edit: oh, now its #1.
Also note that Pauls blog is blazingly fast and does not have ADs/Cookie Conent/Tracking madness. I don't click Medium links anymore b/c all that bloat + crap. With blogs like this, I am back to HN in less than 5 seconds if I don't like the content.
Because I for one and sick and tired of wealth worship in this country.
The post is not interesting and shouldn’t be on the front page.
Why is someone being a zillionaire even a variable to judge whether something was interesting or not?
All kinds of writers, artists, scientists etc were once from that group.
So it's more probable to listen to something interesting from an old money millionaire who inherited wealth, than from a self-made one (which would tire you with self-promotion and gloating about their business acumen, bravado, and hardships they had to overcome).
The only possible criteria that a post this small and with this little substance would get upmodded for is the billionaire bit, and possibly that people are just upmodding 'pg without checking the actual content (I've seen a few people talk about how they use upmodding as a 'read later' function).
I don't even mind that it was, but the comment makes a decent point.
This isn't Billionare worship it is celebrity worship. And it's caused because PG has written enough things insightful enough that people can feel their minds changing as they read, that they will reflexively upvote.
I hate seeing anti-wealth rhetoric on HN. If the point is wealth doesn't matter then the criticism ought to be more substantive then 'aye, he's just popular because he's a billionaire'. HN is one of the only places I know of where ambition has been celebrated. I get that startups and the startup culture didn't turn out to be a necessary good thing so there's some cynicism there. But we can do better than demonizing the money, a result, rather than causes.
(Anyway, I think I'd like to join lobste.rs)
To respond just to this part: I don't think either of these things are true. With "past" you can look around the front page in 2007-8. I just did - not very different at all from today. Not many pg essays around - none on most days on the front page. The titles are a lot longer today, seems the main difference!
You're implying that since it's not actually a variable (X being rich = X having something interesting to say), it can't function as a variable.
But it very much can. Whether it should or shouldn't be a variable, for many people it functions as one.
The same way people buy music or watch movies of "good looking" actors and musicians, even though being "good looking" is not a variable to judge whether a song/movie is good or not.
So, since this (treating wealth/beauty/fame/etc as a variable as to whether something is interesting) exists, and is often prevalent, it makes sense to wonder when someone listens to somebody else X that is rich/beautiful/famous whether they merely listen to X because he is those things (and not because X has something interesting to say).
It is an example of what happens when you feel the urge to say something for the sake of saying it.
And all of this makes me think that maybe somehow there is more randomness to wealth Creation and distribution than we already acknowledge.
Sure, he was relatively wealthy from the sale of ViaWeb. But the popularity of his writing is what led to YCombinator and then to him becoming much more wealthy.
Amen brother! As I was leaving the house this morning I caught a snippet of something about Oprah being on a tour; top tickets are in the thousands of dollars. Nothing against Oprah but what does she have to say that is actionable and I haven't heard before, that I (or anyone, really) should pay to hear? I think it was Gore Vidal (rest his crusty vituperative heart) who wrote that Americans think proximity to wealth eventually confers it on them, especially if they f*-- it. Paraphrased obviously, am not about to google it at work.
It was so out of box to me that I think it speaks to how a large portion of the electorate prefers personalities, particularly those who “created” something.
Are many looking to read what the Waltons say?
No, this isn't wealth worship. The reason why people pay attention to folks like PG and Buffet is because they've repeatedly proven to have useful insights. Does that mean everything they say is of great value? Of course not. But their batting average is strong and they offer a lot of free wisdom. It's a good idea to learn from those who have things to teach, and Paul is a good teacher.
Have you ever been inside a Business College?
Also I enjoy his books and essays, in particular the ones about LISP.
I don't know about his financial situation. And frankly I don't care.
I find these essays, even the short ones, useful and insightful. I hope PG is not unduly influenced by the recent backlash to his publishing more.
I came to this community originally largely due to his insights and the particular culture he nurtured here. The recent uptick in his contributions is welcome.
This is kind of what the original criticism highlighted....
To be fair, yes regularly.
Maybe it's supposed to be a meta essay, an essay about noobs that reads like it was written by a noob?
All the time. Both "personal insight/self help" stuff, and all kinds of low-effort development posts. So?
I guess I'll really regret asking for a few examples of that! But here goes - Some evidence for that claim? Recent links? (This site has stuff that made the front page I think, if that helps https://hckrnews.com/ )
By low-effort, I meant..the combination of bland content, first-draft-quality style, and very short. I don't think I've seen anything that short on here, and it's high on the blandometer too, though some people on this page say they got value from it. (Aw I feel bad criticizing now, hopefully he takes his own advice not to read HN pages about one's own stuff..)
edit: Ah, someone on this page mentioned Seth Godin, which reminds me he had a blog-post linked recently (not sure if it made the front page) - even shorter, and much less to say. One of the most popular blogs in the world! It said. Amazing. My first exposure to him. Well, maybe he used to be good, I don't know.
Plus lots of one-off posts of random "wisdom"
Add to that all the content-less "new Node release", "here's 2 minor changes in Golang 1.1x", "I tried framework X and I don't like it" (with trivial arguments), etc... that somehow are voted to be first page...
It's a useful reminder, but it doesn't stand out. Anyone and everyone these days gives advice about learning voraciously, whether or not anyone listens or does it.
You can expect to have control over something you created.
They appear on the front page because of the 'Newman effect'. I just coined that term for back in the day what made Paul Newman's salad dressing successful and has since been copied as a formula by many celebrity brands. Basically if you have two salad dressings on the shelf in a supermarket people will pay attention and potentially buy the one that they notice for a reason that is not even related to the quality of the product. And as everyone knows in sales or marketing (or should know) getting your message across and getting listened to is (arbitrarily I am making this up) half the battle. [1]
Of course Paul Newman had other things going for him as well. He could get the supermarket to consider his product because of the halo around him as a movie star. He could get top quality people to help with the product as a result of being a movie star. He even (iirc) pioneered (or at least popularized) giving profits to charity (from memory). But much of the success was for sure dependent on his name recognition which made it more likely that people would try the product (same thing happens with why stars are featured in movies obviously although with Netflix that is becoming less important for sure).
[1] This is also what an intro does for you it gets the person to listen to what you have to say which you might not even get the chance to do if you are just cold calling.