Haters

https://twitter.com/brokenimageheap/status/12132089537542021...

But the article took a very interesting turn. It said, (paraphrasing) without gossip, people in power will arrange everything in the general direction of usurping more power (e.g. dictators). And how gossip serves a very important evolutionary need (a powerful, guerilla style technique to destroy power-grabs). If you were under a dictator, openly criticizing them leaves you with a small chance of being murdered. Hence you will choose instead to gossip. Imagine if the dictator then tells all his subjects - "whatever you have heard about me is untrue, it is just some haters hating".

So there is another explanation for haters (and their apparent obsession) - they look around and see a lot of injustice. Usually they are powerless to do anything, and waiting until they achieve something in life might make the problem much worse before they can offer their viewpoint. So perhaps hating has an evolutionary benefit - it gives clues to non-haters to then go and do their own additional research. Sometimes it results in reducing the power of those who become so out of touch that they just casually dismiss all criticism as hating, much like Hillary thought everyone who doesn't agree with her is a deplorable person.

Just taking a perspective publically on something fairly innocuous such as which is the best programming language seemed to attract something much more aggressive than the usual debate because I had a bit of a perceived expertise.

I had a handful of people follow me online commenting on nearly everything, calling me a fraud etc again it wasn’t justified and the topic did not really warrant such a degree of negativity.

And heaven forbid you do actually make a mistake. I made the most tiny oversight about equality and diversity and the baying mob online wanted to tear me to pieces.

One thing I was disappointed about was how the social media platforms responded. They wouldn’t even help me stop some of it even though it crossed a line.

Though it upset me at first, I successfully tuned out and just used it as motivation to prove them wrong. It’s hard though but a definite fact of life.

Couldn't disagree with this more. There are innumerable examples of toxic people turning things around in a different situation. PG is making the fundamental attribution error here.

Only the most cursory glance could imply that haters are never successful. If you followed individual haters, you'd likely find many of them grew up and stopped shitposting on Twitter.

1. Their employee list (not updating it quickly after major staffing changes)

2. Legal status: misrepresenting to the public and to customers that the company is licensed to operate in that capacity or is proceeding illegally?

3. Pressuring it's subscription customers to publish positive stories about the product and reportedly even threatening their access to it.

I ask because this article comes out days after a Business Insider article about a high profile YC company. Its author uses the words "fraud" on their twitter and "cult" in the article, and makes some of the accusations that I've listed above. It's difficult not to suspect the two events are linked.

if you’re a startup CEO and you spend a year relentlessly bragging about your startup publicly you invite scrutiny on yourself. You are practically begging others to ask questions you might not want asked.

His chief of staff literally insulted the intelligence of anyone who dared suggest Lambda School was worth less than $100B https://web.archive.org/web/20190921045339/https://twitter.c...

I don't think that "some thoughtful people who like y" is good enough. There have been big "frauds" in the tech space (and so many in the finance space) were it took years for public opinion to catch up with their actions (Theranos, WeWorks, Epstien and MIT labs) despite some people (Matt levine, John Carreyrou) knowing they weren't above board these people and companies were defended (or not even questioned) by media coverage and big name personalities.

Most people are not complete losers or complete winners. Sometimes they feel a bit of a loser, especially if they have high ambitions but not much above average success, and sometimes they feel winners, especially when compared with people who have clearly achieved less then them in life. Feeling a loser will drive some envy towards people who are very successful. 'It is not only their talent, they were also lucky, they were at the right place at the right time'. Which is partially true.

What pg didn't discuss is that different people get different amount of hate. For example people who misattribute their success to their technical-talent in a technical field, but their success clearly involves other kind of talent or luck get more hate then pure technical geniuses. Also people who like to express strong opinions on lots of often subjective topics get more hate than people sticking to their expertise and to mostly technical topics. For example pg obviously gets more hate than John Carmack or John Von Neumann.

But at the end of the day: everybody must work on this inside their own brain. Even if it were sometimes satisfying to be a bit of a hater, just don't be one.

