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by mattblalock 5299 days ago
HackerNews makes me sad sometimes, too. Seeing everyone's successes, silly stories with the gang, witty blog post, mind-blowing hockey-stick-shaped-charts of "how we got to our 900 millionth user!" ... I'm working 12 hour days doing like 11 jobs, making just enough money to convince myself "in just a few months" I'll find that thing that ticks and then it'll be us making hockey-stick-shaped-growth-charts and finally buying that island ive had my eye on... but even then, the island isn't totally private, so i should probably work harder then i can get a bigger and more private island, one that is fire-resistant and erosion-proof. But shit, look, is that guy competing with me? Do I need to burn his island down? Are there enough customers? Where's the money gone? Wait, why aren't there any customers? Where's all this retail revenue going? I don't see them in the stores, the postal service can barely make ends meet (must not be ecommerce), and then the search volume is low, too, but the customers are coming in, we're selling stuff, we promise... not in America, you're not.

........

I've noticed that by cutting out HN, I am happier and feel more positive about my business.
3 comments
iamandrus 5299 days ago
Agreed. Almost all of the advice on HN is well-intended, but some stories are just big negative walls of text about how my business plan is shit, how I'm an idiot, and how my idea is stupid. By cutting out HN sometimes, I can get things done without overstressing myself thinking about my startup in a negative light.
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SimHacker 5298 days ago
Play Minecraft instead of reading HN, and you can have your own island!
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hello_moto 5298 days ago
There are too many opinions around here that at one point either the HN readers will follow some of them and become a followers (and lost their own primary focus) or they just become more convoluted (should I try X? Y? Z?).

The key is to recognize the patterns (news, prog-lang, running business, scaling) in HN quickly before we become HN-addicts. Once you learn the patterns, HN becomes an average place (e.g.: re-hash of news).

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