Haters - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/fh.html <comment><USER3> For people who don't understand what he's talking about, this is a reference to Lambda School. In the last few weeks, folks have been coming out of the woodwork with stories of illegal, negligent, and abusive behavior.

[https://twitter.com/brokenimageheap/status/12132089537542021...](https://twitter.com/brokenimageheap/status/1213208953754202113)

<comment><USER4> If this allegation about the intent of Graham's article is correct, then that article comes across as disingenuous and passive-aggressive, regardless of its validity with respect to haters in general.

<comment><USER5> The CEO of Lambda School is one of the reviewers of this article.

<comment><USER6> If that's the case, PG's piece does across as an intellectual's attack on the media. A more refined brand of populism, using his platform to vaguely defend an investment. The "haters", in this case, would be those publishing unflattering truths about certain tech companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I once read an article in Readers Digest with the title "Why we gossip". I started reading, prepared for something which was probably going to point out all the flaws in those people who gossip, and how they can be rectified etc.

But the article took a very interesting turn. It said, (paraphrasing) without gossip, people in power will arrange everything in the general direction of usurping more power (e.g. dictators). And how gossip serves a very important evolutionary need (a powerful, guerilla style technique to destroy power- grabs). If you were under a dictator, openly criticizing them leaves you with a small chance of being murdered. Hence you will choose instead to gossip. Imagine if the dictator then tells all his subjects - "whatever you have heard about me is untrue, it is just some haters hating".

So there is another explanation for haters (and their apparent obsession) - they look around and see a lot of injustice. Usually they are powerless to do anything, and waiting until they achieve something in life might make the problem much worse before they can offer their viewpoint. So perhaps hating has an evolutionary benefit - it gives clues to non-haters to then go and do their own additional research. Sometimes it results in reducing the power of those who become so out of touch that they just casually dismiss all criticism as hating, much like Hillary thought everyone who doesn't agree with her is a deplorable person.

<comment><USER8> Well that was interesting until the attempt to turn "To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables." and following regret over saying half, into "Hillary thought everyone who doesn't agree with her is a deplorable person."

I mean just, at least try?

<comment><USER8> My issue with this being I think the GP in its last sentence completely negates its otherwise decent analysis by giving an example not of someone "taken down to earth" or similar by "reasonable" hating, gossip or what you will, but instead having their words spun out of proportion to where something qualified several times over gets remembered as a blanket statement. Even if it fits your morals that they deserved as much, it can't be said to be true, so you'd have to posit truthiness is somehow good. Which I think is real bad.

It makes very little sense to me. Almost reads like a joke.

Edit: shit I'm dumb

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I setup a business which had a reasonable amount of success, and the amount and commitment of some of the haters was a real shock to me.

Just taking a perspective publically on something fairly innocuous such as which is the best programming language seemed to attract something much more aggressive than the usual debate because I had a bit of a perceived expertise.

I had a handful of people follow me online commenting on nearly everything, calling me a fraud etc again it wasn't justified and the topic did not really warrant such a degree of negativity.

And heaven forbid you do actually make a mistake. I made the most tiny oversight about equality and diversity and the baying mob online wanted to tear me to pieces.

One thing I was disappointed about was how the social media platforms responded. They wouldn't even help me stop some of it even though it crossed a line.

Though it upset me at first, I successfully tuned out and just used it as motivation to prove them wrong. It's hard though but a definite fact of life.

<comment><USER10> > Just taking a perspective publically on something fairly innocuous such as > which is the best programming language

I wouldn't call that innocuous at all! Quite the opposite, this is the perfect topic for flame war: people tend to have the same kind of emotional attachment to their favorite programming language as to their favorite sport team. You can't really expect a moderate debate on that kind of topics…

<comment><USER4> It is possible to have a moderate debate over strongly-held opinions, so long as everyone is capable of and willing to distinguish between facts and opinions, and agree to differ over the latter. In discussions over which is the 'best' programming language, you can find examples going this way, and examples turning into flame wars. Only the former are worth following.

<comment><USER10> IRL you can, on the internet the former is much rarer and only works on small groups where the community part is important. And on Twitter or other places where people don't know each other (HN is no exception even if there is a moderation system) it just never happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Could a hater be cured if they achieved something impressive? My guess is > that it's a moot point, because they never will.

Couldn't disagree with this more. There are innumerable examples of toxic people turning things around in a different situation. PG is making the fundamental attribution error here.

Only the most cursory glance could imply that haters are never successful. If you followed individual haters, you'd likely find many of them grew up and stopped shitposting on Twitter.

<comment><USER12> The world is full of haters accomplishing impressive things, particularly in politics.

Edit: if you define "impressive" as "something a hater could not do" and "not impressive" as notorious things haters do, then I understand downvoting this comment. But that's begging the question.

<comment><USER13> I agree - I consider the current president both a hater and accomplisher of impressive things.

down-voters should interpret impressive as "making an impression" not "something really good"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What if the reason haters are using the word "fraud" is not because of sour grape chewing about the random vagaries of chance, but because the company (at the behest of their leadership) has been lying to their customers about such things as:

1\. Their employee list (not updating it quickly after major staffing changes)

2\. Legal status: misrepresenting to the public and to customers that the company is licensed to operate in that capacity or is proceeding illegally?

3\. Pressuring it's subscription customers to publish positive stories about the product and reportedly even threatening their access to it.

I ask because this article comes out days after a Business Insider article about a high profile YC company. Its author uses the words "fraud" on their twitter and "cult" in the article, and makes some of the accusations that I've listed above. It's difficult not to suspect the two events are linked.

<comment><USER15> A more recent example would be this Dec. 30, 2019 twitter thread [0], in which someone asked for an update from the California state regulator on Lambda's approval status, and was told that they were not approved, (see edit for correction of following) and apparently, do not appear to have submitted an application.

[0] [https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680](https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680)

edit: the thread author just replied that BPPE followed up and said Lambda has recently applied:

[https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1216075710818766848](https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1216075710818766848)

> _In a follow up BPPE said they recently applied. They also said it's not > possible for any school offering ISAs to meet the legal requirements._

<comment><USER16> > _do not appear to have submitted an application_

This is nuts.

Does Lambda School market itself, and/or have students in, New York State?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article is about Lambda School, for those who have not been following on Twitter.

if you're a startup CEO and you spend a year relentlessly bragging about your startup publicly you invite scrutiny on yourself. You are practically begging others to ask questions you might not want asked.

His chief of staff literally insulted the intelligence of anyone who dared suggest Lambda School was worth less than $100B [https://web.archive.org/web/20190921045339/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190921045339/https://twitter.com/trevmckendrick/status/1175267394433863680)

<comment><USER6> When I read a tweet like that, I have to ponder the actual, underlying belief (at a personal level) versus the public image you must present as a function of your role, in this case, C-level executive.

It's like you have to be completely blind to anything critical of your business. Your investors expect it. Your colleagues expect it.

It appears to be a genuinely unenjoyable position to be in. Lambda School is even 1/10th of an Apple? It's mind boggling.

<comment><USER18> At that point it's not even meant as a statement of fact, not really. Surely his response to an investor offering less than a $100B valuation wouldn't be "you don't understand the economy haha". Some people just take the attitude that any claim which won't get you indicted for fraud is a legitimate PR tactic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > [1] There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you > distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y > is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty > conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are > some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud.

I don't think that "some thoughtful people who like y" is good enough. There have been big "frauds" in the tech space (and so many in the finance space) were it took years for public opinion to catch up with their actions (Theranos, WeWorks, Epstien and MIT labs) despite some people (Matt levine, John Carreyrou) knowing they weren't above board these people and companies were defended (or not even questioned) by media coverage and big name personalities.

<comment><USER20> Basically yes, but it should be said that John Carreyrou didn't act like a hater. Perhaps a better test is, that a thoughtful person thinks y is a fraud, whereas more or less by definition a hater does not come across as a thoughtful person.

<comment><USER21> That isn't actionable advice. If you think you can reliably identify thoughtful people then you're a fool. Everyone likes to believe that they're good judges of character but we're all very fallible.

<comment><USER20> I think it's difficult to tell if oneself is thoughtful, but identifying other people as thoughtful or not is not nearly as difficult, if you have known them for any amount of time. If they are commenting on a topic you know about from personal experience, is their commentary more or less well informed than the average person?

We are certainly all fallible, but thoughtful would not imply infallible, only that you are thinking over (in this case) the actions of the person in this case, prior to deciding if they were wrong or right. A fanboy, or a hater, more or less by definition knows the answer ("right" and "wrong", respectively) before thinking about it much.

Paying attention to the opinions of other thoughtful people is a much better strategy than only paying attention to your own opinion, with all of its perspective problems. If all the thoughtful people you know have the opposite opinion of you about someone or something, it doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but it ought to at least prompt some double-checking on your part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think we all feel these feelings somewhere deep in our minds. Haters and fanboys are just the extremities.

Most people are not complete losers or complete winners. Sometimes they feel a bit of a loser, especially if they have high ambitions but not much above average success, and sometimes they feel winners, especially when compared with people who have clearly achieved less then them in life. Feeling a loser will drive some envy towards people who are very successful. 'It is not only their talent, they were also lucky, they were at the right place at the right time'. Which is partially true.

What pg didn't discuss is that different people get different amount of hate. For example people who misattribute their success to their technical-talent in a technical field, but their success clearly involves other kind of talent or luck get more hate then pure technical geniuses. Also people who like to express strong opinions on lots of often subjective topics get more hate than people sticking to their expertise and to mostly technical topics. For example pg obviously gets more hate than John Carmack or John Von Neumann.

But at the end of the day: everybody must work on this inside their own brain. Even if it were sometimes satisfying to be a bit of a hater, just don't be one.

</comment><comment><USER23> I never could learn to deal with this.

I set up a blog way back when blogs were first a thing, maybe 20 years ago. Started posting articles about internet, culture, tech, anything I found interesting.

Almost immediately, I had people dropping by and posting the most vile comments. Whatever I did, I did for bad reasons. I was a bad person and there just wasn't anything I could do or say to fix that.

