I posted it here on a punt and getting front page of HN is 10x the feeling any writing contest could give me!

Thanks to all who read and commented, and glad to hear it resonates with some of you!

[EDIT]: There've been a lot more comments since I wrote this one. I want you all to know that I've read every single comment and am ever so grateful for everyone who responded here / took the time to read the story!

It made me think of Justin.tv, which was Justin Kan streaming himself. There weren’t betting markets, but today there would be.

Twitch—what it ended up as–shows how much people crave community. Like other social media, there are many examples in chats of people with believed friendships and parasocial relationships with streamers. For smaller streams, sometimes these are real casual friendships. For larger ones, it’s the dark other side of Aaron.

Anyway, I’m glad prediction markets didn’t exist in those days. I wish they didn’t now (we don’t need more outlets for gambling, in my opinion), but this was a great story nonetheless.

I had spent my whole life dreaming of making my own overnight success on the internet, but had taught someone with no ethics how to do it instead.

This is such a great line and one I know so many people related to as soon as they read it.

You're a great writer, thank you for this today.

Well written. Certainly bridges the gap between fiction and a plausible and believable first person narrative.

Are you familiar with the US magazine The Sun? https://www.thesunmagazine.org/ I have read several short story submissions at The Sun; typically first person submissions which blur the lines between true first person stories, and fiction.

Try to submit your story to The Sun.

I can't tell what I felt in the ending paragraph, but I can be sure of this is the strongest outcome I felt, from an web page.

Congrats, again.

That’s cathartic for some. For me, the narrator rather resembles one of the local tech millionaires, envious of the billionaires. The story doesn’t seem to know the narrator’s dishonesty.

I am absolutely not a writer so take this with a big grain of salt. Something about narrator felt like they weren't a real character and the whole story was just Aaron's third person. Maybe because the narrator didn't seem to have any intentional effect on Aaron's trajectory? Not sure if that was meant as a way to deepen that aspect of the story, but at times it felt a little awkward.

The airgun is a subtle touch. I am in Florida, all kinds of cowboys here, are BBs legal in the UK?

Great story and creating the character Aaron. You did an excellent job in making a very believable person that I think most of us have run into in tech adjacent spaces.

I don't really know anybody like that, but there are certainly aspects of that personality that I can understand. I've never had much desire to get into bitcoin, meme stocks, prediction markets, and other forms of gambling - though at times I have felt a bit of FOMO.

Another aspect I liked about the story is that when he goes from being a failure to being a success (at least in his own mind and to his followers) - despite having the same qualities that he has had for the whole story - he goes from being a character that you pity to one that you resent.

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One thing that I give you as feedback, maybe for another version, or for future stories, would be to develop a bit more on why keep the friendship with Aaron. I know it was there some reasons, but for me it was a bit harder to follow. But even this is a small thing.

Tell us if you have something else written to share.

https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2006/12/i875/4998_big_v...

I also didn't see the notice it was a short story. So I was a bit puzzled when reading how Aaron built his own exchange as a novice programmer. To me building an exchange is high up on the scale of programming difficulty. Its one of those things you have to do extremely well or else no one will trust your platform.

IMHO, with the second paragraph, Aaron starts to fade into background. While you increasingly describe your character in-depth, but also more and more often seem to advert an urge to apologize for ... something. I wonder what that is!?

You can do it, be resilient and stubborn, go against the grain and things start to work out.

I remember a few of his dumbest schemes - one, he would get gift visa cards, run the balance down to pennies, then as a restaurant server for some crappy chain, would charge a customer with a big tip, put it on the drained card, and due to some weird quirk with the way they processed tips back then, the money would hit his paycheck before the decline would happen. I pointed out it was stupid easy to get caught by the bank and his restaurant but he insisted it was genius and foolproof. Got caught in a month or two, fired, nearly got in a lot of legal trouble but somehow got out of it.

His all time dumbest 'scheme' was when a major automaker was going into bankruptcy at some point during the financial crisis, the stock was pennies. So he invested all his savings, some thousands of dollars, into buying the stocks. Even being so young and barely financially literate at that point I was aghast, tried to explain that when the bankruptcy finishes, his stock will be worth nothing. No, no, he assured me - imagine - this stock was $20 before, when it's $20 again I'll be a gazillionaire. I tried very very hard to convince him that was not correct and of course he lost everything. Shortly after he got into dealing marijuana but by that point I had determined he wasn't worth hanging out with anymore. No idea what happened to him.