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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

FlyKly guys: Welcome to HN. I know that a lot of this thread is going to look like we're hating on your product. (Personally I think that if you deliver it with the level of finish you're aiming for, it will be pretty cool). Mostly we're not, this is how we roll. For geeks, we've got x-ray vision when it comes to most new technologies so we see right down to the basic principles (which are almost always simple) right away. These are almost never the most interesting parts of new product releases but will elicit the predictable "pfft, Thomas Edison did it in 1913...". Water off a duck.

What we will do is pour our thoughts like water through your product and ideas. Anything that's not perfectly thought through is going to leak. I hope you'll take the criticism in the (mostly good) spirit in which its offered and use it to build a better product.

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We're also going to read one sentence of your copy and assume that we know everything about how it works. We're going to draw a quick conclusion despite have never developed anything in that space and assert that your product has fundamental flaws without understanding your research, your market, or your funding model. We're going to compare your product to previous market failures despite fundamental differences that actually go so far as the previous product never having been produced.

But hopefully you'll still be able to get something useful out of this crowd :D

Heh. Some of us might. There's no shortage of cynicism to go around, here and everywhere.

On the other hand, what does the HN crowd say about technologies they really do find uninteresting and unimportant? Absolutely nothing. They drop right off the bottom of "NEW" without a single comment.

Edit: And to be fair, most market-speak is so vapid that we often only get one meaningful line of copy stating the purpose of a thing and a picture showing us its general physical shape to go on. We have to deduce everything else from that. In short, we've gotten used to disappointment.

"On the other hand, what does the HN crowd say about technologies they really do find uninteresting and unimportant? Absolutely nothing."

This also encourages us in a way, as weird as it sounds. It probably means we're at least doing something right if everyone is paying so much attention to it. Thanks!

We're definitely getting a lot of useful information out of this, even if it appears somehow hostile at first. This way we can quickly see which information is even more important to stress and even what we somehow missed out initially.

We also do our best to be critical. It makes us look smarter.

"Negative reviewers were perceived as more intelligent, competent, and expert than positive reviewers, even when the content of the positive review was independently judged as being of higher quality and greater forcefulness." — http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=7402

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

Interesting quote. Who is this "we", an actual critic? No, it's just a line from the antagonist in Ratatouille. It's not a critic's view of the profession.

I personally find people like Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Pauline Kael, and Eileen Jones incredibly enjoyable to read. Some "creators" like Wes Anderson actually went to great lengths to get Kael's opinion.

One-upper posters are annoying, but barbs disguised as blandishments like Ratatouille's bug me even more.

I'd guess the real "we" is the writer of movies speaking through the character about their perspective on critics. So it would be not the critic's view of the profession, but the criticized's view. In this instance, that seemed helpful.

Criticism, like music, can be done poorly by nearly anyone and have little meaning, or by someone who has trained and studied carefully. Consider the source, I guess?

By the by: Did you really just criticize my critical quote on criticism? Recurse you, RodericDay!

- Anton Ego, a character from the film Ratatouille (2007)

> from the film Ratatouille (2007)

Which was, incidentally, not a very good or meaningful Pixar movie whatsoever.

For those downvoting my comment, I would like to hear your opinion as to why you think otherwise.

I didn't down vote your comment, but I think ratatouille is one of Pixar's best films, and you made no attempt to justify your low opinion of it.

OK. I found the story weak, the characters relatively dull, and I don't really have any fond memories of any moment in the movie. There was really nothing that made me laugh. Note that I did not hate it, but I just found it very average.

And I liked many of other Pixar movies, some of which are among my favorites.

ah so you really don't like it? I thought your was a tongue in cheek comment since you just provided a negative critics of something just to prove that negative criticism is easy and painless.

Perhaps the HN community judged your comment not very good or meaningful whatsoever.

I don't even disagree with you, I just think the comment is unproductive. You're stating an opinion as fact, and not even giving your supporting reasons. And it's not even on-topic.

I actually thought the comment was brilliant satire, becasue you wee being critical of a comment about being critical

> In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

It's not as easy at it seems. A critic needs to have experience, knowledge, and a certain eloquence in order to have any kind of power or influence. And a critic does take risks every time he writes a piece. Should he write something bad, he may lose his reputation and his following. A critic has to be consistent over time as well - one cannot say A and then B about the same time 2 years later. It's more challenging that it seems, and that is probably because this line was written by a movie script writer who does not like critics.

Thanks! We're fully aware of how HN usually works, some of us actually regulary reside here. That's actually why we rather hang out here and answer your questions than in other comments sections where the debate would not be so intriguing.

We're looking forward to replying to all of your posts here since we believe this is one of the best ways to articulate our points more efficiently. We have the highest level of trust in our product and we'd love to see how could we be able to present it even better.

We appreciate your support, so bring out the big guns, okay?

Everyone who submits a "Show HN" should commit this to memory. This is a great place; thanks for the reminder.

noonespecial, I have no idea who you are and why you think you can speak for me. Stick to the "I" next time you decide to bundle everyone here into a single amorphous mass with you as its speaker.

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