I set up a blog way back when blogs were first a thing, maybe 20 years ago. Started posting articles about internet, culture, tech, anything I found interesting.

Almost immediately, I had people dropping by and posting the most vile comments. Whatever I did, I did for bad reasons. I was a bad person and there just wasn't anything I could do or say to fix that.

I never learned how to mentally deal with this kind of blind anti-fandom, but I did learn an important lesson: never joke on the internet, or if you do, be very, very careful it's obvious it's a joke. Because whatever I think is funny because it's silly, obnoxious, or ludicrous? Somebody else will take seriously. And now you've got a new hater.

The net is drifting towards private communities. I think that's a good thing. This kind of environment really isn't healthy for folks.

I really appreciate how PG applies a sort of pattern matching sense of logic to the world to create really novel insight-- his pattern match here is that haters are fanboys. But it rings a bit untrue, and I don't think yields real insight.

Startups, PG himself and tech have to weather a wide swathe of criticism-- but it can often be warranted. It can seem like companies have haters, but do they have haters or valid critics?

Here's some of the very valid criticisms that tech has had to deal with:

- facial recognition abuse

- privacy data breaches

- misrepresentation of value to shareholders and customers

- theft of contractors tips

- myriad harassment claims towards all genders

- retaliating against whistleblowers

- massive settlements to employees who are accused of crimes

- ceding to Chinese demands for censorship

- taking contracts for controversial governmental agencies

- squashing nascent union organizing (agree or not, people have a right to discuss and consider this)

And I'm sure I'm missing some here.

So ultimately his pattern matching is incorrect. The Twitterati take constant aim at PG and tech for what are quite serious issues. Simply put it's not haterism, it's valid criticism.

Despite that, his other points have merit. Haters and fanboys do have similarities - they stem from the same root cause, that they were emotionally impacted by someone. If that was a positive impact at a time in their life when they really needed it, they are fanboys. If it was a negative impact at a time when they were already struggling, they become haters.

I'm not a fanboy of pg, just a reader, so I'm not going to act like he has let us down by penning a weaker article. We're all imperfect beings, whether we are fanboys, haters, or blog authors whose works isn't always the best. I'm going to look at this specific post as a rough draft that got shared too soon.

haters are just part of life. No need to get worked up on them and make sloppy, weak arguments about them.

> "I've been able to observe for long enough that I'm fairly confident the pattern works both ways: not only do people who do great work never become haters, haters never do great work"

He's a social scientist doing work on human behavior?

Graham probably won't read this, but my advice to him (from a moderate admirer, not a "hater") is not to do this to himself.

How about "Taylor Swift has haters, but so did Jeffrey Eipstein and Elizabeth Holmes".

And to top it off he calls both labeled groups of people "less than men".

All of this setup to deliver the profound advice to just ignore them.

(Before people call me a "hater", note that I strictly do not meet the definition, because I like a lot of his essays.)

"He's less than a man" and "Haters are generally losers"

- to me shows an unhealthy level of grandiosity, and an inability to fully understand another person's experience.

Yes this article might help you deal with some stuff, but it's also not scalable and avoids examining the underlying deep rooted societal inequities that cause these addictive behaviors in people in the first place.

At the same time though, I am grateful to the author for showing himself. I think having these conversations helps us evolve.

Now go watch 'The Work' (2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ

That said, there is one other aspect worth commenting on: the "nearly successful" kind of hater. Yes, they absolutely exist. Academe is particularly full of them. The reason, I think, is simple: some people resent those they compete with. For that kind of person, that means the people right next to them in whatever real or imagined ranking. Those further above or below are irrelevant, and not worth hating.

The other key (subtweeting a bit myself here) is that some people invite this particular kind of hate. They exaggerate any difference between themselves and those they have barely outdone. They hotly deny the role of luck or privilege in achieving their status, more often than pg seems (or wants) to think. Psychologically, they mirror others' envy with a desire to reaffirm their position in a race they know could have gone either way. There's a bond between the haters and the hated, and often both sides participate.

