7 ms·

Reasons not to become famous (2020)

163 points by Tomte 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
avalys 10mo ago
Most of his reasons are related to “you have to deal with crazy people who focus their crazy on you”. Tim Ferris is known for somewhat hyperbolic self-help content. He talks about the millions of people who follow him or consume his content regularly. I’d suggest that the audience for people who obsessively consume this kind of self-help content is probably self-selected for a high proportion of crazy people. So, his experience is probably well outside the norm.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- jonny_eh 10mo ago
  When you make self-help content don’t be surprised when you attract people that need help.
- ghaff 10mo ago
  A lot of people are reasonably well-known in certain circles because of some show, podcast, book, etc. that's become something of a hit often with some calculated controversy. And, as you say, collects something of a following. There are also a ton of people who have never especially groomed the mass market though they're pretty well known in their industry.
- kristianc 10mo ago
  Dealing with crazy people must really cut into his four hour work week.
- showerst 10mo ago
  Plenty of celebrities that have nothing to do with self-help also attract their share of mentally ill folks, so I'm not sure that he's as far out of the norm as you think. A few folks in my social circles are _very_ minor public figures, more in the vein of "occasionally does a talking head segment on CNN" than "wins an Oscar" and even many of them have had to deal with obsessive attention from the unwell, threats, and people assuming they're rich and begging for money.
- Teever 10mo ago
  While it’s possible that being famous for producing self help content does draw more crazies to you it certainly seems like crazies are drawn to famous regardless of what people are famous for. Like John Lennon just made music and he got shot and killed for it. Jodie Foster naively signed up for an erotic role in a movie and was stalked for it.
- nospice 10mo ago
  > So, his experience is probably well outside the norm. Absolutely not. I've been a minor OSS celebrity for a while and even on that scale, it attracted a good number online stalkers and harassers. Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave, as well as rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you / put you down, simply because they think they deserved the limelight more than you.
  - chrisweekly 10mo ago
    nit: "rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you" ^ those are not rational people.
    - netsharc 10mo ago
      I find it fascinating that people can be convinced that they are very very rational, but they can also be convinced about crazy things, things like that the Earth is a flat disc, or that Bill Gates and the rest of the secret cabal of elites are going to put 5G receivers through a mandated vaccination, or that races other than their own need to be eradicated... It makes me worry that what if my belief that I'm rational is also skewed...
      - aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
        In my opinion the explanation is easy: it comes all down to conditional probability and Bayes' theorem: Conditional probability and Bayes' theorem tell you that how given some "ground belief" and new facts, the ground belief should be adjusted to incorporate the new evidence. Making this part of your daily life and belief system is what rationalism is about. But what happens if your ground truth is "fucked up" (in the sense of how an average person would see it)? Then it can easily happen that new evidence can perfectly explained by your ground truth/belief system and thus (in a very rational sense) actually strengthen it. Also keep in mind that a lot of things in the world are "messy", so it's not so hard to come up with a belief system that gives an "encompassing" framework that actually "explains" more things. If this system than becomes "strengthened" by incorporating lots of additional seen evidence (again using conditional probability and Bayes' theorem), this leads to a similar situation.
- Minor49er 10mo ago
  What is the normal experience for a famous person?
- Scubabear68 10mo ago
  Nope. Becoming well known even in a smallish circle of a few hundred or thousand people will likely immediately lead to stalkers and crazies coming out after you. My theory is they are directly drawn to people who make some sort of splash, for whatever reason, even if it’s local and small.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Even just being a starter on a high school sports team will get stalkers once in a while.
- Sam6late 10mo ago
  I think the general idea is sound, although I have changed my mind with our current economic system where one needs to fend for his own with no safety net. I mean upon seeing Chris Rock say in an interview saying that he would be willing to kill to become famous, I am reconsidering this issue.I refused once an opportunity to act with some big shot crew saying that I would not tolerate people and the way they deal with well-known, famouse people. I could not imagine how I could deal with the pressure. Now after 60 I am just looking back at missed opportunities but still content that 'I did it my way', and hope my children would have better future.
- skeptic_ai 10mo ago
  Run any popular web community and you’ll see the amount of craze. Got some random guy sending 100+ emails that will sue and will talk to USA gov because I break the law - for putting ads on my website.
- hn_throwaway_99 10mo ago
  I think it's a pretty safe assumption that all the comments here about "normal non-self help guru celebrities don't get stalked as much" are from men. I think literally every woman who is even semi-moderately in the public eye has stories about stalkers, regular death threats and rape fantasies, etc. Glad to hear other commenters are pushing back against this proposition that Ferris is somehow a special case, because it's a story I've heard from lots and lots of people in the public eye, regardless of their area of expertise.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Even men will get the stalkers. maybe not as many, but they get them.
- levocardia 10mo ago
  I make content and have a following that's ~1/10th the size of what he claims to have in this 2020 post, and I have had, within a rounding error, zero percent of the crazy encounters he had. YMMV. If I were a political influencer or a self-help guru, yes probably that would be different, but audience selection effects are a real factor here. This article always strikes me as insane because he -- a famous person with a history of serious mental illness and suicidal thoughts which he's discussed publicly -- has a moderately bad encounter with a person on the internet and decide that he now needs to purchase a firearm and carry it with him in public.
  - ghaff 10mo ago
