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Comment by blackhole | Hacker News Reader

What disturbs me most about this is the complete lack of empathy people have for the guy. Just look at the comments on the link explaining that Flappy Bird was removed from the app store.

Our culture is so completely and utterly obsessed with money that everyone says he's an idiot for taking down an app without realizing the chaos one goes through in a situation like that. They hurl insults like "weak" and "fragile" as though someone isn't allowed to be shy ever since the internet happened. The sheer amount of greed on display in debates about this game is deeply unnerving, and it seems as though modern culture has forgotten that there are many things that are more important than money. It seems as though our entire country is hopelessly addicted to accumulating more and more pieces of green paper, only to be puzzled when having a large number in their bank account fails to actually solve any of their problems.

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I would say, given what money can do for you in this world -- how much easier it can make your life, the doors it can open -- that it is at the very least surprising that anyone would turn down this kind of success. In fact, I'll bet you'd have trouble finding one person out of a hundred who would not be willing to suffer pretty significant pain for two weeks if it meant they'd make $50,000 a day. Given that people are willing to do this, they're shocked that this dev wouldn't just turn off his twitter, shut down his phone, book a trip to the beach and just ride it out there.

There may be a small handful of people in the world for whom taking the app down is the long-term rational decision. But I'd wager they are a fairly rare breed.

Average monthly salary for a software developer in Vietnam is, what, $600/mo? Nguyen was making around seven years' salary per day for two weeks. A lot of the doors that could be opened with money were already opened at that point.

This random dude makes $1200/mo. I don't know what the average is. Maybe he is set for life, but it's only been really big for a couple of days, and I'd imagine he's not quite yet, and certainly not as set as he could be.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23497561

AFAIK, a good fresh graduate can make from $600 to $800/month (of course, depends on multiple factors: what he can do, experience, school, type of company, English, etc). That "random dude" got a Master's degree in Korea, so his salary is reasonable I think.

Shouldn't he still be making ad revenue even if the app can't be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play? I'm sure those ad $$$s are still rolling in...

I saw reports that he removed the ads from the application.

Nope, ads are still there (Android version, at least)

I think everyone's wondering, why didn't he just book a trip to the beach and come back a month later when all the fuss had died down?

The possible subtext is that he is shutting it down in fear of bad repercussion - like being exposed for gaming the app store rankings - or to simply avoid such accusations.

That's my guess. For all, for the sake of argument, let's say this developer did hire somebody to pump up his numbers. They could even be extorting him to pay them more in exchange for their silence. It reminds me of the movie 'Office Space' ... where they rig their software to shave fractional-pennies off of each transaction for an eventual payday, only to have their plan work too well too quickly.

Then shutting down does not solve the problem. They could still go ahead and reveal.

Could be covering his ass on a cease and desist, making it seem like his decision.

Most people who get one don't know if they can talk about it publicly or not and just want it to go away.

Highly speculative.

That's what I think. Those are just way too much reviews, I would like to see this numbers stacked up against angry birds in its prime.

I actually think that the way the game works. Throwing you back to the home screen every time you loose, makes it more likely that users write a review. They are already outside of the game.

The 'satan' frequency in the reviews vs. the rest of the app store is a smoking gun. https://sensortower.com/flappy-bird-scripted-reviews-analysi...

"There is no concrete conclusion drawn in this post"

" I'm not sure if that is due to genuine virality & copy cat ommentors, an army of keyword-fed reviewers, or an advanced spintax generator. "

"I still have no idea whether or not Flappy Bird gamed the system"

Not much of a smoking gun there.

I don't know what his background is, what his family is like, or what it's like to win the app lottery in Vietnam.

I could imagine scenarios where acquiring that kind of money could destroy your personal relationships, and make you a target of unwanted attention from governments, mafias, or weirdos.

This is especially true in a third world country with perhaps a modest level of corruption. Everyone will want a piece of you whether or not you wanted it. Personal safety and the safety of your family all of a sudden become a major concern.

Your post was brilliant but you ruined it with this..

>>only to be puzzled when having a large number in their bank account fails to actually solve any of their problems.

I'm not sure what kind of utterly broken philosophy propagates this idea. Do people actually believe that some one starving, unable to afford any kind of medical care, who doesn't have a proper home, clothes or anything for that matter is far more happy than a millionaire?

What kind of a brainwashing does it take to help such absurd thoughts totally devoid of common sense to sink in?

