4 ms·

I guess I'm going to get flamed for this, but if I may offer some unsolicited advice on business growth: tone down your personal Instagram a bit, to be a bit mo

• joeberon 5y ago
  Definitely agree, it's just not a good look.
• dandellion 5y ago
  I was curious so I checked it out. While I'm not American, and where I live that's not a thing, and I personally don't like it, it would seem kind of ridiculous to decide to use a service or not based on that Instagram.
  • toolz 5y ago
    Yeah, the comment had me curious as well. It's literally just a guy posting pictures of his guns and family. The most dramatic thing on there was the bio part that said "politically incorrect" while appearing to have nothing political on the page. Are pictures of guns offensive outside of the US? I realize growing up in the US with a family of hunters has me desensitized, but I can't imagine being upset at someone whose hobby is going to the shooting range.
    • danieldk 5y ago
      Are pictures of guns offensive outside of the US? I realize growing up in the US with a family of hunters has me desensitized, but I can't imagine being upset at someone whose hobby is going to the shooting range. Yes. The sentiment of many people in Western Europe [1] is that weapon-carrying Americans are at the very least somewhat lunatic. Big disclaimer: this is not a value judgement, this is not a discussion I want to immerse myself in now ;). Just an observation. [1] I don't know about other parts of the world.
      • stavros 5y ago
        Eastern Europe here, I wouldn't be comfortable around actual guns, and I think it's a bit of a weird hobby, but I wouldn't think too much of seeing guns on someone's Instagram. I haven't seen OP's IG account, but unless it's one of those "confederate flag, don't tread on me, guns don't kill people" starter-pack extremists, it's just another hobby to me.
    • ido 5y ago
      Pictures of so many firearms would definitely make me think this guy is eccentric at best and dangerous at worst. Combined with the articles suggesting "taxes are theft" and that latin quote on the instagram I'd not be enthusiastic about sending business their way. EDIT: I wanted to add that it's also the type of guns in these pics (surrounding a post of only the word "disobey")- these aren't hunting rifles but guns that are more commonly used on people (AR-15, pistols). That doesn't look like someone about to go deer hunting.
      • naasking 5y ago
        > these aren't hunting rifles but guns that are more commonly used on people (AR-15, pistols) What a weird thing to think. Those guns are most commonly used on gun range targets, not people, even in countries with high rates of gun violence.
      • collegeburner 5y ago
        The idea that an AR is "commonly used on people" is bs. It's widely used as a hunting rifle or for recreational shooting and is the most common rifle in America. That's also not as many guns as you think, looks like he's swapping the furniture on his AR a bunch of times, ditto for the Glock 19. And things like "sic semper tyrannus" and "taxation is theft" are pretty common among American libertarians. The "disobey" refers to a really awful rule the ATF is trying to make that would reclassify many braced pistols as SBRs overnight, and since SBRs are title II firearms, having one unregistered would make felons of people who bought entirely legal firearms.
        • ido 5y ago
          Be that as it may but as a non-American my first reaction would have definitely been that at best this guy is a survivalist and at worst someone planning a shooting (and in-between someone who would have participated in stuff like the January capitol attack). I'm living and have lived in countries without widespread gun usage (Germany and Austria) and I've never seen people carrying AR-15 or guns with a similar "military" look around here (I have seen hunting rifles) and have previously lived in a country with widespread gun usage (Israel) and the only people I've seen carrying guns like those there were soldiers or police officers.
    • nicoburns 5y ago
      > Are pictures of guns offensive outside of the US? I'm not sure about offensive, but as a UK citizen I mostly associate guns with crime and violence. I don't know anyone who publicly owns a gun. For the most part police don't have guns here. Typically the only time I see a gun is when I go to the airport (airport security police do have guns). I'm aware of how cultural norms are different in the US, and as such the owners being into guns certainly wouldn't stop me interacting with a business. But it might well make me question their political/moral judgements.
      • Aeolun 5y ago
        Guns as devices scare the crap out of me, but are super fun to shoot on a range (probably because they’re so scary, kind of like a legal forbidden fruit?) Until something jams and you need to fiddle with a loaded weapon to get the round/magazine out. That said, I like living in a country where obtaining one requires me to go through some qualification process and training.
        • stavros 5y ago
          I went to a range when I was in the US. It was, indeed, lots of fun, but also kind of scary, because we could shoot semi-automatic M16s (or something like that, I don't know much about guns), whose only purpose seemed to be to kill people. We were following all precautions (and more), and it was great until one of the shells bounced on the wall and fell in my shoe, and I started hopping around in pain with a loaded handgun and my finger still on the trigger. That's when I realized it's too easy for something to go wrong and I didn't need to kill my best friend by accident over some fun.
    • i_am_proteus 5y ago
      Rather than look at it as offensive vs. inoffensive, I'd say that posting photographs of firearms and identifying yourself as a firearms enthusiast signals certain political views. The same way I suppose that posting a bunch of anti-firearm rhetoric would signal some different political views. I've always kept my politics out of my businesses, because I've thought that whatever benefit I might get from a strong political signal (attracting like-minded clients) gets washed out, or worse, by the people I'd alienate. These days, it seems more likely that a political signal alienates potential clients than it does attract any. All that said, it took me a hot minute to hunt down Ezekiel's instagram dot com web page because it doesn't appear to be linked from his business web site. So it more or less seems like that's personal content he doesn't really associate with his business. And if you have to go out of your way a bit to find a potential business associate's personal social media, it seems like that's intentional to try to keep the business and personal sides of life sort of separate, to whatever extent that's possible in current year. And if you go looking into people's personal lives, well, I guess it ought not surprise when you find that people have families and political views and interests and passions. You might not agree with everything you find. But if you had to go looking for it, it all might be on you.
