[onan_barbarian]

Given the inherent dodginess of so many 'social startups' already ("get piles of users now, figure out how to make a big pile of money from later"), this whole 'naughtiness' stuff bothers me. It's a short hop from naughty to 'actively unethical'.

Here's the question: given that you've already demonstrated that you don't really have a lot of regard for the privacy of fellow YC interviewees (however 'intentionally' you outed a bunch of people on Twitter), why should you be trusted with user data?

If you'll pull a stunt like this for seed money, what will you do to get VC money? Just wait until you've got 2-4 years of serious work on a startup and you're 'close' to serious profitability. What 'naughty' stuff will you do when you've actually got some serious skin in the game?

[mattmanser]

To be brutally honest, if you're not a bit weird[1] you're probably not cut out to make it in the social space.

We're talking about people who would have created a hot or not site 10 years ago without a thought about the pain it could cause people who always ended up 'not'.

These aren't normally adjusted people. They have a lot of good points, and some very bad ones.

If you want to look at it in a good way they're not bounded by social norms. In certain scenarios, they're not very nice people.

I'm not judging and to be utterly frank I sometimes wish I was one of them, they're not like 95% of the rest of us and that gives them some advantages. Like this stunt.

Edit:[1] I'm having a very hard time finding the right word here. Sociopathic? It's a bit too harsh given what can be lumped in there, but it does describe it a bit. A couple of good friends of mine have the trait I'm trying to describe. I love them, but they make me cringe sometimes.

[onan_barbarian]

I don't mind sociopaths; they are what they are. What I mind is the sugar-coating of sociopathic behavior that's actually flat-out unethical as 'naughtiness' so these people can be treated as innovative rule-benders rather than creeps.

Doing many of these 'sociopathic' things is a lot like going to a small country town where people leave their doors unlocked and burgling the houses there; you're violating a lot of unwritten and only mildly enforced rules. What bothers me is the idea that you will be specifically rewarded for this kind of behavior if you can spin it as a 'Country Town Social Hack'.

[nostrademons]

FWIW, HotOrNot scales their votes so that everyone ends up in the top half. (No, they didn't do this when they launched, but obviously they've found it a good idea since then. Even rebels pander to their constituencies.)

[RockyMcNuts]

unconventional?

synonyms from thesaurus.com:

anarchistic, atypical, avant-garde, beat, bizarre, crazy, eccentric, far-out, freakish, freaky, free and easy, idiosyncratic, individual, individualistic, informal, irregular, kinky, kooky, nonconformist, oddball, off the beaten track, off the wall, offbeat, original, out in left field, out of the ordinary, unceremonious, uncommon, uncustomary, unique, unorthodox, unusual, way-out, weirdo

[palish]

I'm surprised HN's spam filter didn't try to murder this comment.

[Alex3917]

"given that you've already demonstrated that you don't really have a lot of regard for the privacy of fellow YC interviewees"

The only thing they really did wrong was publicly tweeting at everyone, had they just used people's twitters to look up their emails they would have been completely in the clear. And even then if they had still tweeted at a few people who were already in the bay area whose emails they couldn't find that would be kosher also, as long as the tweets were carefully worded. They took one short cut they shouldn't have, but otherwise it was a good idea that was well executed.

[citizenkeys]

Although PG uses the word "naughty", I think "radical" is perhaps a more appropriate word. "Naughty" is not necessarily disruptive. "Radical", however, is almost always disruptive. "Radical" also strictly represents the root of something.

Printing cardboard cereal boxes to sell at a convention sounds more "radical" than "naughty". Loading up big piles of airbeds for people to sleep on at another convention sounds similarly "radical". If you look at a list of YC funded companies, you can almost always see a hint of "radicalness" in each of their ideas.

[namank]

I don't think radical is the word. They didn't invent a new way of doing things, they just leveraged what they could to its fullest extent - innovative...with a hint of naughty.

Personally, I don't get what people here are griping about...the only thing I wouldn't have done is the twitter bot.

Although...as long as they didn't go 'HEY YC FINALIST, come eat with us'...I really don't see a problem with the twitter thing either - its all a matter of tasteful tactic.