_why's Estate(viewsourcecode.org) |
_why's Estate(viewsourcecode.org) |
In chapter 1, the narrator tells a story to "get you in the mood" for the Poignant Guide. "Here's something poignant to get you started." It's a story about a dog who he found and adopted, named Bigelow, only to lose him right away.
In chapter 5, the narrator reveals that he is a Preeventualist. Preeventualism seems like a fairly new philosophical doctrine, asserting that the nature of all predictive thought is optimistic -- even dystopian futures are "optimistically" predicted to come true. Therefore preeventualists just "focus... on the understanding that hope will always prevail in any sort of thought". I'd never heard of preeventualism before, but it made sense that someone on the cutting edge of Internet programming would also be on the cutting edge of philosophical discourse. And it was cutting edge -- no wikipedia articles, no podcasts, nothing. Just one page of actual information on the preeventualist homepage, and that shout-out in the Poignant Guide.
But it's a pretty compelling philosophy on the face of it, and they have a preeventualist youth group responsible for maintaining the web page (which is probably why it went down with such frequency). You can see other examples of preeventualist thought if you know what you're looking for: Anathem is pretty preeventualist, and if you start to think seriously about Long-Now style timescales I bet you'll become somewhat preeventualist yourself. (You'll start to mix up words like "molding" and "embroidery".) And of course there's always Ashley Raymond's blog, which sadly doesn't get updated at all. In fact, there's only the one entry, in which Ashley Raymond talks about his time with his dog, whom he called Biggles, whose "accusatory gaze often hinted at how wrong my pronounciation must have been".
Wait. Biggles? Bigelow?
So I did a whois on preeventualist.net, and sure enough, it was registered to _why the Lucky Stiff. Conclusion: the dude FABRICATED AN ENTIRE PHILOSOPHY FOR A THROWAWAY JOKE IN HIS STUPID BOOK. And it wouldn't be so stunning except that I BECAME a preeventualist in the time between discovering the philosophy and discovering that it was "fake" (if such a thing can be said of an idea).
To me it seems like a digital suicide :(
And, since one of the suspected reasons for why he chose to disappear as he did was "people prying into his real-life non-_why identity", it's probably best if we leave it at that.
Interesting timing... I'm just working on the new site for Hackety Hack right now...
His disappearance definitely wasn't a very considerate thing to do, but at least we still have most of his amazing work.
This page is full of links to awesomeness.
http://img.skitch.com/20091219-b386ifyqq1uqrfa2nu4qpd75du.pn...
At the time I commented here saying Zed and _why were foils in many ways. I still believe that. _why was all about encouraging creative expression and absolute artistic freedom, and about making people excited about things. For all that he had a vibrant personality, his work was never about himself. It was about the people he wanted to excite. Zed, meanwhile, is a similarly hard worker, but in Zed's world everything is about Zed and there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and Zed is the one who decides. _why was fine with the fact that not everybody wanted to do things his way. Zed's most famous for yelling and belittling other people, this article included.
While I respect Zed's intellect and like that he's working for one of my favorite companies, he's juvenile and embodies a lot of the parts of this scene that I despise.
Sure, Zed has worse marketing than _why's "happy fuzzy" persona, but I agree with him in this case. From the comments on the github page, it looks like tryruby was rewritten, the code was never recovered.
It is a bit ironic that the hardest artifacts of _why to recover were the projects aimed at teaching Ruby to children (tryruby and some of the books).
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I hope you know what this is from. You did not reply directly to the argument of Zed's blog post, but called him an idiot before you wrote more than 3 words.
I've seen a lot of your posts here and I've liked a lot of what you've said. However, this doesn't just go against the guidelines of Hacker News, this goes against the guidelines of civil discourse.
You took a nice thread about _why and turned it into an attack on Zed. This comment is in no way about _why, and that's just sad.
Wait a minute, you're that dude I roasted a while back for your pathetic little rant about programmers. IIRC you ran your mouth in the HN comments until you actually advocated that a woman who'd been raped deserved it. Then when I called you on it you tried to say you never said that, even though it was easy to read that you did.
If anyone is an idiot here it's you Rory. You don't know me. You definitely don't know _why. And you sure as hell haven't earned enough street cred to have any kind of opinion on the matter.
I suggest next time you just shut your stupid mouth about me and other real hackers. You're a wannabe. When you got some real code under your belt, then you can come back and play with the big boys.
Until then, keep playing the flute or uh writing screen plays or founding companies or whatever other insignificant little events your life needs to define your personality to other people but not to yourself.
I wasn't happy that tryruby is so annihilated. The version they recovered still has issues. I tried using it to get my 14-year-old brother into Ruby, and there was too many bugs for him to smoothly guide through it. But at the same time, I know nothing of _why's decision to remove it, and I won't pretend like I know one so that I can bash him. If one day he returns and explains himself and I find him wanting, then I'll criticize him, but I'm not going to spew hate in his direction even if I do.