> Could a hater be cured if they achieved something impressive? My guess is that it's a moot point, because they never will. I've been able to observe for long enough that I'm fairly confident the pattern works both ways: not only do people who do great work never become haters, haters never do great work.

Listening to that old Steve Jobs interview where he talks about Microsoft (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWWtV1w5fw) I think there elements there of what Paul would be calling a "hater". A view that there's something a bit wrong with the world when particular non-ideal characteristics are rewarded.

It sounds as if Paul has enough of his own personal issues with haters that he wants to put them all into an irredeemable bucket.

this reads like a justification for ignoring criticism by attributing the criticizing party to being a hater.

> "It's unfair that so-and-so is famous," but "It's unfair that so-and-so is famous, and not me."

I believe this only takes < 1% of haters, since "Not me" is not very sustainable and would die out soon. The majority of haters are "us vs them" mentality, which makes hate persist decades. If someone hates a movie maker or a company, it's either:

1. It's DC vs Marvel. They are similar enough to the rest of the world, but there are nuances to the haters and fanboys. Similar things are Vim vs Emacs, Java vs C#. There were also flamewars between Intel and AMD fans, but since Intel clearly outperformed in previous years, both alliances seem died out almost at the same time -- It's just a CPU.

2. He actually hates the genre/category. He hates comic movies as a whole, as it absorbs most of the resources in the market, making the genre he loves never to be cost-efficient to be made anymore. There were some extraordinary movies in the 20th century because movie companies are still exploring business models.

> "because anyone famous knows how random fame is"

This is where the problem is, just we don't know how to fix it yet. Haters are just a phenomenon. Not only it's random, but also it's ridiculous. Scammers exist because people are vulnerable to scamming; Tiktok exists because people are vulnerable to the designed mechanism. Massive surveillance exists because it just works.

It's more than Okay to criticize scammers instead of competing them.

> "although they are occasionally talented, they have never achieved much."

> "successful enough to have achieved significant fame"

It's very hard to correlate success with fame. Taking PG's Lisp vs Blub example, if someone was evangelizing functional programming in the early 90s, they would never as successful as mediocre OO experts. It takes time. PG has spent so much effort on evangelizing Lisp, he never as famous as Martin Fowler or Uncle Bob in the industry.

As another example, Uncle Bob coined the term SOLID. I found almost all my colleagues know SOLID, most of my colleagues know Uncle Bob. However, those people behind those ideas like Barbara Liskov and Bertrand Meyer are much lesser known.

They may have achieved great things in one area but in other areas they are somewhat average and very much like us. Anxiety, doubts, misdeeds, regrets, emotions etc.

Like pg is great but he’s also not a god. Don’t treat him like one. We’d prolly be disappointed. He’s said a fair share of crap as well some very insightful things.

I have trouble understanding why someone over 25 would be either a fanboy or a hater. People are just people. No matter how good someone is, they fuck up, make mistakes, aren't so good at other things and have flaws. Likewise, even someone you find terrible or a 'fraud' has their success or fame for a reason. You may not agree with it but obviously someone sees value in.what they do.

I just can't understand spending the energy obsessing over people either way. I understand recognizing the great achievements people make or being critical of flaws. But to obsess over them seems like such a waste of time and energy.

Nobody's perfect and nobody's completely and utterly hopeless or a fraud or whatever(I see why this term is causing some discussion on hn. It is tough to find a suitable word to describe how a hater would view the hated).

Also, as much as being either a fanboy or hater is a waste of time, feeding off of either of them is also. However good the fanboy's make you feel, it sets you up in a bubble where you start to believe what they say and start to truly believe you can do no wrong. Likewise, the criticism of the haters doesn't really allow you room for critical self analysis because you can do no right.

And as for that bit switch, the funny thing about haters and fanboys is that switch isn't permanently set. It can switch back and forth for the most arbitrary reasons. Because, it's all just obsessive energy and it doesn't take much to switch focus either way.

> There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud.

