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Comment by roflc0ptic | Hacker News Reader

The whole TV show “Halt and Catch Fire” was basically about serial failure by a bunch of technically minded narcissists. I’ve never related more to a television show. Notably, it got ignominiously cancelled.

I think failure is bad entertainment.

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I loved that show and think it finished rather than was cancelled.

But many of the folks I recommended it to, didn’t like it. Various reasons provided but I remember stuff like “depressing” and “failure” coming up a lot.

I tried watching it, couldn't get past the first season because of the characters. I've dealt with enough asshole Steve Jobs wannabes and the 10x rockstar programmer types in real life that watching them on screen gives me PTSD.

At least with Silicon Valley you get to laugh through the tears.

Part of the joy of that show is seeing how the characters evolve personally throughout the seasons. It’s often not predictable - but I would say it is believable.

Yeah, similarly pain for me too. But I think it was accurate based on my experience and I think showing the four broken, jerk people was really representative and accurate. Turning them into likable characters would be even more of a fantasy than it already was. I suppose there’s nice people somewhere, but I had the bad luck of not working with them.

Yeah, that's what's stopped me from continuing with the show so far, the characters are all insufferable. At least in Silicon Valley they're insufferable and hilarious.

It just felt so contrived to me, above and beyond what is normal for a TV show. These 6ish people are responsible for pretty much every revolution and success in the tech sector? Yeah fuck that. It felt like tech-bro worship, completely ignoring the same folks everyone else always ignores who tend to be the ones putting in the uninteresting work that keeps those types able to make their successes.

But I watched every second of it with interest so I don't know what that says about me.

> These 6ish people are responsible for pretty much every revolution and success in the tech sector?

But they weren’t. All their “revolutions” were me too products alongside compaq, aol, and yahoo. It seemed like how there were lots of almost-wases around those times. Just look at all the ibm compatible companies who all made similar stuff and didn’t make it.

I grew up in that era, and maybe that's the problem, but it struck me as a poorly-done "Mad Men" for geeks. The nostalgia wasn't just tacked on, it was duct-taped and painted bright green to make sure you noticed. One scene that stands out in my mind was when the older business owner is ordering some US Robotics modems. As the scene cuts away from him with a phone in his hand: "Of course I want the V.32!!!11!"

I cringed so hard my shoulders ached for two days.

For us youngsters, I think that was probably a necessary move - I don't know what I'm supposed to feel nostalgic for, so by making it obvious enough, I could vicariously imagine "Oh, I bet other people are supposed to be feeling nostalgic right now." shrug

How is HACF bad entertainment? Greatest show ever IMO

I'm saying I like it a whole lot. I'm just saying I think it had limited appeal because it wasn't really the hero's story archetype. Or even an anti-hero archetype.

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