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Why the lucky stiff: when you don't create things...
- jrockway 18y agoMost Mac users need to read this. Choosing to use something is different from creating that thing.
- prospero 18y agoThis is going to be voted down into oblivion, but he's pretty much right; too many people treat being "creative" as a lifestyle. Having vague artistic or musical aspirations doesn't make you creative, creating something does.
- geebee 18y agoYeah, I think we've all met the guy who is so busy being an artist that he forgets to create art. Ditto for programmers. The Mac thing was a cheap shot, though.
- unalone 18y agoYeah. I'd guess there are just as many people using Linux and not getting any coding done. That's a flaw with humanity in general - not in Apple users. Similarly, I'd bet that some people spend all their time using HN and not getting any startups done.
- silentbicycle 18y agoSome people use Linux and focus on e.g. learning about advanced networking or systems administration stuff over programming. Or because nothing else works on their old hardware, etc. Not everybody uses it because they're a programmer.
- unalone 18y agoAnd some people use Apple because they want to write music with GarageBand, or because they're looking for a good way to edit their films, or because they're interested in designing iPhone apps. What I'm trying to say is, don't pigeonhole an OS's users.
- silentbicycle 18y agoAgreed. As for stereotyping Mac users as "creative" types, though, that has been part of Apple's marketing. I definitely agree that it was a cheap shot, but it's not exactly coming out of nowhere.
- axod 18y agoI think you're conveniently forgetting that most people choose a Mac so they have more time to create stuff, rather than messing with their computer.
- ardit33 18y agothe biggest condesenting pricks i have known usually use macs. It is rare to see windows users sneer at other people, just b/c of their choice of OS. Remember, not everybody has 2K to spend in a computer, and if you are a student and do, your priorities are kind of backwards. You can save a 1k by bying a decent PC, so you have 1k of savings, and one month more of runtime to work on a basement for your idea or startup to flourish. And I Bet you money, that all you need to spend is about 1 DAY in tinckering around, until you make both Windows and Linux as usable as your Mac. If you can survive with 1k a month (I could in Cambridge), you just saved about 29 days to work on your startup, if you had to buy the pricey macbook pro. And, I have Macos, Windows XP, and a Linux box at home, and i can say that while MacOs is the more polished and better looking than all, it is not necessary the fastes for me. I find myself working much faster in XP or Linux. And all of those that say you have to spend lots of money $$ into a good laptop in order to be able to get working, well, if you can't code in a $1,000 laptop, you probably can't in a $2,000 one.
- Zev 18y agoIf you work faster in $OSChoiceOne instead of $OSChoiceTwo, great. Use whatever works for you. I wouldn't expect you to do anything less. I would think less of you if you chose to use $OSChoiceTwo anyway, just to be popular. Which i think is the real problem here: Choosing something due to its perception and thinking it will make you work better instead of finding something that actually makes you work better. And just to note, not every Mac costs $2000. Just like not every PC sells for < $1000. The Macbook costs $1100 (even less if you're a student or have an ADC discount) and an Alienware laptop from Dell costs $2100.
- ardit33 18y agoSorry, but the macbook is a piece of crap. Flimsy as hell, and it's keyboard is unusable. I know this, b/c I was shoping for a mac a couple of months ago. You have to go for MCB Pro in order to get anything usable with macs, for which you have to shell at least 2k. Or go the iMac route. Either way, it is much more expensive than you can get out of pc.
- shiranaihito 18y agoHow do you even connect the dots from what Why said to using a Mac? Since when does using a Mac mean you're an aspiring artist who fails to actually create anything?
- gunderson 18y agoIt's the idea that the person sitting there working on a mac must be creative b/c he has the good taste to own a mac, the machine of choice of graphic designers, marketers, and other creative types.
- unalone 18y agoSee, maybe it's where I hail from (New Jersey), but I've never seen the mindset that Apple = creative. Me and other Mac users talk a lot about our Macs because a lot of us are just finding out how to do stuff, and if somebody else brings up the stereotype of artsy-fartsy we jump into character... but I haven't seen anybody walking around with this "I own a Mac" self-importance. There's a lot of "Boy am I glad I have a Mac" mentality, but that's about it. Actually, the most pretentious lad I know uses a Windows because he's too artsy to use something that's accepted by the artistic majority.
- gunderson 18y agoThat's hilarious... the guy who uses windows...
- qwph 18y agoSince when does using a Mac mean you're an aspiring artist who fails to actually create anything? That would be when someone makes a generalization. I'd suggest that it's always dangerous to generalize when talking about people's lifestyles and habits.
- diego 18y agoYour stereotype of "most Mac users" may be a bit dated. Lots of people own Macs for reasons that have nothing to do with being (or appearing) creative.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- marijn 18y agoRandomly hating on mac users isn't all that creative either. (Disclosure: I'm not a mac user.)
