Hacker News Reader

I think it's all the same ocean and a lot of foul creatures swim in it. Some of them are getting you into an MLM where you shuck oysters on a TikTok Live, some of them are selling you grifty courses about flipping houses, and some of them are selling you grifty courses about getting a job in tech. They're not necessarily all morally equivalent, but they're drawing from the same well of rise and grind hustle culture.

MLMs are especially pernicious and harmful, but we do ourselves a disservice if we blind ourselves to the toxic culture that enables them - one that extends far beyond just MLMs.

This is where we talk about the "accredited investor rule".

Startups do not usually require the people brought in to put in actual money. They put in time, for which they are paid with a mixture of cash, and equity which is basically a lottery ticket. But they do not flow money back to the founders. Generally the only people putting in actual money are those who can afford to lose it. Occasionally on HN I've seen people complaining that they can't sell shares to friends and family - or buy a startup they "know" is going to take off. But this is why: it's too easy to be fraudulent.

Now, what field has no such protections? ICOs and cryptocurrency. What field is rife with fraud that's been called "MLM for men"? ICOs and cryptocurrency.

Apparently, you've never watched those start-up tutorials sold on YouTube. Half the course is spent on arguing that by paying $2000 to learn how to make your own iOS apps, you're "investing in yourself". And of course the people that run the course make most of their money from running the course and not from actually releasing iOS apps...

I recommend "Contrepreneurs: The Mikkelsen Twins" by "Folding Ideas" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw

"people that run the course make most of their money from running the course and not from actually releasing iOS apps..."

This is so pervasive. Even in the mainstream economy where we see universities marketing courses that might seem to lead to employment but in fact are very niche with little chance of leading to a job in that specialism.

I've been looking for piano tuition recently and it's refreshing to see marketing along the lines of how much enjoyment you'll get, with potential to entertain your friends at parties.

> Apparently, you've never watched those start-up tutorials sold on YouTube.

I have not. Probably because they simply aren't a significant part of tech or startup culture.

Not to you. Kids starting will easily believe that is startup culture.

The same MLM scam ads exist for becoming a cryptocurrency investor.

Kids will also easily believe that is cryptocurrencies.

The beautiful cryptography is completely shadowed by speculation.

And the kids would be correct in believing that.

I don't understand how Kids have an inaccurate and incomplete understanding of the world is supposed to be a rebuttal.

I don't understand how no-true-scotsmanning "startup culture" is helping either.

> A no true Scotsman fallacy, or appeal to purity, is a fallacy where the one arguing says or writes that all people belonging to a certain group have the same trait, and those in that group who do not share that trait are not really part of that group.

Care to point out where I made any universal claims about startup culture?

"Those MLM videos dont represent real startup/tech culture"

For the record, I agree with you.

To be fair, any profession or field can be turned into a con. Just because deepak chopra advocates quantum healing doesn't mean the field itself is corrupt. MLM are by definition corrupt but startups aren't.

Maybe there is a tipping point where we start saying that "startup" is no longer a positive word.

Amount of wannapreneurs loosing money on scams, amounts of young adults exploited to work for below market rates for years, amount of scammers hiding under "startup" banner getting money from VCs or small investors are not "one Deepak using quantum healing".

> Just because deepak chopra advocates quantum healing doesn't mean the field itself is corrupt.

I must not be understanding what you mean. The field of quantum healing is entirely corrupt. There is no such thing, it's all bunk. Do you mean that quantum physics isn't corrupt? Because I doubt anybody thinks that.

I agree with the distinctions you've drawn. But this is hn so it's not unreasonable to make that startup comparison here, while it would be absurd if we had the same conversation on r/antimlm .

This feels like concern baiting.

The comment you replied to wasn't "Startups are MLMs" and in fact goes out of its way to state that it's not implying they're identical, yet you still force your way into interpreting it in the least useful way possible.

The fact is, of course startups are not MLMs: but there are shared threads in how they lead to fallacious thought that puts someone else's goals and profit ahead of your own time, money, and general sanity based on not much more than a vague promise of a future payout.

> This feels like concern baiting.

I'll agree with you on this because I am trying to switch the concern - putting it back on how bad MLMs are in line with the article.

If you read the article and then read the most upvoted comment, it says "Oh yeah that's terrible, and look at how startup's terrible too in really similar ways!" That is "what-about-ism" - This is bad, "but what about..." Focus shifting.