    The topic/area definitely matters a lot. Certainly politics is a big one that generates a lot of strong opinions and emotions. Some things in open source (see systemd--at least at one time) do as well but the blast radius is probably a lot smaller even for people who are regular speakers and writers in certain tech circles. As was mentioned in another comment, there have almost certainly been more cases where women have had serious/scary issues than men.
techblueberry 10mo ago
This is actually one of my all time favorite blog posts, and his concept of the tribe, the village, and the city, is a mental model I often come back to when thinking about the dysfunction in large communities.
- rwmj 10mo ago
  Ironically I've only ever heard of him because this blog post was previously on HN.
- KellyCriterion 10mo ago
  the idea of the tribe/village/city is a model that he stole from the book "Blitzscaling" by Reed Hoffman, I guess? Or did Hoffmann steal from Ferriss?
lateforwork 10mo ago
He didn't mention one of the biggest reasons for not becoming famous: you'll have less room for mistakes. Take Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, as an example. He made some racist remarks, a mistake he could’ve recovered from if he wasn’t famous. But because he is, he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over.
- postflopclarity 10mo ago
  > he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over. sincere apologies, show of remorse, and substantially + genuinely changing the toxic behaviors goes a long way. there are several celebrities who have done "unforgivable" things and yet been forgiven by the public. the problem is that the kind of person liable to make such remarks is not the kind of person likely to do some introspection to realize they're being a terrible person.
  - lateforwork 10mo ago
    Yes, you can do some repair, but the point is, it is much harder if you're famous. Being under the public eye—all the time—has to be one of the top reasons to not be famous.
  - tim333 10mo ago
    Scott Adams position was kind of he'd done nothing wrong and would keep on doing it.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 10mo ago
  I mean common. The supposed marked for life people are coming back again and again. Even or especially when the supposed mistake is genuine ideological convinction they are actively propagating. Adams mistaken remarks included holocaust denial.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of his situation. He didn’t just make a single comment that marked him for life. He’s been doubling down for years and seems to be constantly running head-first into drama. I didn’t have any opinions on his as a person other than enjoying some of his comics years ago. Then he started showing up in Twitter debates over and over again and there’s no erasing years of bizarre claims and statements from his public opinion. He’s definitely embracing his fame as a platform to push those views, not suffering victimization for one mistake years ago.
theodric 10mo ago
Having been briefly regionally known when I was a kid, I can tell you that it gets fucking annoying having to deal with your adoring public after the novelty of it wears off. Sometimes you're just in line for the toilet and really need to piss.
silexia 10mo ago
The four hour workweek was inspirational for me starting my own business in 2009. My business now employs 250 full time people and helps thousands of clients. I remember HN back then was all entrepreneurs like me and everyone was excited about the free market. I feel like now a lot of people in countries with too much government regulations are here and are downers to people who want to build their own thing. This post is on the money. Being wealthy has almost all of the benefits of being famous.
- aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
  > I remember HN back then was all entrepreneurs like me and everyone was excited about the free market. I feel like now a lot of people in countries with too much government regulations are here and are downers to people who want to build their own thing. Since I am perhaps such a "downer person" who lives in such a country: what should such people then do?
  - silexia 10mo ago
    If you are an entrepreneur and a creative thinker, you absolutely should be a part of this community. If you are a socialist who believes all business success is just luck and people who earn riches are inherently bad, you probably would like Reddit better.
- brap 10mo ago
  >My business now employs 250 full time people You sure about that?
  - silexia 10mo ago
    CoalitionTechnologies.com
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
Aurornis 10mo ago
If you’re not familiar with Tim Ferriss, you should know that there is always more to the story than the narrative he shares. He’s one of the most charismatic and charming writers and podcasters out there and has a strong ability to build trust through his writing. However, he also has a long history of stretching the truth and spinning history in his favor, often by omitting important facts. One example: His 4 Hour Work Week book really was on the New York Times Best Seller list for a long time like he brags about in this post, but he has also bragged in other contexts about all of the manipulation and engineering (including mass purchasing books to artificially inflate sales numbers) that goes into gaming the New York Times Best Seller List. On the topic of being famous, he’s not typically famous like a celebrity. He built his career around being a self-help guru who will bring you the secrets to success in business, life, relationships, and even cooking. He’s talked about how he selects his writing topics based on how to present solutions for people’s inner desires, like financial freedom or impressing people for dating success. He puts himself at the center of these writings, presenting himself as the conduit for these revelations. He was even early in social media and blogging and experimented with social media engagements and paid events where you get to come hang out with Tim Ferriss and learn his secrets, encouraging his fans to idolize him and his wisdom dispensing abilities. So his relationship with his fans isn’t typical fame in the style of a celebrity or actor. He’s more of an early self-help guru who embraced social media and blogging early on. His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame. EDIT to add why I know this: Tim Ferriss literally wrote the book on how to abuse remote work. His Four Hour Work Week book encourages readers to talk their boss into working remote then to outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants so they have more time to travel the world. It encourages things like setting up an e-mail auto responder and only responding to your coworkers once a week whine you’re “working remote” and setting up your own side job while traveling the world. If you’ve ever had a remote work job get ruined by people abusing it, chances are good that those people had read a Tim Ferriss book somewhere along the way.
