Hacker News Reader

throwaway515on A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse

"If they wanted me to watch the documentary they shouldn't have started by forcing me to sit through a bunch of unenlightening establishing shots with the name of the studio, distributor, or director over them. After the third one I walked out. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and produce a documentary and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to watch it."

I'm being perhaps unnecessarily facetious, but is there really that big of a difference here? This is the publication's attempt (and one may debate how successful it was) to immerse the reader in a way that a traditional layout wouldn't.

throwaway515on Fake Men on Hinge

> I think most people don't actively have any way to meet single people their age, so people pretend apps are somehow a band aid for a deeply atomized society

Looking back, I wasted my most dateable years doing exactly this. I thought if I just stayed on the apps a little longer, put up with the dopamine-drip machine bullshit just a little more, I'd meet someone.

I wasn't even relying entirely on them – I attended a church, volunteered at a soup kitchen, and other things where you're supposed to be able to meet people, but I wonder if maybe I would have emphasized them more (seeking out more volunteer opportunities, etc) without the gambler's promise of the dating apps panning out "any day now."

throwaway515on Sex is going out of fashion?

> So often times people feel forced into online dating as one of the few "sanctioned" spaces where it's still considered okay to flirt with strangers.

This has been the story of my life. I think there is a certain type of person - physical attractiveness is part of it, but charisma is even bigger – who can "get away with" flirting in unsanctioned spaces. It's a combination of being confident enough to break taboo, perceptive enough to read subtle interest cues, and being attractive enough for those interest cues to be non-zero.

I've tried to be that person from time to time, but it almost always breaks down on one of those axes, thus consigning most of my dating efforts to the soul-crushing grind of dating sites/apps.

throwaway515on Limb lengthening surgery is becoming more popular

> Basically this means that in modern dating, if you are short, you are very likely to die alone and this trend will only get worse in the future.

I'm 5'6, and after almost 15 years of dating sites to modern dating apps, I have indeed accepted that yes, I will very likely die alone. My therapist has even half-seriously suggested I try lying about my height, and qualms aside, from the studies I've read, any plausible-in-person exaggeration would gain me a couple of percentile points at most.

throwaway515on Ask HN: What is the dark side of working at a successful startup?

This exactly, and sometimes it can be more than just a broken process or two. It could be that the rumors you hear are true, that there's some dirty secret that will eventually surface and endanger the entire business, and that there’s no bond of trust with executive leadership to confront it before it’s too late.

I worked at a unicorn that seemed unstoppable until allegations of fraud surfaced in a major publication, its customers started pulling out, and investors filed a lawsuit. The company shrank dramatically over a period of months, pulled out of a flagship office move, and today is a fraction of its size before the turmoil.