Getting to Gnome Mode | Hacker News Reader

Getting to Gnome Mode

studio.ribbonfarm.com

59 pointsjger1518 comments

I suspect there's a point under all this but I don't have any confidence I've understood it. I get goblins are bad but are gnomes good or not? Where's the halflings and kobolds?

I advocate "dragon mode". Find a defensible place, keeps what's precious to you there; burn the solicitors and anyone who looks tasty.

I expected the analysis of the "gnome mode" language to make a connection to Tom Bombadil. The imagery and language is similar enough to "Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow!" memes that I figured that had to be one of the main inspirations it's drawing on.

It must take an incredibly sheltered perspective to frame goblin mode as something that happens to tech employees who have the luxury of a WFH policy.

I have referred to the Second Month panel as "Two Pile Theory".

TPT would be the clothing article view of this system, I suppose.

After the third mention of "normies", I quit. There may be a point hidden in there, but the writing is too poor to decipher it.

It's a very deliberately affected style, which (clearly) won't be to everyone's taste -- but I don't think it's fair to call it poor writing.

Fair enough.

But the usage of "normies" around here is on the rise and it's in poor taste[0]. There might be a parallel to draw with the now defunct usage of "brogrammer" of a few years ago and group identity: one is about in-groups, the other is about out-groups (but both suck).

[0] and ambiguous.

In this particular case, the word normies is just pointing out more that goblin mode is something an average person can end up.

According to the article goblins have the career path track, money is good mindset that most people have. They are just in a burnout. When they rise again out of that state, they will be career focused again like before, a.k.a. 'normie' in this article. The article talks about Gnome mode as the alternative track when moving on from the goblin mode .

I was interested after the first introduction paragraph but later I felt like it wasn't going anywhere, or they could have been much more concise about it.

It's alarming to me how much I see genuine sentiment being expressed that equates to "do less, be less, it's better that way".

Rejecting burnout / the conditions that cause burnout is perfectly reasonable.

Putting your clothes in a clothes hamper shouldn't cause burnout

At no point does the article say this or infer it, at most the article says it's a side-effect of burnout.

Even then, it's a _story_, it's not saying 'if you are burnt out this will happen'.

> do less, be less It's a relative tip. Absolutely true if you're just pushing yourself to burnout at the sake of your health. Absolutely false if you're wasting whole days on weed & games alone.

As opposed to burnout, hurt yourself and your family, and possibly die or have health issues?

Gnome mode is replacing work with play.

Most great things in human creation emerged from play, not work. Work is what's done to refine the output of play.

Nobody's stopping you from getting to KDE Mode

It's alarming to me that you'd find that alarming.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3rerBnAKPn0

Reply on news.ycombinator.com