- vasco 10mo ago
  Wasn't he also encouraging people to do medical tests on themselves and take acid to work / regular life for a while?
why-o-why 10mo ago
Wow, I thought his first book was insufferable, but I've never read his blog: after reading the first half, that's just who this guy is. The structure he outlines seems so alien to me, and out of touch. People get lucky then think their luck really isn't luck, and then the just swallow their own tail. He's created lifestyle porn for impressionable young men who will never have his luck. I think he's got a good grift. Good for him, he won. It's raining downvotes!
- actionfromafar 10mo ago
  It's raining men! And downvotes from them!
KellyCriterion 10mo ago
I always found Zenhabits.net muuuuch more inspiring than Tim Ferriss Yes, I even hvae his 4h-work-week-book on the shelf
nine_k 10mo ago
"You cannot be important and independent at the same time." (Think whatever you want about the author; the observation is correct.)
kayo_20211030 10mo ago
What an unbearably tedious fellow he is. What was worse? The boasting, the pathetic pleading for understanding, or the sanctimonious preaching? Too rich, too famous, too hurt; how bad? It's 2025. Did he become less tedious since he wrote this piece?
firefoxd 10mo ago
I've had my 15 minutes of fame, twice. 30 minutes I guess. Each time I met people that freaked me out. In 2018, after the news picked up my story, I met the "true" inventor uber. This guy emailed 100s of documents as proof, newspaper clippings, a bunch of pictures with people circled in red, after all that I said "I'm not entirely sure which part you invented." This man "randomly" bumped into me in a cafe to explain it to me. He had driven hundreds of miles to be there. On my second stint a few years later, I went to a Dan Lyons' book signing with my wife. Dan spotted me in the audience and asked me to come up on stage and tell my story to the audience. I was completely unprepared. Later a lady accosted me to get my address and phone number so she can send me stuff. She was persistent, so I said I can give her my email so we can communicate further. It didn't sit well with her. A few days later I got an email from her. It was a few thousand words of threats, and I was going to be reported for violating Australia's laws. She had contacted ABC Australia to get my story retracted. I'm in California...
luxuryballs 10mo ago
I get so much scam bait and phishing emails that I don’t bother reading I can’t imagine even bothering to read threats and similar crazy person emails.
AaronAPU 10mo ago
Interesting read. In modern life almost everyone experiences at least a brief if perhaps isolated/niche version of fame. We are just so heavily connected in so many different networks, it just statistically is likely to happen at some point. It is a mixed bag for sure, but in terms of risk/reward it is best to have an accurate understanding of both sides so you can make damn sure you are optimizing for the right thing.
senshan 10mo ago
Very interesting blog post, but... At the age of 29 he wrote a self-help book. The most fascinating part is that the general public took it so enthusiastically and so seriously. Really? Wisdom dispensed by a 29 years old? This aspect of general public keeps me amazed over and over again.
- tim333 10mo ago
  It's not a bad book. https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/B004C71SLM https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp... It's mostly about starting a small business by someone who'd started a small business selling nutritional supplements.
  - senshan 10mo ago
    I have my doubts: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
bhaak 10mo ago
I’m actively involved in two communities. The first is the NetHack roguelike community, and the second is the fan community of a German internet broadcaster that has existed, in one form or another, for about 25 years. On average, I’d say both communities are equally kind and welcoming. I’d also argue that both contain roughly the same proportion of people who are unhinged and tend to go way over the top. The difference lies in how they go over the top. In the NetHack community, you have people who start and immediately abandon 200,000 games during a tournament because they’re trying to roll the ideal starting conditions for a very specific playstyle. Then there are the Bobby Fischer types who create their own ultra-hard forks of the game because vanilla NetHack is too easy for them. There’s also plenty of criticism. Not everyone is happy with everything, but it’s mostly civil. The worst you usually get is something like, “The dev team sucks; they ruined the game with their latest changes.” By contrast, in the internet broadcaster’s community there’s a very toxic minority that claims to have stopped watching years ago, yet continues to hate on the creators because the channel took a direction they didn’t like. Employees get mobbed and bullied, everything is torn down, and there’s a concerted effort to ruin the fun for everyone else. I mean, I can understand that if you spent your formative teenage years “with” these people, it really hurts when that influence disappears. But can a parasocial relationship really go that far, that you drift into this kind of behavior? How can someone be so hurt that they hold a grudge for years, keep hate-watching the creators, and invest so much time and energy into such a destructive hobby?
- cevn 10mo ago
  I was a big fan of NH until 3.6, now it is too difficult so I switched to Evilhack which has been a breath of fresh air.
  - bhaak 10mo ago
    There have been various improvements over 3.6.0 during the development of the 3.6 branch. If you haven't you should give the not yet released 3.7 version a try. It's on hardfought.org for online play if you don't want to compile it yourself. But you can't be claiming that 3.6 is too difficult if you're comfortable playing EvilHack. EvilHack is clearly more difficult than vanilla. :D But I get the breath of fresh air. I was always playing Valkyries or Wizards and when I first entered the Tourist quest, I was hooked on getting more different levels and that was one of my main focus when developing UnNetHack.
schoen 10mo ago
I met a top-tier actor once in 2014 because he was working on something non-Hollywood-related with a friend of mine. Out of curiosity, I looked at his Twitter feed to see if he had anything to say publicly about that project. It was insane. It was full of people randomly asking to meet up with him in tons of different cities, people asking him to review their movie scripts/theatrical projects, people asking him for money, and women either offering to have sex with him or asking him to marry them. All in public, and just day after day like that.
- wmeredith 10mo ago
  It's not hard to see how celebrities become out of touch so quickly if you have an ounce of empathy.
Nextgrid 10mo ago