Just look at recent history- Enron, WorldCom, Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes (and many more) were ALL widely celebrated by neutral third parties before being exposed as frauds. Neutral opinions are often neutral because they haven't done much research on a topic. Thus, they are often relatively uninformed opinions.

And these frauds were NOT conspicuous at all. They worked very hard to present the appearance of success. It took some dogged investigations from "haters" (by PG's definition) to reveal the truth.

Also the emphasis on 'neutral opinions' is revealing. The problem when speaking to powerful people is that they're very adept at deflecting 'objective' criticism. It's the sort of discourse they're accustomed to. Hate and anger and even slightly mad and irrational criticism can come from a place of truth. And it can be valuable because in contrast to polite discussion scathing anger is hard to deflect. People in a position of power know how to deflect neutral criticism, they don't know how to deal with loud resentment. For many people, that kind of resentment is the only way to even voice their opinion.

The tone of the article sounds so far removed from reality that the article makes "famous people" sound average, the intelligent upper class like the only one with a license for legitimate criticism, while everyone else is a loser, imlpying that losers do not have valid opinions or that their sentiment can be disregarded because they have not learned how to voice them politely.

I don't know if Paul Graham reads these comments, but if you do you may ponder that it almost sounds like you're categorizing the vast majority of people as losers, and emotional expression as invalid. That's the only tool most people have to make themself heard.

My theory for why so many famous people are sensitive to hate is because hate establishes a lack of respect for authority. It dismantles a lot of pretentiousness around so-called 'critical thinking' in particular in these tech circles. The civility attitude on HN is a good example of this. I don't think it exists to actually think critically, it's just an occupational license to have a quick way to disregard the opinion of people who are perceived to be unsophisticated.

Anyway, haters sometimes can’t be ignored since they often spread lies at every opportunity, and these days damaging misinformation travel way faster than truths and are very hard to clear up.

It was quite disturbing and confusing to watch this happen. Since then I've starting engaging fanboys with caution, the same way I might engage haters. I take their opinions with a large grain of salt and try not give them a reason to get too obsessed.

I can see three possibilities here:

1. I've just been lucky so far.

2. I have haters but I've simply not noticed them.

3. There's a range in the spectrum of "fame" where people attract fanboys but not haters -- particularly when people are famous within narrow niches -- and I'm in that range.

I'm leaning towards the third possibility, but I'm curious what other readers think here.

EDIT: pg points out on Twitter that haters are rarer than fanboys, so it may be a combination of 1 & 3: I've been lucky, but most "minor celebrities" are lucky.

Now in this essay he is catching more criticism in the comments here than I expected.

1. For calling someone a loser. I interpreted this to be an act of the will. I can't imagine Paul Graham calling someone a loser who is trying his best.

2. For using the phrase "less than a man." A man is a mature boy. I interpreted this as a pithy way to say that someone is immature, and again by choice.

And yet... there are plenty of wildly successful people that are fans of sports, and haters of the rivals. Obama is famously a basketball fan, for instance.

I get that it’s a lot milder than hating on a person, my point is that this is a thing that is in almost all of us. The smart people just know when to compartmentalise those feelings.

Quite the contrary! My impression is that most famous people are quite full of themselves and attribute too large a portion of their success to skill, when luck (being in the right place at the right time) was a significant factor.

> What sort of people become haters? Can anyone become one? I'm not sure about this, but I've noticed some patterns. Haters are generally losers in a very specific sense: although they are occasionally talented, they have never achieved much. And indeed, anyone successful enough to have achieved significant fame would be unlikely to regard another famous person as a fraud on that account, because anyone famous knows how random fame is.

I guess pg was going more for the startup founder and creative worker aspect but wouldn't a lot of it be explained by the need to be in a tribe? You can find intelligent people in politics hating others simply due to the mere association.

A lot of startups are politically and socially charged (disruption in the power balance of society) so it makes partial sense for someone to hate otherwise they may lose their security out of their primal instincts.

It becoming a part of your identity is likely an unintended consequence of validation from enough insecure people. Further, someone can capitalize being insecure. Probably how a lot of political celebs comes into power.

http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html

Everything more recent than that does not have the notes linked in the body.

