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Haters

paulgraham.com

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Re: Haters

#61

Post by stiray »

What I see here as a huge problem is (and not only in this article) that the word hater is used to disqualify a genuine and true criticism with good fundamental basis. Haters gonna hate, right?

In todays society pop culture is what is mainstream: think positive, smile, listen songs that dont mean anything but are also not hurting anyone, be happy, even if something is negative concentrate on positive (X company is adding toxic chemicals to their food but they have such a lovely packaging), but bottom line, pretend that everything is nice and fine and you will die with a smile on your face.

The problem is that the society is going into endless circle of self soothing minds, that are not only ignoring the hell of a lot of things that needs to be fixed (from society, environment, companys... products) but are also satisfied by someone selling them intelectual or physical product that is a junk but offers them a dream that there is nothing wrong with their lifestyle/thinking/... and are furious protecting that illusion from anyone daring to criticize it. This was a funboy a decade ago. I am observing with horror that now it has become mainstream.

Once the options to contradict logically are gone, as a last scream of mind defending their ego is an etiquette "you are a hater".

In that moment everything seems fine again.

"It is not me.", "It is not the product I love.", "It is you.", "I can go back to my illusion now.".

So Graham. Smile. Be happy. Be positive. Dont be a hater to haters. As maybe... they are not haters after all.

Re: Haters

#62

Post by darawk »

ghostcluster wrote: post #44
darawk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think tribal hatred is a little different than 'hater' as meant here. Fanboy/hater gets its essence almost from its triviality. I don't think PG was trying to describe all hate in the modern world, but rather this much narrower 'hater' concept as related to celebrity-type fame.

Hmm. I see a large fraction of Elon Musk's haters coming from an ideological perspective, for example.

Huh. What do you mean by that? I think of Elon Musk's haters as more coming from the perspective of thinking he's overly self important and irresponsible (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

Re: Haters

#63

Post by AmericanChopper »

dataisfun wrote: post #38

I think there's a bit of cruelty in so casually reducing people to "losers." Taking what must be a complex set of personal histories and circumstances that lead people to that behavior and framing it as a matter of winner vs loser seems to border on smug, especially when the writer is clearly the former.

The post clearly ignores the use of any form of sensitive language, which in this case I thought helped to illustrate the points quite well.

Personally, I can’t imagine calling somebody a loser, but in my head I have a very clear idea of what a loser is. To me a loser is anybody that, in spite of the opportunity to do so, doesn’t take any control over their own life, doesn’t take responsibility for themselves, and blames others for their failure/lack of success. Such people can become marginally successful, but they’ll always be losers, because they’ll never get what they want from life. To me, this idea seems very similar to what he was getting at.

Re: Haters

#64

Post by nl »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #56
darawk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ideology is another word for narrative, and Holmes worked very hard to sell a narrative where she was a disruptive genius who would revolutionise [stale old thing that needed to be disrupted] by sheer force of will and outstanding talent. 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 s…

Ideology is another word for narrative

But it's not?

I mean I guess there is some kind of relationship - ideologies usually have some kind of story that goes with them.

But a narrative in itself isn't an ideology.

But I do agree that Holmes was able to project a "reality distortion field" in the same way Jobs could. I think that's different to ideology though.

Re: Haters

#65

Post by speedplane »

darawk wrote: post #62
ghostcluster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I see a large fraction of Elon Musk's haters coming from an ideological perspective, for example.

Huh. What do you mean by that? I think of Elon Musk's haters as more coming from the perspective of thinking he's overly self important and irresponsible (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

> (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

I also like Elon, but the source of the hate probably comes from two sources. The first is the audaciousness of his general proposal: that we give up technology that worked for a century (oil) and try to build something entirely different. It's based on a bias towards the status quo.

The second is probably more legitimate. No question Tesla has done amazing things, but is it really worth more than established players that sell 10X number of cars? The stock price doesn't make sense based on any traditional valuation, it can only be explained by popular enthusiasm and exuberance towards the vision that Elon provides. It feels to many that Elon is getting away with things that would doom any other company because of this perception. It feels unfair, hence the haters.

Personally, I do love Elon, SpaceX, Tesla, etc, but I don't want to get involved in the stock market casino. I support what he does because of his vision, but Tesla's stock price makes no sense to me. Instead, I'll cheer from the sidelines, and invest my money in boring ETFs.

Re: Haters

#66

Post by ghostcluster »

darawk wrote: post #62
ghostcluster wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I see a large fraction of Elon Musk's haters coming from an ideological perspective, for example.

Huh. What do you mean by that? I think of Elon Musk's haters as more coming from the perspective of thinking he's overly self important and irresponsible (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

The proponents of "Billionaires should not exist"

Re: Haters

#67

Post by nl »

cperciva wrote: post #3

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…

pg points out on Twitter that haters are rarer than fanboys

I wonder if it is rarer, or that haters are caused by a reaction to fanboys?

It seems to me that haters often start off reacting to the uncritical nature of fanboyism, and then that reaction slowly slips into hate directed at the person.

(Not always though - maybe this is one particular type of the fanboy/hater relationship)

Re: Haters

#68

Post by thrwaway69 »

oefrha wrote: post #52
thrwaway69 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, these days organized hate is usually led by paid social media influencers, who are often easy to see through for people with critical thinking capacity.

Not always. I disagree with the idea that critical thinking alone is needed and that it doesn't have its own share of spectrum.

To me, critical thinking is like a veil. It describes many of the behaviors and skills underneath which are not so generally applicable. Empathizing is one of them which many critical thinkers outside of their domain forget about (it's not their fault). A classic HN example is only a few programmers are needed to replace [insert wildly different industry jobs]

Some media influencers are purposefully obvious, critical thinking requires time and energy so once people think they figured out the obvious bait, they stop at that and move their attention to someone who calls out the obvious bait pretending to be an authority of trust. It also gives you power for denial of those untapped as conspiracy theorist or haters.

Re: Haters

#69

Post by darawk »

ghostcluster wrote: post #66
darawk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. What do you mean by that? I think of Elon Musk's haters as more coming from the perspective of thinking he's overly self important and irresponsible (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

The proponents of "Billionaires should not exist"

Oh, ya. Those people are a weird hybrid, I think. They're a sort of mix of hater and ideology, you're right. What it is is haterdom masquerading as an ideology.

Re: Haters

#70

Post by speedplane »

nl wrote: post #67
cperciva wrote: post #3

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…

pg points out on Twitter that haters are rarer than fanboys I wonder if it is rarer, or that haters are caused by a reaction to fanboys? It seems to me that haters often start off reacting to the uncritical nature of fanboyism, and then that reaction slowly slips into hate directed at the person. (Not always though - maybe this is one particular type of the fanboy/hater relationship)

> I wonder if it is rarer, or that haters are caused by a reaction to fanboys?

Most ventures fail. Startup ventures fail even more often. If your goal was to be right most often, you would just bet that every new thing would fail. So there's something inherently illogical about being a fanboy about anything. A fanboy is definitely doing more than just looking at the odds and making a rational decision, they are putting their faith in something.

Because a fanboy derives their enthusiasm from more than simple reason and the odds, they become a threat to anyone that eschews emotion and solely uses traditional valuation models. Fanboys are hated not because they believe in a product or idea, but because they ignore tradition.

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