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Minecraft creator Notch shares the darker side of life after a big exit
- mahouse 11y agoThis guy keeps being an autistic immature child. https://twitter.com/notch/status/637567218222563332 https://twitter.com/notch/status/637567218222563332 I hope he can get the psychological help he needs, very soon. My prayers are with him and especially with his relatives, who do not deserve all of this.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoHow about let's not use "autistic" as an insult, thank you very fucking much. Edit: I don't like doing this, but what's with the downvotes? I think I'm allowed to be a little upset when someone uses a condition I was born with as a synonym for "asshole."
- venomsnake 11y agoWhile I can understand the sentiment, what is a proper way to indicate to a average human being that it is expressing behaviour not associated with normally developed adult person?
- Asbostos 11y agoIt looks like he is behaving like a normally developed adult person. Unless you consider every partner in a divorce to not be normally developed, nor anyone who's ever expressed hostility towards somebody else for what they appear to think of them. Most adults do these things. That makes it normal.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago"Immature child" would have been fine. You may not be aware that autism is a spectrum disorder, with a very broad spectrum. I've got my troubles, but I've got a degree and a career and a life, and I do get tired of people assuming that autism means I need help getting dressed.
- gemma 11y agoUse your words, kind of like you just did. Throwing a disorder around as an insult is always the wrong choice.
- thorn 11y agoAutistic is not something person can choose really or affect. Please learn the words you use.
- striking 11y agoAutism has nothing to do with it. That tweet shows emotional stress. Of course he's lashing out, he ended up selling his life's work. Everyone gets angry now and again. Maybe not everyone has millions of listeners, but that's an aside. He may need psychological help, but he's not autistic. And if you want to be taken seriously, I'd advise you not to use "autistic" in the same breath as "immature child".
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago> He may need psychological help, but he's not autistic. He may be, for all we know. Lots of successful programmers are. I agree with you that it's not really relevant to the current issue, though.
- Asbostos 11y agoRecommending psychological help isn't a constructive way to respond to someone who's upset. We all feel various emotions and most of us say harsh things sometimes. Just because he's famous doesn't mean he has to have a publicist screen what he tweets.
- Profan 11y agoYou're certainly doing good by judging someone without context off his twitter postings. Lets not do that. Twitter is just generally a _really_ bad platform for these things, it's basically built for the purpose of having people take things out of context.
- venomsnake 11y agoThat is why "taking twitter seriously" and "outrages over twitter" correlates negatively with common sense and ability to reason for me.
- logn 11y ago> https://twitter.com/notch/status/637567218222563332 https://twitter.com/notch/status/637567218222563332 That's just the FU-money talking.
- bhouston 11y agoI know you are getting downvoted, but still that type of "fuck all of you" comment is not mature. It is no longer in the moment, it is a long time later. He needs to figure out how to come to terms with what happened and let the bitterness go. I think it is pretty obvious that he has some issues he needs to work out and right now he isn't.
- cies 11y agoGood luck Notch! If you want to get yr normal life back, then just donate all to charity (Watsi?)... Choice is yours. :)
- bshimmin 11y agoPerhaps he needs to meet up with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for a nice lunch over which they can explain to him how to do good, mature things with his staggering wealth, rather than behaving like a baby.
- striking 11y agoMoney is not happiness. You would do well to understand that we are all human. And I assume that's what he's trying to do, is find a mature way to spend his money. In a way that makes the world better.
- bshimmin 11y agoHe's not doing a brilliantly good job of spending his money maturely so far. Unless spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in night clubs counts as mature.
- Asbostos 11y agoThat'd be about 0.01% of what he has. Can you honestly say you've never spent more than that fraction of your savings on short term entertainment?
- bshimmin 11y agoSure, he has lots of money, and so spending the amount some people spend on a house on a single night out makes relatively little difference to him (the equivalent of my buying a sandwich or something). But that doesn't mean it's a mature way to spend his money.