The cURL author also receives lots of crazy emails because his address is listed in the licenses of any product that embeds it (and unfortunately some of those licenses are too accessible to the idiot): https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-slaughter-you/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-slaughter-you/
- alexjplant 10mo ago
  ...that guy was in the throes of a psychotic episode [1]: The long and full apology is inserted below. [...] He (?) also says he suffers from schizophrenia. I’m happy for “Al” that he’s getting help and tries to move on. For me, this apology at least finally proves that this threat is over and in fact never was intended literally. I hope I will never receive anything close to that again. The apology in full I am Al Nocai. When I contacted you initially, I believed you to be a Dan E., from texas, or a Dan S from delaware or a Dan from Minneapolis. I didn’t do my research, and when I found it was actually you and you had nothing to do with my situation, I became indignant and even more of an asshole. You had every right to be mad, and publish as you did. I’m not trying to justify what I did, there is none, I should have been a lot more cordial. I just want to provide context around what was happening, I believe I at least owe you why. I had to retire from my career do to schizophrenia. Again, I should have not let my delusions go to the point they did nor should I have acted the way it does. My illness doesn’t detract from the rashness of my actions. [1] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/08/09/nocais-apology/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/08/09/nocais-apology/
erelong 10mo ago
Are there tips for becoming wealthy without becoming famous, then?
- tim333 10mo ago
  I guess if you follow 'The Four Hour Work Week" but don't endlessly promote yourself through books, articles, podcasts etc? By the way I think the Four Hour book is a bit phoney in that he makes out that's possible but was actually working like 16 hours a day building his own thing.
- ghaff 10mo ago
  I guess MANY people are "famous" within some limited group. I suspect few here (much less more broadly) could name senior execs at the majority of large companies who are mostly wealthy by any reasonable measure.
- brian_spiering 10mo ago
  I got a the highest paid job I could find with the skills I have that I enjoyed "well-enough". I spent less than I earned. I made mostly low risk investments (with a handful of high risk investments). I consistently did those behaviors for many decades. I also got lucky that nothing bad happened to me.
eszed 10mo ago
Everything in this article rings true to my limited and glancing observations of the phenomenon. In a previous life I worked in an industry (entertainment) where becoming a celebrity is an occupational hazard. A few times I was treated as if I were famous in very, very, extremely minor ways - met at the stage door, followed down the street, stared at or photographed in a restaurant or public transportation - and it's super destabilizing and just... Weird. I was pleased to be able to turn the corner and "disappear", as it were. I also had conversations about this with colleagues who were, let's say, well-known (but not even close to globally famous), and the shit they had to put up with was, if anything worse than described in the article - particularly when (this is theatre and independent film we're talking about) their profile didn't come with the income that could support, say, private security, or a secluded property. They were doing what they were doing in order to work on interesting projects with interesting people - and the ability to assure that was their favorite "perk" of their profile - and the "occupational hazard" framing comes from them. Another (very not-famous, though you're almost guaranteed to have seen them in a supporting role in something they've done) person I worked with a couple of times has a globally "you know their face, at least" famous spouse, who got that way because they're an immensely talented and committed artist; someone I've admired for years. I never met that person, because a) they'd have had to deal with a lot of hassle getting into the theatre, and b) their presence would have been an overwhelming distraction from the (interesting, but low-profile) piece we were doing. Fame is not something any well-adjusted person should wish for, and I have a good deal of sympathy for the people who seem to be destabilized by that level of attention.
prmoustache 10mo ago
I don't know who that guy is but my small and very limited in scope (a particular sport) and radius (regional level) experience with fame made me wary for life of ever being famous and I don't really understand why people would seek that. Just the fact that complete strangers were recognizing me and chatting to me like I was their best friend while I had no clue who they were was a really uncomfortable feeling. It was one of the multiple reasons I didn't tried to be a professional in this sport.
_RPM 10mo ago
This guy seems like a sociopath
mannicken 10mo ago
>As you might imagine, dating can be a quagmire of liabilities and bear traps. I did not imagine that at all. In fact, I, like I imagine many other young men, thought that becoming famous would certainly solve their dating problems forever. That certainty has disappeared. Thanks for sharing this. >The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience. Jesus fucking christ, that is a very believable and plausible thought. Even in these 93 comments I'm already seeing people who most likely don't know this dude and somehow decided to dislike him.
interlocutor 10mo ago
Here's a better list: - Being under the public eye—all the time—is one of the top reasons to not be famous. Famous people must constantly self-monitor what they say and do because casual mistakes can trigger disproportionate backlash or headlines. - You lose the ability to have genuine, equal interactions—people treat you differently, with deference or expectation, rather than as a peer. - Privacy disappears as curious strangers can easily discover where you live, details about your family, and how much wealth you have—information you'd normally share only with people you trust. - Strangers form opinions about you before ever meeting you, based on whatever fragments of your public persona they've encountered. - A public persona can become a cage, limiting your freedom to change, experiment, or reinvent yourself.
- emil-lp 10mo ago
  I could have asked ChatGPT myself.
nephihaha 10mo ago
Johns Hopkins is a loaded university with global backers. It doesn't need much more promotion. On the other hand there is probably some obscure college that does worthwhile research and gets little funding.
bsder 10mo ago
Bill Murray has the best take: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job."
cafard 10mo ago
Would it comfort him to know that when I think of "Tim" in an HN context, I think of Tim Bray?