I never learned how to mentally deal with this kind of blind anti-fandom, but I did learn an important lesson: never joke on the internet, or if you do, be very, very careful it's obvious it's a joke. Because whatever I think is funny because it's silly, obnoxious, or ludicrous? Somebody else will take seriously. And now you've got a new hater.

The net is drifting towards private communities. I think that's a good thing. This kind of environment really isn't healthy for folks.

<comment><USER24> I forget where, but I read something once that said "Don't be afraid to delete a stranger's mean-spirited comments."

I've taken that up as a mantra, and never regretted it!

<comment><USER25> Exactly. My site, my world, my rules. It's been my approach too. I don't respond or acknowledge them. Delete and move on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I always love a new article from PG, but this one kind of misses the mark.

I really appreciate how PG applies a sort of pattern matching sense of logic to the world to create really novel insight-- his pattern match here is that haters are fanboys. But it rings a bit untrue, and I don't think yields real insight.

Startups, PG himself and tech have to weather a wide swathe of criticism-- but it can often be warranted. It can seem like companies have haters, but do they have haters or valid critics?

Here's some of the very valid criticisms that tech has had to deal with:

\- facial recognition abuse

\- privacy data breaches

\- misrepresentation of value to shareholders and customers

\- theft of contractors tips

\- myriad harassment claims towards all genders

\- retaliating against whistleblowers

\- massive settlements to employees who are accused of crimes

\- ceding to Chinese demands for censorship

\- taking contracts for controversial governmental agencies

\- squashing nascent union organizing (agree or not, people have a right to discuss and consider this)

And I'm sure I'm missing some here.

So ultimately his pattern matching is incorrect. The Twitterati take constant aim at PG and tech for what are quite serious issues. Simply put it's not haterism, it's valid criticism.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised at the harsh negativity in this article. Not that the inquiry into why people become 'haters' isn't intriguing, but to explore it so shallowly and to boil it down to "Well, they are losers", and call in the image of "basement dwellers" frankly, makes pg sound like he is falling into the same trap he is trying to write about - generic hating on others.

Despite that, his other points have merit. Haters and fanboys do have similarities - they stem from the same root cause, that they were emotionally impacted by someone. If that was a positive impact at a time in their life when they really needed it, they are fanboys. If it was a negative impact at a time when they were already struggling, they become haters.

I'm not a fanboy of pg, just a reader, so I'm not going to act like he has let us down by penning a weaker article. We're all imperfect beings, whether we are fanboys, haters, or blog authors whose works isn't always the best. I'm going to look at this specific post as a rough draft that got shared too soon.

<comment><USER17> The impetus for the post was a few critical threads on Lambda School on Twitter.

I highly doubt any of this would've happened if the CEO had not spent a year relentlessly boasting about his company in a way that you'd expect a used car salesman to do. It was (and continues to be) too fantastical in a way that anyone who has worked in startups knows is rarely the case behind the scenes.

When you invite scrutiny upon yourself by being shameless seller in chief it's your own doing, not because people suddenly decided they wanted to come out of the woodworks and bash your work.

<comment><USER14> > When you invite scrutiny upon yourself by being shameless seller in chief > it's your own doing, not because people suddenly decided they wanted to come > out of the woodworks and bash your work.

Lambda School hasn't been under criticism for literally years because Austen sells too hard. It's because they've done some shady, unethical and outright illegal things.

Their refusal to pay license fees while publicly claiming they did has jeopardized _every dollar of revenue_ they're set to collect. If I were an investor, I'd be pretty mad about that.

Their decision to operate as a high pressure environment has created a string of negative stories on Twitter and Reddit about how pressured students felt.

Their wage disputes with their former educators meant they had to switch to relatively unknown and unverifiable teaching staff, which makes it a lot harder to take them seriously.

The idea that it's LS's presentation that has failed seems like it underestimates the problems at hand.

<comment><USER17> No one would be taking about Lambda School if the CEO didn't court publicity through Twitter.

It's literally the only reason most even know what Lambda School is. That's my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sloppy work in this article. I wonder what drove him to write something like this. It sounds like he's a true hater ...of haters!

haters are just part of life. No need to get worked up on them and make sloppy, weak arguments about them.

> "I've been able to observe for long enough that I'm fairly confident the > pattern works both ways: not only do people who do great work never become > haters, haters never do great work"

He's a social scientist doing work on human behavior?

</comment><comment><USER29> I think that believing in "haters" is a great way to embed yourself in a reality distortion field. You don't need to dismiss someone to ultimately dismiss their criticism of you.

Graham probably won't read this, but my advice to him (from a moderate admirer, not a "hater") is not to do this to himself.

<comment><USER30> Absolutely you can dismiss valid criticism as "haters", and absolutely it's a bad thing to do - you don't hear truth that you need to hear.

But I think most of us here have never actually experienced haters. We aren't big enough, famous enough, successful enough. We may have seen people who were haters of someone else, but we've never been on the receiving end. And I suspect that, as PG said, when you receive it for the first time, it can be confusing. I think it's a valid thing to note, and to mention to people who might become big, important, or famous. (But also mention not to use this to turn off all criticism.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am reminded of the quote "They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown".

How about "Taylor Swift has haters, but so did Jeffrey Eipstein and Elizabeth Holmes".

</comment><comment><USER32> This essay does not read like an intellectual piece at all. Poorly defined terms, labeling people, non-falsifiable psychoanalysis.

And to top it off he calls both labeled groups of people "less than men".

All of this setup to deliver the profound advice to just ignore them.

(Before people call me a "hater", note that I strictly do not meet the definition, because I like a lot of his essays.)

<comment><USER33> Calling you hater based on this post is just using the argument of the article to make a point. That's like saying: "this statement is true" and anyone who disagrees with that, is a <fill in>.

Is a hater akin to a criticaster? Like a critic without substance? And a fanboy a fan without substance? Then the burden of proof to prove a lack of substance is with the person who starts to use the word "fanboy" or "hater". As such definitions are essentially ad hominem (and no, you being attacked personally does not warranty an equal ad hominem).

</comment></comment><comment> floodyberry- A vapid essay on "fans and haters" being discussed merely because of who wrote it would be art if anyone involved realized it

</comment><comment><USER34> To me this is such a toxic post. Using sentences like:

"He's less than a man" and "Haters are generally losers"

\- to me shows an unhealthy level of grandiosity, and an inability to fully understand another person's experience.

Yes this article might help you deal with some stuff, but it's also not scalable and avoids examining the underlying deep rooted societal inequities that cause these addictive behaviors in people in the first place.

At the same time though, I am grateful to the author for showing himself. I think having these conversations helps us evolve.

Now go watch 'The Work' (2017): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8OVXG2GhpQ)

<comment><USER35> You're taking two sentences out of context here. pg's main point is that haters are just fanboys with the sign flipped, whereas your critique seems to just hone in on the two least politically-correct sounding sentences. Both sentences could have be massaged to be more PC but less direct, and the original thesis would still stand.

Your point seems to be though that we need to understand haters more (and if pg's thesis is correct, fanboys). I agree that as social planners, we do need to see why they arise, what their background is, and how social media amplifies it. But that's a big topic and pg doesn't even claim to address that.

By analogy, when you are being attacked by a hater, like many famous people, I don't think social planning is your first order response. Much like if someone were to hold you up with a gun, your immediate response wouldn't be a reflection of the societal conditions of the assailant.

Also, I'm curious whether you'd think this post would be equally toxic if pg only addressed fanboys: "Some fans slavishly love you. It's probably best to ignore them." Is that toxic? Does that generate a similar call-to-action to see why some people are so uncritical?

<comment><USER36> > By analogy, when you are being attacked by a hater, like many famous people, > I don't think social planning is your first order response. Much like if > someone were to hold you up with a gun, your immediate response wouldn't be > a reflection of the societal conditions of the assailant.

Your analogy seems inapplicable here. This was an essay, not an immediate response. Whatever we may think of the response, it seems fair to put it down as the well-considered position of the author, unless they retract it later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The "haters are fanboys except for one thing" idea is useful and I think accurate, though not particularly original. The rest reads like a longer subtweet. It makes me wonder which particular hater(s) pg is hating on.

That said, there is one other aspect worth commenting on: the "nearly successful" kind of hater. Yes, they absolutely exist. Academe is particularly full of them. The reason, I think, is simple: some people resent those they compete with. For that kind of person, that means the people _right next to them_ in whatever real or imagined ranking. Those further above or below are irrelevant, and not worth hating.

The other key (subtweeting a bit myself here) is that some people _invite_ this particular kind of hate. They exaggerate any difference between themselves and those they have barely outdone. They hotly deny the role of luck or privilege in achieving their status, more often than pg seems (or wants) to think. Psychologically, they mirror others' envy with a desire to reaffirm their position in a race they know could have gone either way. There's a _bond_ between the haters and the hated, and often both sides participate.

</comment><comment><USER38> > In fact I suspect that a sense of frustrated talent is what drives some > people to become haters. They're not just saying "It's unfair that so-and-so > is famous," but "It's unfair that so-and-so is famous, and not me."

> Could a hater be cured if they achieved something impressive? My guess is > that it's a moot point, because they never will. I've been able to observe > for long enough that I'm fairly confident the pattern works both ways: not > only do people who do great work never become haters, haters never do great > work.

Listening to that old Steve Jobs interview where he talks about Microsoft ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWWtV1w5fw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWWtV1w5fw)) I think there elements there of what Paul would be calling a "hater". A view that there's something a bit wrong with the world when particular non-ideal characteristics are rewarded.

It sounds as if Paul has enough of his own personal issues with haters that he wants to put them all into an irredeemable bucket.

<comment><USER39> Regarding the link, you can kind of get around that semantically: I'd view Jobs' attention as a "grudge". He's not bashing microsoft out of a generic sense that "microsoft is bad", he's mad at Gates for what he views as specific bad actions taken against him specifically. So he wants to hurt him back.

It seems reasonable to me that that's a different kind of psychology than the fundamentally impersonal "fanboy/hater" ideas in the essay.

<comment><USER16> > _He 's not bashing microsoft out of a generic sense that "microsoft is bad"_

Jobs did a lot of that in his "we are pirates" phase. Us-v-them is a legitimate leadership tactic, and requires somewhat demonising the them.