- omonra 11y agoBut then again you may spend the cost of a house in some african village when you have a dinner out with friends. Just like a car going at 60mph isn't breaking any speed records - but a human would. It's all relative :)
- codingdave 11y agoI don't think negativity and an attitude of superiority is universal after getting a big exit. I have know a few people who have done very well for themselves, and while they do develop caution when discussing money or business, in general they have had improved outlooks on life, and become friendlier people, spending more time following their personal interests and passions. So for Notch, I hope this is just a cherry picked selection of tweets to make a point, because if that is how he is truly feeling most of the time, he needs therapy.... or maybe just a hobby.
- ivraatiems 11y agoThese are a string of very recent tweets all sent in a row. Definitely not cherry-picked. Sorry :(
- tw04 11y agoThat doesn't make them not cherry picked. If there's two years of down-to-earth tweets, and then this, they're cherry picked.
- noir_lord 11y agoMy "holy shit I have more money than I ever expected" plan is to buy a 60ft classic motor yacht and then go get my masters ticket so I can crew it myself then spend the rest of my life traveling from port to port around the world, no big houses, fast cars or any of that jazz, just me, just a comfortable boat and the rest of the world to visit at my own pace.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoYeah, this is kind of depressing. He had struck me as such a down-to-earth guy, before. There was a good few years when he was still living in the same house and working his old dev job part-time, because he wanted to keep in touch with things instead of just being a zillionaire. Apparently the appeal faded, and now he's decided, hey, why not act like a zillionaire? And he's discovered that it makes him miserable, but it hasn't yet occurred to him that he doesn't have to act like a zillionaire.
- aw3c2 11y agoI was hoping for some long article or interview, not a couple of embedded tweets.
- Profan 11y agoI reckon this would imply some sort of effort on the author's part, can't have that can we?! Well, my snark side, these twittericles are getting a bit old. I do hope notch bounces back, everyone has their ups and downs, and it's really hard to judge what's actually going on from an outside context, especially through a medium as scattered as Twitter.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoThere was a really interesting, and more even-handed, Forbes article about six months back: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-markus-persson-life-after-microsoft-sale/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-mar...
- omonra 11y agoI'm actually pretty grateful to the editor who compiled them. I don't care for Twitter and would have no way of reading this story otherwise.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y agoAgreed, I should think that anyone interested in his personal life already follows him on Twitter and would have already seen this. Hopefully it will lead to a bigger interview / blog post from the man himself on the subject as it's certainly interesting (to me at least, and I imagine a lot of the HN crowd).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- thorn 11y agoHuh. My sympathies to Notch. And my disrespect to this kind of news.
- bhouston 11y agoIt is too bad he didn't figure out a way to settle down. Once you have a family and out of the party scene, things are much more normal. You have a routine and good priorities and a plan for the future. I think unlimited money combined with being in the high intensity and fairly superficial rich person's party circuit is likely not something that leads to fulfillment. I know a bunch of fairly well off people and those with prioritized family lives seem to be the ones who are dealing with it the best.
- FreeHugs 11y agoI find the idea of a "family life" nothing but boring.
- Ygg2 11y agoThat depends on what you find meaningful. Some like to build model houses, other like to report from dangerous places, some or out to help people and some just have children.
- irln 11y agoWhen you're young you might feel the tedium of taking care of a kiddo...drudgery of the daily regime. But as you get older you realize that the effort or lack thereof you put into those tasks can give life great meaning or be your biggest regret.
- tytyty33 11y agoI can relate. I grew up really poor and have had moderate success in the past few years. I try to keep myself motivated and learn new things and work on interesting projects, but every now and then I ask myself why. Why do I spend time working when it doesn't matter money-wise? When it gets like that, I just end up wasting the day playing games and regretting wasting the day... even though it doesn't matter. I have managed to try and keep a similar lifestyle. I still live in a $800/mo apartment, but I like browsing $1mm+ houses and think about just buying one for an improvement in lifestyle.