So if people become haters because they never achieved much, why do people become fanboys?

In todays society pop culture is what is mainstream: think positive, smile, listen songs that dont mean anything but are also not hurting anyone, be happy, even if something is negative concentrate on positive (X company is adding toxic chemicals to their food but they have such a lovely packaging), but bottom line, pretend that everything is nice and fine and you will die with a smile on your face.

The problem is that the society is going into endless circle of self soothing minds, that are not only ignoring the hell of a lot of things that needs to be fixed (from society, environment, companys... products) but are also satisfied by someone selling them intelectual or physical product that is a junk but offers them a dream that there is nothing wrong with their lifestyle/thinking/... and are furious protecting that illusion from anyone daring to criticize it. This was a funboy a decade ago. I am observing with horror that now it has become mainstream.

Once the options to contradict logically are gone, as a last scream of mind defending their ego is an etiquette "you are a hater".

In that moment everything seems fine again.

"It is not me.", "It is not the product I love.", "It is you.", "I can go back to my illusion now.".

So Graham. Smile. Be happy. Be positive. Dont be a hater to haters. As maybe... they are not haters after all.

I just disengaged from all these people. I don't read comments on my blogs or articles. But still, having negative fanboys impacts you the rest of your life. You imagine them calling you out. It pulls you down and slows you down.

Thanks for this PG.

PG is likely dealing with a phenomenon that most of us have no personal experience with.

All I can do is try to embrace his understanding to get an insight because I have no idea what it's like to have some stranger obsess about me for good or ill.

I notice some people commenting here who seem to think that trolls and people who dislike you casually are the same as the "haters" PG is writing about. I don't think they are.

1) The person who they hate to them (the hater) appears to have more luck than talent. There are others with the same or more talent (maybe even the hater or someone they know) who get no attention at all and toil in obscurity.

Of course luck is a sliding scale (there is always luck) but someone in theory would be less likely to hate someone who ran a race and was the fastest (low on the luck scale high on the skill scale) but more likely to hate a startup founder or a singer or actor who had fame but it didn't appear related as much to talent but to luck. Someone can imagine 'I could do that' but not 'I can beat that person in a marathon' (easy to quantify).

2) There are fanboys and that enhances the annoyance by the hater. So it's the constant attention (which they feel is undeserved and quite frankly it probably is) that drives the hater. Not the person themselves. The media attention the fawning articles the fawning comments.

3) They get attention for things that the same activity would not get attention by a non famous person. Example is PG wrote this essay and everyone here (including me) are feasting on it.

4) They are unapproachable. They wouldn't give you the time of day (because of course they don't have time to give everyone attention). If you wrote to them they might write back a quick reply but they would never engage in a discussion or invite you to go out or be their friend. They would give you some trivial brush off (if they replied at all). You are not important to them and they know that. That bugs people even if they know there is a legit reason for the brush off. People react negatively to lack of courtesy and to have it in their face that they are not important even if rationally they understand why it's happening to them.

So at the core it's not the actual famous person that is hated so much as the attention that is given to the famous person that drives the hate. The hater feels it's undeserved and over the top.

And it is 'over the top' when it just becomes to much in the mind of the hater.

Should also serves as a lesson illustrating it is not easy to point faults at other, even less so at whole classes of people, when yourself have your own elephant in the room ones...

I learned about it from the book "The Courage to be Disliked" that talks about these two things in a very approachable manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_complex

This essay, if it truly applies to Lambda School as many of the other commenters are suggesting, is a case in point. If this is really about Lambda School, then there's at least some plausible reasons to find it sketchy which one might want to address.

Note also that not all who disagree with you are haters or trolls.

But it reminded me that Paul usually thanks people who review his essay drafts at the end.

This one was no exception, but I noticed a couple new names:

Peter Thiel, and Christine Ford.

From the Kavanaugh drama[1]? It looks like yes.

