4 ms·

love to see pg get more out of touch with every single passing day.

• BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  It's been pretty incredible to watch the transformation honestly. I can't recall what post it was earlier that made it pretty bare. I think it was his reinterpretation of "things that can't be said" to be the exact opposite of speaking truth to power, but instead was along the lines of "people in power are having to deal with consequences of their actions that their money can't save them from. And that's bad." Yeah and people without money/power also have to deal with the consequences of our actions. That's a normal facet of life. All the above is very loose of what he said and I honestly stopped paying attention to his posts and barely remember the details now. Someone else likely can make many corrections to what I wrote above. But honestly the plight of the billionaire gets even less empathy from me right now given what people are living through in 2020.
  • abvdasker 6y ago
    Yes, that was also the blog post which first raised alarm bells for me. The whole time I was reading it I got this sinking feeling. I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, why is PG being so coy here? What is it that he really wants to say but is afraid to? The fact that he thinks it would be too socially costly for him to say it means it might be pretty bad... I had my guesses then, and as his posts have become increasingly conservative I’m more confident than ever that I correctly identified the subtext of his words.
• dang 6y ago
  pg hasn't changed a bit, as far as I can tell. Surrounding conditions (e.g. the political and media climate) have changed a lot, plus there are the expectations people have from anyone they perceive as rich and famous. He ignores that kind of expectation, which pisses a lot of people off—but this is nothing new. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25233038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25233038
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    Not changing when your environment changes is how everyone who is out of touch ends up well, out of touch. If Genghis Khan was still around roaming the steppes pillaging I'd hardly excuse it with "he's independently minded and ignores people's expectations, it just pisses a lot of people off" This is btw another theme of the later batch of his pieces, implying what he's saying is valuable because he's such a maverick, has strong "wake up sheeple" vibes
    • dang 6y ago
      Ok, but if you want to counterfactualize pg that way, then we get no YC, no Arc, and no HN—which saws off the limb we're all sitting on.
  • kgog 6y ago
    That's called being out of touch.
    • dang 6y ago
      That's a mushy pejorative; it means whatever you want it to mean. You could just as easily say he "thinks for himself"—poof, now we have a mushy honorific.
• deleted 6y ago
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• strogonoff 6y ago
  A piece of writing everyone finds level-headed and making total sense is likely not worth reading as it's merely restating what’s on everyone’s mind. Your comment shows this article at least isn’t that (thus being the cue for me personally). You can’t write something really good without pissing at least some people off.
  • kgog 6y ago
    "haters gonna hate" is what egomaniacs who have no respect for others say when they know they are in the wrong but are too stubborn to accept their own shortcomings.
    • strogonoff 6y ago
      As does anyone contributing any new idea ever (apart from purely technical/scientific advancements).