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Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

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Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#561

There’s an old adage about never meeting your heroes that applies well to PG. Some of his daily takes were so embarrassing and insipid that it was hard to maintain respect. It’s funny because his long form posts which are often insightful were likely reviewed/edited by a third person. A concept he has actually said only exists in the modern commercial publishing era.

I've met PG at a book signing and he was quite pleasant. I asked about when Arc would be released (this was a while back) and he laughed and joked about it. Really nice guy. Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?

> Do you really think twitter equates to meeting someone?

That really is one of the worst parts of Twitter. The form of short-form drive interaction encourages some of the most pithy and dismissive conversations and leads to some really hostile interactions that often dispense with human decency.

(I mean, not restricted to Twitter, I've experienced it here, and on Mastodon, but Twitter really takes the cake.)

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#562
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

When you say "I still think Elon is a smart guy" every every time you write about your departure statement, you just communicate lots of things: too much respect and consideration for despicable actors just conveys fear.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#563
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

Calling somebody like Elon eccentric is political correctness for rich, powerful people. It's a polite way of calling him a crazy asshole.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I notice a trend for people to take seem to take stabs at PG whenever he's brought up, and sometimes not seemingly even relevant to the article at hand. I suppose you can only speak for yourself, but I find the words "insipid" and "embarrassing" particularly emotional / unscientific. Out of curiosity, what is there a connection to the article at hand or alternatively why do you feel it's important to spread awaren…

Just last month, he was passionately defending Elon Musk's decisions running Twitter, on Twitter, from all those annoying plebs who dared to speak their minds about it, not even having ran any companies themselves. The topic of "the article at hand" is, inevitably, his incompetence.

Are you saying frustration is simply that he changed his mind on this issue then? And actually it sounds like you think he changed his mind in the right direction.

Was he rude to you personally or something?

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#565
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of people here on HN were also convinced he will try to make Twitter better. Not everybody believed that he will succeeded but it seems like majority belived that he will at least try hard. Like improve app to purchase things (one click checkout), integrate with real time news, some free speech, sports, … so many ideas

> Majority of people here on HN were also convinced he will try to make Twitter better. I mean. I still think he is trying to do that. Is he succeeding? I don’t think so. If it all hits the ground and twitter is no more a going concern will he claim that was his plan all along? Probably. Doesn’t mean it is true. Even on the day he offered to buy twitter he was offering more money than the stock was worth. That is onl…

> Even on the day he offered to buy twitter he was offering more money than the stock was worth. That is only rational if you believe you have a plan to run it better. > According to reports he is spending a lot of his time managing twitter in quite a hands-on way. Do you think he is not trying to make it better in his own mind?

I think it's a case of the gambler having enough money to buy the casino.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#566
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#567
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

Elon is smart but irrational. This goes for a lot of people who are highly accomplished and yet have bizarre opinions and behavior

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a Mastodon account yet? I'd like to continue to follow you.

I'm still on the fence about what to do. As I've written elsewhere today I'm not currently in the best of health and social media takes up a lot of time and energy, also I am wondering whether I should simply not let that go and concentrate on more real world stuff. I do still blog every now and then and I'm on HN in waves depending on how much free time I have.

> social media takes up a lot of time and energy, also I am wondering whether I should simply not let that go and concentrate on more real world stuff.

I dont see why more people arent doing this. How much value are these places really providing you in your life. I think its mostly fomo. Maybe theres a gem somewhere in there.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#569
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return. A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better. Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back…

Well said, good analogy. There’s the immediate issues of the policy. But there’s the bigger issue of the thought process that led to the policy. One of Elons central criticism of old Twitter management was unfair content moderation policy. And almost immediately he enacts a far worse content policy than anything old management did, in a brazen display of hypocrisy. Even if he reverses course on this one issue, he’s d…

Elon Musk's social media policy is now so sensitive that repeatedly linking to other platforms will get you banned. This is coming from the guy who thinks it's fair play to repeatedly call a rescue worker a pedophile -- of all things that shouldn't be considered fair play on or off social media.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#570
post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

Twitter is incidentally a tech company. Fundamentally, it's a "people communicating with each other in people-configurable groups" and that is quite unlike building vehicles.
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