[0]: https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebooks-pr-feels-broken

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford

“How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? ... Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by [frauds]“

The world is full of “thoughtful” people who have been taken in by frauds - Theranos is a recent example - and so I think this is pretty terrible advice in general - although I can see how it might work in certain contexts.

For example, frauds often seem to work on smart people who aren’t smart in the specific field in which the fraud operates.

"A Plan For Haters And Fanboys".

I will try to apply to it to myself

---

Well I am clearly an hater, because I think that Paul Graham says a lot of stupid shit on subjects where he lacks the ability to empathize with the real victims, like many people who are male, white, powerful, well-connected and who can basically accomplish whatever the fuck they want to accomplish. Why don't all those poor victims just do the same, right?

This inflated ego leads him to be a jerk more often than necessary, and write things that are obviously wrong (but not for him) on some subjects where he is a like a snowflake who thinks he is the real victim being attacked. A bit like all those Trump voters who think that the problem with racism in the USA is that white people like them are being unfairly critized as being a racist.

At that point, the Paul Grahan classifier has all the necessary signals to classify me as an hater.

----

On the other hand...

I am obviously a fanboy because I genuinely believe that Paul Graham is a very generous, bright mind who has worked a lot and helped thousands of people.

I know for a fact that he has helped me a lot, I've read pretty much everything he wrote and was nodding furiously all of the time. I can tell you my ten favorites articles from him.

Well actually, let's do it. I really liked

- "Lisp for web-based applications" - "A plan for span" - "If Lisp is So Great" - "What You Can't Say" - "The Python Paradox" - "The Age of the Essay" - "How to Start a Startup" - "What I did this summer?" - "You weren't meant to have a boss" - "Ramen Profitable" - "Startup = Growth""H - "Do Things That Don't Scale" - "Default Alive Or Default Dead?"

Oops, I told 13 instead of 10, and I had to force myself to stop here.

That's what fanboys do.

---

In summary, I understand the tentation to have "A Plan For Fanboys/Haters" like he had a "Plan For Spam".

Frankly that would be nice if that was possible, I would buy it, just say your price.

But I'm starting to think that real human beings are more complex than this nice dichotomy.

I think Paul Graham is like a normal human being, with wonderful parts and deep flaws, pretty much like all of us.

That leads him to be right and helpful on a lot of subjects, and also to be wrong and a jerk on other topics.

Since he is a bright guy, he would have no problems to discover why he was wrong, if he applied his own principles to those topics.

And he would apply his own principles if he was interested.

His output being deeply wrong shows that he is not interested right now by those topics.

Ok, fine.

That said, on Quora, many years ago there was an article summed up by: If you're not pissing someone off, you're doing it all wrong.

I think these's truth to that. So if you want to do it not all wrong, then you have to expect there's gonna be some friction

But there is also a class of fanboys who gradually became disillusioned, for they have come to realize that the emperor has no clothes. For these people it's often the case that the same ones who lifted the star to the top will also cause its downfall. Peter Thiel has written about this in his book, and history is littered with such examples.

Malcolm Gladwell did a good job exploring this type of social behavior in his book.

My hypothesis is that it's a very American concept, as in I don't remember ever anyone outside the US/Canada use that word (same with "winner"). Like in Europe or South America for ex people would say somebody is a deadbeat or terrible at their job or lazy but not a loser (this may be just in my head).

This is entirely wrong. History is full of people with spectacular achievements whom pg would classify as "haters".

The whole essay is really poor (and yes, I've also achieved more than flipping a web-shop to friends at Yahoo during the bubble.).

Hah! PG is a Wodehouse fan. Makes sense.

Think about team-sports, the English soccer hooligans. They succumb to terrible violence because they are fanboys of their own team and haters of the other team, including the followers of the other team.

Sort of like borderline painting black and white.

First - his example of the 'hater of the pop singer' I think is wrong.

Someone likely 'hates' the pop singer because their popularity is not justified, i.e. lacking talent or authenticity.

They don't 'hate' an obscure pop singer, because there's no point.

This is not arbitrary disdain.