163 points by Tomte 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

avalys 10mo ago

Most of his reasons are related to “you have to deal with crazy people who focus their crazy on you”. Tim Ferris is known for somewhat hyperbolic self-help content. He talks about the millions of people who follow him or consume his content regularly. I’d suggest that the audience for people who obsessively consume this kind of self-help content is probably self-selected for a high proportion of crazy people. So, his experience is probably well outside the norm.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
jonny_eh 10mo ago
When you make self-help content don’t be surprised when you attract people that need help.
ghaff 10mo ago
A lot of people are reasonably well-known in certain circles because of some show, podcast, book, etc. that's become something of a hit often with some calculated controversy. And, as you say, collects something of a following. There are also a ton of people who have never especially groomed the mass market though they're pretty well known in their industry.
kristianc 10mo ago
Dealing with crazy people must really cut into his four hour work week.
showerst 10mo ago
Plenty of celebrities that have nothing to do with self-help also attract their share of mentally ill folks, so I'm not sure that he's as far out of the norm as you think. A few folks in my social circles are _very_ minor public figures, more in the vein of "occasionally does a talking head segment on CNN" than "wins an Oscar" and even many of them have had to deal with obsessive attention from the unwell, threats, and people assuming they're rich and begging for money.
Teever 10mo ago
While it’s possible that being famous for producing self help content does draw more crazies to you it certainly seems like crazies are drawn to famous regardless of what people are famous for. Like John Lennon just made music and he got shot and killed for it. Jodie Foster naively signed up for an erotic role in a movie and was stalked for it.
nospice 10mo ago
> So, his experience is probably well outside the norm. Absolutely not. I've been a minor OSS celebrity for a while and even on that scale, it attracted a good number online stalkers and harassers. Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave, as well as rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you / put you down, simply because they think they deserved the limelight more than you.
- chrisweekly 10mo ago
  nit: "rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you" ^ those are not rational people.
  - netsharc 10mo ago
    I find it fascinating that people can be convinced that they are very very rational, but they can also be convinced about crazy things, things like that the Earth is a flat disc, or that Bill Gates and the rest of the secret cabal of elites are going to put 5G receivers through a mandated vaccination, or that races other than their own need to be eradicated... It makes me worry that what if my belief that I'm rational is also skewed...
    - aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
      In my opinion the explanation is easy: it comes all down to conditional probability and Bayes' theorem: Conditional probability and Bayes' theorem tell you that how given some "ground belief" and new facts, the ground belief should be adjusted to incorporate the new evidence. Making this part of your daily life and belief system is what rationalism is about. But what happens if your ground truth is "fucked up" (in the sense of how an average person would see it)? Then it can easily happen that new evidence can perfectly explained by your ground truth/belief system and thus (in a very rational sense) actually strengthen it. Also keep in mind that a lot of things in the world are "messy", so it's not so hard to come up with a belief system that gives an "encompassing" framework that actually "explains" more things. If this system than becomes "strengthened" by incorporating lots of additional seen evidence (again using conditional probability and Bayes' theorem), this leads to a similar situation.
Minor49er 10mo ago
What is the normal experience for a famous person?
Scubabear68 10mo ago
Nope. Becoming well known even in a smallish circle of a few hundred or thousand people will likely immediately lead to stalkers and crazies coming out after you. My theory is they are directly drawn to people who make some sort of splash, for whatever reason, even if it’s local and small.
- bluGill 10mo ago
  Even just being a starter on a high school sports team will get stalkers once in a while.
Sam6late 10mo ago
I think the general idea is sound, although I have changed my mind with our current economic system where one needs to fend for his own with no safety net. I mean upon seeing Chris Rock say in an interview saying that he would be willing to kill to become famous, I am reconsidering this issue.I refused once an opportunity to act with some big shot crew saying that I would not tolerate people and the way they deal with well-known, famouse people. I could not imagine how I could deal with the pressure. Now after 60 I am just looking back at missed opportunities but still content that 'I did it my way', and hope my children would have better future.
skeptic_ai 10mo ago
Run any popular web community and you’ll see the amount of craze. Got some random guy sending 100+ emails that will sue and will talk to USA gov because I break the law - for putting ads on my website.
hn_throwaway_99 10mo ago
I think it's a pretty safe assumption that all the comments here about "normal non-self help guru celebrities don't get stalked as much" are from men. I think literally every woman who is even semi-moderately in the public eye has stories about stalkers, regular death threats and rape fantasies, etc. Glad to hear other commenters are pushing back against this proposition that Ferris is somehow a special case, because it's a story I've heard from lots and lots of people in the public eye, regardless of their area of expertise.
- bluGill 10mo ago
  Even men will get the stalkers. maybe not as many, but they get them.
levocardia 10mo ago
I make content and have a following that's ~1/10th the size of what he claims to have in this 2020 post, and I have had, within a rounding error, zero percent of the crazy encounters he had. YMMV. If I were a political influencer or a self-help guru, yes probably that would be different, but audience selection effects are a real factor here. This article always strikes me as insane because he -- a famous person with a history of serious mental illness and suicidal thoughts which he's discussed publicly -- has a moderately bad encounter with a person on the internet and decide that he now needs to purchase a firearm and carry it with him in public.
- ghaff 10mo ago
  The topic/area definitely matters a lot. Certainly politics is a big one that generates a lot of strong opinions and emotions. Some things in open source (see systemd--at least at one time) do as well but the blast radius is probably a lot smaller even for people who are regular speakers and writers in certain tech circles. As was mentioned in another comment, there have almost certainly been more cases where women have had serious/scary issues than men.

