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I've noticed this as well, and not just on HN. If you do a bit of knitting that is obviously an amateur's attempt, people will say "wow, so cool that you can k

I've noticed this as well, and not just on HN. If you do a bit of knitting that is obviously an amateur's attempt, people will say "wow, so cool that you can knit". When you work hard and get better at knitting and you produce stuff that is so good that it's commercial-product quality, people will say "what's the point in spending all that time and effort when you can just buy one?". Only when you become so good at knitting that your output is of a quality that is not generally available commercially do people find it interesting again. Replace "knitting" with anything you like: programming, painting, woodworking, welding, electronics, 3d printing, pottery, basket-weaving, card tricks, ... People are interested in things that seem cute and homemade. They're interested in things that are better than anything they've seen before. They're not generally interested in the mediocre middle, even when it has been created by 1 person who spent a lot of time and tried hard, rather than by a faceless megacorporation. EDIT: I think I did the faceless megacorporations a disservice there. Faceless megacorporations also make high quality products through the hard work of their employees, they just do such a great job, and they mass-produce so efficiently, that the products end up inconceivably cheap and we take them for granted.

bla3 4y ago
It's also true when learning languages. If you speak a language a tiny bit, locals act politely impressed. If you speak it kind of good but aren't a native speaker, at least in some countries that lands much worse than speaking the language badly.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  if you speak the language like crap and they've never seen you before they think aww, this tourist really tries. When you speak kind of good they know you live there damn it!
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I used to always hear this about black Americans in France. You're unbelievably popular and everybody thinks you're charming and cool until your French gets too good. Then you start being mistaken for an African immigrant and go from being cute to getting spit on by strangers. Actual advice from black people to other black people not to work on your accent.
- astrange 4y ago
  The joke about Japan is that people will constantly tell you "nihongo jouzu" (your Japanese is good) when it isn't really. You know you're getting somewhere when they start correcting you. Although I don't think they'd get mad at you either way; maybe that'd happen at work or if you get something else cultural like body language wrong. Having a bad accent might help you sound like an enthusiastic tourist though; Americans start off with pretty bad pronunciation, Spanish/Italian/Finnish are closer and people might think you're fluent.
ihappentobe 4y ago
Mentioning “knitting” and etc. is interesting, and reminds me of a variation on this theme: Browsing BoingBoing in the 2010s, the maker-themed posts that gained traction were projects that were essentially structured as: An over complicated _______ but it’s actually a simple ________. For example, ‘a 3d printed diy wrist mounted display that actually only shows yesterdays’ tweets”. In some ways today’s pattern of projects being either very complicated or very simple is a distillation/separation of the earlier pattern.
Closi 4y ago
I think we also enjoy playing with other peoples fun passion projects. It’s different playing with something that someone built because they wanted to build it and it was fun, rather than them having some sense of commercial gain. See: indie games.

bla3 4y ago

It's also true when learning languages. If you speak a language a tiny bit, locals act politely impressed. If you speak it kind of good but aren't a native speaker, at least in some countries that lands much worse than speaking the language badly.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
if you speak the language like crap and they've never seen you before they think aww, this tourist really tries. When you speak kind of good they know you live there damn it!
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I used to always hear this about black Americans in France. You're unbelievably popular and everybody thinks you're charming and cool until your French gets too good. Then you start being mistaken for an African immigrant and go from being cute to getting spit on by strangers. Actual advice from black people to other black people not to work on your accent.
astrange 4y ago
The joke about Japan is that people will constantly tell you "nihongo jouzu" (your Japanese is good) when it isn't really. You know you're getting somewhere when they start correcting you. Although I don't think they'd get mad at you either way; maybe that'd happen at work or if you get something else cultural like body language wrong. Having a bad accent might help you sound like an enthusiastic tourist though; Americans start off with pretty bad pronunciation, Spanish/Italian/Finnish are closer and people might think you're fluent.

ihappentobe 4y ago

Mentioning “knitting” and etc. is interesting, and reminds me of a variation on this theme: Browsing BoingBoing in the 2010s, the maker-themed posts that gained traction were projects that were essentially structured as: An over complicated _______ but it’s actually a simple ________. For example, ‘a 3d printed diy wrist mounted display that actually only shows yesterdays’ tweets”. In some ways today’s pattern of projects being either very complicated or very simple is a distillation/separation of the earlier pattern.

Closi 4y ago

I think we also enjoy playing with other peoples fun passion projects. It’s different playing with something that someone built because they wanted to build it and it was fun, rather than them having some sense of commercial gain. See: indie games.