I like the idea of a fanboy being a sign-flipped hater. But these are spherical cows. I'm not sure we can draw real-life lessons from their comparison.

(For example, fanboys can be evangelists and haters canaries in your coal mine. History is filled with delusional people doing great things.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > haters are just fanboys with the sign bit flipped makes it much easier to > deal with them. ... The most important [technique] is simply not to think > much about them.

this reads like a justification for ignoring criticism by attributing the criticizing party to being a hater.

<comment><USER41> I think that's a stretch.

There was a clarification earlier in the article about the difference between a one-off piece of criticism and a pattern of obsessively negative commenting on _everything_ you do.

A critic might respond to every Tesla mention on Elon Musk's twitter with a negative response because they think (rightly or wrongly) that the company is overhyped.

A hater would do the above but also respond negatively to him posting a picture of a sandwich he made and say that it's a terrible sandwich just because he made it.

I took the article to encourage trying to differentiate, and if you find yourself interacting with the latter, then not thinking much about them seems like a valid technique.

<comment><USER42> " _There was a clarification earlier in the article about the difference between a one-off piece of criticism and a pattern of obsessively negative commenting on everything you do._ "

Yes: the former are trolls while the latter are haters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I usually enjoy PG's articles but this one seems almost attacking some specific group without naming it.

> "It's unfair that so-and-so is famous," but "It's unfair that so-and-so is > famous, and not me."

I believe this only takes < 1% of haters, since "Not me" is not very sustainable and would die out soon. The majority of haters are "us vs them" mentality, which makes hate persist decades. If someone hates a movie maker or a company, it's either:

1\. It's DC vs Marvel. They are similar enough to the rest of the world, but there are nuances to the haters and fanboys. Similar things are Vim vs Emacs, Java vs C#. There were also flamewars between Intel and AMD fans, but since Intel clearly outperformed in previous years, both alliances seem died out almost at the same time -- It's just a CPU.

2\. He actually hates the genre/category. He hates comic movies as a whole, as it absorbs most of the resources in the market, making the genre he loves never to be cost-efficient to be made anymore. There were some extraordinary movies in the 20th century because movie companies are still exploring business models.

> "because anyone famous knows how random fame is"

This is where the problem is, just we don't know how to fix it yet. Haters are just a phenomenon. Not only it's random, but also it's ridiculous. Scammers exist because people are vulnerable to scamming; Tiktok exists because people are vulnerable to the designed mechanism. Massive surveillance exists because it just works.

It's more than Okay to criticize scammers instead of competing them.

> "although they are occasionally talented, they have never achieved much."

> "successful enough to have achieved significant fame"

It's very hard to correlate success with fame. Taking PG's Lisp vs Blub example, if someone was evangelizing functional programming in the early 90s, they would never as successful as mediocre OO experts. It takes time. PG has spent so much effort on evangelizing Lisp, he never as famous as Martin Fowler or Uncle Bob in the industry.

As another example, Uncle Bob coined the term SOLID. I found almost all my colleagues know SOLID, most of my colleagues know Uncle Bob. However, those people behind those ideas like Barbara Liskov and Bertrand Meyer are much lesser known.

</comment><comment><USER44> Biggest lesson I learnt from life after meeting some of my idols and heroes. Don't put them on a pedestal.

They may have achieved great things in one area but in other areas they are somewhat average and very much like us. Anxiety, doubts, misdeeds, regrets, emotions etc.

Like pg is great but he's also not a god. Don't treat him like one. We'd prolly be disappointed. He's said a fair share of crap as well some very insightful things.

</comment><comment><USER45> The common ground is that these people are way too interested in what other people are doing. As if life is what other people are doing instead of what one is doing oneself. Life is for participation not spectation.

<comment><USER46> > these people are way too interested in what other people are doing

oh yes, blame them! the lazy buggers! [1][2]

[1] [https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/laziness-does-not- exist-3af27e...](https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/laziness-does-not- exist-3af27e312d01)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-2TEwdRnX0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-2TEwdRnX0)

edit: avoid Medium paywall on [1] = [http://archive.is/ksROw](http://archive.is/ksROw)

<comment><USER45> I did not write this as a casting of blame. Merely as an observation. One can observe that having a broken leg is not optimal for locomotion without blaming the person who is in that condition.

<comment><USER34> I hear you. At the same time, I see this story of "if your life isn't exciting, it's your fault" too often, and I call bullshit.

I believe this story is incredibly harmful because it doesn't help 'non- participants' or 'spectators', as you call them, understand the limitations of their society, and how this impacts them. One of the things I'd like to do instead is to help show them (and anyone else who is interested in reflection or meaningful social change) how these systemic inequities are often slowly grinding them down, and how they can organize to change the system. If I don't help do this I think I might doom them to a life of self-loathing, not to mention that I myself would live in a world of self-masturbatory self- aggrandizement, not really connecting to others and relying instead on my perceived superiorty for comfort and safety; which I think starts to taste bitter if used as a strategy for a long enough period of time.

Don't see the inequities I am talking about? I promise you they are there when you start looking. Some of the ones I've found most glaring are (1) the systemic racism at home in the US, (2) the ongoing battles of the Global South against Global North-controlled extractive and exploitative debt, and (3) imperialistic Intellectual Property agreements which causes ongoing local and global information asymmetries. The bravery of the men and women who have been fighting in these battles is astounding: Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Cornel West, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Sankara, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn, MLK, Paulo Freire, Cedric Robinson, and many more.

Besides Anand Giridharadas and Rutger Bregman, a recent example of someone doing this important work is Law Professor Mehrsa Baradaran, author of 'The Color of Money'. There is a great summary of her arguments here: [https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banking-against-black- ca...](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banking-against-black-capitalism- on-the-color-of-money/)

I think these are some noteworthy excerpts:

"The problem is, black capitalism has not improved the economic lives of black people, and Baradaran deftly explains the reasons why. Black people were systematically excluded from New Deal policies, including the subsidized FHA mortgages that proved fundamental in increasing white wealth, through redlining and racial covenant agreements. Where black banks did exist, they were consistently less well funded, less profitable, and made fewer loans than white banks, rendering them powerless to substantially improve the prospects of black community members. And herein lies one of the most important lessons of The Color of Money — over the course of American history, white economic success has often been subsidized by black dollars, rather than the other way around."

and:

"Even as Baradaran criticizes the implementation of black capitalism, she claims several times that the reason black banking does not succeed in lifting black people out of poverty is that the mechanisms of free-market capitalism were blocked from proper functioning by the "structural inequalities" of racism, as if these existed outside and apart from capitalism, and infected it. Racism made capitalism sick, and if we could fix the former, the latter would deliver equal benefits to all. And yet, one can take the historical evidence she presents to argue something quite different: racism is embedded in the foundations of American capitalism."

<comment><USER45> We should realize that there is not always a very sharp distinction between a participant and a spectator. We all are sometimes a participant and sometimes are tired and just want to watch TV and be a spectator. Drawing a disctinction between spectator and participant may on occasion be helpful. E.g., a young person might hear this and start wondering by him/herself 'what am I doing on these social media for hours and hours' and cut back on it. Such things occasionally happen. The question is more whether a person is doing enough participation for the purposes of his/her creativity or not enough.

You are right that systemic inequalities should be pointed out and improved upon. On the other hand we should also not lose sight of the fact that the most equal and fair societies on the planet are the western ones. Even if one is part of a disadvantaged minority it might well be possible to make much of ones life in the West. Try being part of a disadvantaged minority in China and one might find oneself in a concentration camp instead.

I don't live in the US so I am a spectator as far as racism goes there but I agree that this exists and is a problem. Especially police shooting unarmed black people is obviously a horrible thing. I do have to note though, that your example comes from a long time ago and that much improvement has been made on this front over the decades. I also agree about imperialistic intellectual property, especially patents are a big problem. Software patents should just not exist, for instance. As far as the global south vs the global north I was under the impression that this situation has actually been improving in the last decade or so. People starving to death has been a diminishing problem, as far as I know.

On the one hand it is good to point out inequalities and do something about them but on the other hand it can also make people feel hopeless so that they will achieve less then they otherwise would. This is also something that is happening to black people in the US. I once was on an online forum where the posts of a young black person gave me the impression that a case of self- learned helplessness was going on there where most of the racism involved was coming from fellow black persons and that the group-think thing was not beneficial at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > I would make an exception for teenagers, who sometimes act in such extreme > ways that they are literally not themselves. I can imagine a teenage kid > being a hater and then growing out of it. But not anyone over 25.

I have trouble understanding why someone over 25 would be either a fanboy or a hater. People are just people. No matter how good someone is, they fuck up, make mistakes, aren't so good at other things and have flaws. Likewise, even someone you find terrible or a 'fraud' has their success or fame for a reason. You may not agree with it but obviously someone sees value in.what they do.

I just can't understand spending the energy obsessing over people either way. I understand recognizing the great achievements people make or being critical of flaws. But to obsess over them seems like such a waste of time and energy.

Nobody's perfect and nobody's completely and utterly hopeless or a fraud or whatever(I see why this term is causing some discussion on hn. It is tough to find a suitable word to describe how a hater would view the hated).

Also, as much as being either a fanboy or hater is a waste of time, feeding off of either of them is also. However good the fanboy's make you feel, it sets you up in a bubble where you start to believe what they say and start to truly believe you can do no wrong. Likewise, the criticism of the haters doesn't really allow you room for critical self analysis because you can do no right.

And as for that bit switch, the funny thing about haters and fanboys is that switch isn't permanently set. It can switch back and forth for the most arbitrary reasons. Because, it's all just obsessive energy and it doesn't take much to switch focus either way.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have to totally disagree with this statement:

> There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you > distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y > is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty > conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are > some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud.

Just look at recent history- Enron, WorldCom, Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes (and many more) were ALL widely celebrated by neutral third parties before being exposed as frauds. Neutral opinions are often neutral because they haven't done much research on a topic. Thus, they are often relatively uninformed opinions.

And these frauds were NOT conspicuous at all. They worked very hard to present the appearance of success. It took some dogged investigations from "haters" (by PG's definition) to reveal the truth.

<comment><USER49> > How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, > and because y is a fraud?

