Elite social media
theverge.com
theverge.com
Yes there are a few erudite intellectuals, brilliant greybeards, and SV millionaires knocking about, but there are plenty of scrubs here as well (present company included.)
Nor are those categories mutually exclusive...
They proclaim exclusivity but are often trying to grow their user base (including stealth advertising via article mentions/placement) and monetize. When they focus on the latter is when they realize that their service isn't that useful because their members clearly aren't interested in paying. Exclusivity or not, a network is useless without X critical mass of users and Y minimum activity level.
Yes, like the convenient timing of this Verge article coming out mere weeks before BOAW releases a new iOS app, and the founder's availability for multiple comments despite their focus on discretion...
indeed.
All things aside, HN always seems to be so serious in its discussion about content, and I never get the opportunity to say how much I appreciate this place.
https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with-problems-4...
Compared to the responses at Reddit, Quora and other places the diversity of HN is astounding.
I love HN and have been using for a really long time, but I joined Reddit relatively recently because I found HN to be rather limiting in comparison.
HN certainly can't be accused of being one-note or even two-note anymore, as it could when it first started. It's definitely been growing in diversity of stories as well as users, but it's still mostly about technology and startups. There are certainly articles about all sorts of topics discussed here, but those discussions tend to be relatively short-lived (maybe one or two days max) and then HN moves on to something else.
Compare that to a subreddit like /r/bodyweightfitness[1], where it's basically non-stop talk about the subject day after day after day, and the discussions tend to be pretty high quality ones (certainly at HN level, on this particular subject). HN might see a post about fitness ever now and then, but, again, the discussion will die in one or two days, and the subject does not get explored in anywhere near as much depth as on that subreddit.
That's just one subreddit, and there are thousands more, on virtually every conceivable subject. Not all of them are of high quality, the reddit front page and enormously popular subreddits tend to be garbage, and the overwhelming majority of subreddits are dead, but there are certainly enough quality subreddits to keep my interest and even to entice me from HN.
HN does scratch some itches for me, but not nearly as many as Reddit does. That said, I'm not ditching HN for Reddit, but I am always looking out for other communities with high quality discussions on the subjects I'm interested in.
Apart from Reddit, there are also many specialty forums that have really high quality discussions on their specific subject. For example, the Muffwiggler forum[2], which is a huge forum dedicated to modular synthesizers. Everything conceivable in relation to synths is discussed there, with many subforums on specific manufacturers and subject. It's really active, and the discussions there are super informative. You're just not going to find that kind of depth on HN, or even a synth-specific subreddit.
There are many other great forums out there, too. This is far from a rare example. You do have to search them out, but they are plenty of them out there, on all sorts of subjects. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that HN quality discussion is actually not that rare. You just have to dig below the garbage surface of the internet and it's there.
My question was specifically one that didn't know which channel to ask in. You would never get through with that question on the front of Reddit.
I used to be on Reddit before I joined HN. There are as you say sub-reddits but they aren't good for when you don't know what you don't know.
At least in my experience.
Not all the discussion on HN will be useful, but it's the highest signal to noise I've found in 30 years of participating in internet fora, at least for a group of this size.
Genuinely curious question - do you know about place where these controversial technologies would be discussed in a "better" way?
Moral of the story: rich people will always want to show off that they are rich.
I think you mean, "Some rich people are insecure enough that they want to show off that they are rich."
Amex caters to this very well: they play the whole "prestige" thing but if you have a "higher-level" card for the benefits (platinum, black) they are happy to issue you an ordinary green one you can use so people won't guess your wealth.
What is the difference? I have always believed the terms to be synonyms, and the Wikipedia article for "charge card" does nothing to change that impression.
(http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.htm...)
Edited to add the following paragraph.
The child post accurately points out that these families are not in the 1%.
A family at median household income ($51k) that mortgaged a median-priced home ($180k) and saved 15% for retirement starting from age 25 will have $856k in a 401k and the better part of their house's value in home equity around age ~57.
