Depressing to me, because I find most of the content there to be, "clever only to people of pedestrian intelligence." Then again, perhaps this is just savvy marketing.
While I find 'The Oatmeal' to be somewhat boring and trite, I don't begrudge those who like it their enjoyment, nor do I begrudge the author his income.
I think this is an exercise in awareness, which would be of particular value to the HN crowd. Apple's products are often castigated because their construction/composition/stats go against the preferences of a part of the highly tech-savvy crowd. However, this criticism doesn't take into account the intended audience. There is something similar at work with Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Certain purists might find the language impure and the Rails DSL too focused on a particular way of doing things, but there is a large audience that really likes and benefits from using that software.
While I find 'The Oatmeal' to be somewhat boring and trite, I don't begrudge those who like it their enjoyment, nor do I begrudge the author his income.
Well said! (Better than I did.) I don't begrudge either of those. I also hope no one in this society [1] begrudges my right to express my opinion.
[1] - Deliberately ambiguous, as it's widely applicable.
<< nor do I begrudge the author his income
This is much unlike reading xkcd, where I know quite well that I couldn't do as well.
The focus of the HN crowd is going to be on how he obtained his high level of (financial!) success. To me, it's yet another lesson that mediocrity and lack of talent are no barriers to success. Other factors such as persistence, marketing savvy, funding, connections and lack of any shame about self promotion (this guy practically spammed the hell out of Reddit and Digg 2008-2009) can take you very far.
Metacommentary is annoying, but here goes. His comment was downvoted because it was demeaning without furthering the discussion much. I considered downvoting your comment because it insultingly misstates the reason for members' downvotes when the actual reason is pretty obvious; I actually voted up your comment (since it was down to -1) in spite of that and its defeatist tone because it still made an interesting point.
The lesson I've received, after sparking all this discussion, getting voted down, then back up again, is that it pays off in the end to be open and genuine.
If you do not like something, why bother wasting your time commenting on it. Sure, if it is something that affects you, like your government or road rules, go ahead. If it is something you can ignore, then YOU are being the fool.
One way to make a lot of money is to sell a lot of a product.
Most people are of "pedestrian" (average) intelligence; ergo, to sell a lot of product you must appeal to those of average intelligence.
As any industry grows you see this "regression towards the mean" - one only has to cock one's ear slightly to the side to hear the lamentation of readers, gamers and movie-buffs about how "everything has gone to the dogs".