[vertr]

Ev Bogue is a mentally unstable guy who comes out of the woodwork every so often to say crazy 'edgy' things. He generally builds little cults and then destroys them in fits of mania. His last title for himself was "Cybernetic Yogi."

After he destroyed his minimalist and post-human blogs and communities he's recently got into coding Node. Presumably because he lost all credibility in the other fields. His thing is to "quit" services. He quit Twitter, quit writing, quit Facebook, rejoined Twitter, deleted his blog, undeleted his blog, quit his identity, created a new one, and so on. This would all be very amusing if he didn't take it so seriously himself. He is at best, very mentally ill.

I find his current work particularly annoying because he's a guy who has about six months of coding experience claiming that Node.js is the messiah of the web. Just not worth it. In six months or so Bogue will quit Node and discover the new 'it thing' and ramble about that somewhere. The problem is that he writes about topics that he is not adequately educated on. He does this because he has a deep need to be seen as an expert.

Some back story: http://ariherzog.com/blogger-insists-on-twitter-users/ http://adamtervort.com/blog/2011/01/26/minimalism-isnt-dead-...

"Gwen Bell Blocked Me; Ev Bogue Blocked Me" https://plus.google.com/u/0/114850856787256556043/posts/GLYo...

"Far Beyond My Ego" (parody) http://farbeyondmyego.blogspot.com/

[ronaldx]

Please, it's incorrect to draw "mentally ill" from this.

Mental illness is a very common, serious problem of society which deserves genuine attention. What you described are not symptoms of mental illness.

[vertr]

Of course I'm not in a position to diagnose anyone with anything specifically, however I think erratic self-destructive behavior is in that realm.

"A mental disorder or psychiatric disorder is a psychological pattern or anomaly, potentially reflected in behavior, that is generally associated with distress or disability, and which is not considered part of normal development in a person's culture. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder

Regardless, my assessment of his mental health is irrelevant to my argument that he has no credibility for other substantial reasons.

[euphemize]

> Of course I'm not in a position to diagnose anyone with anything specifically > my assessment of his mental health is irrelevant to my argument

Then don't include it. You're not a health specialist and it only weakens your argument.

[vertr]

I think he's dangerous and posturing these posts to build a new following to replace the last one that he destroyed. I would quite like to keep the HN community out of it.

Fortunately having a weak point in an argument doesn't nullify the whole thing.

[nnq]

Wtf, why would anyone care who someone is or how "mentally stable" he is. If I care about what someone has to say, I can put it in context by myself by looking up his work (github, available resumes etc.). If I were to invest in his company or something, I'll do a proper background check on him myself. Some people like/need a degree of anonymity and the ability to reinvent themselves periodically until they find a "sweet spot" in life. You're way too aggressive about him, which could only suggest a past encounter that resulted in bad business or maybe some personal grudge.

If you think the guy is talking about things he doesn't know enough just say "take care people, he is pretending to be an expert on X but he isn't!" or something equivalent, professionally, don't go ad hominem on someone just because he may be weird and wacky or even stupid...

I've met guys way smarter than me that were way beyond "mentally unstable" (in a bad way!) and I don't respect their work or their ideas less because of this. And I don't know this guy, he may just be a crackpot, but it's just annoying to find this kind of attack as a top comment.

[vertr]

I have a hobby of keeping an eye on and occasionally critiquing 'cult of personality' types who build cults and scam their members. I am passionate about it, however I've never had contact with Mr. Bogue.

I believe the guy is dangerous. Take it as you will.

[tucosan]

I can respect that you do not like what Bogue does/writes, but decrying someone you do not even know personally as mentally unstable/ill is simply presumptuous in my book. Such a harsh accusation should be backed up by hard evidence, and probably better made in private rather than shouting it all over the internet.

Your posts very much shine a light on your mental outfit as much as the guy you're decrying as being dangerous and mentally ill.

My 2c. Take it as you will.

[nnq]

If you're right the warning may be deserved, and I definitely wouldn't pay for any of his books, but calling someone like him "dangerous" means you've never dealt with really dangerous people :)

Actually, I took attention to this mainly because I'm researching the whole "personal branding" thing, but boy he's doing it wrong.

[jmspring]

I wish it were snark, but experience leads me to the conclusion that most people without a development background (even some that do) conclude that node will deliver us to the promised land, just after a short time with it.