If they don't at least have the 401k balance, they're going to be in serious trouble before before they're dead (unless Social Security is still around).
The Millionaire Next Door describes the minimum behavior required to avoid falling out of the middle class over a lifetime.
It's about the kind of people who might buy tickets to the symphony once or twice in a lifetime. Not the kind of people who attend its fundraiser galas. 40%-ers, not 1%-ers.
So about double a movie + dinner.
Selection bias in your sample.
The richest person I've met used to drive a small twenty year old car. Could afford at least a few Bugattis or so.
The mansions and condos tend to be private and secluded. The vacations and galas won't necessarily appear on Instagram. But the truly rich are absolutely out their living large.
I'd argue they are less driven by a need to hoard more money (they already have more than they know what to do with), and more driven by a need to shape world affairs in business and politics while fulfilling noblesse oblige social expectations like philanthropy for the poor, the arts, etc.
They might drive around town in a Toyota, but their family name is in big bold letters on a building somewhere.
I met some pretty cool people at the last ASMallWorld event I went to in Gstaad. Like any social event, some people will be interesting, some will be pompous, some both. You need to sort the wheat from the chaff on your own.
I'd much rather associate with great minds behind a common goal, than by status of wealth. Wealth isn't that great of a filter by which to group peoples' interests.
That being said, success leaves clues, and people who've earned their success financially often have lots of interests stories to tell and lessons to teach. Those that inherit their wealth, it seems, are soon to be parted from it.
There's a place for networking, and there's a place for networking with people similar to you. That being said, I think you're better off focusing on your mission, and letting people attract to you, than you are doing the jetset thing.
Remember these "clubs" are businesses, and they're there to make money on you.
https://www.well.com/join.html
I dabbled in it a couple of decades ago when there was a special-offer for a month's membership, it was certainly highbrow compared to Usenet at the time.
$150 is a fair chunk of cash for a year's membership, but does keep the rabble out whilst not being much of a road-bump to those who are keen.
It had a very interesting commenting system which was non threaded. Instead you referenced the number of the post you were responding to.
It gave some very interesting dynamics in the conversation, something I have never experienced since and I have often thought about doing some exploration around the non-threaded discussion forum.
There's also Lambda the Ultimate (LtU)[2], which had about the deepest language development related discussions I've seen anywhere.
Yet another interesting one, quite different from the above two and from most anything else out there, was everything2.[3] It was kind of like Wikipedia, but not limited in subject matter to "encyclopedic" entiries, nor to "neutral point of view", so it has a lot of really opinionated, creative, and funny entries. Most people don't know about it, and it's been pretty inactive for many years now, but it does still exist and still has a ton of great content.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2.com
I agree, but consider the Vertu phones: really shitty old Nokias caked in diamonds. Even once modern smartphones came out they continued to sell $20K feature phones -- and some clowns bought them.
Personally, whenever I hear the words "prestige" or "luxury" I turn away.
My GF had a visitor from Hollywood during the Super Bowl week end. Said friend was shocked that nobody had bodyguards or drove those fancy looking cars like they have in Hollywood. She was shocked when I introduced her to a couple of billionaires at the sports bar during the game: they were wearing basically the same clothes as everybody else.
(I was shocked that they were there too -- I would have no interest in a sports bar during the Super Bowl except for the entertainment of said house guest).
"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member"
- Groucho Marx
The problem with elite social events is that they're full of the kind of people who value being at elite social events.
This sounds exactly the same and will probably fail for exactly the same issues. A lot of the people aren't really "1 percenters" at all but rather people who live of the "1 percenters" and so the benefits one ends up getting unless they are trying to make money on these people are easy to overlook.
A much better example of a 1 percenter community is Angellist's syndicates. I got a lot of connections that way.
I was a part of A Small World. The unique-ness of it was a draw at first, but it fizzled pretty quickly. Don't know anyone early on who stuck it out...
There are 3 million of them in the US.
From wikipedia:
> The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students; however, later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University.