I think a better example would be the comments section in HuffPo or Breitbart on politics. It's just pure political identity and nothing else: all actions of the opponent must be bad.

Second - I think his characterisation of 'loser' might be very wrong as well. A lot of very rich dudes got that way by being obsessively competitive, sometimes full of arbitrary rage at 'the other guy'. 'Vendetta' is not a word we usually associate with losers, I think it comes from the same place.

It just might be that anger is a little stickier and motivating than other things?

The man I hate is famous, millions of subscribers famous. He makes entertaining (and, sometimes, thoughtful tech videos) on the internet. He is intelligent, funny and charismatic.

But, behind closed doors, the façade that is his personality slips away. And underneath he is a monster. There are stories about this man from the people who have been around him and worked with him. Stories about this man having a tantrum when a sponsor refused to gift him an absurdly costly item in addition to his payment, tickets, hotel stay and a generous per diem. He never stops screaming to the people who work for him. He belittles them. Cuts them down. He abuses everyone around him.

His abuse is prolific. It's not public. But it is prolific. People who know anyone tangential to the space he's in talk about their dealings with him. I have corresponded with him professionally. And that and so much more makes me hate him.

I still enjoy his content, but if people bring him up to me, I pass the word along that he is an unrepentant asshole of the worst stripe. The one who thinks his abuse makes the world a better place. But it really doesn't. Because he just makes videos on the internet.

  –—

I am a fan of my friend. He is also famous. But I don't care that he's famous. I don't read nor see any of the things he is famous for. He is my friend first, and I value him for that. I value him for his kindness, honesty and ethics. I value him for saying thank you to his employees after every long day. But most of all, I value him for valuing other people fairly – and going above and beyond when necessary.

It's not that he doesn't has flaws, but it's that he is a fundamentally good person. He does stupid things sometimes. But I have seen him help other people. I have seen him get hurt while helping other people. I have also seen him continue helping others no matter the cost. It's just who he is. He is a bright spot in this universe, and I do critique the things he wants feedback on. Sometimes I re-write important documents for him, because that's not his forte. But I respect and admire him, and I don't think there's anything I can do that will make me stop respecting or admiring him.

His fame makes me hesitant to say more. His privacy matters to me. Because he is a good person intentionally bringing some good into this world. What he does matters, even at the smallest of scales. He matters.

I won't extend the same consideration to the person I hate.

  –—

  I love my fans, but no one ever puts a grasp  
  On the fact I've sacrificed everything I have    
  I never dreamt I'd get to the level that I'm at    
  This is wack, this is more than I ever coulda asked      
  Everywhere I go, a hat, a sweater hood or mask    
  What about math, how come I wasn't ever good at that?    
  It's like the boy in the bubble, who never could adapt    
  I'm trapped, if I could go back, I never woulda rapped    
  I sold my soul to the devil, I'll never get it back      
  I just wanna leave this game with level head intact     
  Imagine goin' from bein' a no-one to seein'     
  Everything blow up, and all you did was just grow up emceein'   
  It's fuckin' crazy, ‘cause all I wanted was to give Hailie  
  The life I never had, instead I forced us to live alienated

the tone of this article didn't seem to bother PG & friends at all! but it clearly bothered some of us...

The problem is that many online communities foster this sort of thing and allow it to fester and grow..as if it's perfectly acceptable.

Reddit has subreddits that I've seen that are dedicated to this behavior and sites like Twitter and Facebook will only get rid of posts if it fits the current political narrative. I've seen republicans/conservatives get death threats against their kids with no bannings, but if you misgender someone, it's an instant ban.

Its these sorts of double standards that allows hate to flourish and sends a signal to the person doing it that it's acceptable behavior, so it not only continues, but gets worse...and the person sending the hateful messages will never stop there.

I call BS on the premise above.

In the history of mankind, there has never been any shortage of great men, with equal huge fame and big achievements, who hated on each other. From scientists to writers to thinkers to musicians.

Similarly:

> There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud.