- elixerprog9 11y agoFrom his feed: "like three people thanked me for the two million kronor after tax bonus i gave from my own private money. Others said I was cheap." Per Google, the exchange rate for Swedish Kronor to US Dollars is 0.12, so 2,000,000 Kronor works out to $240,000, which while certainly a nice and possibly even life-changing bonus is hardly enough to retire on in Sweden given the cost of living. Considering the company sold for more than $2.5 billion and Mojang had so few employees, Notch could have easily made all of them millionaires while still walking away himself a billionaire. In fact, probably the only reason they didn't all end up rich is because Notch never gave any of his employees any equity in the company whatsoever. Honestly, "cheap" isn't a completely inaccurate description of his conduct here. But it was his company, and now it's his money, and he can do as he pleases with it, but publicly complainig that his former employees aren't especially grateful to him, despite his relative stinginess (no stock options at all?), is silly.
- sp332 11y agoWho said anything about retiring?
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y agoI'd agree, but remember that the others weren't all in it from the beginning. Notch had already done all the groundwork and the game was massively successful before "Mojang" was even a thing. I think $240,000 bonus on top of their (I assume at least competitive) salaries seems incredibly generous to me - not to mention that they're all still gainfully employed after the sale. Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a fan and don't have any loyalty either way, it would be good to hear from someone on the inside.
- elixerprog9 11y agoI'm not trying to hate on Notch, just observing that even a small % of equity would have been enough to cover his employees.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
- myth_buster 11y agoI think the main reason behind this is a lack of purpose. The transition period between completion of a long time project and the beginning of your next will leave everyone vulnerable. Once he finds the purpose and focus, all these would not matter.
- nathan_f77 11y agoAlso probably the lack of a significant other or close friends to share your experiences with. I knew that feeling, and it doesn't matter how much money or purpose you have.
- ablation 11y agoGeez. What an terrible article.
- rootlocus 11y agoI'm having a hard time feeling sorry for the guy. He thought his success was a testament to his engineering greatness, acting like he was John Carmack. Money doesn't buy character, decency or real friends. Notch is feeling the sting of his arrogance? He doesn't have my sympathy.
- j-pb 11y agoHe was just really lucky. He stole most of the ideas from older games, and repackaged them in a horrible turd of a codebase, acting like he invented programming. That guy build a folder tree in the filesystem because of "performance", which means he put a trie on a b-tree because he didn't know about the latter. Also so much for "I'm going to open source this, once I'm rich and famous".
- Dwolb 11y agoI get that it's isolating, hard to trust people, and difficult to find tasks rewarding when you can have everything you've ever wanted ...but it can't be all that bad because this problem can be self-remedied. Theoretically Notch could bring himself out of the stratosphere by removing enough money from his account that he can be perceptibly normal. e.g. donate most of his fortune and leaving himself only enough to qualify as 'FU money'
- byuu 11y agoExactly. I can't feel bad for people complaining about having too much money, when it's such a simple problem to solve if you really mean it. And there are so many people who really need that money, too. Even at my meager $70k income, I've gotten some sense that after a certain point, money's not going to greatly increase my quality of life. And if I had billions, I wouldn't give the money all away either, but at least I wouldn't complain about what a burden it was, living in my $70 million Beverly Hills mansion. That empathy has to go both ways, and those words are really grating to the truly less fortunate in life who can't even put food on the table reliably.
- nathan_f77 11y agoI was just looking at that $70 million mansion, and comparing it with my $25 hotel room in Thailand. The bathroom here is super modern, and the shower is amazing. Have just spent the last few hours rewatching The Office with my wife. Stuff like that doesn't depend on how much money you have. You can be lonely with billions of dollars, and you certainly have the right to complain about it. I don't really know if I would be any happier with 17 bathrooms and a home cinema with seating for 30 people. Especially not if you're constantly second guessing your friends' motives when they come over to watch movies. Yeah, I think I'd probably settle for a $4 million house in a great location. You know, nothing too fancy. Oh, and a jacuzzi way up high with a view of the mountains and the ocean.
- byuu 11y ago> You can be lonely with billions of dollars, and you certainly have the right to complain about it. Oh, certainly. That's possible, and one is allowed to complain. It's just that it's in bad taste to frame it that way. It'd be like going up to a person in a wheelchair and saying, "man, it sure is exhausting having to walk everywhere! You really aren't missing anything, I'm telling you."
