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Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

The most successful lifestyle/dating coach Mark Manson often glosses over him being born into wealth.

It's very easy to Not Give a F** when you've always had rich parents to support you. As if your known to come from money you'll have no shortage of people who want to get to know you.

It's all trash anyway. The only thing that fixed my dating life was dropping 70 pounds in my 20s. Also fixed my blood sugar! Without the chronic back pain I'm happier too.

This was very hard though and took 6 months or so. I doubt ' Fix your life in 6 to 12 months by making hard choices ' would sell all that well. These books offer quick fixes which aren't practical.

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> The most successful lifestyle/dating coach Mark Manson often glosses over him being born into wealth.

The best trick he pulled with "Models" is selling it as a book about dating, when it's really just about developing self-respect.

I didn't know he was wealthy, but his stories aren't all that removed from your average white college guy in the 2000s. The advice he offers isn't dependent on your income. It's not like "4 hour work week" where the secret was just to pay people to take care of basic tasks and free up your time.

In Art of Not giving a F** he quits the one real job he's ever had after 6 weeks.

That's only possible if you are born into money. Even then he avoids giving out concrete advice. If I'm going to spend 20$ on a book I might as well read one by a billionaire.

The choice is of course up to you.

I haven't read "Art of not..." because it came off as one of those books cashing in on "stoicism for bros". As I understand it, that's the book that made him truly famous.

My original comment refers only to what he wrote in "Models", which was written several years earlier. I would much sooner read a book about dating from a relatively average looking, average seeming guy than somebody who never had problems dating to begin with.

Well you can certainly call the 4 hour work week overhyped (it was also largely a marketing exercise by Tim Ferris), though I guess back in the 2000s when the book was first published, hiring helpers was something that many in developed countries hadn't considered but was perfectly viable (if you're willing to live such a lifestyle), so it's also not like the info was complete garbage/only applicable to rich people.

A lot of this type of advice boils down to taking something simple but hard and trying to make it easy but complicated.

Weight loss would be another example. Everybody knows that you should eat less and exercise more, but those things are hard to improve at, so instead many people gravitate to gimmicky fad diets that won't work but are much easier to try.

> I doubt ' Fix your life in 6 to 12 months by making hard choices ' would sell all that well. These books offer quick fixes which aren't practical.

I'd question this. It's my impression that this is currently the last self help hype - at least it was two years or so ago.

The gospel is that you have punish and torture yourself to accomplish something. You have to "leave the comfort zone" but in a particularly strenuous, masochistic fashion. The pain is then a signal interpreted as being on the right path.

Maybe I'm just a bit narrow in my worldview, but something about that sounds very distinctly Christian to me.

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