Not much for monotheism myself.

[kryten]

As a veteran programmer (20 years now, pretty much everything out there), I spent a couple of days with Node to see what all the fuss was about.

I walked out with 'meh' after working out I can shift more requests with asp.net and the tooling was better on asp.net as well.

Node looks good on paper but the new approach and scalability is pointless when you're losing perhaps 1-2% of a request on your web server and framework and actually having to do some work in the back end. JavaScript sucks for that and so does node's async model.

Node just makes stuff harder.

Not for monotheism either which is why you can swap asp.net, java EE or python/flask with the above and I'll say the same.

[jmspring]

Agreed.

I actually find the await/async model of C#/.NET 4.5 less hideous than the callback hell of Node.

That said, there is an attraction to tipping up a basic server in a dozen or so lines of code.

[kryten]

Golang seems to fit that bill for me. I'm using it more every day now.

[tippytop]

You sound like a pretty boring dude. He's just a guy in the Internet writing stuff, and you're just a guy on the Internet talking about him.

[kryten]

Thanks to my tiny phone screen, I accidentally downvoted you. Sorry. I agree entirely. Have two upvotes for other posts.

[vertr]

Seems pretty hypocritical of you considering you are in the same position.

[coldtea]

>Ev Bogue is a mentally unstable guy who comes out of the woodwork every so often to say crazy 'edgy' things. He generally builds little cults and then destroys them in fits of mania. His last title for himself was "Cybernetic Yogi." After he destroyed his minimalist and post-human blogs and communities he's recently got into coding Node. Presumably because he lost all credibility in the other fields. His thing is to "quit" services. He quit Twitter, quit writing, quit Facebook, rejoined Twitter, deleted his blog, undeleted his blog, quit his identity, created a new one, and so on.

All of which sound like very normal things for a non-conformist with lots of interests. Perhaps they exhibit a small attention span, but that's about it.

>He is at best, very mentally ill.

I presume that you are a medical professional, and you have, in fact, examined him. Else, you are, at best, rude.

[vertr]

Why would you presume that? Your mistake.

[andrewcooke]

"this would be very amusing..."

i think you could describe this person without being so aggressively unfriendly. [edit: i think what i am saying is that really you should try not to be yourself quite so obviously.]

[vertr]

Or I could be myself thanks.

[coldtea]

People say that like it's a kind of medal of honour.

No, if your self is impolite, jerk, greedy, racist, etc, and a thousand other things, it's not OK to "be yourself".

That's what societal standards of conduct were for, back in the day.

[teeja]

Half of the hobbyists and makers who made personal computers and the internet sounded just like Ev at one time.

You muggles should lay off the magicians. They could have saved you from the Panoptican if you'd been less dismissive.

[vertr]

If they are actually a magician a dismissive critic would hardly prevent them from 'saving' everyone from anything.

[OGC]

"A year ago, I nearly vanished from the public web because I had an intuitive feeling the centralized web was a backdoor to the government."

Yeah, I bet that's why he did that.

Another attention-whore riding the NSA-scandal wave.

Edit: Okay, this guy is a troll. Or insane. He uses the verb "deploying" like it's a.. i don't know, lifestyle or something. His node code is a really, really basic website with some routes, views and markdown code. And he wants 37$ for his ebook which will teach you how to do that on your own! Whoa.

Don't feed the trolls.

[vertr]

I just found this post, it's a pretty good review of the madness: http://evbogue.com/haters

"Learning to deploy Node.js is probably one of the hardest things I've done with my life to date. It's a different kind of challenge than traveling around the globe, or throwing out all of your shit."

[cheald]

In fairness, it is fairly difficult to read the documentation with your head crammed up your rectum.

[coldtea]

Well, if you're not a programmer, it makes sense.

[vertr]

Yeah but this is a guy who is selling a guide on deploying Node.

[ancarda]

Depends. It could easily be a crude guide saying little more than "apt-get install node". Isn't that "deploying"?

[OGC]

Another gem from his twitter:

"@_jpope How likely is it that I will brick my Macbook Pro while trying to install Arch Linux?"

...

[lmm]

I bricked a mac the last time I tried to install linux on it. (one of the last pre-imac ones. one too few zeroes when changing the firmware adress thingy. Kind of a shame as it had a very nice A/V PERCH card). So it's not an entirely unreasonable question.