But what if I want a faster horse?

Post by kccqzy » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

_kush wrote: post #116

cjs_ac wrote: post #16

For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…

This is the cycle I keep seeing: Most great products start out for enthusiasts and often by enthusiasts. They’re opinionated, sharp, sometimes rough, but exciting. Then VC funding comes in, and the product has to appeal to a broader audience. Things get smoothed out and the metrics rule decisions. Eventually, the original enthusiasts feel left out. The product’s no longer for them. So a new product comes out, started…

Post by MortyWaves » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 2:14 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #163

Sometimes you just have to do it yourself. I'm lucky enough to have had a CD collection before music streaming is a thing. Now my phone has enough capacity (since I still use phones that can take SD cards) to casually carry my entire collection around. I can play it in any order I want. I've even still got a streaming service I can do exploring on, since YouTube bundles one with Premium. I find it's a good thing I ha…

Post by bee_rider » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

fourneau wrote: post #140

another-dave wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is also what I feel about the Spotify algorthim at times — no matter what I'm listening to, it invariably brings me back to what it thinks are my "old reliables" once it gets onto recommending stuff. I might just listen to it, if I have it on in the background, which then in turn feeds the algorithm that it made the "correct choice", but it's a million miles away from, say, listening to a radio DJ where you lik…

To this point, I've been using Qobuz as an alternative and it's recommendation engine is laughably bad, but the experience is somehow better. I'll get the most random songs pop up in the list, and sometimes it's a very pleasant surprise. In the world of music discovery a bad recommendation engine is maybe better than a hyper-fine-tuned one.

Post by EdwardCoffin » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

_kush wrote: post #116

cjs_ac wrote: post #16

For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…

This is the cycle I keep seeing: Most great products start out for enthusiasts and often by enthusiasts. They’re opinionated, sharp, sometimes rough, but exciting. Then VC funding comes in, and the product has to appeal to a broader audience. Things get smoothed out and the metrics rule decisions. Eventually, the original enthusiasts feel left out. The product’s no longer for them. So a new product comes out, started…

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Apr 11, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

world2vec wrote: post #76

JKCalhoun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say they're popular because they are expensive. It's bragging rights, conspicuous consumption…

But people desire them as a conspicuous symbol because some people decades ago were really into fast cars and picked those brands as the best of the best. It was the true enthusiasts that promoted them and then other people copied them because they wanted to be in the same "gang" and over time that evolved into a status symbol, far removed from the original one. But it did start with a small group of true fans.