted aggressively ... which haven't worked out so well.

Part of me regrets tremendously that the idealism didn't deliver. Another part recognises that the idealist model of reality was fundamentally flawed. The questions of how and why it was flawed, if there's some way to redeem or resurrect parts, or if there are alternative ways to deliver on some of those principles or goals ... I'm not sure of.

Looking at the present state of things, its systems and organisations and institutions, I'm strongly disinclined to participate at all. Watterson's very few public comments don't seem to indicate he feels this way, and I don't want to put words in his mouth. The commentary on selling out ... suggests at least some alignment with this philosophy.

Among the things I've focused on over the past decade or so has been trying to understand media, its interactions with society (there's a bidirectional feedback), and both its capabilties and limitations. If I'd known then (in the late 1980s / early 1990s) what I know now ... I don't know how my activities would have differed, though I suspect my outlook would have been vastly less idealistic.[1] As I've come to hold that view myself it seems also to have become far more prominent generally, I don't know if I've led or followed that path to any particular extent.

Understanding who was promoting what visions of the future of technology, and what their own motiviations, beliefs, and priors were, has also been illuminating.

HN has been extraordinarily durable for an online forum, even by historical standards. Usenet's heyday was about a decade (mid-1980s -- mid-1990s), Slashdot only about 5 years (1999--2004). Reddit and Facebook both grew far too large for meaningful discussion (as well as suffering numerous other failings[2]). A large part of HN's success has been in remaining reasonably small, and it is of course dilligently moderated. Despite that, there are topics HN really can't discuss, and I'm often frustrated by the shallowness with which meatier topics and articles are addressed. But relative to other general online fora it really does excel. Applying my lens, perhaps it has the right ballance of ideal vs. pragmatism.

PSA: Don't take the brown acid.

________________________________

Notes:

1. The "light reading list" I've occasionally linked in earlier HN comments gives a pretty good grounding in my thinking / reading. It's incomplete and probably always will be, but should give good initial vectoring and velocity. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...

2. I don't, and never have, participated in Facebook, so can't comment on its dynamics. I was an active participant on the conceptually similar platform Google+ where a "salon-style" form of discussion emerged around a few dilligent hosts. I've discussed Reddit's issues numerous times at my now all-but-entirely-defunct subreddit, with several of those addressed / linked here: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/8rq08y/i_wont_...