I'm simply grateful for all the things he gave the community, no strings attached. If the day he'd gone we never saw any of his work again, he'd still have made me a better person, inspired me to try things I'd never done. Beyond that he never had a responsibility to me and so I'm not angry. Hell, I'm still discovering new things of his — the music from his old band is playing through on iTunes now, and it's inspired stuff. (I could further the comparison by saying that Zed writes a lot about practicing guitar, but the music he's made is derivative; _why's music is haphazard and amateur but it evokes something. But that's not fair to Zed.)
As I said, I respect some things about Zed, and if he didn't spend his time being an arse to other people I'd respect him a lot more. But all the time he spends being negative really irks me, especially when it's targeted towards one of the most positive people in the community he left so violently.
So lay it on my oh master of the totally original. Where's your music?
Writing insults ought to be more skillful than just stringing eight or nine unrelated adjectives together sarcastically. Used to be flamewars had craft, Zed.
I hadn't heard about this detective work until just now, but there was never a great mystery in my mind. Not to be a jerk, but I think it was obvious at the time that this was just a person who really valued his privacy.
So, while I can't speak for randallsquared, at least some of the people wanting to know if he'd "suddenly died" or some such were just being too tactful to say that they were afraid he might have committed suicide--in which case the deleting all his online stuff would have been completely plausible.
Like I said, it was kinda creepy. I wouldn't even have been reading about it but... well, I wanted to know if _why was okay. And yes, I realize that even if I didn't actively participate, watching others do it doesn't necessarily make me blameless.
Make of that what you will, but I do encourage everyone to not pursue the matter further. He's fine, don't worry about that, let's show him some respect.
So I'm writing a blog in college where I pretty openly write whatever I feel like, on impulse, with a big warning saying I write whatever words come to mind and that I frequently write things without thinking them through. One of those things was some speculation about the social niche of the programmer, which somebody saw fit to submit to HN. (Curiously, just this week there was a conversation about that, and I was able to contribute some much-matured thoughts.) I protested against the submission - it was written at 4 AM and I made no attempt to claim it was anything good - but because it's HN and I love most of the community, I figured I'd engage the people commenting about it, not because I have a holier-than-thou complex like you but because I like arguing with people when I suspect I'm being stupid. That's how I learn.
Of course, that's not all that was happening with my life. I wrote that in the middle of some stressful school stuff, my personal life was in the middle of a nasty crunch, and I happened to be in a place I utterly hated. That meant I had a very bleak, nasty mindset, and that expressed itself in my writing.
But you jumped on the comment I made and latched on, formed a summary, and you refuse to let go. Even then, when I came back from my 6AM class to see your rant and apologized for writing a half-garbled, drowsy comment, you thought the best procedure would be to go about insulting the kid who'd just told you he'd said something stupid. I didn't instantly drop out of the conversation because I figured you might have something interesting to say. You didn't. You bitched and moaned and then tweeted a shitstorm telling all the people they agreed with me that you thought they were terrible people.
So yeah, Zed. That was disillusioning. I'd seen you as a guy whose Ruby bitching was a breath of fresh air in the community, and that your gripes were legitimate. After you posted what you did, I had to seriously reconsider your past attitude, and I concluded what I just posted today, namely that for all your intelligence you've got some emotional issues that leak into a lot of your work. Sometimes I see what you're working on and I really dig it, because you're doing it to solve a problem that needs solving. Other times I read something of yours and it comes across as self-inflated and pissy. Not that I hold that against you - I still keep a secondary blog to bitch and moan into so that it doesn't leak into my main writing - but in this particular case, I thought my viewpoint on your _why rant would contribute to the conversation.
And you sure as hell haven't earned enough street cred to have any kind of opinion on the matter.
I've been a major participant in online conversations for six years. I read a shitstorm and I write a shitstorm. I interned with a major company on the merits of what I was writing back when I was seventeen. My current blog is four months old and I get 15,000 unique visitors every month. No, I'm not Ruby-famous for writing an overlong bitchfest, but I think that what I did is even more impressive, considering I like to switch between writing about modernist poetry and GTD and the occasional short fiction piece. 15,000 people a month think that I'm interesting despite the lack of niche. And in my capacity as an amateur theme designer (emphasis on amateur), I field dozens of emails a week about my work, fix bugs, and just yesterday was asked for the first time about doing some commissioned work, without once seeking any out actively.
I suggest next time you just shut your stupid mouth about me and other real hackers. You're a wannabe. When you got some real code under your belt, then you can come back and play with the big boys.
Dude, I'm a writer. I don't program. My passions involve essay writing, screenwriting, playwriting, poetry, fiction, forum posts... You get it? My chops are my writing. I do a bunch of other things on the side, but if you're asking for work I've done, I can give you a few hundred thousand words of polished work. As I've said before, even on this thread, that's what drew me to _why. I know nothing about his programming skills, although the products of his I used worked and he made programming more appealing to me than anybody else ever has, but his musical and writing output thrills me.