    • abcd_f 5y ago
      Not offensive, but weird and puzzling, and not in a good way. Also it’s not the pictures per se, but the need to make one’s affection for guns public.
      • bettysdiagnose 5y ago
        Exactly, if guns are just tools, I'd be about enamoured with the idea of doing business with this chap as I would with someone with an obsession with swords or suicide vests. At best, boring.
    • toomanyducks 5y ago
      Reading this, I feel less offended (really, I don't understand the use of that word in politics) and more scared and threatened. I'm a :sparkles: gender minority :sparkles: so politics can get really directly influential really quickly, and the picture of a gun-owning person who thinks taxes are theft is less than encouraging: that type of ideology usually does not account for people like me's existence. It's possible that it's just a hobby (heavy benefit of the doubt here), but it reads like a political statement against my ability to live freely. Anyway, you asked: that's why I'd be scared to put much into the OP's hands.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • toolz 5y ago
        thanks for the reply - no idea why you're getting downvoted as this strong contrast of perception is what I was interested in hearing about. Do you feel like your fear is rational? Statistically my gut instinct would be to think you have virtually zero chance of being physically harmed by a business owner with a family, regardless of how many guns they own. Not that I would discount your fear, just wondering if this is something more akin to my fear of heights as opposed to my fear of driving through a high violent crime rate neighborhood at night with my gas tank indicator saying "empty".
• ritchiea 5y ago
  Agree it’s not a great or neutral look for all audiences. Why not set it to private?
• ezekg 5y ago
  Well, this is weird and very off-topic. I keep that page personal and separate from my business, which I'm allowed to do. I don't really care if I've lost a customer or 2 over my personal beliefs -- my business is growing just fine, thank you. My customers do trust me.
  • querez 5y ago
    In this blog (which is hosted on the page of your business), you're equating taxes to theft. Which in my mind is a very weird look for someone offering any kind of non-shady business. Especially in a SaaS (which, like taxes, are something you pay for so someone else can provide a service you care for but are unable/unwilling to provide yourself).
    • ezekg 5y ago
      It's a joke. I understand politics are at an all time high for polarization, but I think people need to lighten up.
      • querez 5y ago
        I understand that it was meant as a joke. I'm just saying that it might come across as a very unprofessional one to some people (it certainly did so to me).
      • slothtrop 5y ago
        I read it thinking you were completely serious fwiw. I can see the angle that it could deter people, but that is probably overstated. At any rate, being careful about online presence is advice anyone should heed.
    • antonzabirko 5y ago
      Taxes ARE theft, they get completely misappropriated. The 25% that goes back in the pockets of businesses is essentially stolen.
    • dang 5y ago
      I suspect that this is one of those areas where cross-national/regional/cultural mismatches are having an effect. The audience here is distributed all over the world, and what would be taken as an obvious mild joke in one region can land as a serious provocation in another. This happens all the time, and unfortunately it's largely unrecognized. If we were together in person, these differences would be apparent and people would automatically modulate for them. But all we have on this forum are little text blobs which don't come with any of that metadata. I think this is probably the biggest source of conflict and misunderstanding on HN; certainly one of them. Edit: there's another clear example of this in another part of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28614998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28614998. That was a rare case of people actually figuring out the mismatch.
• GiorgioG 5y ago
  > People do pick up on these things. Pick up on what things? Guns are tools. You may not be interested in those tools, but judging someone because they enjoy them legally and responsibly is unfair and unwarranted.
  • roel_v 5y ago
    Pick up on what it means when you openly signal this sort of "tribal allegiance". I'm not making any sort of point on whether someone should own guns, or whether it should be legal, or anything like that. That's a discussion about how things should be, which I'm not talking about. I'm talking about how things are, and how they are is that this sort of online branding puts one in a "camp". And in my experience, being put in a "camp" is bad for business, for most people. Furthermore, sometimes people are classified as such and so without them realizing, or at least without them realizing to what extent this happens, or what effects it has. Which I suspect is happening here, and which is why I posted. For a small business that offers a critical service, the personal branding of the principals (and public facing employees) matters. And for most people, that brand should (for better or for worse) be on the bland side, for maximum profitability.
• pmarreck 5y ago
  I would bet the Venn diagram of libertarians and business owners has much more overlap than you are suggesting here. He lives in Texas, OF COURSE he has guns. > I'm 100% confident you've lost customers over this. There's 2 problems here. 1) Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. 2) Expecting every business persona to be completely beige and devoid of color is absofuckinglutely ridiculous IMHO (and yes, I'm staring at leftwingers here... I'm centrist/anti-tribalist, for the record, but it's been a struggle to say the least). Some of my most admired CEO's are quite colorful (Branson, Legere, etc.) It might even be arguable that the very people who are apt to strike out on their own instead of forcing themselves to conform to ("beige into", I'll dismissingly call it) an organization, are the same people who are least likely to force themselves to conform to social norms. Especially "developers of a certain age"... It may come as a shock, but being interested in computers was not always cool, and in order to doggedly pursue it, one needed to grow a thick skin against those enforcing the "computers are uncool therefore you are uncool" social norms of the time