8 ms·

Haters (2020)

52 points by zuhayeer 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hikingsimulator 5y ago
This reads like a piece about nothing: setting an arbitrary dichotomy to pontificate about it. Using such a broad stroke (who's to say that someone is uncritical, etc.?) is an iffy process. Beyond the armchair psychoanalysis of the so-called haters, casting people as such is an opportunity to cast aside actual criticism. And critics is what people with an audience and a privileged status (e.g. economic, social, or political) will, and should, garner. Power should come with its own criticism. This can be exemplified with the treatment of Musk' critics, who are more often than not labeled as haters. A quick, dirty solution that fits in today's social media driven PR environment.
wideareanetwork 5y ago
Presumably this is rising because of the topical current Basecamp saga. But I don’t think Basecamp is like the simple model put forward here by Paul Graham, who is saying “if you’re famous you get fanboys and their opposite and that’s just an outcome of being famous”. Basecamp and it’s founders have over many years taken extremely opinionated and contrarian positions, and it’s always been presented with an air of breathtakingly arrogant superiority. The tone of their communication has always to me seemed to be bursting with superiority and smugness. They haven’t just ended up with haters just because that’s what happens if you’re famous. They’ve ended up with haters because they almost appeared to actively be trying to create haters because they wanted to generate extreme opinions because it’s good publicity. And now finally Basecamp founders have taken yet another contrarian arrogant position but this time it’s fallen flat and backfired severely. And now many former fanboys are haters and there’s no goodwill and all there is, is haters.
- luckylion 5y ago
  > And now many former fanboys are haters and there’s no goodwill and all there is, is haters. That sounds like maybe they weren't fans, but rather were happy (and wanted to amplify) that their worldviews/political ideologies aligned, and now that that's not the case on some issue, they switch to hate (and want to see it burn). I don't think those were fans.
  - loopz 5y ago
    When relying on others' platforms, the ground can disappear below your feet very fast. Such vulnerability can quickly change sentiments.
tomhoward 5y ago
The context for how this has gotten back on the radar: Today, Suhail Doshi, founder/CEO of Mighty (and previously the founder/CEO of Mixpanel), tweeted [1]: This week I've witnessed some of the most rude, mean spirited, dismissive people. I suspect IRL they're much different. Meanwhile, there's been an outpouring of support, encouragement, and optimism to counter-act it all. My team & family appreciate it. All fuel for fire. I gather much of this happened in the HN thread [2], which included this gem [3]: This is like a parody of the current state of affairs in modern web development. Except it's actually serious. Sigh. I am so disappointed in our industry that tools like this even need to exist. It really makes me want to quit programming entirely I guess it's up to all of us to reflect on our reactions to new products/concepts, and consider what it says about our own place in the world, and exactly what kind of "help" we want to offer to those who are expending effort to try and make something better. [1] https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1388377957895315458 https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1388377957895315458 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957215 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960946
- mellosouls 5y ago
  This seems an unfair assessment - to consign those comments to coming from "haters" (though the one you quote is over the top, the first is fair comment to be debated), and not in keeping with the OP article here itself which is about those who attach themselves obsessively to particular people.
  - tomhoward 5y ago
    Nobody that saying everyone who questions or criticises is a hater. Just that there is an important difference between people who raise legitimate questions or objections and express them reasonably, vs saying they "root for [your] company to crash and burn on principle" and "hope [your company and others like it] fails and fails hard" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961051. The thread had its share of both. The top comment was reasonable and Suhail replied to it with an interesting perspective. PG's point is that the more successful you are, the more "haters" you'll attract, in addition to fanboys, reasonable supporters and reasonable critics, and that a key to surviving the rollercoaster of commercial success is being able to identify the haters from the rest and avoiding letting them hold you back from doing good work. EDIT: People are objecting to the sentence in the original version of my comment that the linked comment "wish[ed] for personal harm". Fair enough that that can be seen as an inflammatory interpretation. For what it's worth I consider people angrily wishing for your company to go bust, which can often lead to personal impoverishment and career/reputational damage to the founder to be equivalent to a wish for harm to them, but I don't need others to agree with that.
quanty 5y ago
This kind of hating is not restricted to famous persons. If you are in a software team and produce more valuable code than anyone else, you'll be resented and people will make your life difficult. I think in another essay pg writes that the popularity contest stops after high school. This is false, at least in 2021. It continues and is played by the same people with the same high school tactics. I suspect it is because the Internet has made it easy to connect and act like in high school. In the days of TV, one had to sit down and pen a physical hate-mail to send to a TV show host, which is more work and not coordinated with a hate mob.
- loopz 5y ago
  If you work and contribute with other people, instead of against them, there'll be negative reasons for resentment.