- josscrowcroft 11y agoWhen Open Exchange Rates [0] began making decent returns - not a $2.5billion exit trajectory by any means, but certainly enough to set me apart from my peers - I felt I was on the path to something great. I thought something like "Now that I don't need to trade my time for money, I'll be [popular, happy, fulfilled, 'enough']... and I'll grow automatically." I awoke years later (thankfully only two) to find that I had none of what it would take to be happy, or to grow as a man, and a seeming eternity of free time stretching out before me to enjoy my comfortable isolation. I only had to taste the false freedom of wealth - really just an appetiser - to know that no amount of resources would fulfil me if I could not meet basic emotional needs, go through pain and challenge, be vulnerable, build relationships, and self-nurture. God forbid I ever come into the kind of money he has - but if I do, I pray I would have the courage to start from scratch to build the life that nourishes my spirit. I think many will take a high position, point a finger at this man, and feel good about themselves. It's easy to look at him and say "High value problems," and "He has nothing to complain about," or even "He should be X/do Y...", etc. The real tragedy for me is that his issue can be so socially unacceptable. I rate him for being open and vulnerable about this part of the journey and hope he finds the peace he deserves. [0] https://openexchangerates.org https://openexchangerates.org
- cryoshon 11y agoHonestly, I expect the rich to just buy a damn therapist rather than complain to the rest of us. They have enough money to pay someone to care, but they yap to us and expect it for free.
- sowbug 11y agoYou mentioned money five times in two sentences. This is in a conversation about a person trying to talk about feelings.
- chii 11y agoand as someone who may not have their money problem solved, it makes it difficult to discuss the possibility that feelings of this nature a real problem. It's similar to the privilege problem that man faces - no man can really understand their privilege and the position a women is in when she is discriminated, because men don't face that problem and never has.
- josscrowcroft 11y agoI was sorry to read this. From my perspective, this comment broadly captures what is so tragic for me about his situation and the potential pitfalls of isolation-by-riches: the apparent fact that the majority of people discount a wealthy man's cry for help (read "willingness to be vulnerable"), dehumanising him and robbing him of an opportunity to heal - whether through therapy, community, or some other significant life change.
- hobs 11y agoThey do that because they measure the rich person's woes and find that they are considerably less than theirs, its basically that they don't appreciate the person in the sedan chair complaining about the heat. A wealthy person is still a person, but when another looks at their burden and finds it lighter than their own, they often don't pity them because they perceive they can much more easily mobilize their own help (see: an article about a billionaire's emotional state vs European immigration crisis.) Basically, the "pitfall" of isolation by riches is a problem a large portion of humans would like to have.
- Squarel 11y agoI always think that being rich and/or famous must make life a PITA. Sure, you have money to do whatever you want, but, those friends you have? You sure they are your friends, and not the friends of your wallet? Those people you trust, you sure you still trust them not to make a quick buck from selling stories about you? Want to head out while looking like crap? Sure you want those photos posted all over the media with the accompanying headlines about how you have let yourself go? There is a saying about how the best way to enjoy a sunrise is by sharing it with someone....no amount of money can make that happen.
- JewGoldKyle 11y agoIf i were looking at this question for my life, I would say I only have a handful of friends anyways. It wouldn't matter to me if they made a quick buck telling stories about me, as long as they weren't lies. Don't care about what people think of how I dress. Even the shit-o'clock hour of the morning after a run. Meh.
- alexvr 11y agoI hope he gets out of this rut and finds a way to be happy and do more good things. It's a little painful to watch a smart guy with billions spend his time making gimmicky video games and partying and being generally unhappy.
- ja27 11y agoI'm been worried about him since long before the Microsoft sale. I hope he gets some real help.
- highercenter 11y agoWhen he sold it for 2.5 I felt really sorry for him, this was so much to be expected. It is very hard to be happy and live a fruitful live with such amounts of money. Most people do not understand this, they find out once they have it. I wish you all the best notch.
- yarou 11y agoThe things you own end up owning you.
- mhartl 11y agoBut what if Notch is his fucking khakis?
