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Stop Acting Like You're Famous

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Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#201

Post by ubertaco »

peddling-brink wrote: post #4
level87 wrote: post #2

Agree with focusing on doing it because you enjoy it, something gets lost when we try and impress others; I'm sure we can all remember being a child and doing things purely because we enjoyed it. However, I disagree with the personal style part of things, or trying to make things look good. These things don't have to be about impressing an audience. It can be just as much about enjoying the process.

The way I read “personal style” was, don’t make it your whole personality. And making things look good is in the eye of the beholder. If you like design and want to make pretty things, do that and don’t worry about the criticism. For me, pretty is my code, I couldn’t care less about the UX because I’m the only user.

Yeah, I think another way to think about this is "don't get distracted with cultivating and maintaining your brand", rather than "don't find any particular way that you enjoy doing the thing."

One of those is performative and creates pressure and expectation, often at the expense of personal enjoyment and rest. The other is just finding the bit that's interesting to you.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#202

Post by throwaway290 »

throwaway290 wrote: post #121
mapreduce wrote: post #110

Why is it so that every so often one of these feel-good LinkedIn-style posts make it to the front page? Is there so much demand for banality on this site? I come here to read good tech articles or articles that stimulate my curiosity and it is sad to see these articles upvoted to the top when so many other good articles at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest continue to languish.

At first I thought it's generally good and can help with perfectionism and apathy, but the completely unnecessary plug of Grammarly put it in question. I'm on mobile but if there is any analytics tracking views (hard to say if it is server side) then surely the author gets paid

(For context, I was triggered since I know the likes of Grammarly, NordVPN and similar are absolute beasts in getting plugs from people with any sort of following in any niche)

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#203

Post by ubertaco »

nickelpro wrote: post #126
yawboakye wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you talk about something else. sometimes, in fact most times, this imaginary and large audience (who also happen to be great critics) can beat anyone into inaction and kill whatever little flame we were nursing. it’s all in our heads, which means we end up defeating ourselves. it isn’t an ode to mediocrity, imo. if anything, practice and more practice is the best cure for mediocrity.

I don't understand the difference in what I and the OP are talking about. The OP said, "In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. If you have to, make some goals for yourself, but never for your 'audience'" Presenting to the audience is my goal. If you're telling jokes, your goal is to make your "audience" (friends/coworkers/family/etc) laugh. The only way you can get funnier is…

I don't think it's "do things without an audience"; I think it's "don't give the audience absolute authority over your ability to enjoy the thing".

Comedy is good with an audience, and not so much without, so it's a great example.

If you're doing comedy as a hobby, even though comedy is done for an audience, then you can feel free to take time away (or stop entirely) when it's no longer interesting to you. If you're doing it "for the audience" in the sense that the OP is talking about (where the audience is the only point, rather than just being a part of the experience of your enjoyment of doing comedy), then no, the show must go on and you must sacrifice your own interests for the audience's sake.

It's sorta like the difference between the low-key hobbyist mindset of selling something at the local farmer's market vs the high-pressure "obligation to the shareholders" mindset of corporations.

Or to go back to the article title's advice to "stop acting like you're famous": a member of a local improv troupe might doesn't have to spend much of their life worrying about what the paparazzi will say or how the critics or box-office numbers will judge their improv (even though the improv is very directly a performance for an audience), but an A-list celebrity actor does have to keep that awareness in mind at nearly all times, and it often makes their life miserable.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#204

Post by DiggyJohnson »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #197
pat64 wrote: post #17

I’m going to hard disagree with this. A lot of the enjoyment I get from creation is the process of others enjoying what I’ve built. Further more, building for others is great for building out areas you’re weak or inexperienced in. Like, I was poor on the accessibility front until I found the thing I created resonated with the visually impaired folk.

Imagine you made a mug and nobody used it. That’s a bummer. Imagine you wrote a novel but can’t find anyone to read it. That’s a bummer too. Art is there to create experiences for people. If somebody writes a novel in the woods, but nobody is there to read it, does it really make sound?