cupofcoffee 5y ago
PG got called out on his BS for his previous essay now cries because "haters". Very sloppy writing Paul, very lazy.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  This seems to be the 16th most recent essay on his site. http://paulgraham.com/articles.html http://paulgraham.com/articles.html
abhinav22 5y ago
Preface: I like Paul Graham’s work generally, not amazing but good (in particular his Lisp books). He has a gift of writing in an inspirational style, which I believe many enjoyed when reading his essays. He and his colleagues had a brilliant idea and execution when it came to ycombinator, and anybody who’s successful has done a lot more work behind the scenes that we would be aware of (in true HN fashion, we would say we could code up Viaweb in a day and it was right time, right place; but it’s hardly that simple and a huge disservice to their intelligence and hard work). That is to say, I’m not a hater by any regards. But there is little of substance in this article. It’s not an exaggeration that the whole article could be summarized by one line: “Haters, like fanboys, are likely to be obsessive and should be ignored”. And given it’s been reviewed by the following, it seems like they all are so detached from reality that they cannot objectively provide meaningful feedback to the article. > Thanks to Austen Allred, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Christine Ford, Daniel Gackle, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Elon Musk, Harj Taggar, and Peter Thiel for reading drafts of this. In my own analysis side, perhaps the article, being devoid of meaningful content, is more telling of the author and his peers - the use of third person, the constant mentions of fame and celebrity status and perhaps the preoccupation with haters (why else write an article) may be an indication that they are becoming caught in their own celebrity worship. It seems a celebrity worship culture continues to accelerate within mainstream conscious (Elon Musk’s tweets moving market prices for example), perhaps amplified by the scale offered by technology and the explosion of digital communication in the last 20-30 years. There will always be inequality, but I believe from basic scientific principles, the differences between so called “visionaries” and “leaders” is not that much vs the broader population and that more equality, more “biodiversity” or spreading of opportunities for intellectual and practical contributions vs. a top down “here’s what’s good for you” approach is undeniably good sense and one we should actively aim for. I.e. less attention / admiration of those at the top and more mutual respect and community building. Fight for more decentralization and peer to peer solutions - the best voice is everybody’s voice!
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > But there is little of substance in this article. It’s not an exaggeration that the whole article could be summarized by one line: “Haters, like fanboys, are likely to be obsessive and should be ignored”. The article does have more substance, for example exploring where the hate comes from. Of course, it does not seem relevant to you, because all you see from haters is a bit of flaming on forums. For famous people, this is a big pain point and worth the many words. > And given it’s been reviewed by the following, it seems like they all are so detached from reality that they cannot objectively provide meaningful feedback to the article. These are exactly the people having the problem! It's like calling someone to black to talk about discrimination against black people. This is very much a problem only these people get to feel the full extent of.
latexr 5y ago
> because anyone famous knows how random fame is. We’re on a website (founded by the author of the post!) where “how I became successful” posts abound. Western culture is filled with examples of famous entitled pricks who project themselves as the architects of their own success: Kanye West, Ellen DeGeneres, James Corden[1]… He has American citizenship; isn’t he familiar with the pervasive myth of the “self-made man, pulling himself by his bootstraps”? [1]: Plenty of stories online from staffers.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  It's both. Success requires hard work and lot of luck. Mere hard work is not enough -- there are millions of hard-working people living paycheck to paycheck. Successful people are proud of their hard work, and usually they are right. But the smart ones among them notice that they worked equally hard at different projects A, B, C, and while project A was a success, projects B and C have failed, for reasons unrelated to how hard they worked, often pure luck. So they can imagine an equally hard-working person who just got unlucky with all their projects. It's as if in return for your hard work you got lottery tickets. No hard work, no tickets, no money. But sometimes it's also lot of hard work, many tickets, and still no money. Maybe the arrogant successful people are those who succeeded at their first project, so they believe the relation between hard work and success is automatic? Or maybe people who had enough of safety net, so they knew they can keep trying over and over again until they succeed?
mellosouls 5y ago
Much of this article seems like an accurate (if not very original) assessment of a particular type and the fanboy flipside, but perhaps a little passive-aggressive, like pg is venting a little (which is understandable as he will have had their guns directed at him many times). I do think though there is probably a hate/love spectrum rather than the dichotomy presented here; but as ever its the extremes that generate most of the noise and toxicity.
GoodJokes 5y ago
This essay is not good. The writing and meaninglessness and is why people like Paul Graham have haters. Founder worship. ITS SO LOGical.
ArtWomb 5y ago
