51–60 of 308 posts
> Haters are generally losers in a very specific sense: although they are occasionally talented, they have never achieved much. So if people become haters because they never achieved much, why do people become fanboys?
I’ve definitely seen way more haters who hate simply because they’re fanboys of the competition, than frustrated talent who think they themselves should be famous instead. Anyway, haters sometimes can’t be ignored since they often spread lies at every opportunity, and these days damaging misinformation travel way faster than truths and are very hard to clear up.
I have seen obvious marketing people starting subreddits with purpose to hate on competition/social rising and carefully craft a cult. I don't believe a wider cult hate singularity can exist without money spent on it somewhere for a purpose. Follow who is going to profit from the hate. An uncritical hater can't rile up thousands or millions of people worldwide to hate something only specific people have access to. Ir…
Love PG's writing, always a good read. First - his example of the 'hater of the pop singer' I think is wrong. Someone likely 'hates' the pop singer because their popularity is not justified, i.e. lacking talent or authenticity. They don't 'hate' an obscure pop singer, because there's no point. This is not arbitrary disdain. I think a better example would be the comments section in HuffPo or Breitbart on politics. It'…
I don't actually think this is a better example. People have a lot on their plate, they can't be expected to investigate every issue to extreme depth. They rely on institutions. Many people join Breitbart politics because they trust Breitbart, even if they know little about it's underlying reasoning. Similarly, many people trust the national academy of sciences, even if they know little about the underlying science.
Even a critical reader can't know everything, and so they must trust people and institutions to represent them.
I'm not a PG fanboy ;) but I usually really admire his writing. He writes so plainly and clearly, it's something I struggle with. My issue is never ever that my writing is not flowery or interesting enough, it's that it's not simple enough. Knowing firsthand how much harder this is than one would think, I quite admire how plainly and straight-to-the-point PG writes.
If you like his style, then you would find these interesting: http://paulgraham.com/speak.html (counter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3720459 ) http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html http://paulgraham.com/essay.html (counter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3306364 ) http://paulgraham.com/talk.html (counter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448643 )
I setup a business which had a reasonable amount of success, and the amount and commitment of some of the haters was a real shock to me. Just taking a perspective publically on something fairly innocuous such as which is the best programming language seemed to attract something much more aggressive than the usual debate because I had a bit of a perceived expertise. I had a handful of people follow me online commentin…
Quoting from https://os.me/the-heart-of-success/ > In Indian villages, even today, when an elephant passes through a village, all the elders gather and fold their hands in reverence. They also nudge the children to do the same and bow to the majestic pachyderm. “This is Lord Ganesha,” they say. And the kids quickly bring their hands together in reverence and holler, “Ganapati Bappa Morya!” and so on. The women step o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Therons is an example of letting ideology drive investment decisions.
Is it? What ideology was that? It seemed to me like people were legitimately taken in by her. At least, that's what I got from reading Bad Blood. It didn't seem like there was any particular unifying ideology of the investors/believers in Theranos. Some people seemed to like it for its female empowerment narrative, maybe, but I don't think that was a major component for most of the prominent people involved.
Does that narrative not sound a little familiar?
Being a woman genius took it to another level.
It's possible Holmes actually sold the narrative to herself at least as much as she sold it to everyone else.
(But that's not an unfamiliar story either.)
The worrying thing is that Holmes blanked out legitimate criticism. Perhaps she even labelled legitimate critics as haters.
That's an overtly cult-like move. Outsiders who are not aligned with the goal of the cult - often powered by a cult of personality - are dismissed, when in fact their criticisms are realistic and appropriate.
In fact what makes fanboys and haters so annoying is obsessive irrationality. They're noisy, but worryingly content-free.
But not everyone is irrational, and both outsiders and insiders may have valid and considered non-obsessive opinions. Those opinions may be positive, or they may be critical - both for perfectly valid reasons.
Curious, what sorts of famous people do we have hanging around HN?
Whether he is Satoshi or not, he certainly did a brilliant launch of BSV
I find this parallel interesting. I definitely have "fanboys" (I cringe at the term, but it's what pg uses, so I'll be consistent) who drive me crazy with their complete lack of critical thinking about my work -- I can see obvious flaws in many things I do, but they apparently can't -- but I can't think of anyone whom I would describe as hating me. Plenty of people ignore me, of course -- but that's quite different f…
1. Your source of fame is one-dimensional. You're famous for a handful of achievements, they're unambiguously positive, and that's pretty much all that most of us remember.
2. Nobody perceives you as having power over them.
3. They hope that you'll make a 4.4 release of bsdiff with an improved suffix array construction algorithm. Maybe divsufsort, as it looked good in "SACABench: Benchmarking Suffix Array Construction" (2019).
At least, that's my personal guess. :P
The common ground is that these people are way too interested in what other people are doing. As if life is what other people are doing instead of what one is doing oneself. Life is for participation not spectation.
> these people are way too interested in what other people are doing oh yes, blame them! the lazy buggers! [1][2] [1] https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-2TEwdRnX0 edit: avoid Medium paywall on [1] = http://archive.is/ksROw