The very premise of this question is broken.

What matters is whether y is a fraud, not why x is calling them a fraud. The way to discover whether y is a fraud is to look at any evidence x provides, and/or think about any questions x proposes.

If x is correct, what does it matter if they're a hater? If x is incorrect, what does it matter whether neutral opinion agrees with x?

Imagine we applied this logic to barristers. The defence rises to argue that the police exceeded their authority by searching the accused's home without a warrant.

"Your honour," the district attorney/crown attorney drawls, "My friend acting for the defence is a notorious police hater. Day after day, all they do is nitpick and question the actions of the police and the conclusions we the prosecution draw from the evidence."

<comment><USER50> > _What matters is whether y is a fraud, not why x is calling them a fraud. > The way to discover whether y is a fraud is to look at any evidence x > provides, and /or think about any questions x proposes._

If _x_ is a hater, they may indeed bring forward useful evidence. Even their silence can be useful evidence: if a Courtney Cobain hater doesn't think she killed Kurt, that's pretty good evidence that there isn't even the flimsiest case that she did, since if there was, the hater would have obsessively investigated it and presented the best case.

However, the _existence_ of a hater, or many haters, doesn't provide any real evidence that _y_ is a fraud. It's just evidence that _y_ is famous. In the same way, a defense attorney questioning the actions of the police doesn't in itself provide any real evidence that the police acted questionably. It provides evidence that they are a defense attorney.

It probably isn't a good strategy for finding the truth to carefully consider all the claims that _y_ is a fraud if they are famous. That's because any famous person will have many thousands of haters, and so there will be many thousands of such claims to review. Maybe if a friend of yours is such a hater, talking to them is worthwhile. Or maybe it's worth reading one or two antifan diatribes. But at some point you probably want to plow your attention into more fertile fields.

Speaking of which, I have appreciated and admired your thinking for many years, having learned a great deal from you, and I even thought of you as a friend. So it came as a shock when you blocked me on Twitter. What did I do?

<comment><USER50> Courtney _Love_. Fuck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> absolutely horrible piece. From invoking stereotypes about basement-dwelling losers and manhood to a completely uncritical view about what constitutes hate and what doesn't, to the implicit lambda school context around the article, this reads like apologia for the tech CEO polite society who cannot handle criticism from ordinary people. The article even uses the words famous and successful interchangeably, entertaining the idea that fame may be ill- received only in the footnotes.

Also the emphasis on 'neutral opinions' is revealing. The problem when speaking to powerful people is that they're very adept at deflecting 'objective' criticism. It's the sort of discourse they're accustomed to. Hate and anger and even slightly mad and irrational criticism can come from a place of truth. And it can be valuable because in contrast to polite discussion scathing anger is hard to deflect. People in a position of power know how to deflect neutral criticism, they don't know how to deal with loud resentment. For many people, that kind of resentment is the only way to even voice their opinion.

The tone of the article sounds so far removed from reality that the article makes "famous people" sound average, the intelligent upper class like the only one with a license for legitimate criticism, while everyone else is a loser, imlpying that losers do not have valid opinions or that their sentiment can be disregarded because they have not learned how to voice them politely.

I don't know if Paul Graham reads these comments, but if you do you may ponder that it almost sounds like you're categorizing the vast majority of people as losers, and emotional expression as invalid. That's the only tool most people have to make themself heard.

My theory for why so many famous people are sensitive to hate is because hate establishes a lack of respect for authority. It dismantles a lot of pretentiousness around so-called 'critical thinking' in particular in these tech circles. The civility attitude on HN is a good example of this. I don't think it exists to actually think critically, it's just an occupational license to have a quick way to disregard the opinion of people who are perceived to be unsophisticated.

<comment><USER52> Consider that the tone of the article, as you're experiencing it, may have more to do with your own attitude and preconceptions, and what meanings you're choosing to read between the lines.

Where you wrote:

"Entertaining the idea that..." "... is revealing ..." "The tone of the article sounds like..." "It almost sounds like..."

These are all places where one could interpret things very differently.

I read the whole article also, and drew none of the conclusions you did.

<comment><USER53> I, too, read the article. I felt it apparent, from just about the beginning, to be as-described by Barrin92 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022013)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I've definitely seen way more haters who hate simply because they're fanboys of the competition, than frustrated talent who think they themselves should be famous instead.

Anyway, haters sometimes can't be ignored since they often spread lies at every opportunity, and these days damaging misinformation travel way faster than truths and are very hard to clear up.

<comment><USER55> I have seen obvious marketing people starting subreddits with purpose to hate on competition/social rising and carefully craft a cult. I don't believe a wider cult hate singularity can exist without money spent on it somewhere for a purpose.

Follow who is going to profit from the hate. An uncritical hater can't rile up thousands or millions of people worldwide to hate something only specific people have access to.

Ironically, I have noticed strong fans are also strong haters and it doesn't take much for them to change their side.

<comment><USER54> Yes, these days organized hate is usually led by paid social media influencers, who are often easy to see through for people with critical thinking capacity.

<comment><USER55> Not always. I disagree with the idea that critical thinking alone is needed and that it doesn't have its own share of spectrum.

To me, critical thinking is like a veil. It describes many of the behaviors and skills underneath which are not so generally applicable. Empathizing is one of them which many critical thinkers outside of their domain forget about (it's not their fault). A classic HN example is _only a few programmers are needed to replace [insert wildly different industry jobs]_

Some media influencers are purposefully obvious, critical thinking requires time and energy so once people think they figured out the obvious bait, they stop at that and move their attention to someone who calls out the obvious bait pretending to be an authority of trust. It also gives you power for denial of those untapped as conspiracy theorist or haters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I've realized that fanboys are the same as haters with a "bit flipped" when we've had a super fan flip flop to and from being hater. And in each case he was writing articles and tweets about our startup saying why it's the best or why it's the worst.

It was quite disturbing and confusing to watch this happen. Since then I've starting engaging fanboys with caution, the same way I might engage haters. I take their opinions with a large grain of salt and try not give them a reason to get too obsessed.

</comment><comment><USER57> I find this parallel interesting. I definitely have "fanboys" (I cringe at the term, but it's what pg uses, so I'll be consistent) who drive me crazy with their complete lack of critical thinking about my work -- I can see obvious flaws in many things I do, but they apparently can't -- but I can't think of anyone whom I would describe as _hating_ me. Plenty of people _ignore_ me, of course -- but that's quite different from actively denegrating my work or attacking me at every opportunity.

I can see three possibilities here:

1\. I've just been lucky so far.

2\. I have haters but I've simply not noticed them.

3\. There's a range in the spectrum of "fame" where people attract fanboys but not haters -- particularly when people are famous within narrow niches -- and I'm in that range.

I'm leaning towards the third possibility, but I'm curious what other readers think here.

EDIT: pg points out on Twitter that haters are rarer than fanboys, so it may be a combination of 1 & 3: I've been lucky, but most "minor celebrities" are lucky.

<comment><USER5> I think #3 is spot on; if you have a small amount of fame, especially in a niche area, there are people whose lives and work you'll impact enough for them to think really highly of you.

But that kind of fame doesn't really garner enough envy for people to develop much of a hatred toward you. Also, when someone badmouths a really famous person, that badmouthing can get some traction on its own just from the namedropping. When someone badmouths a niche-famous person, it's hard to get much traction. So their envy/ hatred doesn't really go anywhere.

I do wonder if there should be a third category, for people whose hatred and envy are so deep that they represent a real danger to their target. I will be happy to never have that kind of fame.

<comment><USER58> > _Also, when someone badmouths a really famous person, that badmouthing can > get some traction on its own just from the namedropping. When someone > badmouths a niche-famous person, it 's hard to get much traction. So their > envy/ hatred doesn't really go anywhere._

I feel this is very important point pg didn't consider in his essay. The degree of fame one has amplifies the fanboyism and hate they receive, because the more famous someone is, the more status can a fan or hater get with their peers by displaying obsession about said celebrity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> In defense of Paul Graham, I don't agree with every conclusion he has ever drawn, but his writing style is so good, in a world where most writing is so bad, than I do admit a temptation to be a fanboy. His essay "Taste for Makers" is a tour de force.

Now in this essay he is catching more criticism in the comments here than I expected.

1\. For calling someone a loser. I interpreted this to be an act of the will. I can't imagine Paul Graham calling someone a loser who is trying his best.

2\. For using the phrase "less than a man." A man is a mature boy. I interpreted this as a pithy way to say that someone is immature, and again by choice.

</comment><comment><USER60> The gratuitous use of unnecessarily gendered language (all male pronouns, "less than a man") in this article was grating and annoying.

</comment><comment><USER61> Well, consider sports fans for a moment. There's nothing rational in particular about worshipping a uniform, and yet you will find sports fans all over the place. And sports fans are almost all haters of the other team.

And yet... there are plenty of wildly successful people that are fans of sports, and haters of the rivals. Obama is famously a basketball fan, for instance.

I get that it's a lot milder than hating on a person, my point is that this is a thing that is in almost all of us. The smart people just know when to compartmentalise those feelings.

<comment><USER62> I thought of sports too. I personally have irrational hatred for rival players that, for example, accidental injured a player on my team in a big game. But it's almost like a joke or game; if I met the player in person I wouldn't act crazy.

I think the compartmentalizing you mentioned is interesting. In American politics right now, the home team and rivalry mentality seems to have spilled out into actually important areas of discourse. At the same time, neighbors still live in relative harmony in their day to day lives.

I just wonder if PG's theory really is more about trolls, despite him specifically addressing the distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> > _[...] because anyone famous knows how random fame is._

Quite the contrary! My impression is that most famous people are quite full of themselves and attribute too large a portion of their success to skill, when luck (being in the right place at the right time) was a significant factor.

</comment><comment><USER55> > A hater is obsessive and uncritical. Disliking you becomes part of their > identity, and they create an image of you in their own head that is much > worse than reality. Everything you do is bad, because you do it.

> What sort of people become haters? Can anyone become one? I'm not sure about > this, but I've noticed some patterns. Haters are generally losers in a very > specific sense: although they are occasionally talented, they have never > achieved much. And indeed, anyone successful enough to have achieved > significant fame would be unlikely to regard another famous person as a > fraud on that account, because anyone famous knows how random fame is.

