3 ms·

To author: It appears the realization is setting in now that most of the VC landscape is a fugazi, a playground for the mindless rich pissing away millions on t

To author: It appears the realization is setting in now that most of the VC landscape is a fugazi, a playground for the mindless rich pissing away millions on trends they can't see the hearts of, on overdeveloping asinine apps and gadgets blind by their pointlessness and lack of need amongst the growing sea of world problems, and on lavish offices and 100 engineers to over-engineer and over-complicate every code base as long as the new hires only come from ${MIT, Stanford, CalTech} after having been privileged with the means to attend. To you and your melancholy, wading through the quagmire of self absorbed executives seeking to get rich, those false prophets whose only aim is as much money as their ravenous actions can exploit, to you I say welcome to the reality the rest of us have been living our entire lives, welcome to your disillusionment.

dang 9y ago
Would you please not rant like this here? It isn't that you're wrong; it's that even if right, this is not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity which motivates HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Ginning up rage is a different thing, and the two are not compatible. Take out the rage and it becomes plain that what you've written here is too generic to have much substance. Curiosity requires a gentler touch and a more specific one. For example, if you have personal experience with things related to the article, sharing something about those, the way you would to peers in a good discussion, would make for an entirely better comment.
- the_cat_kittles 9y ago
  disagree- it reads in an interesting way, cultivating a mood that wouldn't exist if you just stated the "facts". its also, i would say, in thematic agreement with the linked article.
  - dang 9y ago
    Quite right, but it's a tradeoff. We have years of experience with the effects posts like that have on HN, and they're dreadful. I puzzled over this dynamic for years but it seems clear to me now: the issue is genre/medium fit. In the case of the GP comment, the genre is the diatribe. A scathing diatribe in a small literary salon or journal, like n+1, is one thing; on a large, public, internet forum it's another. In the first case it's interesting and leads to interesting responses. In the second it's a fast track to the bottom of the barrel, a snake in Snakes and Ladders. Imagine if anyone who felt like it could reply to any n+1 piece and n+1 had to publish all of them as new pieces without editing. What would happen to quality? It would tank. Personal projection, simple misunderstanding, dimwittedness, windbaggery, reversion to the mean: every known factor would work against you. Extrapolate further and this would kill n+1. In both cases—a small literary forum and a large internet one—the goal is more complex, more interesting formations, but the way to get them could not be more different. The more I learn about this, the more I appreciate McLuhan. Most of the issues on HN derive from the medium, not what people post to it.
    - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
      i give you a lot of credit for writing this out. very thoughtful, thanks.
- bgg123 9y ago
  The author CLEARLY stated that this is the reality they have been facing for their entire life. That is a personal experience related to the article. Were you too busy getting offended at their ranting to read that?
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. On the contrary, the comment didn't share any specific experiences. "The reality the rest of us have been living our entire lives" is rhetoric, as generic as the rest of the language there. Here's the thing about generics: the larger a topic, the fewer things one can meaningfully say about it. The fewer things one can say say, the more repetition there is, because you end up cycling through those same few things over and over ("mindless rich pissing away millions", "asinine apps and gadgets", etc.) Curiosity withers under repetition; HN is a site for curiosity; therefore generic comments aren't suitable here. A fine way to turn a generic comment into a specific one, and thus get the needle back into the desired range, is to drop the rhetorical veneer and share something of the motivating specifics. That's what I mean by personal experience. Anyone who feels that strongly has good reasons to feel that strongly. To share some of those reasons in a neutral, informative discussion would be more in the spirit of this site.
    - bgg123 9y ago
      There we go, that's a constructive comment. Here's a COOKIE.

dang 9y ago

Would you please not rant like this here? It isn't that you're wrong; it's that even if right, this is not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity which motivates HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Ginning up rage is a different thing, and the two are not compatible. Take out the rage and it becomes plain that what you've written here is too generic to have much substance. Curiosity requires a gentler touch and a more specific one. For example, if you have personal experience with things related to the article, sharing something about those, the way you would to peers in a good discussion, would make for an entirely better comment.

the_cat_kittles 9y ago
disagree- it reads in an interesting way, cultivating a mood that wouldn't exist if you just stated the "facts". its also, i would say, in thematic agreement with the linked article.
- dang 9y ago
  Quite right, but it's a tradeoff. We have years of experience with the effects posts like that have on HN, and they're dreadful. I puzzled over this dynamic for years but it seems clear to me now: the issue is genre/medium fit. In the case of the GP comment, the genre is the diatribe. A scathing diatribe in a small literary salon or journal, like n+1, is one thing; on a large, public, internet forum it's another. In the first case it's interesting and leads to interesting responses. In the second it's a fast track to the bottom of the barrel, a snake in Snakes and Ladders. Imagine if anyone who felt like it could reply to any n+1 piece and n+1 had to publish all of them as new pieces without editing. What would happen to quality? It would tank. Personal projection, simple misunderstanding, dimwittedness, windbaggery, reversion to the mean: every known factor would work against you. Extrapolate further and this would kill n+1. In both cases—a small literary forum and a large internet one—the goal is more complex, more interesting formations, but the way to get them could not be more different. The more I learn about this, the more I appreciate McLuhan. Most of the issues on HN derive from the medium, not what people post to it.
  - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
    i give you a lot of credit for writing this out. very thoughtful, thanks.
bgg123 9y ago
The author CLEARLY stated that this is the reality they have been facing for their entire life. That is a personal experience related to the article. Were you too busy getting offended at their ranting to read that?
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. On the contrary, the comment didn't share any specific experiences. "The reality the rest of us have been living our entire lives" is rhetoric, as generic as the rest of the language there. Here's the thing about generics: the larger a topic, the fewer things one can meaningfully say about it. The fewer things one can say say, the more repetition there is, because you end up cycling through those same few things over and over ("mindless rich pissing away millions", "asinine apps and gadgets", etc.) Curiosity withers under repetition; HN is a site for curiosity; therefore generic comments aren't suitable here. A fine way to turn a generic comment into a specific one, and thus get the needle back into the desired range, is to drop the rhetorical veneer and share something of the motivating specifics. That's what I mean by personal experience. Anyone who feels that strongly has good reasons to feel that strongly. To share some of those reasons in a neutral, informative discussion would be more in the spirit of this site.
  - bgg123 9y ago
    There we go, that's a constructive comment. Here's a COOKIE.