Not one single person who is rich I know isn't happy. When rich people talk of money being unable to solve 'some problems' they are talking of stuff which I wouldn't even consider as problems. They are more like minor small time inconveniences.

Your post was brilliant but you ruined it with this..

>>Not one single person who is rich I know isn't happy.

The whole point is we first need to define happiness, no?

There are a lot of people who are confused between things like sadness, disappointment, inconvenience, hopelessness and many such negative emotions.

The problem is we bundle them all en masse in to this category called 'happiness' or its opposite. To be happy is a overloaded term used to define many emotions.

Rich people suffer from the same negative emotions any human on earth goes through. Because they are humans. If their child doesn't win a soccer game, they may get disappointed, if some one in the family falls ill to a deadly disease without a cure they may feel hopeless. But these are emotions every human regardless of their financial status goes through. Whether you are rich or poor.

Having money will keep you well fed, clothed and housed. Your medical expenses are taken care of. Your children's needs are tended to and give you an overall sense of confidence and a sense of safety and freedom.

Being poor means you have a put up with a great deal of BS that life throws at you. You have to sacrifice every single thing, every single desire of yours. Its very exact opposite of what I wrote above.

I don't know of one single human who doesn't go through human emotions but yeah coming to being happy in the sense having to never really get screwed at every step along the way. Rich people never really stop being happy, and most poor people don't even what that kind of happiness actually is. Basically because they continually being fed this garbage that suffering in their current state is far better than breaking out of it.

Wealth removes a number of problems yes, but there are plenty of problems left to deal with.

Even with medical bills "taken care of", health issues don't just disappear. Making love work is just as hard for wealthy people as for anybody else. And some wealthy people feel trapped by their wealth and the responsibility that comes with it. I had a conversation with a guy who had been "told" by his mother that it was time for him to step up as CEO in the family business. We are talking about a large company and this guy flies his own helicopter. I met him in Bangkok where I was staying for the time because I was just traveling around. He told me that he envied me and I got the impression that he was truly miserable because he really didn't want to be CEO of this company. If this man is happy by your definition then it's definitely different from the definition that I subscribe to.

Making love work is just as hard for wealthy people as for anybody else.

It's less clear-cut with love, but at least marriage is much easier for wealthy people - or at least, non-poor people. Divorce rates are higher among poor people, and it makes sense: being low on cash creates a new stress factor, and relationships can be broken by that.

I'm not aware of clear evidence when it comes to love, but I'd wager that it looks at least similar.

That fellow's problem is being under his mother's thumb. It sucks for poor people too. But at least if he decided to quit, he wouldn't have to wonder how he'd eat. So from this we can conclude that making yourself a slave to another person leads to unhappiness, but being rich is very good for your freedom as an employee.

What the ... I was referring to the fact that you presented "people you know" as a meaningful sample of the population.

Yeah seriously. My grandma died and left me enough money to not have to work for like ten years, even without investing it. I live relatively simply to try and stretch it out, but goddamn if it hasn't removed a ton of stress from my life and made me a lot happier. I've got the freedom to spend my days writing and drawing a comic about a lesbian robot with reality problems instead of scrambling for crappy web dev work or begging my friends who draw stuff for PopCap for an in to go work all week on stuff I don't care much about.

I think the difference is that nobody know you're rich. Everyone knows Nguyen is rich.

Lots of fake people out there.

People have a sort of natural baseline level of happiness, different for each person. When bad or good things happen you move the needle a bit, but when you get into a steady state it moves right back to your baseline. Unless you live in a situation of genuine poverty it's highly unlikely that having more money will make you happier. I know all sorts of income classes and i don't know of a difference in self-perceived happiness among those classes. You can mock rich people for the silly worries they have (like how best to invest their money) but that doesn't mean those worries aren't just as real to them.

(Incidentally, the book The Happiness Hypothesis covers this subject as well as how to actually become happier.)

> Our culture is so completely and utterly obsessed with money that everyone says he's an idiot for taking down an app without realizing the chaos one goes through in a situation like that.

It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it. I mean, it isn't that hard to ignore all the bad comments and emails, and a small price to pay for riches. There must be something else going on, and that is the bit that is frustrating, not knowing.

Of course, it is completely up to him, and this is in no way justification for awful comments or messages to the dev.

it isn't that hard to ignore all the bad comments and emails

The gravity and emotional toll of receiving death threats and verbal harassment is often incredibly underestimated by those who haven't received them.