I guess pg was going more for the startup founder and creative worker aspect but wouldn't a lot of it be explained by the need to be in a tribe? You can find intelligent people in politics hating others simply due to the mere association.

A lot of startups are politically and socially charged (disruption in the power balance of society) so it makes partial sense for someone to hate otherwise they may lose their security out of their primal instincts.

It becoming a part of your identity is likely an unintended consequence of validation from enough insecure people. Further, someone can capitalize being insecure. Probably how a lot of political celebs comes into power.

</comment><comment><USER64> Slightly off topic, but in Paul's recent essays the footnotes are no longer linked to in the body of essay. In this one from 2016 you'll see [1] or [2] and so on in the body, and the links jump you down to the relevant note at the bottom:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html)

Everything more recent than that does not have the notes linked in the body.

</comment><comment><USER65> > Haters are generally losers in a very specific sense: although they are > occasionally talented, they have never achieved much.

So if people become haters because they never achieved much, why do people become fanboys?

<comment><USER66> My personal theory: same reason but scoped to a limited domain. You can be a generally happy and successful person but a fanboy of an athlete because you've never achieved much in sports. You want someone to succeed because it resonates with some unrealized potential in yourself.

<comment><USER65> That makes sense. To the extent I've ever been a fanboy, it's because I wanted to emulate that person in some way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Enemies make me aware of my flaws. Haters make me aware of their flaws. My enemies make me stronger. Haters are just losers or bullies. I'm not famous so I can't speak about fanboys.

</comment><comment><USER68> What I see here as a huge problem is (and not only in this article) that the word hater is used to disqualify a genuine and true criticism with good fundamental basis. Haters gonna hate, right?

In todays society pop culture is what is mainstream: think positive, smile, listen songs that dont mean anything but are also not hurting anyone, be happy, even if something is negative concentrate on positive (X company is adding toxic chemicals to their food but they have such a lovely packaging), but bottom line, pretend that everything is nice and fine and you will die with a smile on your face.

The problem is that the society is going into endless circle of self soothing minds, that are not only ignoring the hell of a lot of things that needs to be fixed (from society, environment, companys... products) but are also satisfied by someone selling them intelectual or physical product that is a junk but offers them a dream that there is nothing wrong with their lifestyle/thinking/... and are furious protecting that illusion from anyone daring to criticize it. This was a funboy a decade ago. I am observing with horror that now it has become mainstream.

Once the options to contradict logically are gone, as a last scream of mind defending their ego is an etiquette "you are a hater".

In that moment everything seems fine again.

"It is not me.", "It is not the product I love.", "It is you.", "I can go back to my illusion now.".

So Graham. Smile. Be happy. Be positive. Dont be a hater to haters. As maybe... they are not haters after all.

<comment><USER69> I think you missed the point. Graham is explicitly _not_ using hater to disqualify genuine criticism but to identify people whose hate is irrational, who can't be reasoned with. Obviously it's a risk that someone can dismiss genuine criticism as hate (and people do this all the time), but that's not what Graham's advocating here.

<comment><USER70> Who decides what is "genuine criticism" and what is "hate"?

To the person receiving criticism, everything is hate. Look at pg's twitter on Tesla: doesn't understand the hate. Has he read the criticism and refuted it? No, he dismisses it.

<comment> phoe-krk > To the person receiving criticism, everything is hate.

That's some immature criticism-receiver that you are describing here. You have just implied that it is impossible to receive criticism without thinking of it as hate, which I find to be false.

<comment><USER70> I agree, it's immature. But I'm not the one who wrote an article calling critics haters and losers.

I mean, the article literally says the calling card of a hater is the use of the word "fraud". Meanwhile, we see actual fraud in Silicon Valley (and beyond, of course) _all the time_. God forbid it gets called out.

I'm old enough to remember the flak people took on these very forums for calling Theranos a fraud: thoughtful people obviously did due diligence on the company, critics (losers?) couldn't stand seeing a woman be so successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> While I am by no means "famous" in the sense of Paul Graham famous, this essay is spot on. I had a coterie of haters when I was getting started on my own. I would post a blog and they would counter with their own blog making fun of me. One of them was a better writer than I and his criticisms were cutting. But they were just mean. I suspect it was this guy who created a fake twitter account using my avatar. It was labeled "fake" so not an attempt to slander me. I felt somewhat like it was a compliment. And it was very clever.

I just disengaged from all these people. I don't read comments on my blogs or articles. But still, having negative fanboys impacts you the rest of your life. You imagine them calling you out. It pulls you down and slows you down.

Thanks for this PG.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is one of those cases where I try really hard to set my preconceptions aside. I'm not famous. I'm not a thought leader. I don't maintain a "public persona" on social media. If I have a couple of twitter followers, I figure they're just some kind of bot or spammer.

PG is likely dealing with a phenomenon that most of us have no personal experience with.

All I can do is try to embrace his understanding to get an insight because I have no idea what it's like to have some stranger obsess about me for good or ill.

I notice some people commenting here who seem to think that trolls and people who dislike you casually are the same as the "haters" PG is writing about. I don't think they are.

</comment><comment><USER73> Core reasons perhaps people are haters?

1) The person who they hate to them (the hater) appears to have more luck than talent. There are others with the same or more talent (maybe even the hater or someone they know) who get no attention at all and toil in obscurity.

Of course luck is a sliding scale (there is always luck) but someone in theory would be less likely to hate someone who ran a race and was the fastest (low on the luck scale high on the skill scale) but more likely to hate a startup founder or a singer or actor who had fame but it didn't appear related as much to talent but to luck. Someone can imagine 'I could do that' but not 'I can beat that person in a marathon' (easy to quantify).

2) There are fanboys and that enhances the annoyance by the hater. So it's the constant attention (which they feel is undeserved and quite frankly it probably is) that drives the hater. Not the person themselves. The media attention the fawning articles the fawning comments.

3) They get attention for things that the same activity would not get attention by a non famous person. Example is PG wrote this essay and everyone here (including me) are feasting on it.

4) They are unapproachable. They wouldn't give you the time of day (because of course they don't have time to give everyone attention). If you wrote to them they might write back a quick reply but they would never engage in a discussion or invite you to go out or be their friend. They would give you some trivial brush off (if they replied at all). You are not important to them and they know that. That bugs people even if they know there is a legit reason for the brush off. People react negatively to lack of courtesy and to have it in their face that they are not important even if rationally they understand why it's happening to them.

So at the core it's not the actual famous person that is hated so much as the attention that is given to the famous person that drives the hate. The hater feels it's undeserved and over the top.

And it is 'over the top' when it just becomes to much in the mind of the hater.

</comment><comment><USER74> That's part of the worst writing I have read about people. Writing a complete armchair analyst pamphlet indicating among other things than some people are "less than a man" reflects rather poorly on the author. I hope I'm not a "hater" by saying that -- at the same time if he wrote that because he encountered some "haters" of him, I can imagine where that hatred could came from.

Should also serves as a lesson illustrating it is not easy to point faults at other, even less so at whole classes of people, when yourself have your own elephant in the room ones...

</comment><comment><USER75> As a moderately famous person with a lot of haters I have a lot of observations about this and have come to a fundamentally different conclusion. Haters are simply heavy users of the basic human social mechanism known as Altruistic Punishment. This mechanism rewards calling people out on perceived flaws with an immediate boost to social status and enhanced opportunities for bonding. Under most circumstances Altruistic Punishment helps bind society together, but like all social reward systems ends up being abused, sometimes chronically.

</comment><comment><USER76> I'm not a psychology expert by any means but this reminds me of Adler's idea about the Superiority Complex [1] and how it's a defense mechanism for an Inferiority Complex. I think PG arrived at the same conclusion Andler did back in the 1920s.

I learned about it from the book "The Courage to be Disliked" that talks about these two things in a very approachable manner.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_complex)

</comment><comment><USER77> I have butted heads with pg in a minor fashion in the past over his tendency to disingenuously omit things from his essays, then get pissy about the fact that critics don't always go line-by-line over the "thing I got wrong" (ergo: critics == haters).

This essay, if it truly applies to Lambda School as many of the other commenters are suggesting, is a case in point. If this is really about Lambda School, then there's at least some plausible reasons to find it sketchy which one might want to address.

</comment><comment><USER42> " _A hater is obsessive and uncritical. Disliking you becomes part of their identity, and they create an image of you in their own head that is much worse than reality. Everything you do is bad, because you do it. If you do something good, they find a way to see it as bad. And their dislike for you is not, usually, a quiet, private one. They want everyone to know how awful you are._ "

Note also that not all who disagree with you are haters or trolls.

</comment><comment><USER78> Someone mentioned their surprised at the negativity in this essay. I agree, Paul's frustration is coming through which is new to me as a long time reader of his. It got me thinking of the recent article [0] the other day about someone analyzing Facebook's latest PR, with Sandberg, Boz, and Zuckerberg seemingly speaking out a little more "off the cuff" as usual, as if they've been letting their frustration get the best of them and speaking publicly about ongoing events when it'd be "better" to say nothing at all. Perhaps this is one of those cases, but seeing as how Paul likes writing about what can't/shouldn't be said, maybe I'm not so surprised. And actually I liked this essay anyway :)

But it reminded me that Paul usually thanks people who review his essay drafts at the end.

This one was no exception, but I noticed a couple new names:

Peter Thiel, and Christine Ford.

From the Kavanaugh drama[1]? It looks like yes.

[0]: [https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebooks-pr-feels- broken](https://themargins.substack.com/p/facebooks-pr-feels-broken)

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford)

</comment><comment><USER79> Adding Paul Graham to the list of people whose detractors are just haters and losers who will never amount to anything, it's becoming quite the club.

</comment><comment><USER80> I thought the article was interesting, but this footnote left me cold:

"How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? ... Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by [frauds]"

The world is full of "thoughtful" people who have been taken in by frauds - Theranos is a recent example - and so I think this is pretty terrible advice _in general_ \- although I can see how it might work in certain contexts.

For example, frauds often seem to work on smart people who aren't smart in the specific field in which the fraud operates.

