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Well said, Loren. We are all a part of this mess. We all play the numbers games. We all assume that people with more readers are more important. We all strive

by ruabin 17y ago

Well said, Loren. We are all a part of this mess. We all play the numbers games. We all assume that people with more readers are more important. We all strive to have more readers so that we can be more important. We worry about pageviews and clickthroughs and every other possible way we can possibly whore ourselves out because everybody else is doing it and telling us how much fun they're having doing it. TechCrunch is only well-read because it's well-read. People don't just stumble upon it and fall in love. They go to it because they've been told how many other people have gone to it. And we have decided it's still okay to rate things based on how frequently other people go to them. Brusilovsky is a prick. Not because he accepted a present from a business, but because he's spent his entire life doing vacuous, meaningless work in exchange for attention and celebrity. We all gawk and applaud that it's so nice a 17-year-old managed to write for TechCrunch, but when you look at the guy you realize he can't code, can't design, can't write. All he can do is whore, and even that he doesn't do well. But he writes for TechCrunch and so he's worth our time. We care more about quantity than we do about quality, as an industry. Witness the recent conversation about the Google redesign contest, with people bitching and moaning about how the new aesthetic design was "worse" than Google's current design because it denied information. We have this mindset wherein we still think Google ought to be everything for everyone; the result is that Google meets a lot of people's needs without really providing a breathtaking experience. Google's the archetypal villain here, that cares more about edging out clickthroughs than it does about anything else. And yeah, it's nice, and yeah, it's made Google the industry leader, but in the end being ranked #1 means jack shit, or ought to. It doesn't make you in any way better or more valuable. It comes up in fucking everything. Mac vs Linux vs PC arguments are the same way: We're so determined that what we want ought to be what everybody wants. So rather than discussing feeling and process we discuss pure, blunt numbers. We're just as childish as the people Loren scolds here. We think about our world in the simplest, more black-and-white terms. Hacker News was designed to foster this. It "ranks" conversations. It assigns people as "leaders". We have so many fucking posts about what domains get the most upvotes and which users have the best comment average and basically it's all of us sucking our own dicks in the hopes we can get them longer than anybody else's. But this is a debate that's raged for a long time, and this comment won't change things. The people in charge of Hacker News are just as immature about this as anybody. I'd like it if a few of us, just a few, saw this and decided that perhaps spending a lifetime looking for more numbers and variables and stats isn't the best way to spend a life. In the end, we're playing a schmuck 17-year-old's game, as much as we'd like to pretend we're doing anything remotely meaningful.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
We all assume that people with more readers are more important. We all strive to have more readers so that we can be more important. We worry about pageviews and clickthroughs and every other possible way we can possibly whore ourselves out because everybody else is doing it and telling us how much fun they're having doing it. Umm, no. We worry about those things because more pageviews and more clicks = more money. And some of us are actually interested in making money. What does "meaningful" even mean to you? If Google did provide a "breathtaking experience", how would that be any more meaningful in the long run? Useful is better than innovative.
- ruabin 17y ago
  Do you know how meaningless the ability to make money is? Anybody with a hint of talent and a hint of focus can make lots and lots of money very easily. If your only goal is to make lots of money and make even more money then, what do you do afterwards? Die and give away your money so that somebody else can play the game? But yours is the voice I most disagree with, Ryan. Your MightyBrand stands out in my mind as the worst sort of startup — you appeal not to a person with a single, concrete objective, but to somebody with a vacuous sense of what he's looking for online. I'm sure you have the best intentions, and I don't doubt your ability to make things, but I could never spend a part of my life developing tools just to let other people look at numbers online. It seems like such a pathetic goddamn endgame to me. Useful? Useful's good. But useful isn't the end of the job, like Google routinely assumes it is. Once you've made something that people can use, your goal needs to be refinement. And Google's refinements are geared toward an unpleasant goal. As they've evolved they've become steadily uglier. My favorite things of theirs are the ones that add the least function, like the new fade-in on their homepage that adds simplicity without removing anything. But I guess you don't know why breathtaking experiences are good. I guess you've spent your life in a gray box staring at the numbers and comments of people who as far as you're concerned aren't really people. You've never watched movies or read books or done anything that was enjoyable beyond simple utility. So you wouldn't understand why I think web developers need to learn how to create enjoyable, pleasant reactions from their designs. It would certainly explain MightyBrand's design. "Useful is better than innovative." No it's not. It's different. Some people like the one, other people like the other. I regret that so few people go for the latter, but I suppose, like you, they've this binary worldview wherein doing one thing your entire life maximizes some variables I'm not aware of.

by ruabin 17y ago

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

We all assume that people with more readers are more important. We all strive to have more readers so that we can be more important. We worry about pageviews and clickthroughs and every other possible way we can possibly whore ourselves out because everybody else is doing it and telling us how much fun they're having doing it. Umm, no. We worry about those things because more pageviews and more clicks = more money. And some of us are actually interested in making money. What does "meaningful" even mean to you? If Google did provide a "breathtaking experience", how would that be any more meaningful in the long run? Useful is better than innovative.

ruabin 17y ago
Do you know how meaningless the ability to make money is? Anybody with a hint of talent and a hint of focus can make lots and lots of money very easily. If your only goal is to make lots of money and make even more money then, what do you do afterwards? Die and give away your money so that somebody else can play the game? But yours is the voice I most disagree with, Ryan. Your MightyBrand stands out in my mind as the worst sort of startup — you appeal not to a person with a single, concrete objective, but to somebody with a vacuous sense of what he's looking for online. I'm sure you have the best intentions, and I don't doubt your ability to make things, but I could never spend a part of my life developing tools just to let other people look at numbers online. It seems like such a pathetic goddamn endgame to me. Useful? Useful's good. But useful isn't the end of the job, like Google routinely assumes it is. Once you've made something that people can use, your goal needs to be refinement. And Google's refinements are geared toward an unpleasant goal. As they've evolved they've become steadily uglier. My favorite things of theirs are the ones that add the least function, like the new fade-in on their homepage that adds simplicity without removing anything. But I guess you don't know why breathtaking experiences are good. I guess you've spent your life in a gray box staring at the numbers and comments of people who as far as you're concerned aren't really people. You've never watched movies or read books or done anything that was enjoyable beyond simple utility. So you wouldn't understand why I think web developers need to learn how to create enjoyable, pleasant reactions from their designs. It would certainly explain MightyBrand's design. "Useful is better than innovative." No it's not. It's different. Some people like the one, other people like the other. I regret that so few people go for the latter, but I suppose, like you, they've this binary worldview wherein doing one thing your entire life maximizes some variables I'm not aware of.