1% rule
31–40 of 158 posts
Re: 1% rule
#32I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something. I probably am biased from the culture on…
> on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people...
There are also big differences within this 1%. Even among the people who write regularly, there is probably a tiny minority that generates most of the text. Imagine people with no life, spending each day at least 10 hours online, typing without thinking too much, which allows them to post at least one comment each minute... doing this for years. Your comments are mostly lost in this ocean.
Re: 1% rule
#33I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something. I probably am biased from the culture on…
> is being read by a minimum of 99 people
I think of that sometimes when writing. I try to avoid, for example, abbreviations: It's shorter for me to write, but it means 99 other people will need to decipher them.
Or not editing my post, things like that, that might save me time, but are multiplied by 99 on the other end.
Re: 1% rule
#34That 1% really flatters themselves if they think of themselves as "creators".
Re: 1% rule
#35I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something. I probably am biased from the culture on…
Why should we care about what the silent 99% think? We’re the top 1%, everyone else wishes they either had something to say or the courage to say it.
Being in the 1% that contributes does not necessarily mean you're the top 1% by quality of thought.
Re: 1% rule
#36We're all in our little alcoves of the human experience, trying the best we can to make the most of the situation we find ourselves in. For most of us, no matter how good we are at something, there are probably 100-million other people just as good as you.
The 1% rule reflects this reality: every snowflake is unique, but individual snowflakes are not special.
The 1% of people who contribute to an online community are either people who've gotten to the point that they think they have something to contribute, or they're crapflooders with nothing better to do.
Sometimes a few people (say, 1-in-10-million) rise above the ruckus and do something exceptional, or lay the groundwork for a future generation to build upon. In the last two centuries we've had a series of developments by people who laid the foundation for our species to achieve liftoff: James Clerk Maxwell, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla, Hewlett & Packard, Grace Hopper, William Shockley, and a hundred thousand remarkable/mildly-remarkable others.
Hopefully in the next few decades our species can capitalize on the foundations provided by our predecessors, and we can make it into orbit.
But most people are "average" or below average. My pseudonym started as my reports of an unremarkable person trying to make observations of average people's struggles. I grew up in a top 10% income household (parents took my sibling and myself on vacations), had a reasonable college fund (which was not well-spent), and didn't appreciate how the other 90% lived until I started driving around in my taxi.
Our present engineered shutdown of the economy for a significant percentage of the 90% of people who are no longer needed as farmers should be used as an opportunity to reconsider how things are done for the 99% of people who are just trying their best to get by.
Re: 1% rule
#37I hope many of us internalized this early. It's not very accurate, but I try to think of this as meaning that on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people, multiplied by either the upvote count on the thread (for HN) or the number of active followers I have (for Twitter). It has helped me to always think this to myself before posting something. I probably am biased from the culture on…
> on average, everything I post online is being read by a minimum of 99 people... There are also big differences within this 1%. Even among the people who write regularly , there is probably a tiny minority that generates most of the text. Imagine people with no life, spending each day at least 10 hours online, typing without thinking too much, which allows them to post at least one comment each minute... doing this…
On Twitter that still seems to be a bad problem but it's less so here. Those types tend to say the same things over and over again and get dismissed or downvoted. Unless there are posters on HN that just happen to be 100x more interesting than everyone else... are there? :)
Re: 1% rule
#38That 1% really flatters themselves if they think of themselves as "creators".
Oscar Wilde's got you covered.
https://www.wilde-online.info/the-critic-as-artist.html
> THE CRITIC AS ARTIST: WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF DOING NOTHING
Reflecting on my internet posting history, sometimes it does seem like a whole lot of nothing. But I still like it.
Re: 1% rule
#39[deleted]
Re: 1% rule
#40I find that if I am excited about a subject, I tend to participate a lot more (create/edit) than if I am simply consuming. I think there is a 1% rule for /topics/ as well, i.e. I as a user am interested in actively creating/contributing to 1% of all topics I see...