<comment><USER81> Therons is an example of letting ideology drive investment decisions.

<comment><USER82> Is it? What ideology was that? It seemed to me like people were legitimately taken in by her. At least, that's what I got from reading Bad Blood. It didn't seem like there was any particular unifying ideology of the investors/believers in Theranos. Some people seemed to like it for its female empowerment narrative, maybe, but I don't think that was a major component for most of the prominent people involved.

<comment><USER83> Ideology is another word for narrative, and Holmes worked very hard to sell a narrative where she was a disruptive genius who would revolutionise [stale old thing that needed to be disrupted] by sheer force of will and outstanding talent.

Does that narrative not sound a little familiar?

Being a woman genius took it to another level.

It's possible Holmes actually sold the narrative to herself at least as much as she sold it to everyone else.

(But that's not an unfamiliar story either.)

The worrying thing is that Holmes blanked out legitimate criticism. Perhaps she even labelled legitimate critics as haters.

That's an overtly cult-like move. Outsiders who are not aligned with the goal of the cult - often powered by a cult of personality - are dismissed, when in fact their criticisms are realistic and appropriate.

In fact what makes fanboys and haters so annoying is obsessive irrationality. They're noisy, but worryingly content-free.

But not everyone is irrational, and both outsiders and insiders may have valid and considered non-obsessive opinions. Those opinions may be positive, or they may be critical - both for perfectly valid reasons.

<comment><USER84> _Ideology is another word for narrative_

But it's not?

I mean I guess there is some kind of relationship - ideologies usually have some kind of story that goes with them.

But a narrative in itself isn't an ideology.

But I do agree that Holmes was able to project a "reality distortion field" in the same way Jobs could. I think that's different to ideology though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> So Paul Graham has just developped the perfect classifier

"A Plan For Haters And Fanboys".

I will try to apply to it to myself

\---

Well I am clearly an hater, because I think that Paul Graham says a lot of stupid shit on subjects where he lacks the ability to empathize with the real victims, like many people who are male, white, powerful, well-connected and who can basically accomplish whatever the fuck they want to accomplish. Why don't all those poor victims just do the same, right?

This inflated ego leads him to be a jerk more often than necessary, and write things that are obviously wrong (but not for him) on some subjects where he is a like a snowflake who thinks he is the real victim being attacked. A bit like all those Trump voters who think that the problem with racism in the USA is that white people like them are being unfairly critized as being a racist.

At that point, the Paul Grahan classifier has all the necessary signals to classify me as an hater.

\----

On the other hand...

I am obviously a fanboy because I genuinely believe that Paul Graham is a very generous, bright mind who has worked a lot and helped thousands of people.

I know for a fact that he has helped me a lot, I've read pretty much everything he wrote and was nodding furiously all of the time. I can tell you my ten favorites articles from him.

Well actually, let's do it. I really liked

\- "Lisp for web-based applications" \- "A plan for span" \- "If Lisp is So Great" \- "What You Can't Say" \- "The Python Paradox" \- "The Age of the Essay" \- "How to Start a Startup" \- "What I did this summer?" \- "You weren't meant to have a boss" \- "Ramen Profitable" \- "Startup = Growth""H \- "Do Things That Don't Scale" \- "Default Alive Or Default Dead?"

Oops, I told 13 instead of 10, and I had to force myself to stop here.

That's what fanboys do.

\---

In summary, I understand the tentation to have "A Plan For Fanboys/Haters" like he had a "Plan For Spam".

Frankly that would be nice if that was possible, I would buy it, just say your price.

But I'm starting to think that real human beings are more complex than this nice dichotomy.

I think Paul Graham is like a normal human being, with wonderful parts and deep flaws, pretty much like all of us.

That leads him to be right and helpful on a lot of subjects, and also to be wrong and a jerk on other topics.

Since he is a bright guy, he would have no problems to discover why he was wrong, if he applied his own principles to those topics.

And he would apply his own principles if he was interested.

His output being deeply wrong shows that he is not interested right now by those topics.

Ok, fine.

</comment><comment><USER86> This isn't startup-centric. This is life. We've taken it. And most of us, at some point, have been a fan or a hater.

That said, on Quora, many years ago there was an article summed up by: If you're not pissing someone off, you're doing it all wrong.

I think these's truth to that. So if you want to do it not all wrong, then you have to expect there's gonna be some friction

</comment><comment><USER87> it seems possible to cure haterdom: try do to creative work in the same domain and at the level of those you hate. it's almost certain you will come to better recognize their struggles, and may even turn yourself into a fanboy once you understand what was involved for them to reach their fame.

</comment><comment><USER88> True haters are usually those who do not fully understand the subject of their hatred. Because of that, it's always safe to ignore them because the target should know deeply within themselves why they are right.

But there is also a class of fanboys who gradually became disillusioned, for they have come to realize that the emperor has no clothes. For these people it's often the case that the same ones who lifted the star to the top will also cause its downfall. Peter Thiel has written about this in his book, and history is littered with such examples.

Malcolm Gladwell did a good job exploring this type of social behavior in his book.

</comment><comment><USER89> Somehow related, for non-US people, do you ever use or heard/read the term "loser" (or direct translation)?

My hypothesis is that it's a very American concept, as in I don't remember ever anyone outside the US/Canada use that word (same with "winner"). Like in Europe or South America for ex people would say somebody is a deadbeat or terrible at their job or lazy but not a loser (this may be just in my head).

<comment><USER90> At least in the Netherlands, the word "loser" (in english) is used quite often.

<comment><USER89> thanks, -1 for my hypothesis. Well not totally, the fact that the original English word is used (instead of a Dutch one) is also telling.

<comment><USER91> One more data point: in Hungarian it's also common, also borrowed from English. It's spelled lúzer.

<comment><USER89> great thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I'm not a PG fanboy ;) but I usually really admire his writing. He writes so plainly and clearly, it's something I struggle with. My issue is never ever that my writing is not flowery or interesting enough, it's that it's not simple enough. Knowing firsthand how much harder this is than one would think, I quite admire how plainly and straight-to-the-point PG writes.

<comment><USER93> If you like his style, then you would find these interesting:

[http://paulgraham.com/speak.html](http://paulgraham.com/speak.html) (counter: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3720459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3720459))

[http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html](http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html)

[http://paulgraham.com/essay.html](http://paulgraham.com/essay.html) (counter: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3306364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3306364))

[http://paulgraham.com/talk.html](http://paulgraham.com/talk.html) (counter: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448643))

<comment><USER92> Thank you. I'll check these out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> The unexpected hyperlink was such a 'nice' touch! I guess that means we have a reverse-fanboy on our hands too, don't we?

</comment><comment><USER95> "Could a hater be cured if they achieved something impressive? My guess is that it's a moot point, because they never will."

This is entirely wrong. History is full of people with spectacular achievements whom pg would classify as "haters".

The whole essay is really poor (and yes, I've also achieved more than flipping a web-shop to friends at Yahoo during the bubble.).

</comment><comment><USER96> I think there's a bit of cruelty in so casually reducing people to "losers." Taking what must be a complex set of personal histories and circumstances that lead people to that behavior and framing it as a matter of winner vs loser seems to border on smug, especially when the writer is clearly the former.

<comment><USER97> The post clearly ignores the use of any form of sensitive language, which in this case I thought helped to illustrate the points quite well.

Personally, I can't imagine calling somebody a loser, but in my head I have a very clear idea of what a loser is. To me a loser is anybody that, in spite of the opportunity to do so, doesn't take any control over their own life, doesn't take responsibility for themselves, and blames others for their failure/lack of success. Such people can become marginally successful, but they'll always be losers, because they'll never get what they want from life. To me, this idea seems very similar to what he was getting at.

<comment><USER96> The notion of control over one's life is elusive. Our futures can be wrought by trauma, poverty and the lottery that is our DNA, and by extension, our brain. Given the randomness/contingency Graham acknowledges explains his and others' success, and by implication the various dependencies en route to that success, I'd just ask for a bit more compassion for those, whether through birth or circumstance, find themselves constitutionally unable to make the most of their lives in the sense you probably mean. Something as simple as a deficit in executive function can wreak havoc on one's ability to self- motivate, just as an example.

<comment><USER97> You're massively misinterpreting what I said.

> in spite of the opportunity to do so

I am talking about people who have opportunities they don't take, so the spiel about circumstances is pretty off topic. In my comment I also made no reference to outcomes. I was specifically describing an approach to life. Anybody, even the most low agency circumstances, can choose how they approach life.

<comment><USER98> > Anybody, even the most low agency circumstances, can choose how they > approach life.

That is a very common ideology around these parts (and also in the US), but it is simply not true. We are constrained by our mental health in how we can choose to approach life, and our mental health is partly due to genetic lottery and partly due to environmental circumstances outside of our control. This is not my opinion, scientific studies are _massively_ (as you would say) in agreement with what I claim here.

The American obsession with "winner" and "losers" is just an excuse to be selfish and cruel. Its fruits are extreme economic equality, school shootings and people dying of easily curable diseases because they don't have money for the treatment (or even the ambulance to the hospital).

<comment><USER99> Please don't add nationalistic flamebait to HN. It leads to nationalistic flamewars, which we're trying to avoid here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Sometimes being a hater is not because one is unsuccessful _or_ successful in their craft. A lot of hate in the modern age is driven by ideological capture. If someone is in your ideological outgroup and famous, hate them. If someone is a billionaire and your ideology tends towards the marxist, hate them, etc.

<comment><USER82> I think tribal hatred is a little different than 'hater' as meant here. Fanboy/hater gets its essence almost from its triviality. I don't think PG was trying to describe all hate in the modern world, but rather this much narrower 'hater' concept as related to celebrity-type fame.

<comment><USER100> Hmm. I see a large fraction of Elon Musk's haters coming from an ideological perspective, for example.

<comment><USER82> Huh. What do you mean by that? I think of Elon Musk's haters as more coming from the perspective of thinking he's overly self important and irresponsible (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

<comment><USER101> > (I like Elon though, for the record). I don't really think of his haters as > ideological per se. What kind of ideology do you see in his haters?