- xornor 11y agoIf the burden is unbearable a solution is easy - he can just give everything away. Usually problems of life are not that easy to solve. This was very childish for Notch.
- humanrebar 11y agoWould that even work? Who do you give it to? How to you prevent resentment from those who thought they deserved more of the money?
- adventured 11y agoYou can't prevent resentment, that's up to other people. Whether it's over a billion dollars, or a raise, or a new car, or anything else. The key in most cases is to stop caring so much about what other people think (assuming you're not being an overt jerk to spur the resentment). How highly you value someone's opinion should roughly match how much you value them as part of your life in general; any misalignment of that, will usually cause suffering. You give it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Within reason you could pick a specific project that interests you (education in Sweden, or a specific disease, or clean water in Africa), and they would go after it on your money's behalf. They have the scale and systems in place to do that with large donations.
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- coldcode 11y agoAn infinite amount of money will not change anyone for the better. What you were before remains, you just have more money. If you cared deeply for things before you were rich you will still care afterwards, if you had nothing to care about before you won't suddenly care unless you have someone to kick you in ass. Notch has no one but himself. Bill Gates didn't suddenly become a philanthropist after all his money, he married a woman who did care deeply about things enough to change her husband's direction. Steve Jobs gained and lost enormous money but remained passionate about making better products no matter what. You might not like him but he remained the same throughout other than maybe getting a little more trusting and less crazy.
- rootlocus 11y agoYou would think that with an infinite amount of money, you could pursue whatever lifestyle you desire. One could easily buy land and housing anywhere on earth, and surround himself with whatever people he wishes. I can't even imagine the endless possibilities. The choice of a $70mil mansion and non-stop parties is pretty narrow-sighted. Lucky for him he still has a fortune to try again.
- mikekchar 11y agoMany people (probably almost everyone who will read this post) have enough money to eat just about any kind of food they want for dinner tonight. Imagine the endless possibilities! You can go to a market and discover a whole new world. The internet can teach you how to bring it to your own house. For a little bit more, you could go to a fancy restaurant. For a one time treat, most here could easily afford to eat dinner prepared by a famous chef. Despite this, how many will choose fast food tonight? Fast food, sit-coms on TV, no exercise, same boring commute every day, same conversations with the same people every day. All of these things are well within our control. Do we lack imagination, or something else? Even without his fortune, we can all share in his misfortune ;-) P.S. My boss once told me about someone who would buy anyone a hamburger in exchange for a good story. Not really, that expensive IMHO (cheaper than a movie!).
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- ohyes 11y agoIs this really the money or is it the relative fame and lack of anything to do with his time? It seemed like he was genuinely happy creating games. Why can't he go back to that rather than being a celebrity? I could imagine him fading from the spotlight and becoming a private person within a couple of years.
- adventured 11y agoBased on one of his recent tweets, he hasn't developed the ability to deal with assholes or similar. Even with $1.5 billion he finds it difficult to deal with them, and that kind of wealth and power confers every advantage over 99.9-% of assholes on the planet one could ever ask for. I'd guess there's a much deeper issue at play. Crippling social anxiety, an overly extreme need to be liked, etc. Then combined with his semi-fame, he's finding it difficult to create again, out of fear of rejection / mockery / jerks. The solution is to stop caring so much about what other people think (it's how people like John Carmack survive it), getting to that point appears to be his challenge.
- travislm 11y agoIt all comes down to crippling autism coupled with narcissism.
- ja27 11y agoI keep hoping he'll connect with the Penny Arcade crew. Maybe go collaborate with them on a project.
- alain94040 11y agoSidenote: the madness of tweetstorms (and how the press covers them) must end. I believe a simple tweet: "I hereby grant an irrevocable worldwide license to all my Twitter posts to all" will fix the problem once and for all. [0] https://medium.com/@colunchers/quotable-tweetstorms-87770df8fdf4 https://medium.com/@colunchers/quotable-tweetstorms-87770df8...
- thewarrior 11y agoBy sheer coincidence , I just finished a watching an Oscar nominated short film called MORE which exactly parallels Notch's situation. It's saddening and quite moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk I think both Notch's feelings of isolation and ennui and the resentment of those around him are both valid. One doesn't preclude the other , in fact they feed into each other.
