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Hacker News Genius Catfishing

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53 pointswoolion15 comments

Something to keep in mind: it's not just an either/or; even some of the people who will get you real funding and real deals also have a strong Reality Distortion Field.

It's fun to dance at the Faerie Court, just (a) don't spend so much time there that your family will have aged significantly, and (b) do keep a social distance while attempting to discern if any gems and baubles granted you are still going to turn out to be useful dry leaves*, once you leave the mushroom circle.

* I made it out of my startup days with a handful of novel ideas and a suitcase of dead presidents; dry leaves that are fungible tender are the best kind.

It's an interesting way to put it, and I certainly agree with your sentiment.

The other aspect to the strong Reality Distortion Field is the unfair advantages founders might get through VC funding -- a huge amount of money is already a great advantage over competitors, but there are others like access to domain-specific confidential data and API, protection from lawsuits, ... In that case the faerie dance is more like a kabuki dance.

Very similar experience here as well

Had a business man show me how far bullshitting can get you, I just decided not to follow suit

The dude did raise a lot of money, and tacked his name onto some big projects

But the people up there with him knew he was a fraud, but the folks below were all enamored

Love the Faerie Court analogy.

In the stories, faeries can be benevolent or malevolent.

I think I've encountered this type of person. On physics stackexchange there was a guy who would write with great confidence about all kinds of difficult topics, like string theory. When he wrote about my area of expertise, most of it made sense, although he was sometimes vauge and ambiguous. From his interactions with others I would say his knowledge was genuine there too. But every now and then he would make grandiose claims about fringe topics (cold fusion) or really weird political remarks. And when criticized he would snap and insult people. I think he eventually got a lifetime ban on stackexchange. I never figured out if he was a genius or crazy or both. The guy didn't have another online presence as far as I could tell.

Ron Maimon?

"Why isn't this person working with someone they know?" is a useful way of approaching cold connection B2B.

People have track records. If they can't convince anyone who knows them to go in on their deal, there's a reason. Often these are good reasons drawn from experience.

Maybe a stranger really does want to make me rich. Probably not.

Past a few years in the industry, you can have brilliant friends who are all in more or less okay jobs but are very risk-averse, either because of their situation or simply because of it's too much effort without a guarantee. There's a reason there are founders networks, it might be hard to find entrepreneurial-minded people around. So, there's a (slim) chance.

That said, it's certainly a good approach to ask that question in earnest early on.

[caveat: the founders network context falls outside my idea of “people I don’t know” because being in the network would puy the other person in my network. Basically it is what I signed up for. YMMV.]

In the ordinary circumstance, I come back to “why me?” because the “secure job,” etc. still means people who know the entrepreneur much better than me don’t trust them enough to go into business with them and it means the entrepreneur can’t convince those people.

But it also means the entrepreneur sees me as their best option…and why that would be the case is really worth thinking through unwishfully…the article touches on why.

I'm not an idiot or a bad actor, but if people like me are here... Well, anyone could be. Most people here are probably much like I am. People less sane or even genius are probably few and far between.

HN is mostly a bunch of hairless apes tapping their ape thoughts into the ether, and that's okay. I admire intelligence when I see it here, but it seems a bit strange to imagine there is an exceptional or noteworthy number of geniuses here.

"We have this bias that this is a forum frequented by some elites, geniuses, etc."

The word "some" is doing a lot of work there. Not to mention "we".

I really don't get the point of this post.

Mybe in the early 90s, having access to the Internet, sent a signal, now it's nothing. Anyone can post on HN - it doesn't mean anything.

Someone who can't succinctly state their thoughts is probably not ready to run a complex business. The author says that they had an 8-hour conversation - this is a big red sign, and nothing can explain this.

The 8 hour meeting is:

1. This person lacks clarity of thought and clarity of expression.

2. They don't value their own time.

3. They don't value other people's time.

Actually sounds like someone with bipolar disorder, manic grandiose phase followed by depressive one when they hate everyone.

> But each one of those ideas would have been more interesting than the problem he claimed to have solved, and easier to market.

If that is true, then it seems like it would be straightforward to execute those ideas and demonstrate that conclusion.

The more charitable interpretation to this is that what's "more interesting" to you might not necessarily be what's "more interesting" to M. M's interest prioritization might not necessarily be rational, but it seems like a more plausible explanation than "this is fake".

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