Until then, keep playing the flute or uh writing screen plays or founding companies or whatever other insignificant little events your life needs to define your personality to other people but not to yourself.
You kind of have these masculinity issues, like when you tweeted that if _why had been a black belt like you maybe he wouldn't have felt the need to quit the community. You say "keep playing the flute" like it's a bad thing.
But I didn't mention flutes or screen plays or companies here. I mentioned you. You kind of ignore that and go about insulting me. As a matter of fact, I haven't mentioned flute playing online for a year or so, because I haven't done anything interesting with it whatsoever. I put screenplays online and when I do a few hundred people read through it. I occasionally find that they've quoted my words online, so I guess my writing reached somebody.
But at the end of the day, you're the 30-year-old who gets so worked up over legitimate criticism that you call college kids names. Goes to show being a programmer doesn't instantly make you a man, amirite? Pathetic.
Let's add it up. You've called me pathetic, idiot, immature, juvenile, questioned my mental state, said I have emotional issues, insulted my 30-year-old age, and questioned my manhood so far. Good thing I know myself pretty well or I might actually be insulted.
Everyone eats it up like candy and boosts your comment to the top. Good job.
Yet, when I insult you back in my style HN rates me down quite harshly. My retaliation is seen as "immature", yet people completely gloss over your insults entirely. It's as if your insults are the parenthesis in LISP and are just to be ignored.
What I find even more interesting is that you state your insults are legitimate criticism. They aren't, they're just insults, and fairly obnoxious ones. Legitimate criticism would be done in private and would include ways to improve, and typically comes from people who actually know the person.
Your criticism is just insults, and based on the size of this response, I'd say mine are way more effective at getting you worked up.
Now lets see if people try to justify their preconceived voting of our respective comments by pointing out key phrases from my reply, but not from yours.
You have fallen victim to your own trolling in a way, as you are getting angry about someone getting angry at something you wrote to get people angry. So unless you were laughing when you wrote that (which I doubt, you genuinely seem angry) your trolling is self-destructive and extremely immature. Think about that, you actually spent time breeding anger in others and yourself. For what purpose? Get a punching bag, or exercise some other way, if you need to get rid of your emotions productively. When I see people like you it's not hate that is inspired it's pity that you never learned basic self-control and have to "excuse" your outbursts by saying it's all a joke.
Please grow up, people might respect you if you did. When I say "I would never ever do business with Zed or anyone he works for", you would no doubt say "I am a good hacker with tons of business I don't need your business. I am well off and my company understands I am more of an asset than a burden." But I am not denying you my business, I am denying you my respect.
Even with a tad of self-reference, you are headed the way of ESR (self-professing hacker status and all too). That is not a road I would want to be on. Best of luck.
Now, nobody flagged him for the troll he is. In fact, nobody ever said "hey it's not within our posting guidelines to call someone an idiot".
However, when I reply and insulted him back not only do people like you defend him, but you say I'm being a troll and that I need to grow up. Even though it's (hopefully) clear that I may just be trolling him for a reason.
It's not right for you to apply a standard to me that you don't also apply to Rory. If I'm not allowed to be immature, juvenile, and insulting than neither is he. In fact, he's more in the wrong here because he did it without provocation for no other reason than to troll and win favor with people who have your opinion.
Next time, if there's a standard you have, such as "people should be mature and not insult others" then you should apply it to both parties in an argument. If everyone did this then trolling like this might end fairly quickly. In fact, don't even reply, just flag both posts and move on.
I think the message would have been better delivered by someone who isn't a colossal asshole with an overinflated sense of self-worth. There was definitely something highly inconvenient about what _why did, but my attitude toward these things is "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away."
You said of _why:
> For all that he had a vibrant personality, his work was never about himself.
Yet in your repeated attempts to have the last word you are making the thread less about _why and more about yourself. A little inconsistent perhaps.
Normally on HN, that would have been the end of the thread, because there really wasn't much more to talk about. However, Zed decided it was worth not only insulting me here but posting a link to this thread for his thousands of Twitter followers to read and downvote, so this got out of hand.
I'd be happy to take this to email with Zed so we can settle. That's happened a few times with people, and I find it helps us talk things out without the peacocking that goes on when somebody thinks they're in the public eye. But Zed's decided to be obnoxious, and, much as I feel sick even being in this conversation, I don't want to let him rip me apart when he's saying things that are incorrect and immature.
Your plan actually works pretty well because, while other people here say I should follow the posting guidelines, nobody says you should. Despite the fact that to an educated intellectual such as myself the insult of "idiot" is probably one of the worst you could sling.
I'm dying to know.
To be fair, one other person has told you this and has been turned gray for it; I'm sure most people think you can probably fend for yourself just fine.
