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The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders
- ritchiea 11y agoI bought the kindle edition and I don't get the hype about this book at all. First of all it's barely a book, it's not even a novella, it's pretty much zine length. It's a 10-15 min read. I'm thinking I made a mistake in getting the electronic version since the charm seems to be in the physicality of it. There is some cleverness in the story but it's so brief that the real phenomenon here is not poignant satire, instead it's how the zine was delivered to its initial recipients and that it got their attention in the first place.
- blue11 11y agoI don't get it either. The story is very short and barely funny. And, frankly, the whole thing feels like a PR stunt of some sort. Whatever the motivation, they seem to be succeeding though, it's definitely going viral.
- StavrosK 11y agoI read the link, and I agree. It's just a few hundred words with ridiculous tweets interspersed. Whenever the first time I hear about something is from a story about how popular it is, my spider sense tingles.
- david927 11y agoI'm surprised you felt that way. I only read the (linked) introduction so far and I was bent over laughing. The story, punctuated by the tweets, is hysterical. I don't see how the length (Candide was also short) or physicality of it matters. I find that it is, indeed, poignant satire, and that is enough for me.
- ritchiea 11y agoMost of the story and the best jokes are in the articles about the book and the included text.
- david927 11y agoI remember once, years ago, a member of a 70's band (Jethro Tull?) being asked if he watched MTV. When he replied, "Yes," the commentator remarked that he was surprised that this person liked that music. The band member's eyes widened in horror and said, "I watch the news. That doesn't mean I like what I see." I guess I love the book for the same reason that I hate HN, despite that I check it daily. Silicon Valley has had tremendous success financially, if not technically, and that has spawned with it a strange micro-culture that is easy to skewer when you take just a few steps away from it.
- ritchiea 11y agoI didn't say the skewering was the problem. The book barely scratched the surface of the material that's out there.
- myth_buster 11y agocharm seems to be in the physicality of it From what they are saying, they are impressed by the typesetting and graphics. And the novelty of having one of 140 books in production.
- hendzen 11y agoThere are quite a few young founders getting trampled to death by llamas (users) after being (easily) influenced by tweets (and essays...) from thought-leaders.
- gohome190 11y agoFrom the headline, I thought this was going to be a piece about who runs @StartupLJackson
- bunnymancer 11y ago"I'm tired of these motherfcking startups on this motherfcking bay"?
- SonicSoul 11y agoI was hoping it was about @BoredElonMusk
- bennettfeely 11y agoOr Jesus Christ, Silicon Valley, which unfortunately hasn't written anything new for a year or two. http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/ http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/
- austenallred 11y agoI'm pretty sure there are a wide number of people who know who SLJ is.
- govindkabra31 11y ago.. large number of people..
- austenallred 11y agoYou're right. Shoot.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoBecause we all know InfoSec Taylor Swift is actually Taylor Swift.
- allemagne 11y agoSo if there are really only 140 copies, how long until the book is put online?
- wf 11y agoIt links to a copy in the article: https://fusiondotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/iterating-grace_digitized_small.pdf https://fusiondotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/iterating-g...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Hortinstein 11y agoalready online: https://fusiondotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/iterating-grace_digitized_small.pdf https://fusiondotnet.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/iterating-g...
- masklinn 11y agoIt's already online, the article links to a PDF scan. And there are 140 original copies, but the article notes Farrar, Strauss and Giroux reached a deal with the authors to publish it.
- smcl 11y agoThis reminds me a little of "Being or Nothingness" by Joe K (hehe) http://lukemuehlhauser.com/the-riddle-of-being-or-nothingness http://lukemuehlhauser.com/the-riddle-of-being-or-nothingnes...
- applecore 11y agoJoe K's BorN is a great read. Love Hofstadter's quote on the matter: “People who are normal, i.e., sane, sensible, don’t try to open lines of communication with total strangers by writing them a series of disjointed, weird, cryptic messages.”
- marknutter 11y agoThis is off topic, but why is WaPost only giving me 30% of my screen in which to view the article: http://i.imgur.com/QwnLoIh.png http://i.imgur.com/QwnLoIh.png I sometimes wish these news publications would just use Medium or similar blogging platforms.
- username223 11y agoThis is why modern browsers have a "please format the text I came here to read in a way that I can actually read it" button. It's ironic that online publishers are paying coders to make reading their publications so awful that the companies who write browsers pay other coders to remove the awfulness.
- austenallred 11y agoThe rest of the page is ads. I presume you have adblocker turned on.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoAnd publishers are surprised we use ad blockers...
- dublinben 11y agoIt's not perfect, but I find most news sites to be more readable after turning off CSS. The text will properly fill your window, and there are no annoying typefaces.
