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Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

In all the infinite wisdom of developers and tech gurus, we get dictatorial systems that rigidly force dumb and obtuse rules and stupid "success scripts" on creative people that only end up rewarding trust fund babies, scammers, and/or hackers... Leaving the most talented and original creators to wither in obscurity.

Social media sites like Twitter (Now Titter) have brought out the worst in us, and now that they're collapsing under their own arrogant leaders, no one is really considering the lessons learned... They can't exist without creators, but creators can exist and function on any platform. Screw Twitter's dictatorial algorithm, mastering it does not help anyone to be creative and successful unless they're trust fund babies, scammers, and/or hackers.

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Let's be honest here: vast majority of "talented and original creators" on social media are the ones seeking out, sharing, and geeking about "success scripts". And, of course, social media isn't unique here. This is a story as old as time: any activity that has a competitive element to it gets dominated by those "playing to win". It's true in every aspect of life. I feel the only way to avoid it is to suppress the entire competitive angle - which means removing the rewards altogether, or making them purely random, as any correlation between activity and reward will attract people willing to game the activity.

You can also throw the ball, aka gameification of parts of the activity, so the success nerds can be busy romping and playing, while the other grown ups get on with the actual fun part.

Unfortunately, "success nerds" end up owning their social status, and they also generate buzz. Frantic activity is a catnip from entrepreneurs, so sooner or later, those "success nerds" end up being the ones making real money off their "success", and as money tends to corrupt things, your activity becomes controlled by the "success nerds", for their own benefit, and the benefit of their sponsors.

See also the Iron Law of Bureaucracy[0], which is closely related[1].

EDIT:

The "success nerds" are usually the grown-ups, encouraged by non-participating grown-ups who see the entire activity as just a money printer.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

[1] - I don't think it's an accident. Those are the same group dynamics at play.

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