Dropped (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Dropped (2014)

grantland.com

163 pointsmhb46 comments

"But then came a guy who wasn’t interested in lying, who wanted to do stuff that was hard because he could. This was his power in the world and he wanted to exert it — the basic impulse of any athlete. Yet he never really found his audience, even though he conquered juggling’s demands like no one before him. Gatto learned how to stand calm and straight-backed beneath sick, dizzying multitudes of spinning, arcing objects and conduct them with model-train precision into his hands. He also learned to charm people, even though it didn’t come naturally to him, as the kiss-the-ball video shows. He gave in. He grew to accept the necessity of kissing the ball and lobbing it gently into the crowd with a grin. He also learned to make hard tricks look hard, to pantomime the exertion and self-doubt of a man working at the edge of his ability even though his ability stretched on and on. He learned to entertain, because for some reason, even though we exist in a physical universe defined by the relative attractive powers of massive objects, the mere demonstration of a lush and lovely control of gravity is not enough. He labored to please an audience that could never appreciate his greatness. Then he got older and watched a new wave of jugglers abandon the stage for the flicker of computer screens, sneering at the bright-light mastery he’d worked so hard to gain.

That’s my impression, anyway. Gatto didn’t talk to me. Maybe he wants to focus on running his business. Or maybe he got so used to performing for people who couldn’t understand his gift that when he decided to back away from juggling, he felt no need to help them understand why."

In case you can't tell, hownottowrite posted a perfect TL;DR, being a couple of paragraphs from the end of the article.

Two paragraphs before he says this that explains a lot of his frustration IMHO:

> Jugglers don’t have to perform difficult tricks to entertain people, because audiences generally don’t know what’s difficult. Juggling five objects is 10 times harder than juggling four, and six objects is 10 times harder than five, but to most people, five objects in the air looks like six, and six looks like five. A truly difficult juggling trick doesn’t necessarily register intuitively as difficult. It just looks like a bunch of weird shit crossing in the air.

That I think has two consequences (that the author alludes to btw):

1- You're working hard to please a crowd of clueless chumps that you have no respect for.

2- You're vulnerable to hacks who can impress the public with easy tricks and are a hundred times or a thousand times less talented than you, and who don't even work hard.

Sometimes being too good makes it impossible to go on.

> You're vulnerable to hacks who can impress the public with easy tricks and are a hundred times or a thousand times less talented than you, and who don't even work hard.

This I think has led to something interesting. Most proficient (and by proficient in this case I mean capable of juggling more than 5 balls) jugglers are either young, or relatively old. The top 10 this year were all born after 1990, and some are significantly younger (<18).

Last year, he posted a youtube video of something he had found: https://www.youtube.com/user/ator1a1m/videos

He said, "Not sure if this ever got uploaded. All I can say is Damn I was good. Not missing it. Keep the dream alive."

Sometimes, you just get burned out. It's hard to stay the best in the world if your heart isn't in it anymore. I'm glad he found something that works for him.

this is so fun to watch. thanks for the link

I juggle. I started when I was 30, 6 years ago, because I felt I wasn't learning anything new in my life and job. I grabbed three crummy balls that were gathering dust i my room, and for 20 minutes a day, I practiced. It took two weeks of daily 20-minute stints until I had a stable pattern. It reminded me that I could learn, and that was essential for my well-being.

20 minutes was a good length for a training session. I'd start out energized and motivated, I would fail and get frustrated, but would push on until I felt I had measurably improved. The best advice I have if you're in this valley of despair is to practice above a table in front of a wall. You won't have to bend over to pick up the balls you dropped on the floor :)

When I moved to where I now live, I didn't know anyone here. Luckily someone at a local hackerspace started a little juggling group once a week, so I joined them to meet people. They're now the core of my friend group here, and it's how I met my girlfriend. They juggled clubs, so I had to learn to juggle clubs. After a couple months of weekly frustrating sessions (I'd have a beer at the start to force me to relax), I finally got the hang of it, and then started learned passing with them.

Once you get the hang of it, passing clubs is a lot of fun. It's a social exercise in a way that only dance compares.

I still can't juggle more than 3 balls or clubs. Anthony Gatto is amazing, but I completely understand his frustration with difficult juggling not being intuitively impressive.

I still juggle in short stints almost every day when I'm frustrated with a piece of code. It's wonderful to take your mind off things, because you have to let your hindbrain take over.

To labor tirelessly at a craft that has a low market value and/or is relatively obscure can be maddening at times.

I have found you eventually say to yourself, "If I applied this level of focus to X, Y, or Z I would be much better off in a number of important ways. And you end up right about that.