>>> I could see myself being a Wodehouse fanboy Same. But his critics loathe him. Derided as un-literary fluff. That "elitism" is rapidly breaking down. A direct result of consumer internet applications at scale, as predicted in the early idealistic writing about the web. Any prestige-based institution is finding itself in competition with a cloud service. And it's not just young people tuning into TikTok instead of CNBC for stock tips. The entire concept of fame is becoming "based" ;)
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  So, what does "based" means ?
Traster 5y ago
It doesn't seem very consistent to go out, canvas the opinion of all your celebrity mates and write an article and publish it about haters with the key take-away being "ignore the haters". I also think there are some pretty dumb assertions here - successful people aren't mean for example. I would say there are good examples of mean successful people that PG got to read this draft, they're just not mean to Paul, so it doesn't count, they're not mean in a disney villain sense of the word. To me the far more interesting question isn't what to do about haters, it's how do you distinguish between haters and people who have a genuine point to make. Elon Musk attracts a lot of attention, he has a lot of haters, he also does a lot of things that are worthy of real criticism and he should listen to that criticism. It's a question PG just completely fails to address, there's a certain kind of motivated reasoning here - I'm great and all the people who criticise me are just haters and they're bad and they're mean and they'll never amount to anything in life etc. My suspicion is that Paul doesn't actually know many haters, and he hasn't put much effort into getting to know what's actually going on, it comes across very much like this is just a nice way for him to think about the world - the nasty people are bad people and through some cosmic justice they're all unsuccessful. In reality, the world is far more complex, and the framework of thinking about this that PG is putting forward probably doesn't do much to actually reflect that complexity.
- meowface 5y ago
  This is one of pg's most-criticized essays (each time I've seen it posted here or on reddit), but I actually really like it. This is an essay intended for a specific audience and narrow purpose. I think he intentionally doesn't add any caveats about how to deal with criticism in general. I think he knew there'd be a deluge of responses like yours; you're not the intended audience. It's not about criticism or critique. It's about a model of haters. It'd be a waste of space to waffle on about ways to handle feedback and how to distinguish valid and invalid criticism, etc. He's talking past and above all of that. I'd find it condescending and tiring if he did do that; obviously he agrees with what you're saying here. He doesn't need to state the obvious. If you've ever been a public figure or spent a lot of time seeing how public figures are discussed (especially online), the "fanboy" and the "hater" are very real archetypes. These aren't people praising or criticizing you. It's a certain kind of pathological personality type. And if you're the kind of person who's not used to having either, this is just a little guide to let you know it's very normal. It's just some advice he's giving out to people who've found themselves becoming public figures. Also, at the end, he does address your point to an extent: >The mistake here is to think of the hater as someone you have a dispute with. When you have a dispute with someone, it's usually a good idea to try to understand why they're upset and then fix things if you can. Disputes are distracting. But it's a false analogy to think of a hater as someone you have a dispute with. It's an understandable mistake, if you've never encountered haters before. He's trying to help people not think they're doing something wrong by refusing to engage with this particular kind of individual, because their natural tendency will probably be to get bogged down trying to understand and address what they think is a dispute. And he additionally includes some of the should-be-obvious stuff in the footnotes (where I think they more naturally belong).
avocade 5y ago
Evergreen. Good advice for keeping sane if you have any degree of persona on the internet. This will only get worse in the next 5 (please not 10+!) years as haters truly and the Clash of Cultures go mainstream. But after the perspective is gained, we will have a more productive discourse online. ”Haters are just fanboys with the sign switched.”
FlyingSnake 5y ago
"If you're not getting your ass kicked in the arena, your opinions don't bother me" IMO This is the only heuristics should be applied to Internet criticism. This article reads as if they're unable to handle criticism and instead of self reflection they create false dichotomies like fanboy/hater.
samirillian 5y ago
Hate hate hate https://www.cc.com/video/v64ifb/chappelle-s-show-the-playa-haters-ball https://www.cc.com/video/v64ifb/chappelle-s-show-the-playa-h...
beej71 5y ago
The way I see it, if you make a thing, some people are bound to hate it and tell you how bad you suck. Far more useful than whether someone is a hater or a fanboy is the amount of actionable information in the feedback. Sometimes suggestions are wrapped up nice with grateful suggestions for improvement. Other times they're embedded in vitriolic tirades. Still other times, there's no actionable information at all. ("This sucks! You suck!") But if someone tells you that you suck and should quit because this and that needs improving in your product... hey--that's free advice about improving your product, and maybe it's worth something. Once you stop thinking about if someone's a hater and start thinking about how much help (or not) they're giving you, everything gets a lot easier. If a hater lashes out with no actionable information, then you don't need to take action. You knew they were out there, no big deal. You alone are responsible for your reaction. But If a hater says you need to improve something, and they're right, improve it and make your product better. And don't forget to thank them--they just did work for you for free, after all. :)