I think the commenter meant to literally ignore comments and emails, as in, don't read them.

It is not obsession with money, it is just confusion over it.

The actions and statements of the author seem completely at odds, and he literally could not do more self-promotion if he tried. Seriously, beyond assassinating a world leader dressed as flappy bird, I cannot fathom how he could have cemented more attention.

He had a hit game. These come and go, usually with the creators completely shrouded and hidden. But he does an interview where he states enormous income levels, guaranteeing an incredible amount of media attention. He is all hands on twitter. Then, in the face of supposed negative attention (or simply attention), and coincidentally at what many would say is almost certainly the crest of the game's popularity, he announces that he is removing the game...in a day. So get in and get those downloads, before you lose your chance. Again, enormous attention across the media.

Had he not done the original interview. Had he not announced that he was making $50K per day on ads. Had he not then announced a 24-hours until its gone window...he would have remained yet another anonymous game creator. Instead we know how it played out.

It could entirely be cultural misunderstandings, but it is tough to listen to the whole "just leave him alone" claims in the face of actions that the most manipulative, talented PR agency would dream up.

Or maybe he was just naive and didn't expect that outcome.

I think some of this speculation that this man is some cunning, super-intelligent villain gives him, an average human being, too much credit. Honestly, these "theories" are too outlandish to really be about the actions of a mere human being. What is honestly more believable, that he is some "super PR genius" or, perhaps, just had more than he could handle?

Villain? Super-intelligent? While your strawman is interesting, and typical in a discourse that too often has to be extremely polarized opposites, it has zero relevance to my comment. Don't try to use me as a lever, thanks.

Precisely. If he didn't want the negative feedback, or he is "shy", why did he throw himself out in front of everyone? If you're shy, you don't do interviews, and you definitely don't boast. Things don't add up here.

The only charitable interpretation I can imagine is that he's both shy, and also a doormat. As in, he didn't want to do interviews, but he didn't know how to say no when asked for them. This sort of person also feels intense pressure to answer every fan-letter in their inbox, etc. I can see, if this is the case, why he would want to quit out of the situation.

Doesn't seem unlikely. "Shy, and also a doormat" is how I'd describe probably half of the developers I know. The stereotype of a nerd lacking in social skills is true for a lot of us, and having a difficult time saying "no" is often part of that.

The thing is, at this point, there was literally zero additional involvement this guy had to have to anything related to the game. Just sit back and check in on an ever increasing bank account. Once the fad died down, enjoy the money. He didn't have to show himself, do interviews, anything at all.

Just accept the cash and fade off into obscurity.

It's hard to empathize with somebody who had to take a specific action to make himself less better off in the end, he was better off with doing nothing at all.

The minute he exposed how much money he was making, he made himself a huge target in Vietnam. Making that much money is dangerous in SEA if you don't have any connections.

Sharing the money would've gotten him the connections.

He may be a target, but I don't think everyone would chase him for money. Someone who has a net worth of 1 or 2 millions USD is not so rare in Vietnam.

A tiny bit of Googling, not to mention common sense, reveals your second sentence to be patently untrue.

Since when a "tiny bit of Googling", not to mention the query is (supposedly) in English, is a reliable source? Hopefully you obtained enough data (preferably in Vietnamese) about distribution of wealth, net worth and sources of income (which people normally don't want to (and sometimes can't) disclose), etc.

I'm not saying that my sentence is absolutely correct. It's my personal experience, based on what I know and observe everyday. I just don't buy your "tiny bit of Googling".

And please, don't rely on common sense. Things that are so called "common sense" are often agreed within a community and not universally correct, regarding to other communities.

That's said, what I was trying to tell is that earning lots of money doesn't automatically make you a huge target. Yes, Vietnam is a poor/developing country. But it's actually quite safe and peaceful, as long as you use "common sense" (our common sense, if that matters). Money is not everything people care about. And for people that really want your money, at least they don't have gun :) (no offense).

Feel free to offer real numbers in response then. I could not find any source that listed the number of USD millionaires in Vietnam to be out of the hundreds... when you're talking hundreds out of a population nearing 90 million, then yes, millionaires are rare.

(Should also clarify that my "common sense" is also based on, like you, personal experience. I would just rather rely on actual research, which, again, seems to flatly contradict your claims.)