It's the literal opposite of whataboutism. In no way, shape, or form, did the comment try to use startups to make MLMs look less bad, and in fact it did the exact opposite.

You're on a site where a disproportionate number of people are involved in startups/startup culture, and are also disproportionately in socioeconomic positions further removed from the effects for an MLM than a random population sample*.

(* I hesitate to even say this since I don't trust you won't try and build an enormous strawman argument out of it, trying to paint this as a "oh well readers here are to rich to care?!". I'm from a 3rd world country, so no, that's not it either.)

-

Drawing parallels to a topic that's relatable to the reader is exactly what you'd expect in any half decent comment section.

At the end of the day you're saying you intentionally interpreted the comment in bad faith as a springboard to push your own take. A take which just repeats the literal contents of the article rather than interpreting it in a novel way.

I appreciate the feedback but it looks like we won't see eye-to-eye.

> did the comment try to use startups to make MLMs look less bad, and in fact it did the exact opposite.

So you read OP's comment and thought "Wow, MLMs are even worse because startups have toxic culture."?

I did not. I read that comment and thought "now the most upvoted thread will talk about startups" instead of MLMs and how they should be regulated like for profit schools.

> Drawing parallels to a topic that's relatable to the reader is exactly what you'd expect in any half decent comment section.

> At the end of the day you're saying you intentionally interpreted the comment in bad faith as a springboard to push your own take.

Again, agreed, I do take the comment in bad faith, which is why I voiced my disagreement and downvoted. Because the parent comment did exactly what you state, drew parallels to something that "people understand" here by trying to make startups and MLMs morally equivalent with the phrase "You could easily change that to:".

That surface deep parallelism detracts away how destructive MLMs are - hence my comment from personal experience.

> I hesitate to even say this since I don't trust you won't try and build an enormous strawman argument out of it, trying to paint this as a "oh well readers here are to rich to care?!"

Not sure what you're trying to preempt here, but quite a weird comment, sort of a strawman of strawman.

It's interesting because we're starting from the same position. What you're accusing me of - I'm agreeing with you because that's what I'm trying to do, but the conclusions end up being different - thus, never eye-to-eye.

I think you've misinterpreted broadening the conversation ("this was interesting, but what about this other topic?") with deflection ("are MLMs harmful? Well, other businesses are not angels either you know, what about the crimes of startup culture?").

Whataboutism is necessarily a deflection relying on a stated or implied moral equivalence between something under scrutiny and something irrelevant. Accepting the premise that something is problematic and asking whether that reflects a problem in other places is introducing a new topic of discussion to a conversation. You are free to criticize that, but whataboutism is a mischaracterization.

(And in a strange coincidence, this is the second time I've defined whataboutism today, in unrelated threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34919705)

> You are free to criticize that, but whataboutism is a mischaracterization.

I think this is the root of it. That the parent comment does the moral equivalence action with "You could easily change that to:" and then inserts startups.

The assertion that I'm rejecting is the mischaracterization of startups. There absolutely are predatory startups, 100%, but to say as-a-group/whole that they're anywhere near the moral equivalence is what I'm rejecting.

[edit]

I realize replying to the other comment is - I didn't want the most upvoted thread to be about how toxic, predatory startups are. I could see this forum would easily agree to that and discuss it at length. And that's why I called it "whataboutism" because it's focus shifting and you're right, probably less about mischaracterization.

May I offer you a piece of advice, which is to try not to let it bother you too much if the top thread is something other than what you'd prefer? I know how frustrating that is, I experience that all the time on this site. But it's outside of our control what people want to talk about. You can't push the river, but you can exhaust yourself trying.

Paradoxically, I personally believe that only by accepting this and giving up on trying to steer the conversation or convince anyone of anything can you engage in a way that might accomplish those things. Or at least, for myself personally, I find that when I get too invested my rhetoric gets too heated and I feel all sorts of perverse "someone is wrong on the internet" pressure, and I write dumb stuff that makes people angry but convinces no one of anything.

Thanks I appreciate the wisdom.

The word "startup" is used for multiple different things.

One is funded by VCs, pays you a healthy salary, and gives you a shot, if you're lucky, at wheelbarrows of money from stock options.

Another is a pretend job you do from the age of about 23 until 37, mostly by yourself, bouncing between "accelerators" and "mentors", paying yourself a wage that a graduate student would feel sorry for, slowly getting old, and eventually realizing, as you approach 40, that you are now actually unemployable.

They're not the same.