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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

I know we don't love reddit here, but it's the first online source I could find for Edward Abbey's hilarious review of ZAMM:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CalamariRaceTeam/comments/5bij42/ze...

Yeah, I know, allegedly written by "Dave Harleyson". Count me among the skeptical.

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That's the book review version of those jokes where someone writes to the agony aunt about some relationship drama and the response is all about what might be wrong with their carburetor.

If, like me, you started but didn't finish ZAMM, that review is absolutely hilarious and a must-read.

I found it takes a weird turn after 2/3 or so that made me dislike it but maybe that is just me 30 years ago, and I only read it once. It reminded me in a way of Life of Pi. It starts as one type of book and starts morphing.

This is some of the most stilted writing I have ever read, like a high school writing assignment gone wrong.

The author was trying way too hard to be cute with the biker thing, and the result is cringeworthy.

Why do we dislike Reddit?

Because Reddit doesn’t follow Hacker News guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think this one is the biggest difference:

“Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.”

I'm guessing because the content/comments are generally lower quality/effort.

Reddit was a YC company. Why don't we like Reddit?

Reddit's incredible. We're just focusing on a different sort of information and discussion here.

For those who might not know: Reddit was pg's idea, which he suggested to Steve and Alexis. Once it started to become popular, Reddit became less interesting for him personally to read (plus they stopped implementing his feature requests), so he made HN. In that sense "not being Reddit" is one of the founding impulses of this site. But there were others too, like wanting a watercooler for the startup world, and wanting to write a web app in Arc.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I agree it's a different sort of vibe, and Reddit depends heavily on which sub you're looking at.

I'm just objecting that liking one precludes liking the other. I post on both and get different things from each. One can appreciate both Shakespeare and the Three Stooges

Is there a list or sampler somewhere, of the P.G. feature requests for Reddit that the Reddit people wouldn't implement?

Sure it includes items like:

  Feature Request 2345: Make the site user-scriptable with Common Lisp.

pg doesn't like CL; too complicated. Back then I'd guess MzScheme.

Extreme herd mentality. The community often values base, emotional instinct over logic and rationality. Glib responses are typically more highly valued than thoughtful replies.

I couldn't tell which community you were talking about there. I sometimes feel like this community dresses up its expression of base, emotional instinct and herd mentality by trying to pass it off as logic and rationality.

It goes without saying that in the end we're all apes and no system is perfect. I think many would agree that with HN there is at least a consistent effort to strive for higher ideals.

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