We can easily find the number of millionaires to be few hundreds. But it's probably only based on stock assets. There are hidden millionaires who own other types of assets, like real estate, gold, jewelry, foreign currencies (not legal anymore) or even cash. Some assets are not in name of the real owners but their relatives. Some people are rich thanks to corruption (which is sadly quite high). And all those people won't disclose their net worth. Thus, it's almost impossible to have an exact number of millionaires (http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/special-reports/2712/real-v...)

So yes, I don't have a reliable source either. Though I believe that there are no less than thousands or even tens of thousands. Buy it or not, your choice :)

Just a random story: three years ago, a 66 years old lady owned around 50 millions USD in various types of assets. The thing is no one, including her adopted daughter, knew that before her sudden death. Would her name be mentioned in the list of millionaires? I don't think so.

http://kinhdoanh.vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/vi-mo/khoi-tai-san-ng...

http://www.thanhnien.com.vn/pages/20120607/rac-roi-quanh-kho...

You've perfectly illustrated the post you are replying to, from my perspective

I'm aware of that. But what exactly am I supposed to empathize with? It's like empathizing with anybody who actively takes an action that's not helpful to them.

It's like somebody taking up smoking, drugs and drinking when they have no interest in those things at all and would be much happier and healthier without. Or actively going out of their way to not learn to read.

Even if he does have an emotional/psychological problem (which I do empathize with), he could roll that money into a stellar long-term treatment program and come out better on the other side. Or just donate the money to a charity or something.

Vague "I can't take all this opportunity to do nothing and solve many of my life's problems" is not something that's easy to empathize with.

I think what alot of people keep missing is that Vietnam has communism rooted deep in its culture. I would think that accumulating massive personal wealth like the Flappy Bird guy did can cause some problems with the government and the general population when the media portrays something in the way they did with Flappy Birds. It might just have been very unsettling for the guy.

Not really. Vietnam has changed quite a lot since the war and the 90s. Someone with a net worth of 1 or 2 millions USD is not considered to be "massive" rich.

So far, the only official comment from the government is that he should pay income tax (which is reasonable I think). It is also stated that he will get a favored tax rate, since the government wants to encourage developers like him and IT sector in general. Note that income tax was introduced quite recently in Vietnam (a few years ago I think) and the tax rate is pretty low, compare to other countries.

Generally speaking people and the media have a positive opinion about Dong. Some even say Vietnam is proud of him, he inspires young Vietnamese developers (communism, remember?), etc. Of course, there are haters, just like anywhere else.

Thank you for saying this.

On the other side there are also people like %#&$* Scoble that say this is just a marketing play. The lack of empathy and awareness that not everyone in the world is as greedy and selfish as you really upsets me. But you said it better anyway.

Thank you so much for saying that.

Of course, many of the fans of Y Combinator know that changing the world is more important, but those who have time to comment here and seem focus on extracting rent rather than creating value needed to read this.

But, more importantly (and I might show how old I am by saying this) I didn't feel like this since ’94 and Kurt Cobain’s death: same accusations of being a manipulative mastermind playing hard to get, lacking talent, copying, and the same glaringly obvious suicide warnings: “I want peace”? Really? Do you need anything clearer? An Instagram of the guy with a shotgun in his mouth, asking ‘Like if you think I should pull the trigger, comment otherwise’?

If it happens, there will be so much hand-washing here…

Why not keep the game up and give the money to charity? Removing a good that people want to pay for destroys value. It's like wasting millions of dollars' worth of food.

I for one find these kinds of success stories extremely demoralizing. They create unrealistic expectations. But certainly nothing could justify death threats and personal attacks…

I think the genesis of the obsession you describe is that having significantly not enough in your bank account causes severe problems.

Well he basically slaughtered a goose laying golden eggs. Why not just let it grow old? Hand it over to someone else?

That money isn't just going to stay in his bank account - he can use it to fund a new app, get a car, a new computer, a house, education - it does seem weak willed to take it down because of the pressure of success (of all things)...

If I found something I enjoyed and wanted to share it with my friends, and then someone made it so I couldn't do that, I'd be upset - I think understandably, and not in a particularly greed-motivated way. And that's effectively what the developer has done here.

Yeah ... welcome to capitalism

Are you replying to the wrong submission? I believe there was another submission where people went through these "woe for society" hysterics. As is people may not be empathetic because motives seem curiously in contrast -- I think we're all jaded enough that we don't immediately take what people say as absolute truth.

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