Haters (2020)

52 points by zuhayeer 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

This reads like a piece about nothing: setting an arbitrary dichotomy to pontificate about it. Using such a broad stroke (who's to say that someone is uncritical, etc.?) is an iffy process. Beyond the armchair psychoanalysis of the so-called haters, casting people as such is an opportunity to cast aside actual criticism. And critics is what people with an audience and a privileged status (e.g. economic, social, or political) will, and should, garner. Power should come with its own criticism. This can be exemplified with the treatment of Musk' critics, who are more often than not labeled as haters. A quick, dirty solution that fits in today's social media driven PR environment.

wideareanetwork 5y ago

Presumably this is rising because of the topical current Basecamp saga. But I don’t think Basecamp is like the simple model put forward here by Paul Graham, who is saying “if you’re famous you get fanboys and their opposite and that’s just an outcome of being famous”. Basecamp and it’s founders have over many years taken extremely opinionated and contrarian positions, and it’s always been presented with an air of breathtakingly arrogant superiority. The tone of their communication has always to me seemed to be bursting with superiority and smugness. They haven’t just ended up with haters just because that’s what happens if you’re famous. They’ve ended up with haters because they almost appeared to actively be trying to create haters because they wanted to generate extreme opinions because it’s good publicity. And now finally Basecamp founders have taken yet another contrarian arrogant position but this time it’s fallen flat and backfired severely. And now many former fanboys are haters and there’s no goodwill and all there is, is haters.

luckylion 5y ago
> And now many former fanboys are haters and there’s no goodwill and all there is, is haters. That sounds like maybe they weren't fans, but rather were happy (and wanted to amplify) that their worldviews/political ideologies aligned, and now that that's not the case on some issue, they switch to hate (and want to see it burn). I don't think those were fans.
- loopz 5y ago
  When relying on others' platforms, the ground can disappear below your feet very fast. Such vulnerability can quickly change sentiments.