I also like Elon, but the source of the hate probably comes from two sources. The first is the audaciousness of his general proposal: that we give up technology that worked for a century (oil) and try to build something entirely different. It's based on a bias towards the status quo.

The second is probably more legitimate. No question Tesla has done amazing things, but is it really worth more than established players that sell 10X number of cars? The stock price doesn't make sense based on any traditional valuation, it can only be explained by popular enthusiasm and exuberance towards the vision that Elon provides. It feels to many that Elon is getting away with things that would doom any other company because of this perception. It feels unfair, hence the haters.

Personally, I do love Elon, SpaceX, Tesla, etc, but I don't want to get involved in the stock market casino. I support what he does because of his vision, but Tesla's stock price makes no sense to me. Instead, I'll cheer from the sidelines, and invest my money in boring ETFs.

<comment><USER70> What about the fact that he paid a shady PI to shake down a cave diver trying to help with the Thai cave rescue? Or regularly sends his troll army after journalists with baseless accusations? Or that he commited securities fraud in plain site? Or that it looks like he bailed his family out at the expense of company shareholders? Or that he burned taxpayers in Buffalo?

What about the fact that as the world wakes up to atrocities in China, he went there hat in hand, selling out to the CCP?

There are legit reasons he could be disliked.

<comment><USER101> > There are legit reasons [Elon] could be disliked.

Yes, there are many legitimate complaints about Elon, some disputed, some not. But the legitimate complaints you describe don't create the haters. What hedge-fund short-seller, or random internet troll, really cares about Hong Kong's civil rights? The same folks that are crying fowl on Elon support far more ruthless enterprises, their complaints aren't coming from a morally sound platform.

The vast majority of hatred towards Elon is what I described: (1) his audaciousness; (2) inflated valuations that don't conform to traditional valuation models.

Sadly, any legitimate criticism is lost in this noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> If you search and replace "haters" with "taters", it becomes a very strange essay about potatoes.

</comment><comment><USER103> >> If P. G. Wodehouse were still alive, I could see myself being a Wodehouse fanboy.

Hah! PG is a Wodehouse fan. Makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER104> We always have leaders and followers. I think the haters might be those who are fanboys of someone else.

Think about team-sports, the English soccer hooligans. They succumb to terrible violence because they are fanboys of their own team and haters of the other team, including the followers of the other team.

</comment><comment><USER105> I think a portion of haters are post-fanboys. That is, at some time there was an experience where the fanboy could no longer deal internally with failures of their obsession, they flipped and gone hater.

Sort of like borderline painting black and white.

</comment><comment><USER106> Love PG's writing, always a good read.

First - his example of the 'hater of the pop singer' I think is wrong.

Someone likely 'hates' the pop singer because their popularity is not justified, i.e. lacking talent or authenticity.

They don't 'hate' an obscure pop singer, because there's no point.

This is not arbitrary disdain.

I think a better example would be the comments section in HuffPo or Breitbart on politics. It's just pure political identity and nothing else: all actions of the opponent must be bad.

Second - I think his characterisation of 'loser' might be very wrong as well. A lot of very rich dudes got that way by being obsessively competitive, sometimes full of arbitrary rage at 'the other guy'. 'Vendetta' is not a word we usually associate with losers, I think it comes from the same place.

It just might be that anger is a little stickier and motivating than other things?

<comment><USER101> > I think a better example would be the comments section in HuffPo or > Breitbart on politics. It's just pure political identity and nothing else: > all actions of the opponent must be bad.

I don't actually think this is a better example. People have a lot on their plate, they can't be expected to investigate every issue to extreme depth. They rely on institutions. Many people join Breitbart politics because they trust Breitbart, even if they know little about it's underlying reasoning. Similarly, many people trust the national academy of sciences, even if they know little about the underlying science.

Even a critical reader can't know everything, and so they must trust people and institutions to represent them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Good points and we are definitely not above this phenomenon. Articles with >500 comments are almost always infested with endless threads pitting fanboys against haters. It's an infinite loop that goes nowhere.

</comment><comment><USER108> The footnotes are once again missing in this article (as in, the notes appear, but are not linked to from the text). I think this is the third or fourth article for which this is true - hope pg notices and fixes this.

</comment><comment><USER109> I am a hater.

The man I hate is famous, millions of subscribers famous. He makes entertaining (and, sometimes, thoughtful tech videos) on the internet. He is intelligent, funny and charismatic.

But, behind closed doors, the façade that is his personality slips away. And underneath he is a monster. There are stories about this man from the people who have been around him and worked with him. Stories about this man having a tantrum when a sponsor refused to gift him an absurdly costly item in addition to his payment, tickets, hotel stay and a generous per diem. He never stops screaming to the people who work for him. He belittles them. Cuts them down. He abuses everyone around him.

His abuse is prolific. It's not public. But it _is_ prolific. People who know anyone tangential to the space he's in talk about their dealings with him. I have corresponded with him professionally. And that and so much more makes me hate him.

I still enjoy his content, but if people bring him up to me, I pass the word along that he is an unrepentant asshole of the worst stripe. The one who thinks his abuse makes the world a better place. But it really doesn't. Because he just makes videos on the internet.

      –—

I am also a fan.

I am a fan of my friend. He is also famous. But I don't care that he's famous. I don't read nor see any of the things he is famous for. He is my friend first, and I value him for that. I value him for his kindness, honesty and ethics. I value him for saying thank you to his employees after every long day. But most of all, I value him for valuing other people fairly – and going above and beyond when necessary.

It's not that he doesn't has flaws, but it's that he is a fundamentally good person. He does stupid things sometimes. But I have seen him help other people. I have seen him get hurt while helping other people. I have also seen him continue helping others no matter the cost. It's just who he is. He is a bright spot in this universe, and I do critique the things he wants feedback on. Sometimes I re-write important documents for him, because that's not his forte. But I respect and admire him, and I don't think there's anything I can do that will make me stop respecting or admiring him.

His fame makes me hesitant to say more. His privacy matters to me. Because he is a good person intentionally bringing some good into this world. What he does matters, even at the smallest of scales. He matters.

I won't extend the same consideration to the person I hate.

      –—

It is tempting to think that Paul's essay is for me, but it isn't. It's for the extremes of fame. And I have seen these extremes and he's right. These labels he wrote about are an important way to stay sane when you're so fucking famous that reuters measures your farts for clicks;

      I love my fans, but no one ever puts a grasp
      On the fact I've sacrificed everything I have
      I never dreamt I'd get to the level that I'm at
      This is wack, this is more than I ever coulda asked
      Everywhere I go, a hat, a sweater hood or mask
      What about math, how come I wasn't ever good at that?
      It's like the boy in the bubble, who never could adapt
      I'm trapped, if I could go back, I never woulda rapped
      I sold my soul to the devil, I'll never get it back
      I just wanna leave this game with level head intact
      Imagine goin' from bein' a no-one to seein'
      Everything blow up, and all you did was just grow up emceein'
      It's fuckin' crazy, 'cause all I wanted was to give Hailie
      The life I never had, instead I forced us to live alienated

</comment><comment><USER110> Is this a brand new essay, or is it one that pg has talked about / published before? Because I am having an extreme case of deja-vu right now. Was this originally published 10-15 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER111> I've watched for a number of times that a bully became a bully victim, and a bully victim became a bully. So I eventually concluded that they're actually the same kind of people.

</comment><comment><USER112> Curious, what sorts of famous people do we have hanging around HN?

<comment><USER113> I'm not the only fanboy of Alan Kay around here! ;)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alankay1](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alankay1)

>(OMGOMGOMG Dude, Dr. Kay, sir, your excellency, sir! I'm a huge fan! HUGE! You have made my day. I'm going to be telling random strangers in the street "Alan Kay responded to m'comment on the intertubes today!" and whistling and dancing on lampposts. Okay, deep breath, calming down...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> the big take away for me is the parallel between "fanboys" and "haters". other than that, i have to agree with some comments that the article feels strange because of the casual use of the word loser and a loose description of their unfortunate fate. "fanboys" didn't get the same treatment. no word to identify them (winner, maybe?).

the tone of this article didn't seem to bother PG & friends at all! but it clearly bothered some of us...

</comment><comment><USER115> My opinion is that if you are spending all of your time posting hate towards another person, you are mentally Ill and should get help.

The problem is that many online communities foster this sort of thing and allow it to fester and grow..as if it's perfectly acceptable.

Reddit has subreddits that I've seen that are dedicated to this behavior and sites like Twitter and Facebook will only get rid of posts if it fits the current political narrative. I've seen republicans/conservatives get death threats against their kids with no bannings, but if you misgender someone, it's an instant ban.

Its these sorts of double standards that allows hate to flourish and sends a signal to the person doing it that it's acceptable behavior, so it not only continues, but gets worse...and the person sending the hateful messages will never stop there.

<comment><USER116> It doesn't have to be so extreme, or even hate.

What I've found is that the overwhelming discourse in this society has been moving away from facts to emotion. If there were any news coming from anywhere, regarding a person or a group of people, the first criteria of examination, especially on places like reddit is usually: Does it fit my narrative and emotional need? Not fact, those are usually thrown out of the window.

This trend is accelerating and it has successfully taken over most social media. HN has been one of the few places left that unpopular opinion based on fact still gets upvoted. When facts and emotions collide, it fosters hate as hater cannot dismiss the argument factually, and resort to attacks on personal level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> Why have bottom page notes and no numbers in the text? Look like a sloppy mistake, which is unusual for PG.

</comment><comment><USER118> Agree with the premise of the article. Haters and fanboys alike all end up wearing themselves out anyway.

</comment><comment><USER119> > _But haters are not always complete losers. They are not always the > proverbial guy living in his mom 's basement. Many are, but some have some > amount of talent. In fact I suspect that a sense of frustrated talent is > what drives some people to become haters. They're not just saying "It's > unfair that so-and-so is famous," but "It's unfair that so-and-so is famous, > and not me." Could a hater be cured if they achieved something impressive? > My guess is that it's a moot point, because they never will._

I call BS on the premise above.

In the history of mankind, there has never been any shortage of great men, with equal huge fame and big achievements, who hated on each other. From scientists to writers to thinkers to musicians.