This reminds me that I'm a sysadmin primarily because there's no money in music journalism [+], and in relative terms I now get paid by dumptruck.

[+] still potter with it at https://rocknerd.co.uk for what that's worth, but art criticism in general is completely fucked in all directions. You think the internet did a number on the record labels ...

And why I work in IT after studying economics after studying mathematics after studying philosophy. IT is pretty much dominating the world.

And why I work in IT after doing so much biology.

Makes you wonder about what effects the current crash is going to have on employment numbers.

The economy (US or global?) was forecast to go into recession in Nov 2016 but didn't. Granted, there seems to have been a post-Trump election business bump. That can easily wear off.

I was talking about tech specifically.

Same here!

The joke I tell people is that "Economics majors know enough about Economics, to know that they should be getting the hell OUT of Economics and INTO Tech. Thanks Economics! For telling me why my decisions were wrong, and that I should be doing something else!"

Seriously. Though finance may pay better. I still use economics for personal decisions. It helps to be able to understand leading data points and put together some data.

If there was a demand for people who write about music, it would still be a viable business. People just don't feel the need to pay for opinions in that area any more.

That being what I just said!

The Economist gives some numbers: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21663274-more-music-gi...

" but art criticism in general is completely fucked in all directions. You think the internet did a number on the record labels ..."

As a label founder myself [+], I'm not unfamiliar with where you're going but I'm curious on your perspective. Care to elaborate?

[+] you plug i plug: scalatapes.net

See Economist link below on what happened to the New Musical Express. Even in the '80s and '90s (when I was doing rock journalism for money), the pay was bloody dismal and the main attraction was that it beat working for a living; but even that's now largely gone.

The situation now:

* before the Internet, you could read about a record - but hearing it required hard work, happenstance or money we didn’t have. It could take years between seeing the name of some potentially-interesting band or song and actually hearing them. (Rather than just going to YouTube, where someone has lovingly ripped their old vinyl copy.) A note on this experience: https://rocknerd.co.uk/2016/06/02/false-memories-of-feelings... So before, music press got the word out about music before the music itself could get there. But it's no longer necessary to that function, even as it can still be useful.

* With the rise of blogs, opinion is as readily available as the music itself. Approximately nobody is going to pay money for this shit. (This is a special case of the problem affecting journalism in general.) Only the biggest blogs and sites can sell the ads they need to. Per comment below, The NME is now an entertainment guide given away outside tube stations. The problem for professional music critics/press is that they're competing with literally everyone everywhere now, the same problem artists have: https://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesth...

About the only press I can think of that's done at all well is the tech press, who ripped down those tedious walls between editorial and advertising and reluctance to live off payola around the turn of the millennium and turned into utter and unapologetic shills. And even then the competition is bloody vicious.

tl;dr the problem: you and I are in competition with literally everyone now.

I'm not entirely displeased at music journalism being stabbed through its putrid little heart; way too much about it was gatekeeping rather than enthusiasm. I do think everything is much better now for culture.

Oh, and cheers to a label on Bandcamp :-D Bandcamp is IMO THE BEST thing to happen to selling music on the net, like, ever.

> This reminds me that I'm a sysadmin primarily because there's no money in music journalim

Ditto for me.

I work in IT, because I fell in love with computers when I was nine. I get paid the same as you. My skill at being able to "juggle seven clubs" has no value. You know how to google as well as I do.

Today's Internet sensations make much more money than both of us. Their skill is in their audacity, with which I am genuinely impressed. Juggling fire is audacious. Juggling seven clubs is like being able to program well in Arc: an interesting skill with little or no commercial value.

You would not get money from YC just because your app was written in Arc. You almost certainly wouldn't get money if your site looked as bad as HN (unless it was already a runaway success like Reddit was when YC invested in it :).

It's interesting to me that PG puts any time in Arc. It's a bit like juggling clubs in his driveway. PG is probably his most brilliant at being a hacker, but that skill doesn't have the same ROI as being a VC.

More power to PG and Gatto for finding ways to make money while doing something valuable for society. Long live YC and Big Top Concrete!

This story is me after I moved from near-unemployable nonprofit lifer to overpaid geek: http://thebaffler.com/blog/from-punk-house-to-penthouse-fros...

I was pushed into STEM hard at school, ‘cos I was fairly good at it! But I also suddenly gained an interest in music and pop culture and the analysis of it, which proceeded to occupy about 110% of my brain for much of my twenties. I struck out in tertiary education repeatedly attempting to get a STEMish qualification, and what actual paying work I got was music journalism (which to be honest I enjoyed even the tedious bits of), public servant or just plain office drone. I was a hot prospect for an underpaid overworked career as a paperpusher and/or bullshitter on the nonprofit/NGO circuit until I remembered I could work these computer things and got on the rather more lucrative career path.