techblueberry 10mo ago

This is actually one of my all time favorite blog posts, and his concept of the tribe, the village, and the city, is a mental model I often come back to when thinking about the dysfunction in large communities.

rwmj 10mo ago
Ironically I've only ever heard of him because this blog post was previously on HN.
KellyCriterion 10mo ago
the idea of the tribe/village/city is a model that he stole from the book "Blitzscaling" by Reed Hoffman, I guess? Or did Hoffmann steal from Ferriss?

lateforwork 10mo ago

He didn't mention one of the biggest reasons for not becoming famous: you'll have less room for mistakes. Take Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, as an example. He made some racist remarks, a mistake he could’ve recovered from if he wasn’t famous. But because he is, he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over.

postflopclarity 10mo ago
> he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over. sincere apologies, show of remorse, and substantially + genuinely changing the toxic behaviors goes a long way. there are several celebrities who have done "unforgivable" things and yet been forgiven by the public. the problem is that the kind of person liable to make such remarks is not the kind of person likely to do some introspection to realize they're being a terrible person.
- lateforwork 10mo ago
  Yes, you can do some repair, but the point is, it is much harder if you're famous. Being under the public eye—all the time—has to be one of the top reasons to not be famous.
- tim333 10mo ago
  Scott Adams position was kind of he'd done nothing wrong and would keep on doing it.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
watwut 10mo ago
I mean common. The supposed marked for life people are coming back again and again. Even or especially when the supposed mistake is genuine ideological convinction they are actively propagating. Adams mistaken remarks included holocaust denial.
Aurornis 10mo ago
I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of his situation. He didn’t just make a single comment that marked him for life. He’s been doubling down for years and seems to be constantly running head-first into drama. I didn’t have any opinions on his as a person other than enjoying some of his comics years ago. Then he started showing up in Twitter debates over and over again and there’s no erasing years of bizarre claims and statements from his public opinion. He’s definitely embracing his fame as a platform to push those views, not suffering victimization for one mistake years ago.

theodric 10mo ago

Having been briefly regionally known when I was a kid, I can tell you that it gets fucking annoying having to deal with your adoring public after the novelty of it wears off. Sometimes you're just in line for the toilet and really need to piss.

silexia 10mo ago

The four hour workweek was inspirational for me starting my own business in 2009. My business now employs 250 full time people and helps thousands of clients. I remember HN back then was all entrepreneurs like me and everyone was excited about the free market. I feel like now a lot of people in countries with too much government regulations are here and are downers to people who want to build their own thing. This post is on the money. Being wealthy has almost all of the benefits of being famous.

aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
> I remember HN back then was all entrepreneurs like me and everyone was excited about the free market. I feel like now a lot of people in countries with too much government regulations are here and are downers to people who want to build their own thing. Since I am perhaps such a "downer person" who lives in such a country: what should such people then do?
- silexia 10mo ago
  If you are an entrepreneur and a creative thinker, you absolutely should be a part of this community. If you are a socialist who believes all business success is just luck and people who earn riches are inherently bad, you probably would like Reddit better.
brap 10mo ago
>My business now employs 250 full time people You sure about that?
- silexia 10mo ago
  CoalitionTechnologies.com
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]

Aurornis 10mo ago

If you’re not familiar with Tim Ferriss, you should know that there is always more to the story than the narrative he shares. He’s one of the most charismatic and charming writers and podcasters out there and has a strong ability to build trust through his writing. However, he also has a long history of stretching the truth and spinning history in his favor, often by omitting important facts. One example: His 4 Hour Work Week book really was on the New York Times Best Seller list for a long time like he brags about in this post, but he has also bragged in other contexts about all of the manipulation and engineering (including mass purchasing books to artificially inflate sales numbers) that goes into gaming the New York Times Best Seller List. On the topic of being famous, he’s not typically famous like a celebrity. He built his career around being a self-help guru who will bring you the secrets to success in business, life, relationships, and even cooking. He’s talked about how he selects his writing topics based on how to present solutions for people’s inner desires, like financial freedom or impressing people for dating success. He puts himself at the center of these writings, presenting himself as the conduit for these revelations. He was even early in social media and blogging and experimented with social media engagements and paid events where you get to come hang out with Tim Ferriss and learn his secrets, encouraging his fans to idolize him and his wisdom dispensing abilities. So his relationship with his fans isn’t typical fame in the style of a celebrity or actor. He’s more of an early self-help guru who embraced social media and blogging early on. His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame. EDIT to add why I know this: Tim Ferriss literally wrote the book on how to abuse remote work. His Four Hour Work Week book encourages readers to talk their boss into working remote then to outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants so they have more time to travel the world. It encourages things like setting up an e-mail auto responder and only responding to your coworkers once a week whine you’re “working remote” and setting up your own side job while traveling the world. If you’ve ever had a remote work job get ruined by people abusing it, chances are good that those people had read a Tim Ferriss book somewhere along the way.

vasco 10mo ago
Wasn't he also encouraging people to do medical tests on themselves and take acid to work / regular life for a while?

why-o-why 10mo ago

Wow, I thought his first book was insufferable, but I've never read his blog: after reading the first half, that's just who this guy is. The structure he outlines seems so alien to me, and out of touch. People get lucky then think their luck really isn't luck, and then the just swallow their own tail. He's created lifestyle porn for impressionable young men who will never have his luck. I think he's got a good grift. Good for him, he won. It's raining downvotes!

actionfromafar 10mo ago
It's raining men! And downvotes from them!

