This essay is a frustrating read, because you can feel his condescension towards critics (oh, they must be envious, or taking cheap shots), and you get a window into his headspace in which he believes that his way of examining the world and arriving at substantially the same beliefs is the only correct way.
But to be quite honest, many PG essays fit this same basic structure, whereby some venture or belief of his is introduced in a slow-burn way, with lots of short sentences light on content as if trying to sound off-the-cuff but way too authored to sound convincingly so, and then a dispassioned but complete teardown of the critics of the idea. A subversion of an appeal to historical authority thrown in for good measure. He always comes across as the understated luminary whose low opinion of the clueless hordes or meddling schemers below him is emotionlessly obvious, and anyone who disagrees is clearly a meddling schemer because of envy or fear or some other existential insecurity, because his seldom-mentioned achievements ought to speak for themselves about the supremacy of his approach.
But what's especially frustrating about this essay is that it's clearly precipitated by the dismissive public reaction towards the Mighty app -- an observation shared by many others in this thread -- but this is intentionally unacknowledged by him, presumably so that he can pontificate about the bravery of weird ideas the envy and fear of others on his personal blog without soiling the name of a business venture he backed. But it's also evidence that with a simple Twitter beef, you can get under his skin -- a sad fact you'd be forgiven for doubting if you hang on every word of his essays.
I don't think he gets hundreds of likes because he's amazing (though some of what he's written has been). It's because his writing is an insight into silicon valley and VC culture. Even when I completely disagree with his opinions they're interesting to read because they give an insight into how him and many of his peers think. And as someone interested in this industry that's fundamentally interesting even when it's not great. Arguably more so.
I think this may be an American thing. People as successful as PG, Musk, Bezos, Gates etc become demigods, for a majority of people. Cults are created around them. They can never be wrong and so on.
As a result, the opposition arises too: the people who dislike these demigods for the same reasons their followers like them.
I say this is probably an American thing because I don’t see this happening in Europe. I worked for years for one of the most successful startups in Europe and I have no idea what the names of the founders are. Probably no one does by now.
All of the attention around these guys seems like an extension of celebrity culture. I know Europe (in particular the UK and France) have a somewhat large culture around celebrities and their opinions / comings-and-doings, but the US is on a different level.
These founder-cults seem like the cults around the Kardashians (or whoever), but for guys who couldn't care less about movies but really want to be rich.
> I say this is probably an American thing because I don’t see this happening in Europe. I worked for years for one of the most successful startups in Europe and I have no idea what the names of the founders are. Probably no one does by now.
I agree there's much less business related worship in Europe. I also worked a couple of years for a successful "startup" (it's a public company so hardly a startup any more), and wouldn't be able to name the founders. I've also been visiting HN for a good while and have no idea who PG is, beyond that he apparently is some boss at YC and likes to write controversial blog posts.
We do get our share of Gates/Bezos/Musk news but lots of it is quite critical, I don't think anyone sees them as role models.
A large proportion of people are here specifically because of PG and his endeavours, of course he's going to get lots of upvotes. Even if you don't agree with him, he's worth listening to, particularly if you have any aspirations to join YC.
I think that's the curse of our social media. At best you get a binary Like/Dislike mechanism, at worst just Like. There's no contextualization of those choices.
In this case, PG's writing is directly related to the discussions around MightyApp even though he doesn't disclose this fact. I think that's important because it's seemingly a conflict of interest being passed under the auspice of objectivity.
I also think it's important to discuss MightyApp, not for it's merits but for it's implications.
Unfortunately social media doesn't offer a "look at this shit" button along site the like button. I venture to say if they did there'd be a lot fewer likes.
You should offer some criticism about what he wrote. Dismissing something because of who wrote it is just as ineffective as liking something because of who wrote it.
Hidden Wiki is the name of the main wiki that uses onion link. It's not a scam and I've visited it every couple years for a decade, though there are several scam sites like that.
