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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

e: Removing because I think this is distracting from the main conversation & potentially flamebait.

Wouldn't a more reasonable explanation be that a16z destroyed their brand through years of questionable investments, excessive hype, cringe inducing behavior and being very obnoxious, very publicly. Also not a fan of their push to "American Exceptionalism" aka weapons dealing and mass surveillance.

Sure, except for the fact that I see this same trend of very young accounts making very negative comments for any sort of successful new tech trend.

I don't think anyone here is commenting on the AI trend, they're commenting on a16z.

Right, I am making a comment about the overall tenor of the website, which requires looking at multiple threads.

You're saying "No, they just really hate a16z" and I'm saying huh, it is interesting that all of the threads on new technology, whether it is LLMs or crypto or whatever, tend to have people who "really hate [xyz]".

Honestly, it speaks to the magnitude of the LLM breakthrough that HN is at least mixed on that topic.

Fwiw I'm a huge fan of LLMs and not a fan at all of a16z for the reasons I stated. I think you're reading too much into this thread.

If you actually joined the website 13 days ago though, I'm not sure if you are really in a position to evaluate the shift in culture over years timespan?

Lot of talking down to new users coming from a 3 year old account on a website that's been up for 15+ years.

This site would be better if users like you read and followed their own advice.

I'm not talking down, in fact I think it is likely they have either been lurking for much longer than they've had an account or this is not their first account. That's the case for me, for instance.

There's no higher "status" or anything to be gained on how long you spend on this silly site, I just think it is relevant to the specific conversation.

Ah, so the person with multiple accounts knows that account age is irrelevant, but still chooses to pick on "new" users anyway.

Why is account age relevant to the conversation when you have already demonstrated it's not accurate?

That's the point lol. Hacker news guidelines clearly state... sigh whatever

The point is a16z is wholly unqualified to offer commentary on AI. The authors are qualified. But I’m immediately sceptical given their choice of affiliation.

I'm inclined to agree that the vibe has shifted a bit. HN users have always shown a lot of hostility towards certain groups, like journalists, politicians and financiers. VCs, founders and tech executives were more often seen as part of the in-group. I think the explanation is simple: many HN users are tech employees, and they've had a rude awakening with recent layoffs as to who is the master and who the slave.

My take is the opposite. Hacker News has turned increasingly away from Hackers and more towards Marketing. Understandably, some of us resent the apparent astrotufing of this site and react accordingly.

It’s so easy to throw out meta-commentary and to pscyholigize[1] people based on a single prompt that you then don’t even have to defend (“people are reading this as more of a[...]”). Oh, were a16z good or bad, or neutral? Uh, doesn’t matter as long as I get to express my little pet-peeve.

[1] Using “ressentiment” is on the level of accusing someone of having father/mother issues (the Freud variant).

That seems unrelated to the issue at hand, which is that people have specific grievances with a16z

I don't deny that, what I am saying is that a broader 'grievance culture' has arisen in HN that previously was much more muted.

Have a look at HN threads on topics like corporate diversity, women in tech, or H1B visas.

One man's 'objective critique' is going to be another man's 'grievance culture'.

In any case, A16z attracts more dislike because their image is that of influencers and hype men. You won't see the same dislike of Kleiner Perkins or others because they keep a low public profile.

I've been here for a few years longer than that and haven't observed that trend. Feels like it's always been that way to me.

Seems to me like it goes all the way back to that Dropbox comment.

I was thinking about the Dropbox comment actually as emblematic of the sort of current I was thinking of, but one that I perceive as growing larger.

It might be bias on my part - I work in deep NLP and maybe I'm just feeling the heat there for the first time.

Speaking as someone who worked for FB for five years, it really sucks when people seem to hate the thing that you're in to.

Why should that matter? They are not addressing you personally.

Look at all the negative posts about Google, Youtube and ads. Do you think the adtech engineer visitng HN cares one iota?

Dunno, all I was saying is that it was more difficult for me than a regular visit to HN. It actually made me a _lot_ more sceptical of the average commenter on things I didn't know anything about.

They do. (Source: talked to Google adtech engineers.)

I wouldn't say you're entirely wrong about that trend, but that is clearly not why a16z is facing criticism here.

What is large or successful about their crypto currency, web3 or nft endeavors?

Now that we have good language models, it would be great to see what would a quantitative analysis of this perceived increase in ressentiment actually lands as results. I lean on agreeing with your comment, but also curious to see if we're both hallucinating.

a16z have always been sleazy, and their entire crypto/NFT run just proved it further. Their hook towards AI the moment the NFT/Crypto market started crashing shows how little they believe their own bullshit. I don't have a problem with people getting wealthy, I have a problem with a16z because they did it by pushing crypto scams on normal, everyday, people by convincing the world it was the future while knowing full well it was shit all the way down.

Now they're trying to to do it again. AI is important, but it's simply not the "all things will be different in six week, so invest now or get left behind!" that they're doing.

Why do you think that is ?

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