KellyCriterion 10mo ago

I always found Zenhabits.net muuuuch more inspiring than Tim Ferriss Yes, I even hvae his 4h-work-week-book on the shelf

nine_k 10mo ago

"You cannot be important and independent at the same time." (Think whatever you want about the author; the observation is correct.)

kayo_20211030 10mo ago

What an unbearably tedious fellow he is. What was worse? The boasting, the pathetic pleading for understanding, or the sanctimonious preaching? Too rich, too famous, too hurt; how bad? It's 2025. Did he become less tedious since he wrote this piece?

firefoxd 10mo ago

I've had my 15 minutes of fame, twice. 30 minutes I guess. Each time I met people that freaked me out. In 2018, after the news picked up my story, I met the "true" inventor uber. This guy emailed 100s of documents as proof, newspaper clippings, a bunch of pictures with people circled in red, after all that I said "I'm not entirely sure which part you invented." This man "randomly" bumped into me in a cafe to explain it to me. He had driven hundreds of miles to be there. On my second stint a few years later, I went to a Dan Lyons' book signing with my wife. Dan spotted me in the audience and asked me to come up on stage and tell my story to the audience. I was completely unprepared. Later a lady accosted me to get my address and phone number so she can send me stuff. She was persistent, so I said I can give her my email so we can communicate further. It didn't sit well with her. A few days later I got an email from her. It was a few thousand words of threats, and I was going to be reported for violating Australia's laws. She had contacted ABC Australia to get my story retracted. I'm in California...

luxuryballs 10mo ago

I get so much scam bait and phishing emails that I don’t bother reading I can’t imagine even bothering to read threats and similar crazy person emails.

AaronAPU 10mo ago

Interesting read. In modern life almost everyone experiences at least a brief if perhaps isolated/niche version of fame. We are just so heavily connected in so many different networks, it just statistically is likely to happen at some point. It is a mixed bag for sure, but in terms of risk/reward it is best to have an accurate understanding of both sides so you can make damn sure you are optimizing for the right thing.

senshan 10mo ago

Very interesting blog post, but... At the age of 29 he wrote a self-help book. The most fascinating part is that the general public took it so enthusiastically and so seriously. Really? Wisdom dispensed by a 29 years old? This aspect of general public keeps me amazed over and over again.

tim333 10mo ago
It's not a bad book. https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/B004C71SLM https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp... It's mostly about starting a small business by someone who'd started a small business selling nutritional supplements.
- senshan 10mo ago
  I have my doubts: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

bhaak 10mo ago

I’m actively involved in two communities. The first is the NetHack roguelike community, and the second is the fan community of a German internet broadcaster that has existed, in one form or another, for about 25 years. On average, I’d say both communities are equally kind and welcoming. I’d also argue that both contain roughly the same proportion of people who are unhinged and tend to go way over the top. The difference lies in how they go over the top. In the NetHack community, you have people who start and immediately abandon 200,000 games during a tournament because they’re trying to roll the ideal starting conditions for a very specific playstyle. Then there are the Bobby Fischer types who create their own ultra-hard forks of the game because vanilla NetHack is too easy for them. There’s also plenty of criticism. Not everyone is happy with everything, but it’s mostly civil. The worst you usually get is something like, “The dev team sucks; they ruined the game with their latest changes.” By contrast, in the internet broadcaster’s community there’s a very toxic minority that claims to have stopped watching years ago, yet continues to hate on the creators because the channel took a direction they didn’t like. Employees get mobbed and bullied, everything is torn down, and there’s a concerted effort to ruin the fun for everyone else. I mean, I can understand that if you spent your formative teenage years “with” these people, it really hurts when that influence disappears. But can a parasocial relationship really go that far, that you drift into this kind of behavior? How can someone be so hurt that they hold a grudge for years, keep hate-watching the creators, and invest so much time and energy into such a destructive hobby?

cevn 10mo ago
I was a big fan of NH until 3.6, now it is too difficult so I switched to Evilhack which has been a breath of fresh air.
- bhaak 10mo ago
  There have been various improvements over 3.6.0 during the development of the 3.6 branch. If you haven't you should give the not yet released 3.7 version a try. It's on hardfought.org for online play if you don't want to compile it yourself. But you can't be claiming that 3.6 is too difficult if you're comfortable playing EvilHack. EvilHack is clearly more difficult than vanilla. :D But I get the breath of fresh air. I was always playing Valkyries or Wizards and when I first entered the Tourist quest, I was hooked on getting more different levels and that was one of my main focus when developing UnNetHack.

schoen 10mo ago

I met a top-tier actor once in 2014 because he was working on something non-Hollywood-related with a friend of mine. Out of curiosity, I looked at his Twitter feed to see if he had anything to say publicly about that project. It was insane. It was full of people randomly asking to meet up with him in tons of different cities, people asking him to review their movie scripts/theatrical projects, people asking him for money, and women either offering to have sex with him or asking him to marry them. All in public, and just day after day like that.

wmeredith 10mo ago
It's not hard to see how celebrities become out of touch so quickly if you have an ounce of empathy.

