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I, personally, cannot imagine any question to which I would get a more valuable answer from a 28-year-old software engineer in California interested in finance,
by jtheory 12y ago
I, personally, cannot imagine any question to which I would get a more valuable answer from a 28-year-old software engineer in California interested in finance, men's fashion and weightlifting than I would get from my wife, family, friends and peers -- people who know me; whose lives actually overlap with mine in some way. What is "telling it like it is" if you don't share the same context? How likely is it he can pick up on something you should really know (like: "you interrupt women more often than you do men") if all he knows about you is what you've told him?
I imagine myself paying $10 and asking "hey, what do you think of my outfit tonight?" And he would kindly inform me that my chances of scoring (or whatever they call it these days) wearing these sandals, hiking pants (pull these zippers and they become shorts!) and grey kinda stretched-out long-sleeve t-shirt are next to zero. But my Friday night activity was going out with my wife, toddler & 5-year-old to have dinner with a bunch of retired English expats in the middle of nowhere in central France. I sat next to a guy who was a large-scale industrial engineer back in the 70s -- extracting helium & natural gas in communist Poland, in Iran when the Shah fell... And my little ones had great fun racing around and then choosing the winning tickets for the lottery.
But: there are plenty of people in this world (or at least in the more Californian parts of this world) who share his particular little slice of the human experience, who are a bit less far along than he is, perhaps, in figuring out who they are and who they want to be, and who have not yet built any meaningful friendships.
(It seems like it should go without saying: if you have built a meaningful relationship with someone who cares about you and has a bit of wisdom, they will find a way to tell you the things you need to know with no brutality required. You will also do this for them.)
- jerguismi 12y agoWho the fuck cares if you don't see the need. It is a niche product, like an impulse buy in a supermarket. I don't see need for 99% of the crap what is sold in a dollar store, but the dollar store is still a quite solid business. That said, I just bought my advice, paid but I still don't see email. Damn.
- goodoldboys 12y agoSorry about that - this got popular faster than I thought it would! Did you use paypal or bitcoin? I think I'm having issues with Coinbase at the moment. Could you send me an email directly at brutalhonestyio@gmail.com? I'll get to yours next :)
- FLUX-YOU 12y agoThe lesson learned here is that the cost of living is so high in California that $10 only has the buying power of $0.02
- RainSunshine 12y agoHe isn't trying to suggest this is a service which everyone will find useful or interesting. It actually takes a lot of honesty with yourself to even understand why you might need this service. Thousands of people every day make decisions on their own, or on the advice of others, which are badly informed decisions. This guy could help them. For $10, he isn't going to send you a 5 word email and ignore you forever. He is going to have a reasonable dialogue pertaining to your question/concern. If you say "No bro, I am not looking to score" he will ask "OK, well what are your intentions? What is your actual concern with your outfit?"
- jerguismi 12y agoUsually the consultants I pay or meet are much more expensive than $10.
- RainSunshine 12y agoI am not sure what the point of that comment is.
- alxdistill 12y agoHow about $75? http://talkshopwithus.com/creatives/ http://talkshopwithus.com/creatives/
- jayseeg 12y agoThey also likely have a clear expertise.
- Dewie 12y ago> like: "you interrupt women more often than you do men" Nice enlightened example.
- kyro 12y ago"Telling it like it is" is typically a cover used by assholes who want to give a simplistic, boneheaded, confrontational opinion completely devoid of context and empathy.
- egypturnash 12y agoYour Friday night sounds pretty awesome.
- fixxer 12y agoThis made me laugh.
- lmg643 12y agoI think we're missing the joke here: this is an update on the concept of "my 2 cents", with the difference being... ...he has adjusted for inflation, with a markup. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
- ChrisAntaki 12y agoFrom 1913 to 2014, $0.02 cents inflated to $0.48 cents. At that rate, wouldn't it be over 100 years before reaching $10? In which case, in 2014 he'd have to share 20.83 opinions per session to justify the cost.
- sesqu 12y agoI tried to find a year for which $0.02 in today's money today would be approximately $10, but it turned out that you'd have to start somewhere in the middle ages, and the error bars get pretty large.
- DanBC 12y agoThat's inflation adjusted, but now you need to do the compound interest to get it from $0.02 to $10.
- zamabe 12y ago> I imagine myself paying $10 and asking "hey, what do you think of my outfit tonight?" And he would kindly inform me that my chances of scoring (or whatever they call it these days) wearing these sandals, hiking pants (pull these zippers and they become shorts!) and grey kinda stretched-out long-sleeve t-shirt are next to zero. But my Friday night activity was going out with my wife, toddler & 5-year-old to have dinner with a bunch of retired English expats in the middle of nowhere in central France. I imagine you meant to include at least a modicum of detail to establish the context of your question to get any value out of your $10; or maybe you just wanted [to imagine] the exchange to be frustrating.
- jtheory 12y agoSure; my point in that example was that his pitch (esp. including his chosen list of interests and potential questions) felt extremely narrow to me; I'm also a white American male and only 10 years older; but the world he seems to be inhabiting (men's fashion! weightlifting!) is not even adjacent to mine. If we met in a social situation, we could probably find something to talk about; but we'd not be paying either other for that.
- zamabe 12y ago> but the world he seems to be inhabiting (men's fashion! weightlifting!) is not even adjacent to mine. I doubt the service would be valuable if he were offering advice on subjects you're already comfortable judging for yourself.
- nzealand 12y agoBut your friends have been lying to you. About your website/app/resume/outfit. You need to know the truth. How can you afford to not know?
- jtheory 12y agoThis is really my point. There are probably better sources of truth than "some people I hang out with sometimes". Those sources vary depending on the subject, but they probably won't be "someone I don't know, from the internet" either, unless he happens to have that specific expertise and you have a common need. Website/app/resume: for me this just equates to "how is the business doing", and I don't ask friends; this is what data is for. There's a possible conflict of interest here with our CEO (my primary source of truth for financial status), because he wants to motivate the company (and hence generally add a positive spin); but he's also well-aware that transparency & trust are far more important than any temporarily gain from faked positivity. Outfit: sure, appearances matter in life & work. But I have better sources of truth here as well than "ask a friend"; hello again CEO/founder, for one. We talk about what we're wearing if that's going to be relevant, and (more likely) how we're speaking on phone calls, and what can be better. Think he's honest? Well, he'd be a fool not to be. But most of the time my wardrobe only matters to the extent that my wife feels I'm appropriately dressed if we're out in public, and she's perfectly capable of pointing it out if I've misjudged. It's just "oh hey, don't forget we're going out to dinner before we come back home tonight", and that works.