tomhoward 5y ago

The context for how this has gotten back on the radar: Today, Suhail Doshi, founder/CEO of Mighty (and previously the founder/CEO of Mixpanel), tweeted [1]: This week I've witnessed some of the most rude, mean spirited, dismissive people. I suspect IRL they're much different. Meanwhile, there's been an outpouring of support, encouragement, and optimism to counter-act it all. My team & family appreciate it. All fuel for fire. I gather much of this happened in the HN thread [2], which included this gem [3]: This is like a parody of the current state of affairs in modern web development. Except it's actually serious. Sigh. I am so disappointed in our industry that tools like this even need to exist. It really makes me want to quit programming entirely I guess it's up to all of us to reflect on our reactions to new products/concepts, and consider what it says about our own place in the world, and exactly what kind of "help" we want to offer to those who are expending effort to try and make something better. [1] https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1388377957895315458 https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1388377957895315458 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957215 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26960946

mellosouls 5y ago
This seems an unfair assessment - to consign those comments to coming from "haters" (though the one you quote is over the top, the first is fair comment to be debated), and not in keeping with the OP article here itself which is about those who attach themselves obsessively to particular people.
- tomhoward 5y ago
  Nobody that saying everyone who questions or criticises is a hater. Just that there is an important difference between people who raise legitimate questions or objections and express them reasonably, vs saying they "root for [your] company to crash and burn on principle" and "hope [your company and others like it] fails and fails hard" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961051. The thread had its share of both. The top comment was reasonable and Suhail replied to it with an interesting perspective. PG's point is that the more successful you are, the more "haters" you'll attract, in addition to fanboys, reasonable supporters and reasonable critics, and that a key to surviving the rollercoaster of commercial success is being able to identify the haters from the rest and avoiding letting them hold you back from doing good work. EDIT: People are objecting to the sentence in the original version of my comment that the linked comment "wish[ed] for personal harm". Fair enough that that can be seen as an inflammatory interpretation. For what it's worth I consider people angrily wishing for your company to go bust, which can often lead to personal impoverishment and career/reputational damage to the founder to be equivalent to a wish for harm to them, but I don't need others to agree with that.

quanty 5y ago

This kind of hating is not restricted to famous persons. If you are in a software team and produce more valuable code than anyone else, you'll be resented and people will make your life difficult. I think in another essay pg writes that the popularity contest stops after high school. This is false, at least in 2021. It continues and is played by the same people with the same high school tactics. I suspect it is because the Internet has made it easy to connect and act like in high school. In the days of TV, one had to sit down and pen a physical hate-mail to send to a TV show host, which is more work and not coordinated with a hate mob.

loopz 5y ago
If you work and contribute with other people, instead of against them, there'll be negative reasons for resentment.

cupofcoffee 5y ago

PG got called out on his BS for his previous essay now cries because "haters". Very sloppy writing Paul, very lazy.

yesenadam 5y ago
This seems to be the 16th most recent essay on his site. http://paulgraham.com/articles.html http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

abhinav22 5y ago

Preface: I like Paul Graham’s work generally, not amazing but good (in particular his Lisp books). He has a gift of writing in an inspirational style, which I believe many enjoyed when reading his essays. He and his colleagues had a brilliant idea and execution when it came to ycombinator, and anybody who’s successful has done a lot more work behind the scenes that we would be aware of (in true HN fashion, we would say we could code up Viaweb in a day and it was right time, right place; but it’s hardly that simple and a huge disservice to their intelligence and hard work). That is to say, I’m not a hater by any regards. But there is little of substance in this article. It’s not an exaggeration that the whole article could be summarized by one line: “Haters, like fanboys, are likely to be obsessive and should be ignored”. And given it’s been reviewed by the following, it seems like they all are so detached from reality that they cannot objectively provide meaningful feedback to the article. > Thanks to Austen Allred, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Christine Ford, Daniel Gackle, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Elon Musk, Harj Taggar, and Peter Thiel for reading drafts of this. In my own analysis side, perhaps the article, being devoid of meaningful content, is more telling of the author and his peers - the use of third person, the constant mentions of fame and celebrity status and perhaps the preoccupation with haters (why else write an article) may be an indication that they are becoming caught in their own celebrity worship. It seems a celebrity worship culture continues to accelerate within mainstream conscious (Elon Musk’s tweets moving market prices for example), perhaps amplified by the scale offered by technology and the explosion of digital communication in the last 20-30 years. There will always be inequality, but I believe from basic scientific principles, the differences between so called “visionaries” and “leaders” is not that much vs the broader population and that more equality, more “biodiversity” or spreading of opportunities for intellectual and practical contributions vs. a top down “here’s what’s good for you” approach is undeniably good sense and one we should actively aim for. I.e. less attention / admiration of those at the top and more mutual respect and community building. Fight for more decentralization and peer to peer solutions - the best voice is everybody’s voice!

