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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

I think their main goal is to serve as a counterbalance to the prevailing voices in the industry and to show people that there are various definitions of success - not just the definition that TechCrunch and the VC circles elevate.

I welcome their voice. I think it’s a nice counterbalance. We need both kinds of voices in the room.

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I think that's fair, however the tone seems to be more aggressive than simply saying "hey there are other options." It's more "there is no place for this ecosystem and you're broken if you play in it."

For example just from this post alone:

These people have "delusions of grandeur" and "congitive dissonance" are making an "existential cry for help."

“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

Their "main goal" is self-promotion, same as the material they put down. Which they need, the way dung beetles need dung.

I don't think they have much to gain by advocating for this kind of stuff so publicly. They're already incredibly well known for Basecamp, Ruby on Rails, and various other things. That's why I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that they've demonstrated they deserve (in my view).

But who knows, maybe they are indeed psychopathic attention seekers like you suggest. It's impossible for us to prove it one way or another, so I largely find that an irrelevant detail. I generally agree with the general spirit of what they're advocating for even if sometimes they don't quite hit the mark.

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