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Comment by resu_nimda | Hacker News Reader

For the most part, I agree with him, he was essentially violated by a sensationalist online media that spews cut-and-paste drama with absolutely no due diligence ("viral" is particularly evocative here).

That said, it does sound like a pretty extravagant over-the-top wedding, if a more tasteful one than your typical Kardashian affair. I suspect people latched onto that bit and just ran with it. I can't reconcile his talk of nature and sanctuary with the extremely manufactured and "faked" nature of the event. Why not have a low-key ceremony in an actual beautiful natural area?

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So why does it matter that his wedding sounds like an extravagant affair to you? There are plenty of people who want to spend a lot of money on their weddings or other events and have a vision of it that pleases them.

I think we should all expect the right to spend our money the way we choose (within legal and ethical boundaries) without being second guessed and attacked by a public mob.

Now, if you had wanted to, you could have penned an editorial exploring whether there's hypocrisy in his decision to "manufacture" the scenery. But the real issue is why so many people who call themselves members of "the media" get to publish scathing blog posts that they pass off as news articles without doing any actual journalistic research.

It doesn't "matter," I was just putting in my two cents. Penning a micro-editorial on a bit I perceived to be inconsistent, if you will. I'm trying to post a hopefully discussion-provoking comment on a small forum community; I'm clearly in agreement on the media and their knee-jerk public lashings.

At some point, when you become famous enough (or infamous, in Parker's case), things like extravagant weddings are going to get attention from the media, whether you like it or not. I would not be entirely surprised if Zuckerberg took this into consideration when he planned his surprise, low-key backyard wedding. In the wake of the great recession, which most of America is still slowly recovering from, fancy cars and nice suits aren't going to win you sympathy from the American public. If you care about the public's perception of you, then adopting a low-key lifestyle would be a prudent effort in managing that. If you don't care, then feel free to live extravagantly, and be prepared to either tune out the blogs and trolls, or have some thick skin and learn to deal with them.

The public is simply jealous that they don't have them money to have a wedding like that and so they feel like they have a right to complain about it.

Ostensibly, a "a low-key ceremony in an actual beautiful natural area" (that can support 360 guests) would have a far greater ecological impact than manufacturing such a place in an already developed campground.

To make such a suggestion, you'd have to claim that they shouldn't have invited nearly so many people, which is an uncomfortable claim to make.

It bothers me that this is the highest voted comment to this thread thus far.

Why should anyone have to subject their ideals of what their wedding, a deeply personal experience to them, and basically nobody else, ought to look like?

Why should the extravagance of their wedding be cause for anyone to criticize them? It wasn't tax dollars being spent, nor was the money stolen from any of the complainants. The cost of the Parker wedding doesn't affect anybody else, and could arguably seen as a beneficial set of activities as pertaining to trickle-down economics.

> Why should the extravagance of their wedding be cause for anyone to criticize them

Because self will, opinion and free speech are VASTLY more important and sacred then someone's feelings. The internet is the MOST public medium imaginable. When talking in public expect the public to respond.

I'm not suggesting that anybody doesn't have the right to express their opinion so much as I am lamenting that people's opinions are so childish and petty.

> lamenting that people's opinions are so childish and petty.

Fair enough. Perhaps I'm overly cynical and jaded but lamenting that is like lamenting rain is wet.

I can dream of a better world at least.

I mostly (at least try to) ascribe to the Thomas Jefferson ideal of "if it neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket, then it matters not to me" style of involvement with other people's business.

Aside from that, I worry about the growing perception of a media/government encouraged class war, which feeds mostly on people's completely unjustified jealousy.

I feel the same way, and I think you conflated my comment with a lot of other people being angry and caring a lot about this. I didn't even explicitly criticize the cost or extravagance, and you've read a lot into that. My point was mostly about the dissonance between his own framing of the event as a "natural" "sanctuary", and the rather un-natural reality of it. If he had said "we just wanted an all-out, spare no expense, Disneyland wedding," I would have moved right along. I thought it would be interesting to discuss, but I don't really care what he does, especially since he did make an effort to be socially responsible about it.

Fair enough. For what it's worth, my own value judgements only allowed me to complain, but I couldn't quite get far enough along in even my own vitriol to actually downvote your comment.

Apologies for unfairly representing your message. Perhaps I, too, was oversensitive to the subject - though not being a rich white guy with a history of opulent marriages, I don't know what specifically I reacted to.

> When talking in public expect the public to respond.

I'm confused - how exactly was anything they did talking in public?

> We chose a remote location (Big Sur), invited no press, and did our best to conceal that location from the press. We didn’t court attention — quite the opposite, we asked guests to check their cell phones and cameras at the door and we didn’t sell our photos to tabloids.

I;d say, it's his wedding. The answer to "Why not do it this way?" is that as a couple, that's not what they wanted. This only looks "faked" is because we have no personal connection with the couple.

I'm with you on the sensationalist bit, and would take it the additional step of assuming we have no right to barge in & opine over someone else's wedding... so long as they're not hurting anyone (or any trees). I'm guessing that last bit is the sticking point :)

Yeah, I tried not to be overly judgmental, it is his wedding and his money, but it's pretty common for people to react poorly to opulent displays of personal wealth. I said "faked" because they literally trucked in a fake castle and forest, among other things to the tune of a few million dollars. It just seems inconsistent with a professed love of nature, and hardly "the antithesis of the technology-infested world we live in."

Sounds like solid logic to me. Glad to have that one explicitly worked out :)

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