Would I be happier as a severely insecure and underpaid humanities academic, writing probably much the same sort of stuff as I do now but more of it and showing more of my references? (the really good thing about music journalism is the freedom to be a primary source.) Well, I’d have a lot more fun with it. OTOH I eat vastly better on this path.

Don't you still improve your musical skills, even though you are making money in STEM?

Per link above, https://rocknerd.co.uk :-D

I even have a Soundcloud! https://soundcloud.com/diva-rose/ Though I am quite unlikely to become a pop star at 50.

Though I am quite unlikely to become a pop star at 50.

You're unlikely to become a pop star at any age, and you won't fit into the typical teeny-bopper star at age 50, but.....for example, Seth McFarlane is doing rather well with his record sales, even though he's old and chubby and doesn't fit the 'typical' mold. Also, the Gorillaz. So it's something that can be done.

And today I just found this:

http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/biggest-british-debut-...

Look at who made the biggest-selling British debut album of 2016.

> Juggling fire is audacious.

Is it? The article points out that juggling fire is no more dangerous than juggling pins. It only appears audacious to an ignorant audience.

That's kind of the point though. The reality of the difficulty is unimportant, it's the perception of difficulty that matters.

Then it's a dangerous parallel when talking about startups. Easy but impressive has no moat. Probably worse than easy but boring.

Or it's impressive because the marketing and design is really good? Think Beats headphones; nothing special technically, horrible value proposition, yet you see them everywhere. Is that not a most?

If by "marketing" you mean "celebrity endorsement". Beats was founded by Dr. Dre and featured by several hip hop artists and in several music videos.

Which is not said to denigrate Beats. By all means, play to your strengths. But it's certainly not an avenue obtainable by your average startup.

Beyond that, if you're talking a startup - especially an early startup - you probably aren't at the "I'm everywhere" stage yet.

We mostly self fund our companies. Easy and impressive, for us, tends to be a death knell. 6, maybe 12 months before someone bigger with more money comes into the market. Boring and easy is OK though, because people don't really pay much attention to boring.

Showmanship and perceived difficulty often seem to matter more than actual skill in writing code, too.

Lovely metaphor buried in the middle: "like the words in a short story that slivers through you and leaves a melon-size exit wound."

This was a fantastic read. Thank you so much for (re)submitting this.

Is there a freaking link to the videos Gatto and Galchenko did of the five-club five-up 360s in a minute? All I find is this and a couple of other articles describing them, but no links. And it doesn't seem to be on Gatto's current channel.

I found some of Vova's videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zG_QpwbV3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9csBR4AcSAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGbWbWSr00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_08RmjLVrpE

I think I have Gatto's videos saved somewhere on my hard drive, I'll try and upload them somewhere if I can find them.

edit: found one of them, I think there was another video before this: http://juggling.tv/16257

brief timeline of events: http://www.galchenko.com/oldsite/news,_2008.htm http://www.jugglingsubculture.com/?p=112 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.juggling/5up3... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.juggling/OcYsxJC...

thanks a lot. lmk if you happen to find the other gatto video. props.

Edit: I love how Gatto's record-break is just buried in a practice video. Very Gatto of him.

Edit2: God, he does a 7 clubs 7 up pirouette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uPoToK4xOY

I don't think I have the other videos, IIRC he removed or made private the previous videos shortly after the later ones were uploaded and that was the impetus for downloading them in the first place.

Btw, here is an another video of Gatto in the BJC uploaded very recently that I'll think you'll enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtsaTMdKVTM

Interesting article. High art in strange mediums.

The thing about high art is that in order to be high art, people have to understand it. Writing or filmmaking lend themselves to high art because you've read a lot or watched a lot of films.

I miss Grantland. Fuck you, ESPN.

In the ’80s, a few jugglers with academic backgrounds had developed something called “siteswap” — a mathematical notation for objects in motion.

Makes me wonder what other activities academics have / will invent notations for

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214

If you're interested in seeing the state of juggling now, the top 40 jugglers of 2016 just came out [1], this was the first time since the list started (in 2003) that Anthony Gatto was not on the list.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M22bYjTWJw0

I enjoyed the article enough to go look at some of his juggling videos and also at several other jugglers.

That's the funniest first paragraph I've ever read. I'll probably be laughing for days. Great stuff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com