- unalone 18y agoOf course it isn't. That's why Mac insulters rarely use Macs. (WAY-oh!) In all seriousness, though, we do it back to the Linux people. So a lot of this flack is just part of tradition.
- brianmckenzie 18y agoI really needed to hear this today. Thanks!
- jodrellblank 18y agoSketchy, Fitful Why
- xenoterracide 18y ago11 points? 11 points!!!! man I'm really thinking about leaving this site. people ask questions on here and sometimes they don't get past 1... (when they are legit) and things like this... get 11!!
- aasarava 18y agoWhen I was a writer for Wired News, it was always exasperating to see the previous day's stats and find that the story with the word "iPod" in the title got 5 times the pageviews of the "hard stories" on topics like privacy breaches or environmental waste. But them's the breaks. It's not a vote on the True Merit of a submission -- it's just a nod to something you happen to have found interesting that day.
- rewind 18y agoIf you're going to leave, just leave. There's no need to waste our time telling us about it. I'm not trying to be (overly) harsh, but I'm pretty sure there are far more people than just me who are tired of wasting time reading comments from people threatening to leave or bitching about a post that got too high on the homepage.
- hugh 18y agoI think bitching about things getting too modded-up is a good story-downvote substitute. I think we need more of it.
- froo 18y agoI know I'm going to get voted down for this, but your comment is fair - I was going to vote it up until I realised its current points.... 11 points - irony is a wonderful thing :)
- axod 18y agoWell that was a waste of time clicking... I feel empty and used. Who would have thought it'd come to sharing fortune cookie soundbites.
- cypress-hill 18y agobut i tend to create only to satisfy my tastes...
- tamersalama 18y agoNot sure I'm getting thick or the css work is eating my brain. I think he meant "confined" rather than "defined".
- hugh 18y agoThis would be better if it were lengthened out to a proper article. It would probably still sound pretentious, self-important and platitudinous, though.
- seregine 18y agoI wish most of the blog posts I see linked here would condense their message like this, rather than rambling self-indulgently.
- smakz 18y agoSteve Yegge, we're looking at you.
- staticshock 18y agohe wrote about that, actually: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-size-does-matter.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-... i think his main point was that, despite popular opinion, more people will read the longer articles, and more people will take them seriously and remember them. to quote: In short, I think long blogs have better survival characteristics: greater reach and greater impact.
- jonknee 18y agoThanks for the summary, I stopped reading too quickly to grok that.
- whacked_new 18y agoReads like an unsatisfying self-justification to me. I think people read his posts not because they are long, but simply because he's a pretty decent writer with a pretty engaging style. Nevertheless, his style entails a lot of extraneous, decorative statements that get annoying when you're looking for raw information. That kind of style works fine with, say, Violent Acres, because you know what to expect. But Yegge also writes semi technical material with the same style! In this regard, Eliezer Yudkowsky does a good job IMHO: long, but succinct.
- eloop 18y agoI think the message wasn't "write concise blogs", it was create rather than critique. Yegge could be accused of doing both copiously.
- gunderson 18y agoI am not a huge fan of cartoon foxes, but he really nails it with that tweet. Maybe cartoon foxes aren't so bad after all.
- jamesbritt 18y ago"you become defined by your tastes rather than ability." Oh? How so? " your tastes only narrow & exclude people." Again: How so? (Yes, these are semi-rhetorical) I mean, I'm all for creating over not creating, but this sounds like feel-good but completely unsupported assertions. The sort of thing people want to believe, perhaps because people want to see themselves as creative. (Also, are there any people who do not in fact create anything?)
- kaens 18y agoFor the first, I know that it's true for me that if I don't actively create things, my ability stagnates. If I actively create things right at my skill level, I stay the same, and if I actively try to learn new methods to deal with problems my ability increases. If my ability were to stagnate far enough, all I would have left would be opinions about the methods that made up my previous ability. I could probably still argue in their favor, but not do much else than that. For the second, it's a bit vague to me. I guess if you don't have much in the way of ability, you may start defining yourself by your opinions - which can lead to narrow-mindedness and exclusion because you are stuck in a mindset where your opinion is "correct" and have not experienced the other side of the debate, whatever it may be. I'm pretty sketchy on my guess on that second one. "I mean, I'm all for creating over not creating, but this sounds like feel-good but completely unsupported assertions." You may be right, but I have the feeling that it has more to do with the format of twitter than anything else. "(Also, are there any people who do not in fact create anything?)" Unless you're speaking of the obvious physical limitations on "not creating anything", yes - tons of them.
- 13ren 18y agoYour tastes only narrow But even if they do narrow, the more you look, the more you see... a world in a grain of sand.
- brandonkm 18y agoI really like that quote. Probably one of the more insightful quotes i've read recently. If more people created things that were a fan of the scene in which they made something would only improve. On the flip side, you have to acknowledge the quality of the creations, which can only improve with the number of creative contributions.