Sebb767 5y ago
> But there is little of substance in this article. It’s not an exaggeration that the whole article could be summarized by one line: “Haters, like fanboys, are likely to be obsessive and should be ignored”. The article does have more substance, for example exploring where the hate comes from. Of course, it does not seem relevant to you, because all you see from haters is a bit of flaming on forums. For famous people, this is a big pain point and worth the many words. > And given it’s been reviewed by the following, it seems like they all are so detached from reality that they cannot objectively provide meaningful feedback to the article. These are exactly the people having the problem! It's like calling someone to black to talk about discrimination against black people. This is very much a problem only these people get to feel the full extent of.

latexr 5y ago

> because anyone famous knows how random fame is. We’re on a website (founded by the author of the post!) where “how I became successful” posts abound. Western culture is filled with examples of famous entitled pricks who project themselves as the architects of their own success: Kanye West, Ellen DeGeneres, James Corden[1]… He has American citizenship; isn’t he familiar with the pervasive myth of the “self-made man, pulling himself by his bootstraps”? [1]: Plenty of stories online from staffers.

Viliam1234 5y ago
It's both. Success requires hard work and lot of luck. Mere hard work is not enough -- there are millions of hard-working people living paycheck to paycheck. Successful people are proud of their hard work, and usually they are right. But the smart ones among them notice that they worked equally hard at different projects A, B, C, and while project A was a success, projects B and C have failed, for reasons unrelated to how hard they worked, often pure luck. So they can imagine an equally hard-working person who just got unlucky with all their projects. It's as if in return for your hard work you got lottery tickets. No hard work, no tickets, no money. But sometimes it's also lot of hard work, many tickets, and still no money. Maybe the arrogant successful people are those who succeeded at their first project, so they believe the relation between hard work and success is automatic? Or maybe people who had enough of safety net, so they knew they can keep trying over and over again until they succeed?

mellosouls 5y ago

Much of this article seems like an accurate (if not very original) assessment of a particular type and the fanboy flipside, but perhaps a little passive-aggressive, like pg is venting a little (which is understandable as he will have had their guns directed at him many times). I do think though there is probably a hate/love spectrum rather than the dichotomy presented here; but as ever its the extremes that generate most of the noise and toxicity.

GoodJokes 5y ago

This essay is not good. The writing and meaninglessness and is why people like Paul Graham have haters. Founder worship. ITS SO LOGical.

ArtWomb 5y ago

>>> I could see myself being a Wodehouse fanboy Same. But his critics loathe him. Derided as un-literary fluff. That "elitism" is rapidly breaking down. A direct result of consumer internet applications at scale, as predicted in the early idealistic writing about the web. Any prestige-based institution is finding itself in competition with a cloud service. And it's not just young people tuning into TikTok instead of CNBC for stock tips. The entire concept of fame is becoming "based" ;)

BlueTemplar 5y ago
So, what does "based" means ?

