Earlier quoted context omitted.
Y Combinator's motto is literally "Make something people want."
isn’t there an implied, “in order to generate revenue”?
If there were, why would they accept non-profits, which they have done so since 2013?[0]
Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
151–160 of 267 posts
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
To your point its possible to make movies differently, there is a game called spec ops that is very subversive of the military shooter genre. Where other games want you to feel cool shooting and killing people spec ops constantly wants you to feel bad about your actions, at one point asking "do you feel like a hero yet? " Very good game.
People like the idea of it when they read about it online, but it sold poorly and the few people who played it didn't enjoy it.
I one of these few people who played it, I really enjoyed it. Thought on hardest difficulty it was a really good challenge.
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Y Combinator's motto is literally "Make something people want."
isn’t there an implied, “in order to generate revenue”?
Maybe so, but that's very different than "Beat the system and make tons of money".
See some of pg's early essays:
http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
http://paulgraham.com/good.html
Entrepreneurship is one of the least zero-sum activities you can participate in.
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Buffett's field of study is the finance and economic system. It should be easy to see that one of the things that separates Warren Buffett from the rest of us is that he has a unique perspective of the financial world – he sees all of the dynamics and intricacies of the financial world in a way that few others do. It took years for him to build the mental framework that led to his deep understanding and unique view o…
I kinda think Buffett's way of investing is obsolete these days. Every single analyst is studying the fundamentals and financials of companies now. Every single analyst has access to the same information he had. It was different decades ago when we didn't have BloomBerg, Thomson Reuters, FactSet, etc. Now everyone does. His advantage now is just that he has boatloads of money to buy companies and turn them around.
you dont understand his strategy if you think it is out of date.
1) he buys equity in the private markets not in the public markets 2) he has capital to buy entire companies 3) he can evaluate a company based on the people, not based on financials 4) he commits to not meddling in operations. Today's tax structure forces entrepreneurs to sell because of huge tax implications of passing down a privately held company. 5) emotionally he is very strong and he is willing to wait on the sideline for years if necessary.
He holds on to huge amounts of cash. Meanwhile shareholders are getting mad that he is not getting the returns and start talking about how he should just pay out the dividends, people start talking about how he has lost his touch or his method is out of date. The market is skyrocketing. Then the crash happens and he buys tons of distressed assets at a discount and he is brilliant again.
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I mean Scarface looks pretty terrible by the end of the movie, and people idolize him. You got the wrong idea. I don't think anyone idolizes Tony. It's a great movie and Tony is a great character and Scarface tells an interesting story, not because the protagonist made himself rich. Same as Godfather, I like it and I like them not because they are rich, but it was because they made interesting choices. Let's talk ab…
>You got the wrong idea. I don't think anyone idolizes Tony. If you'd like I can provide a short list of rap songs about selling drugs which contain lyrics positively representing scarface/Tony. People idolize him. He's a self made man who took what he wanted. He's betrayed in the end, but plenty of people look at that as the actions of outside actors and not the consequences of his behavior. I'm not going to go into…
I do wonder, though - do people want to be Tony end-to-end, or do they just like the middle and think it wouldn't end that way for them? Even a visceral, horrid ending is easy to downplay when it's just on a screen.
I mean, what does Jay-Z have to say about Montana? Fuck Sosa, this Hova this is real life // This is what the ending of Scarface should feel like. Because he's better than Tony, and he's going to make it all work.
There are definitely people who idolize the Achilles bit, living gloriously and briefly, but I feel like the most common reason people celebrate that is that they get to downplay the messy ending.
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
isn’t there an implied, “in order to generate revenue”?
If there were, why would they accept non-profits, which they have done so since 2013?[0] [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/
I always assumed every YC startup is "non profit" for the first 5 years of life... ;)
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#157One thing I've been struck by with movies and films like the Wolf of Wall Street, the film Wall Street, Fight Club, or even the Great Gatsby is how many people end up coming away with the exact opposite message of the movie. They end up idolizing the vapid, shallow lifestyle that the movie is critiquing, because even though the film is critiquing that it can't help but also make it glamorous. Michael Douglas has said…
This also applies to almost every single gangster movie. "Scarface" being really the case study. I believe it is mostly due to the last scene of these movies where the hero dies in some crazy action scene. Lot of adrenaline, and it looks so "cool" on screen that you can't help thinking "wow this guy was awesome!". One movie that dealt with that really well was "Goodfellas". During the 2nd part of the movie, the downf…
And yet, Goodfellas was directed by Scorsese. What was he thinking with TWOWS?
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#158Slightly OT, but for the rest of us "fake it till you make it" is terrible advice. Because if you don't make it, you have lived a fake life and this will eat on you.
Actually the proverb is sort of short for "have courage through the difficult part and you will be successful in one way or the other". It's not about being fake. The OP title, though, is a play on the term, referring to actual fakeness.
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
That might have also to do with how movies are made usually. If you really think about it, most detectives in detective stories abuse power and do things that cops really really should not. But, we are supposed to suspend reality and root for them. Same with action movies - main character does a lot of damage to everyone around, steal cars, hurt innocent people and we are supposed to ignore that. Happy end involves m…
To your point its possible to make movies differently, there is a game called spec ops that is very subversive of the military shooter genre. Where other games want you to feel cool shooting and killing people spec ops constantly wants you to feel bad about your actions, at one point asking "do you feel like a hero yet? " Very good game.
I heard that "this war of mine" is similar in that regard. You don't kill people tho, you manage survivors.
Re: Fake it till you make it: the wolves of Instagram
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
isn’t there an implied, “in order to generate revenue”?
If there were, why would they accept non-profits, which they have done so since 2013?[0] [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/
> Since some people were confused when we funded Watsi, I’d better clarify that the money we’re putting into the nonprofits will be a charitable donation, rather than an investment in the narrow sense. We won’t have any financial interest in them.
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