There was never a shortage of "thoughtful people" who have sided with frauds. If one considers e.g. Hitler or Stalin a fraud, there was no shortage of influential and famous men, including major artists, thinkers and scientists, who routed for one or the other...

So, at best the premises hold for low-status "internet mob" style haters.

Not for haters-at-large...

- Paulo Coelho

A. Hypothesis:

The person you laud is a target of your psychological projection.

B. Evidence:

Let's take Apple. It had a lot of fanbois, especially 1990-2010. If one thing can be said for it, its ads were true: it thought different. In a world of computers for businesses and penny pinchers, Apple catered to artists and perfectionists.

My first computer was a Macintosh. So that's another thing: nostalgia.

Steve Jobs said and did things that I wish I had the courage to say and do.

C. Conclusions:

When I think of the fanbois of Apple, I think of people who feel (1) underrepresented, and now have found (2) representation.

Therefore to them, Apple is, in a way, them. Apple is me, Steve Jobs is my avatar. I am not famous, so I rely upon Steve Jobs to go out in the world and speak on my behalf. When I see him make a mistake, I explain it away, the way I explain away my own shortcomings. When people attack him, I feel attacked, and so I speak up in his defense.

---

II. Paul Graham suggests that fanbois and haters are two sides of the same coin. So let me put haters under the same light.

A. Hypothesis:

The person you cast aspersions upon is a target of your psychological projection.

B. Evidence:

Scant evidence, because I don't talk to haters much about their hating. I did have a friend though who was normally cheerful but surprised me one day with his hatred for Ben Affleck. Now that I revisit the memory, I wonder if Ben Affleck reminded him of an old classmate.

People have an unusual hatred for celebrities who seem nice like Taylor Swift. Maybe she reminds them of an old girlfriend who hurt their feelings.

C. Conclusions:

As I walk these streets, I seem to be surrounded by nice, well-adjusted people. Most of them are polite and quiet. But as I get to know people, and as I read the news, I keep finding out that emotional abuse is rampant. I think everyone is hurting, but they're usually stuffing it, and then it escapes in unexpected directions, like at Ben Affleck.

Therefore Ben Affleck or Taylor Swift is, in a way, the person who hurt them. Ben becomes the avatar of a certain enemy (or perhaps one's own repressed shame, maybe he reminds you of you).

Such is psychological projection. I didn't make it up. I read about it. It's usually about projecting onto not-famous people, just people around you. For example, a father might project his own faults onto his son. But now I am thinking of it specifically for people in the spotlight. It makes sense that people who have your attention could become the target of your thoughts.

---

Coda:

A nice side of this theory is that it explains sports fans too. Why do you care about this group of people throwing a ball around in this field down below? Why are you yelling and screaming? Well, because for whatever reason you have decided that they represent you. Maybe it's as simple as the team is from Cincinnati, and you live in Cincinnati. Or in the case of college sports, that you went to that college, or your mother did. (I admit I'm not into sports, and many people root for teams that seem to have nothing to do with them, so this explanation may be incomplete.)

---

Epilogue:

Paul Graham did not treat this possibility, but his conclusion rings true: When people love or hate you unreasonably, it's not about you, it's about them.

«A fanboy is obsessive and uncritical. Liking you becomes part of their identity, and they create an image of you in their own head that is much better than reality. Everything you do is good, because you do it. If you do something bad, they find a way to see it as good. And their love for you is not, usually, a quiet, private one. They want everyone to know how great you are.»

I am also reminded of Rene Girard's notion of a scapegoat mechanism - perhaps the object of people's irrational hate is a kind of scapegoat to those people

for trump it’s like 99 pct.

it’s a shame people can’t just be objective and call out good/bad

I vibe to this. Anyone who has leveraged talent into success in any area knows how much work it is to be successful at anything. It inspires a level of empathy for people who have trod a similar path.

The fanboy is so slavishly predictable in his admiration that he's diminished as a result. He's less than a man. And I think this is true of haters too.

I'm kind of disappointed by the choice of words here. I get the point of the phrase "less than a man", but it implies some toxic ideas about masculinity that are kind of ugly.