Traster 5y ago

It doesn't seem very consistent to go out, canvas the opinion of all your celebrity mates and write an article and publish it about haters with the key take-away being "ignore the haters". I also think there are some pretty dumb assertions here - successful people aren't mean for example. I would say there are good examples of mean successful people that PG got to read this draft, they're just not mean to Paul, so it doesn't count, they're not mean in a disney villain sense of the word. To me the far more interesting question isn't what to do about haters, it's how do you distinguish between haters and people who have a genuine point to make. Elon Musk attracts a lot of attention, he has a lot of haters, he also does a lot of things that are worthy of real criticism and he should listen to that criticism. It's a question PG just completely fails to address, there's a certain kind of motivated reasoning here - I'm great and all the people who criticise me are just haters and they're bad and they're mean and they'll never amount to anything in life etc. My suspicion is that Paul doesn't actually know many haters, and he hasn't put much effort into getting to know what's actually going on, it comes across very much like this is just a nice way for him to think about the world - the nasty people are bad people and through some cosmic justice they're all unsuccessful. In reality, the world is far more complex, and the framework of thinking about this that PG is putting forward probably doesn't do much to actually reflect that complexity.

meowface 5y ago
This is one of pg's most-criticized essays (each time I've seen it posted here or on reddit), but I actually really like it. This is an essay intended for a specific audience and narrow purpose. I think he intentionally doesn't add any caveats about how to deal with criticism in general. I think he knew there'd be a deluge of responses like yours; you're not the intended audience. It's not about criticism or critique. It's about a model of haters. It'd be a waste of space to waffle on about ways to handle feedback and how to distinguish valid and invalid criticism, etc. He's talking past and above all of that. I'd find it condescending and tiring if he did do that; obviously he agrees with what you're saying here. He doesn't need to state the obvious. If you've ever been a public figure or spent a lot of time seeing how public figures are discussed (especially online), the "fanboy" and the "hater" are very real archetypes. These aren't people praising or criticizing you. It's a certain kind of pathological personality type. And if you're the kind of person who's not used to having either, this is just a little guide to let you know it's very normal. It's just some advice he's giving out to people who've found themselves becoming public figures. Also, at the end, he does address your point to an extent: >The mistake here is to think of the hater as someone you have a dispute with. When you have a dispute with someone, it's usually a good idea to try to understand why they're upset and then fix things if you can. Disputes are distracting. But it's a false analogy to think of a hater as someone you have a dispute with. It's an understandable mistake, if you've never encountered haters before. He's trying to help people not think they're doing something wrong by refusing to engage with this particular kind of individual, because their natural tendency will probably be to get bogged down trying to understand and address what they think is a dispute. And he additionally includes some of the should-be-obvious stuff in the footnotes (where I think they more naturally belong).

avocade 5y ago

Evergreen. Good advice for keeping sane if you have any degree of persona on the internet. This will only get worse in the next 5 (please not 10+!) years as haters truly and the Clash of Cultures go mainstream. But after the perspective is gained, we will have a more productive discourse online. ”Haters are just fanboys with the sign switched.”

FlyingSnake 5y ago

"If you're not getting your ass kicked in the arena, your opinions don't bother me" IMO This is the only heuristics should be applied to Internet criticism. This article reads as if they're unable to handle criticism and instead of self reflection they create false dichotomies like fanboy/hater.

samirillian 5y ago

Hate hate hate https://www.cc.com/video/v64ifb/chappelle-s-show-the-playa-haters-ball https://www.cc.com/video/v64ifb/chappelle-s-show-the-playa-h...

beej71 5y ago

The way I see it, if you make a thing, some people are bound to hate it and tell you how bad you suck. Far more useful than whether someone is a hater or a fanboy is the amount of actionable information in the feedback. Sometimes suggestions are wrapped up nice with grateful suggestions for improvement. Other times they're embedded in vitriolic tirades. Still other times, there's no actionable information at all. ("This sucks! You suck!") But if someone tells you that you suck and should quit because this and that needs improving in your product... hey--that's free advice about improving your product, and maybe it's worth something. Once you stop thinking about if someone's a hater and start thinking about how much help (or not) they're giving you, everything gets a lot easier. If a hater lashes out with no actionable information, then you don't need to take action. You knew they were out there, no big deal. You alone are responsible for your reaction. But If a hater says you need to improve something, and they're right, improve it and make your product better. And don't forget to thank them--they just did work for you for free, after all. :)