- anaximander 11y agoSearch for the div with id="cLxocL1WVq1Evp" and set its width to 100% in the CSS. Abracadabra.
- pmontra 11y agoIn part because text formatted into many shorter lines is easier to read. The longer the line and the more space you need between lines. This is basic typography [1]. But that doesn't account for the white space on the top. I don't get that in my Firefox but I checked with Chromium and I see it. It's the advertising/social buttons banner. Once again adblockers win the day. [1] http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-2/text-typography/line-spacing-for-text http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-2/text...
- elmar 11y ago"We were promised flying cars and all we got was 140 characters" Peter Thiel I bet in Peter to be one of the authors of the book.
- austenallred 11y agoThere are a lot of quotes in there from a ton of people. I'm actually in there, and I'm neither famous nor do I know who put the book out.
- Artistry121 11y agoI read on your blog that you were getting off HN. Glad to see that's not true.
- austenallred 11y agoI'm trying to get off HN like it's an abusive significant other. I don't know why, and I don't think it's healthy, but somehow I keep coming back for more.
- logfromblammo 11y agoWe're sorry. We didn't mean to take your productivity out to the back and throw it under the lawnmower. Twice. Can't you procrastinate with us, just a little, please, for old times sake? It'll only take a minute. You can stay for a minute, right? Hey, did you see there's a new release of Dwarf Fortress out? You should look at some of the engineering behind the B-29 cannon system. Isn't it interesting how the human body responds to long-term microgravity? How would you like to buy a South Dakota hamlet? Do you think malware could effectively exploit any flaws in multiprocessor computing?
- headgasket 11y agothat made my day. really.
- 11y ago
- jpwagner 11y agofrom the text: "Crooks never tweeted. He never retweeted. But he had developed his own, impassioned way of favoriting." This is great.
- zatkin 11y agoAll I can think of when reading this is to ask myself whether or not the work that I do is good for my mental stability.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- peter303 11y agoYawn. Just more Millennial narcissism.
- kaonashi 11y agoIn the tweets?
- humbertomn 11y agoI know who wrote it... Hint: He was very active on HN on Feb/2015!
- GalacticDomin8r 11y ago> He was very active on HN on Feb/2015! Hence the inspiration.
- dear 11y agoLink would be much appreciated! :)
- roymurdock 11y agoSelf-referential, technology-focused and shaped texts like this make me wonder what the new, dominant school of thought will be for this generation's western literature. Post-modernism [1] has been considered "dead" for about 10-15 years with no discernible movement coalescing to replace it. SV, entrepreneurship, and startup culture have had such a profound effect on the west that it would be hard for authors today to ignore the tropes and heroes of this movement, which is what these anonymous authors have addressed head on. Will kids in high school 30 years from now still be reading Salinger, Vonnegut, McCarthy, Orwell, Heller, Faulkner, Steinbeck and other classics? Or will there be some literary movement borne out of SV culture to supplement these classic texts? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism
- Alex3917 11y ago> Post-modernism [1] has been considered "dead" for about 10-15 years with no discernible movement coalescing to replace it. I think transmodernism is pretty clearly on track to win right now. Just look at the rapid increase in states legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational purposes.
- urschrei 11y agoPostmodernism was never alive in the sense to which the parent refers. Now that we've neatly rejected the premise of that comment, let's move on: nobody cares or knows about transmodernism, or any other literary movement (be it imaginary, as — in the case of transmodernism — or otherwise) The days in which a movement could be dominant are long past us. That's sort of the point.
- swampthinker 11y agoGot a good laugh at this: "When it comes to any sort of stunt that gets a lot of attention on social media, all roads lead back to Taco Bell or Mountain Dew."
- DaveWalk 11y agoAnother discussion about the piece: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10652145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10652145
- gadders 11y ago>> that has stumped tech world insiders ... and bored anyone not in the SV echo chamber.
- prezjordan 11y agoSome think this might be why the lucky stiff. https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/671713994441293824 https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/671713994441293824
- sevensor 11y agoIt doesn't not seem like something _why would do.
- s986s 11y agoThis was a really great essay, very funny. Before I jump in with the rest of you claiming "sv echo chamber", I'd like to point out that these tweets can be made to look like asshats and can be made out to be inspirational and telling of a the silicon valley mind set. These are the bourgeoisie that are looking for that perfect work/life balance and want to see future push forward, though usually by building really simple technologies. They have the opportunity to become senile or play with philosophy because they are doing everything in the power to bet big. As much as this essay shows how alien their world is to my own, it also shows what successful marketing/operations people think about while pushing for success.