Nextgrid 10mo ago

The cURL author also receives lots of crazy emails because his address is listed in the licenses of any product that embeds it (and unfortunately some of those licenses are too accessible to the idiot): https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-slaughter-you/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/02/19/i-will-slaughter-you/

alexjplant 10mo ago
...that guy was in the throes of a psychotic episode [1]: The long and full apology is inserted below. [...] He (?) also says he suffers from schizophrenia. I’m happy for “Al” that he’s getting help and tries to move on. For me, this apology at least finally proves that this threat is over and in fact never was intended literally. I hope I will never receive anything close to that again. The apology in full I am Al Nocai. When I contacted you initially, I believed you to be a Dan E., from texas, or a Dan S from delaware or a Dan from Minneapolis. I didn’t do my research, and when I found it was actually you and you had nothing to do with my situation, I became indignant and even more of an asshole. You had every right to be mad, and publish as you did. I’m not trying to justify what I did, there is none, I should have been a lot more cordial. I just want to provide context around what was happening, I believe I at least owe you why. I had to retire from my career do to schizophrenia. Again, I should have not let my delusions go to the point they did nor should I have acted the way it does. My illness doesn’t detract from the rashness of my actions. [1] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/08/09/nocais-apology/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/08/09/nocais-apology/

erelong 10mo ago

Are there tips for becoming wealthy without becoming famous, then?

tim333 10mo ago
I guess if you follow 'The Four Hour Work Week" but don't endlessly promote yourself through books, articles, podcasts etc? By the way I think the Four Hour book is a bit phoney in that he makes out that's possible but was actually working like 16 hours a day building his own thing.
ghaff 10mo ago
I guess MANY people are "famous" within some limited group. I suspect few here (much less more broadly) could name senior execs at the majority of large companies who are mostly wealthy by any reasonable measure.
brian_spiering 10mo ago
I got a the highest paid job I could find with the skills I have that I enjoyed "well-enough". I spent less than I earned. I made mostly low risk investments (with a handful of high risk investments). I consistently did those behaviors for many decades. I also got lucky that nothing bad happened to me.

eszed 10mo ago

Everything in this article rings true to my limited and glancing observations of the phenomenon. In a previous life I worked in an industry (entertainment) where becoming a celebrity is an occupational hazard. A few times I was treated as if I were famous in very, very, extremely minor ways - met at the stage door, followed down the street, stared at or photographed in a restaurant or public transportation - and it's super destabilizing and just... Weird. I was pleased to be able to turn the corner and "disappear", as it were. I also had conversations about this with colleagues who were, let's say, well-known (but not even close to globally famous), and the shit they had to put up with was, if anything worse than described in the article - particularly when (this is theatre and independent film we're talking about) their profile didn't come with the income that could support, say, private security, or a secluded property. They were doing what they were doing in order to work on interesting projects with interesting people - and the ability to assure that was their favorite "perk" of their profile - and the "occupational hazard" framing comes from them. Another (very not-famous, though you're almost guaranteed to have seen them in a supporting role in something they've done) person I worked with a couple of times has a globally "you know their face, at least" famous spouse, who got that way because they're an immensely talented and committed artist; someone I've admired for years. I never met that person, because a) they'd have had to deal with a lot of hassle getting into the theatre, and b) their presence would have been an overwhelming distraction from the (interesting, but low-profile) piece we were doing. Fame is not something any well-adjusted person should wish for, and I have a good deal of sympathy for the people who seem to be destabilized by that level of attention.

prmoustache 10mo ago

I don't know who that guy is but my small and very limited in scope (a particular sport) and radius (regional level) experience with fame made me wary for life of ever being famous and I don't really understand why people would seek that. Just the fact that complete strangers were recognizing me and chatting to me like I was their best friend while I had no clue who they were was a really uncomfortable feeling. It was one of the multiple reasons I didn't tried to be a professional in this sport.

_RPM 10mo ago

This guy seems like a sociopath

mannicken 10mo ago

>As you might imagine, dating can be a quagmire of liabilities and bear traps. I did not imagine that at all. In fact, I, like I imagine many other young men, thought that becoming famous would certainly solve their dating problems forever. That certainty has disappeared. Thanks for sharing this. >The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience. Jesus fucking christ, that is a very believable and plausible thought. Even in these 93 comments I'm already seeing people who most likely don't know this dude and somehow decided to dislike him.

interlocutor 10mo ago

Here's a better list: - Being under the public eye—all the time—is one of the top reasons to not be famous. Famous people must constantly self-monitor what they say and do because casual mistakes can trigger disproportionate backlash or headlines. - You lose the ability to have genuine, equal interactions—people treat you differently, with deference or expectation, rather than as a peer. - Privacy disappears as curious strangers can easily discover where you live, details about your family, and how much wealth you have—information you'd normally share only with people you trust. - Strangers form opinions about you before ever meeting you, based on whatever fragments of your public persona they've encountered. - A public persona can become a cage, limiting your freedom to change, experiment, or reinvent yourself.

emil-lp 10mo ago
I could have asked ChatGPT myself.

nephihaha 10mo ago

Johns Hopkins is a loaded university with global backers. It doesn't need much more promotion. On the other hand there is probably some obscure college that does worthwhile research and gets little funding.

bsder 10mo ago

Bill Murray has the best take: "I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job."

cafard 10mo ago

Would it comfort him to know that when I think of "Tim" in an HN context, I think of Tim Bray?