Ask HN: What happened to Mr. Robot?

It seems to be suffering a bit from the Matrix Effect: The first installment promised far more than the sequels could possible provide.

Stories involving a protagonist with seemingly otherworldly gifts tend to craft a narrative where the possibilities and potentials are limitless. While this form of storytelling is very good at garnishing attention, it’s mainly capitalizing on the mystery surrounding the main character. People tend to fill in those unknown personality traits by projecting themselves onto the character.

The problem arises when the Author attempts to choose a reality for their character to follow. No matter what reality you pick, the story will never live up to the quintessential version everyone has uniquely envisioned. The more we learn about the character, the less we feel a sense of awe and wonderment. This transforms something that once held so much promise into something that seems mundane. It’s not because the story is bad, it’s just that it could never live up to its own open-endedness.

I've seen that sentiment in a couple of places, and the answer is fairly simple: The first season gave us a show about a heterogeneous team of hackers (plenty of ages, both males and females, different personalities, etc.) trying to "fight the man", so to speak.

The hacking, portrayed as fairly realistic, especially for people used to Hollywood craziness, and the fight (against financial institutions) pulled quite a lot of people.

Then, fairly suddenly, you get hit with a mental illness angle. A lot of people didn't ask for it, and don't really welcome it. It's not just a show about hacking now. It's a show about a very mentally ill man with a particular set of baggage trying to cope with it, while being part/the leader of a very notorious hack team.

So yeah, if you really like the first season, you might not like the second one much. At least so far.

I heard a lot about Mr. Robot so decided to check out the hype. Started watching with interest - the first episode really blew my mind when they started discussing GNOME and KDE, I was like wow I love this show already. Like you said the mental illness took over and I'm like this is going into la la land now - there's less hacking and more of a human angle, which is great and all, until you realize the human angle is superseding the hacking and computers, which is what drew me in in the first place. There's some real "holes in this firewall" if you get my meaning, and not in a good way. I guess part of me wanted it to be this really geeky show, but I suppose they might have gone too far already for the (comparatively) 'technologically challenged' populace already. I guess I will save my dime and wait to spend on Season 2 until after reviews are out. I hope they fix it.

The show is heavily inspired by Fight Club and season 2 essentially picks up where Fight Club (and season 1) ends. As someone who is both a "hacker" and a huge fan of Fight Club this makes season 2 even more interesting to me.

I remember reading the foreword to Fight Club where the author stress that the "Fight" in Fight Club is not what the book is about. He even considered other types of clubs/themes to convey the ideas in the book.

So perhaps that's a way to look at it: Mr Robot is Hacker Club and hacking play the same role as fighting does in Fight Club.

I need more hacking