- tetraodonpuffer 11y agoMoney is just a force multiplier, I am not sure why there should be a "darker side of life" after a big exit, as long as you realize that one is happiest when working, having lots of money will enable one to work as much as they want on what they find important without having to have a job. With a large amount of money one can focus fully on what one really wants to achieve in life, you can "buy time" by hiring others to work with you, you can "buy life" by setting yourself up in a very low stress environment with quality food and help with your physical needs. It doesn't take much to figure out that a life spent partying is empty and unfulfilling, the difference between not having a lot of money and having it is that after figuring this out in one case one has to go back to their job, while in the other one can step back and work on something meaningful (to them) without concerning themselves about how to make rent or buy food while they do so. Maybe though having a big exit / lots of money is easier if one is tendentially an introvert, for me when I read things like "how do I know if all these people around me want to be friends with me or my money" the first thing I think of is "why would I want a lot of people around me, it would just take time away from working towards my goals" Also unless somebody is a Hollywood star it should be feasible to be anonymous enough to meet people and get to know them without them realizing you are worth gobs of money, just get a modest house somewhere not under your own name and volunteer at some local charities for a while, which is a lot more fulfilling than the party circuit anyways. This said good luck to Notch and others in his situation in figuring things out, the more people we have working towards making the world a better place, the better it is for everybody.
- dpeterson 11y ago"As a liberal commie hypocrite I WILL NOT give my money away; yet I still want to be a victim. I thrive on it as liberals and commies are wont to do.
- washadjeffmad 11y agoHello, Citizen! Friend Computer wishes you to know that sarcasm is treason. Treason is punishable by death.
- bazillion 11y agoI'm not sure if you guys are familiar with how Notch left Mojang, but he basically went home like it was completely normal and didn't say good bye to the people he'd been working with on Minecraft[1]. That's what you have to understand when you're reading these tweets: this is not a normal individual that understands typical human behavior. He has always had trouble connecting to people, and no surprise, money doesn't fix that. Remove everything else, he'd be an awesome guy to hang out with and talk about video games, but he wouldn't really know how to have a conversation around the typical personalities of this forum, since he isn't an entrepreneur by nature. For most of us, all we ever really talk about when meeting other people are: 1) Our own businesses; 2) Their businesses; 3) How we/they/everyone should start a business -- we get absolutely pumped about these topics. That's how this guy is with video games, and it makes it difficult to connect to the people who he's supposed to hang out with due to the social standing his money has given him. Why? Because the people who have made that much money almost always come from the entrepreneurial mindset, since a business is what usually took them there (or a business on top of their fame). So, I hope Notch will somehow develop an understanding of the world that allows him to become immune to what others think he ought to be and what he ought to do, and instead he just becomes like Wozniak and becomes content with himself. It definitely won't happen if he continues to use social media as an outlet, instead of making real human connections that aren't focused on partying and spending his money. I don't imagine him getting there, though, since it seems like he isn't growing the fortitude required to handle the responsibility of the wealth he's developed. It's always painful for me to see people unable or unwilling to help themselves, and in that regard this shows that a billionaire can be in the same emotional place as a person living on the street. [1] http://www.inquisitr.com/1589883/minecraft-officially-owned-by-microsoft-notch-has-left-the-building/ http://www.inquisitr.com/1589883/minecraft-officially-owned-...
- dang 11y agoThe Schadenfreude in this thread is shameful. Using someone else's pain as fodder for meanness merely reveals something nasty in oneself. Fortunately we have empathetic commenters here as well.
- yarou 11y agoI think part of Markus' problem stems from a hidden desire that men of our generation secretly have. This desire is to become actualized through a woman or relationship. However, this desire will never be fulfilled, because a woman will never be complete or actualized herself. Pop culture advances the trope of a woman who can save a man, but in reality this will never happen. A woman will always be incomplete, at least the vast majority of women steeped in Western culture. So the answer is to self-actualize, rather than to look externally.
- Mithaldu 11y agoYou missed the bus to #gamergate, buddy.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]