Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmateu | Hacker News Reader

Maybe because in Venezuela we are bombarded with propaganda everyday about how terrible meritocracy is, it bothers me to see this sentiment here.

As geeks, don't we recognize that The Deck ads are better than Google AdWords? Isn't the MacBook Air currently better than probably any other laptop? Wasn't Gmail the best thing since sliced bread for a long time?

I get it that it's part of the script in a socialist revolution, but in a start-up news site?

Curtis, can be as arrogant as he wants and still have a great product (or be right). Just like John Gruber is a jackass, but one who is usually right and (for the context of this site) has a successful business many us would love to have.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind helping out anybody here (or being helped), but at the end of the day, I want kick all your asses and win. And if I can hire the best of you, even better.

View on HN

> Curtis, can be as arrogant as he wants and still have a great product (or be right).

Ah, but there's the rub: Dustin doesn't have a great product and he isn't right. At best he's a good marketer: the only things he ever stands out for are his gimmicks. His best posts were gimmick posts ("watch me redesign airport passes!", "let me show you how stupid commercial graphic designers are!"); his only creations are good marketing creations ("you should follow me on Twitter here", "kudos!"). Occasionally I've seen him get halfway towards having a decent thought, but I've never seen him follow through.

Compare that to John Gruber, who's talked before about how he painstakingly selected the Daring Fireball color before he launched his blog (which has displayed his thoughts, gimmickless and unchanged, for a decade now). Greatness is a matter of finding big ideas and sticking to them; the only thing Dustin's stuck to in the few years he's been promoting himself is that people ought to remember him. But he's forgotten to create something worth remembering.

Curtis writes:

> One of my main goals for this new writing interface was to encourage myself to spend more time writing and less time presenting.

Which is admirable, and I've noticed that his writing in this new iteration is somewhat less surface-irritating. But he contradicts this in this very thread, when he says of his jackass slogan: "It perfectly accomplishes my goal: you'll remember it." He cares about being remembered; it never seems to occur to him that there's more to writing good things than making them memorable.

Let's agree to disagree.

His product is compelling for some people.

The Deck is compelling for some people.

MacBook Air is compelling for some people.

GMail is compelling for some people.

I don't care about elitism, but I wouldn't use this word to describe that case. It would be more like cocky and not very elegant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com