The advise is don't write a novel if you're motivated by the possibility of monetizing it, because nobody will probably read it. That's all.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#205

Post by jimbokun »

apples_oranges wrote: post #144
mapreduce wrote: post #110

Why is it so that every so often one of these feel-good LinkedIn-style posts make it to the front page? Is there so much demand for banality on this site? I come here to read good tech articles or articles that stimulate my curiosity and it is sad to see these articles upvoted to the top when so many other good articles at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest continue to languish.

HN is too popular, too many users water it down. I hope I will soon discover what the next place like this used to be, is now

Nobody reads Hacker News anymore, it's too popular.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#206

Post by d--b »

Vox_Leone wrote: post #158
d--b wrote: post #84

Ok the most important sentence in this essay is its subtitle: “Advice for myself around leisure activities” Personally I am no perfectionist at all, but I don’t see the fun in making stuff myself that I could otherwise buy. I took up sewing, not because I want to sew the perfect shirt, but because men’s fashion sucks. That said, I sew stuff I can wear. So it needs to look at least as good as what I could buy. I don’t…

>Personally I am no perfectionist at all, but I don’t see the fun in making stuff myself that I could otherwise buy. That's ok, but then there are things that are not available to buy. I want a 500-850 degrees C 3D printing hotend, which can only be built of ceramics. I'm a hacker. Gotta make it. https://voxleone.com/2024/03/05/3d-printing-im-making-a-500c...

Yes exactly. It's very difficult to find Mexican peppers in France, just gonna grow them. No interest in growing tomatoes whatsoever.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#207

Post by jimbokun »

lapcat wrote: post #134
mapreduce wrote: post #110

Why is it so that every so often one of these feel-good LinkedIn-style posts make it to the front page? Is there so much demand for banality on this site? I come here to read good tech articles or articles that stimulate my curiosity and it is sad to see these articles upvoted to the top when so many other good articles at https://news.ycombinator.com/newest continue to languish.

HN is a comment site masquerading as a news site. A large percentage of commenters go directly to the comments without ever reading the article. They just want an excuse to spout their opinions.

I don't think it's even masquerading, the design puts the comments front and center.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#208

Post by jimbokun »

Springtime wrote: post #115

> Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience [...] The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it [...] In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating somethi…

The danger with wanting to polish things before putting them out into the world, is often you never share anything because it's never "done". And you may be polishing something in the wrong direction, which you would know if you put the unpolished version out into the world to get feedback.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#209

Post by apantel »

Springtime wrote: post #115

> Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience [...] The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it [...] In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. I don't understand the equivalence the author is ultimately making in suggesting that creating somethi…

It’s a quality of artisans to make the things they make polished and complete. There’s an inherent satisfaction in doing that if it’s your thing. In other words, applying that polish is an end, not a means.

Re: Stop Acting Like You're Famous

#210

Post by _akhe »

Hypocritical - because all the edge-lordiness in the title and writing style is for an audience too.

It comes across as typical anti-individual ("anti-millennial") drivel by a person paralyzed by society out of fear, who now wants to share that paralysis with others.

This kind of paralysis (and writing style) comes from failure - either too much or not enough.

This author should have made a song, a documentary, an app, a painting, a company, documented making a dish from an ancient recipe, recorded themselves doing their first kickflip, made a pixel-art game engine in C, traveled to the Richat Structure to prove that it is/isn't Atlantis, etc. but instead of all that much cooler stuff that would further enlighten themselves and the world, they wrote this projection of insecurity.

"Don't try."

Nobody says this louder than people who either give up too easily or are afraid of challenges. Maybe they've never experienced the fruits of labor when it comes to a personal venture - economic or otherwise.

You really can sell software, get brand deals on a YouTube channel, get sponsored doing action sports, perform on stage in front of thousands, gain fans by living and documenting an incredible life on social media. It's not only possible, but it's a lot more fun than living as a copy/paste bubble jacket drone who has to go to work, who never does or says anything interesting.

The author's choice to not use CSS is not effortless minimalism by the way, it's the same thing as his moody black and white photo example - it's a conscious decision to appear a certain way to an audience.

This article is what a crab in a bucket looks like in the wild. The author is trying hard - they're just putting more effort in keeping contemporaries down than pulling themselves up. A sad state of our youth.

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