Similarly:

> There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you > distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y > is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty > conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are > some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud.

There was never a shortage of "thoughtful people" who have sided with frauds. If one considers e.g. Hitler or Stalin a fraud, there was no shortage of influential and famous men, including major artists, thinkers and scientists, who routed for one or the other...

So, at best the premises hold for low-status "internet mob" style haters.

Not for haters-at-large...

</comment><comment><USER120> That old quote is relevant here: "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."

</comment><comment><USER121> People who use the term "haters" boil my blood, it's an incredibly juvenile label

</comment><comment><USER122> I felt like I was reading an analysis specifically of the Star Citizen community.

</comment><comment><USER123> Nice but judging by those standards almost everyone on this planet is a loser.

</comment><comment><USER124> "Haters are confused admirers who can't understand why everybody else likes you"

\- Paulo Coelho

</comment><comment><USER125> Dutch proverb for contemplation: "High trees catch lots of wind."

</comment><comment><USER59> I. An alternative theory of fandom:

A. Hypothesis:

The person you laud is a target of your psychological projection.

B. Evidence:

Let's take Apple. It had a lot of fanbois, especially 1990-2010. If one thing can be said for it, its ads were true: it thought different. In a world of computers for businesses and penny pinchers, Apple catered to artists and perfectionists.

My first computer was a Macintosh. So that's another thing: nostalgia.

Steve Jobs said and did things that I wish I had the courage to say and do.

C. Conclusions:

When I think of the fanbois of Apple, I think of people who feel (1) underrepresented, and now have found (2) representation.

Therefore to them, Apple is, in a way, them. Apple is me, Steve Jobs is my avatar. I am not famous, so I rely upon Steve Jobs to go out in the world and speak on my behalf. When I see him make a mistake, I explain it away, the way I explain away my own shortcomings. When people attack him, I feel attacked, and so I speak up in his defense.

\---

II. Paul Graham suggests that fanbois and haters are two sides of the same coin. So let me put haters under the same light.

A. Hypothesis:

The person you cast aspersions upon is a target of your psychological projection.

B. Evidence:

Scant evidence, because I don't talk to haters much about their hating. I did have a friend though who was normally cheerful but surprised me one day with his hatred for Ben Affleck. Now that I revisit the memory, I wonder if Ben Affleck reminded him of an old classmate.

People have an unusual hatred for celebrities who seem nice like Taylor Swift. Maybe she reminds them of an old girlfriend who hurt their feelings.

C. Conclusions:

As I walk these streets, I seem to be surrounded by nice, well-adjusted people. Most of them are polite and quiet. But as I get to know people, and as I read the news, I keep finding out that emotional abuse is rampant. I think everyone is hurting, but they're usually stuffing it, and then it escapes in unexpected directions, like at Ben Affleck.

Therefore Ben Affleck or Taylor Swift is, in a way, the person who hurt them. Ben becomes the avatar of a certain enemy (or perhaps one's own repressed shame, maybe he reminds you of you).

Such is psychological projection. I didn't make it up. I read about it. It's usually about projecting onto not-famous people, just people around you. For example, a father might project his own faults onto his son. But now I am thinking of it specifically for people in the spotlight. It makes sense that people who have your attention could become the target of your thoughts.

\---

Coda:

A nice side of this theory is that it explains sports fans too. Why do you care about this group of people throwing a ball around in this field down below? Why are you yelling and screaming? Well, because for whatever reason you have decided that they represent you. Maybe it's as simple as the team is from Cincinnati, and you live in Cincinnati. Or in the case of college sports, that you went to that college, or your mother did. (I admit I'm not into sports, and many people root for teams that seem to have nothing to do with them, so this explanation may be incomplete.)

\---

Epilogue:

Paul Graham did not treat this possibility, but his conclusion rings true: When people love or hate you unreasonably, it's not about you, it's about them.

</comment><comment><USER126> The conclusion of this post can be summarized as "haters gonna hate".

</comment><comment><USER127> Now renamed to just 'Haters'

</comment><comment><USER128> Haters gonna hate, and 'flaters gonna inflate.

</comment><comment><USER129> This essay makes a strong assumption that haters are haters and fanboys are fanboys. Always and constantly. I think both figures are myths. I have never met a person who always hates everyone or someone who fanboys everyone. I think we are all haters and fanboys to some extend. I have a big list of people that I admire and same goes to people I hate — like Donald Trump. I'm sure Paul Graham also hates someone occasionally. It's human.

</comment><comment><USER130> That 6 people pg obviously respects personally reviewed this and not enough of them said, "this is pretty lame and kinda dumb" to prevent him from publishing says something grim about his inner circle.

</comment><comment><USER131> Shallow piece. Tl;dr: haters gonna hate.

</comment><comment><USER132> How to deal with heaters check here

</comment><comment><USER70> Silicon Valley is simply preparing itself for the immense blowback it will receive when this whole operation unravels financially...again.

<comment><USER99> Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER70> What is "unsubstantive"? Valuations have sky rocketed, frauds are being uncovered slowly, investments are looking shaky. So,the VC world has to start the PR circuit. "Don't listen to the haters, they are unsuccessful losers. We thoughtful people dont mess up" fits right in, no?

How someone who lives and works in the tech world can't see the cracks is astonishing. This is how economic cycles work.

<comment><USER99> Your comment was a dismissive one-liner, the leading genre of unsubstantiveness.

Even your post here is a caricature. People have been saying such things for years. In fact, unless I'm mistaken, you yourself have been repeating such things on this very site for years. Predictability is always unsubstantive, because it adds no new information, and indignant predictability especially so. HN is supposed to be for curious conversation. Reductive hops to angry places—note the word 'simply' in your comment above—are the opposite of that.

The trouble with such comments is not that they're wrong. Maybe you're right about economic cycles, who knows? Maybe the people who you assume can't see things actually see the very same things that you see, who knows? The problem is rather that such comments don't show the reader anything, except how you feel—which could also be interesting, except that you're not talking about it directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER133> This passage applies so perfectly to obsessed supporters of political candidates, especially in the Trump era (no matter what side):

« _A fanboy is obsessive and uncritical. Liking you becomes part of their identity, and they create an image of you in their own head that is much better than reality. Everything you do is good, because you do it. If you do something bad, they find a way to see it as good. And their love for you is not, usually, a quiet, private one. They want everyone to know how great you are._ »

</comment><comment><USER134> This was an interesting post and it hit home, although not in a good way (because it caused me to reflect on my own instances of hating on individuals). Although I'm not sure reality is quite so simple -- take Trump's irrational hatred of Obama, with the whole 'birther' thing being an example of fomenting hater mobs against him. But he eventually succeeded at becoming the president himself. And he seems to have his own haters; I mean people who beyond rightly recognizing that he is a terrible president and need to spend all their waking hours on reddit's r/politics cracking jokes about the orange dude.

I am also reminded of Rene Girard's notion of a scapegoat mechanism - <USER2> the object of people's irrational hate is a kind of scapegoat to those people

</comment><comment><USER135> sometimes it seems like on this site 80 percent of people fall in one of those categories for someone like elon musk.

for trump it's like 99 pct.

it's a shame people can't just be objective and call out good/bad

<comment><USER101> > sometimes it seems like on this site 80 percent of people fall in one of > those categories for someone like elon musk. for trump it's like 99 pct. > it's a shame people can't just be objective and call out good/bad

I actually, uncharacteristically, disagree with a lot of what Paul Graham has said about fans and haters. His basic premise is that we should judge people/endeavors based on critical thinking and solid metrics, rather than how we "feel" about something.

There are two problems with this:

1\. Who gets to define the metrics. Any endeavor can be made to look great or horrible if different metrics are used. People who wish for "critical thinking" in public discourse are really wishing for their own critical thinking to be applied. e.g., building luxery high-rises is good because it raises a community's average home value... lets forget about the people who are being displaced.

2\. There are no good metrics. For most new endeavors, we have very little data about what they are doing. No one knows the details of SpaceX's starship and how it will turn out (probably including SpaceX employees). In politics, no one knows what Trump will do next, or what his strategy (if any) has been. No one has any good data if the next VC backed social media company will be a hit or not.

Generally, in all of these areas, all we have is a leader and sometimes a vision, but rarely a plan. A "fanboy" is someone who believes in the leadership, and a "hater" is someone who does not. It's true that neither looks at the hard details, however those details often don't exist. A fanboy/hater just trust/distrusts the leader and vision, rather than taking a close look at the individual steps that they've made.

This is actually a good thing. Someone offers up a vision and their own credibility, and you make a decision to support them based on them, rather than specific moves they've made. You trust the person first, rather than what they do.

Apple Fanboys are who they are because they believe in Apple's vision of good design to create better electronics. Startup haters are who they are because they see a lack of discipline in the space. It's entirely natural, and probably preferred, for people to make decisions this way rather than unknown data.

<comment><USER136> One thing I've noticed is confirmation bias causes people to look for any evidence to support their initial gut feeling. It gets worse the more this is tied to identity. I had gear head friends in the 1980's who loved carburetors, thought mechanical fuel injection was wonderful and exotic. And HATED electronic fuel injection. Same guys hated the Prius when it showed up. And now they hate electric cars. They make bargaining arguments why X is bad.

I think the best thing to do with someones vision is try and prove it instead of tear it down. In business the only real show stoppers are, doesn't work, doesn't pencil out[1], no customers/potential customers have no money.

[1] On the other hand see Uber. Maybe you can win with two out of three even.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _...haters are not always complete losers... some have some amount of talent. In fact I suspect that a sense of frustrated talent is what drives some people to become haters._

I vibe to this. Anyone who has leveraged talent into success in _any area_ knows how much work it is to be successful at _anything_. It inspires a level of empathy for people who have trod a similar path.

 _The fanboy is so slavishly predictable in his admiration that he 's diminished as a result. He's less than a man. And I think this is true of haters too._

I'm kind of disappointed by the choice of words here. I get the point of the phrase "less than a man", but it implies some toxic ideas about masculinity that are kind of ugly.

<comment><USER137> HN is so full of extremely rational men seeking objective truth, they have perfected the art of quickly downvoting any mention of gender _and_ probably found a way to rationalize it.</comment></comment>