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Comment by sarreph | Hacker News Reader

OP here - longtime HN user. I submitted this story to a writing contest a few months back, but didn’t hear anything from them.

I posted it here on a punt and getting front page of HN is 10x the feeling any writing contest could give me!

Thanks to all who read and commented, and glad to hear it resonates with some of you!

[EDIT]: There've been a lot more comments since I wrote this one. I want you all to know that I've read every single comment and am ever so grateful for everyone who responded here / took the time to read the story!

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You're a great writer. I haven't read a lot recently, but this was the type of story that I really could not stop reading.

I also didn't see that it said "This is a short story" at the top, so I read more than half thinking it was nonfiction. Heh.

Wish I had known it was fiction – read half of it thinking it was real.

Very kind of you to say.

Also see a lot of comments echoing your point about missing the fact that it was fiction... Next post might have a stronger disclaimer! (But I fear it actually worked in my favour here)

Damn Rory, I didn't know you wrote fiction! Nice work here

Ah cheers, James!

I suggest you keep it quizzical - that little not-knowing is like spice in a recipe.

I wonder if it was AM's writing contest. Your writing is great, keep going.

My god, for a minute there I thought this was real.. This resonates, I bet a number of us know or Are an “Aaron”. Thanks for this.

I'll admit, I was really hoping the end was going to be like, "And that's how Aaron Kalshi created a £XX billion company."

THIS!

I thought it was going to be about Aaron Swartz.

I immediately noticed something was wrong when the "daily tech message board" appeared. Before that point, I 100% believed that this was a real story.

This is incredibly well written had me hooked till the end (probably because I thought it was a real life incident. :)

Very well written! I haven't read such a long piece on the internet for quite a while but this hooked me immediately, and kept me hooked.

Breath of fresh air between all the AI """writing""".

It so was. It's amazing how easily we can all tell what's written by a real person these days. It's gotta be like the early days of CGI.... ten years from now it'll be so hard to tell :(

Thanks OP, great read

This reads so well I was supposed to go out for a workout but I couldn't stop until I finished it. Incredibly engaging yet simple writing that flows well.

Congratulations! As someone who's written (micro and short) fiction for many years, I _feel_ how hard it is to get someone to read it. Enjoy it!

Good story, write more. You have a good NO AI style.

Couldn't stop reading! It's been an embarrassingly long amount of time since I got hooked to something like this. Keep going!

You write wonderfully, direct, heartfelt, human, real, the opposite of LLM output, and that’s the highest honor I can bestow.

I enjoyed the story!

Opinion

The ending is quite abrupt, I'd consider another short scene. Perhaps one at Aaron's funeral where there's a little more exposition about the shooter, such as with a conversation with Aaron's mom, or with the wider group of friends. For example, we don't know if the bet was paid out, or if the bettor had some relationship to the shooter.

The shooting itself could have a bit more conflict and tension. Imagine if, for example, there was some kind of animosity due to a fight between Aaron and the narrator. (Instead of them drifting apart.) Then imagine that the narrator saw the bet before the race, saw someone suspicious, put two and two together, and tried to warn Aaron?

Anyway, great story!

"The ending is quite abrupt"

As was the ending of the young man's life.

It works perfectly as is. Often in life there is no denouement.

Super cool story!

I actually had to look up "Come bet on Aaron’s life with us" to make sure it wasn't real.

I also liked your WhatWeSee art exhibition, pretty interesting concept.

> I actually had to look up "Come bet on Aaron’s life with us" to make sure it wasn't real.

Another commenter suggested I could have made a parody site / post -- maybe an idea for next time...

> I also liked your WhatWeSee art exhibition, pretty interesting concept.

That's kind of you. I've been experimenting a lot recently with getting agents to make art, and the results are certainly interesting!

Why make him #5 in WoW of all games? Arena has never been that prestigious and most players primarily engaged in PvE rather than PvP, which didn’t have such rankings.

Aaron seems like the kind of guy who would sink a ton of time in to something so meaningless now, doesn't he?

He was #6.

PvE didn't necessarily have formal individual rankings at that time, but it sort of does now.

PvP was a perfectly legit thing to be sweaty about ranking in. I had about 3 friends who were in some of the top rankings for their battlegroup for their classes.

I love your website. The lists page is a brilliant idea and I might steal it from you. Human curation is such a luxury.

> The lists page is a brilliant idea and I might steal it from you.

You should! Tom MacWright's website[0] was a big influence on the design of my site. I especially took inspiration from how they structure their reading list and how I could apply that to more abstract objects that I wanted to document.

[0] - https://macwright.com/

I really enjoyed this! Thank you for writing and sharing.

Well done! Looking forward to your next.

great story. thank you for sharing, it perfectly captures whats going on right now with betting apps...

Very well written!

Good story. I was hooked.

fantastic - well done, couldn't stop reading!

Superb storytelling. Thank you. This was fantastic.

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