
The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’ - pl0x
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/rise-grind-and-ruin-the-dangerous-fetishization-of-hustle-porn
======
exogeny
There's nothing wrong with hard work.

But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health
is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off -
the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever.

To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark
Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been more
interesting or lucrative. In the wake of that, WeWork and GaryV and a whole
bunch of people are selling the idea that regardless of how bad your idea is
or how unfit you are to be an entrepreneur, all you need is access or hustle
to succeed. And that's awful, awful advice.

As income inequality continues to grow, I expect this to get worse and worse.

~~~
userbinator
_something else is off - the idea isn 't good enough, you're attacking it in
the wrong way, whatever._

...and don't forget the fact that seems almost taboo to say these days: you
just don't have the ability.

~~~
JimboOmega
What hussle porn is selling most of all is agency. That you can get whatever
it is you want through some actions you can take.

~~~
bunderbunder
Hun. When you put it that way, it doesn't sound all that much different from
_The Secret_.

~~~
sk5t
Nor too different from Dale Carnegie.

------
honkycat
Agree with this 100%. Hustle porn is toxic and and the ethos needs to be
avoided.

It is clear why people latch onto the narrative. Working insane hours is a way
to conceal incompetence.

When your boss or employees come knocking and sees the complete waste you have
made of your task, you can point at your complete lack of social life and how
much you have martyred yourself for your company as proof of your competence.
"I can't be a fuck-up, look at how hard I worked!" THAT is a participation
trophy.

I have a revolutionary new form of hustle: It's called taking care of yourself
and getting an education AKA "Growing Up".

I do weight training after work every day. I eat healthy. I cook food with my
girlfriend. I read multiple programming books a month ( Shout-out to Uncle
Bob!). I read multiple other types of books a month. I meditate. I go to bed
on time and get up on time. I work on side-projects. I even find time to smoke
some weed and play video games with my friends!

And I am extremely productive. I'm constantly learning. I measure twice and
cut once instead of hopelessly flailing at a keyboard long into the night. I
do not need to martyr myself to make sure everyone around me knows how hard I
am working, it's just obvious from the quality of my work.

~~~
Novashi
>I do weight training after work every day.

Dunno about that; you're supposed to have breaks so the muscle has time to
repair itself unless you're just not pushing.

~~~
roel_v
Not if you're intermediate or advanced and go on split routines.

~~~
Novashi
Split routines to me are back/biceps one day, chest/tri, then legs totaling 3
days a week, but maybe the fitness board I learned that from is wrong.

~~~
roel_v
Yeah that's one kind of split, but google 'n day split' with values of n in
[4,7] and you'll find many.

------
ardy42
> The guy hoping to help me pick myself up by my bootstraps is Gary
> Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur known for investing in tech companies like
> Facebook, Twitter and Venmo and amassing a $50 million fortune in the
> process. But it’s unlikely that you know him as a successful businessman.
> More likely, you’ll recognize him being plastered all over your social media
> feeds as an “inspirational speaker” and internet personality who gives
> lectures on how to hack your life in such a way that you become “more
> productive” and “more successful.”

A VC lecturing everyone to work their asses off reminds me of this:

www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ (not direct-
linked due to a referrer-prank):

> Michael Arrington posted this article, "Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry
> Less, And Quit All The Whining" which quotes extensively from my 1994 diary.
> He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software
> industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your
> one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my
> words to try and back up that thesis.

> I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous.

> What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for
> you to give up your life in order for him to become richer.

> Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what's good for you, check
> your wallet, then count your fingers.

------
ilamont
There was an article discussed here on HN a few weeks back about "hustle
culture"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605))
that encapsulated the trend in the ad industry, but this could apply in tech
startups or many other businesses as well:

 _To be clear, hustle isn’t just hard work — it’s showing that you’re working
hard. It’s Instagram posts about how much you have to travel for work, it’s
LinkedIn and Medium memos about how if you’re not working yourself to the bone
you’re not doing enough. It also smacks a little bit of “work at all costs.”
And if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not working hard enough._

Sadly, this has been going on for years, even before social media gave it an
outlet for fetishization. Accelerators like Y Combinator and TechStars as well
as VC and angel communities are a big part of the problem, emphasizing
questionable demonstrations of "progress" as a condition for getting into the
program and getting attention from investors like Gary V. I've seen it in
graduate business programs, too, thanks to lecturers drawn from the investor
class and academics who push students to learn how to appeal to them.

Some call it "startup theater," but "hustle porn" works, too.

------
rampage101
Saw this GaryV video where he was saying how he told a caller to 'eat shit'
for the next 3 years, and he was proud of his advice to the caller.

A woman called in saying she was working three jobs where one was her main
income, and she had 2 side opportunities. Her basic question was which one to
pick. He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations,
just completely grind out her existence and nothing else.

The guy is seriously a maniac recommending this approach. He doesn't consider
at all the risk of burnout, and how a real burnout can set you back so far.
There's zero balance to his approach. I've also found it amusing there is no
talk of what you should do when you retire or get the money you are aiming
for.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _He told her 'eat shit' for the next couple years and take no vacations_

I did this for three years. It sucks, and my god is it a roll of the dice with
your health, wealth and happiness. But for me, at the time, the risk of
breaking was worth the chance at stability and autonomy.

It’s terrible universal advice. But if wealth and power matter to you; and you
diligently save, take sensible risks, and remain health- and mental-health-
wise grounded, it can skip you up quickly. (Important, for me: having friends
I could spend evenings with, eating macaroni and drinking cheap wine. Also,
don’t do this if you haven’t found product-market fit.)

~~~
pluma
It's only ever "worth it" if it works out. It's never "worth it" if it didn't.

This is basically the survivor fallacy: you didn't win because you risked
ruining yourself, you won because you got lucky. Risking to ruin yourself just
meant you increased your chances of winning (while also significantly
increasing your chances of losing).

Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit"
for years may create a handful of winners but it will also cause a ridiculous
amount of ruined lives (not to mention families and relationships).

Imagine playing Russian roulette with only one empty chamber but afterwards
everyone who survives also gets a toin coss to determine if he also wins a
billion dollars on top.

Sure, if you win, it was totally worth it because you came out of it unharmed
and you have a billion dollars.

If you win the roulette but lose the coin toss, hey at least you were ever so
close to winning the billion dollars. Maybe you'll write an inspiring blog
post about how waking up before dawn and doing push-ups helped you come that
far and about your plans to win that coin toss if you get another chance in
the future.

Or you are sour about losing the coin toss and traumatised from the roulette
but people now just lecture you about how you held the coin wrong and you
should be lucky you even made it to the coin toss because if you fumbled the
coin toss you really weren't skilled enough to win the roulette or you should
have played for a few more rounds after nobody else was left because then
you'd have definitely performed better at tossing that coin.

But if you lose the roulette, you're probably in no state to lament to anyone
how terrible of an idea it was to play in the first place.

And if you look at the really successful ones, you'll notice they actually
sometimes shot themselves but their parents or family were rich enough to make
sure they wore a bullet-proof helmet.

It's luck. Risking your health and social life just slightly increases the
number of coin tosses while loading more bullets in the chamber. Look at how
many entrepreneurs are putting themselves out there and working themselves to
death, then look at how many are billionaires -- heck, look at how many are
millionaires. The rest that just vanishes? At best they gave up and decided to
do something else.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Teaching people they 'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat
> shit" for years may create a handful of winners but it will also cause a
> ridiculous amount of ruined lives (not to mention families and
> relationships)_

Totally agree. Telling people to "eat shit" is terrible universal advice.

> _if you lose the roulette, you 're probably in no state to lament to anyone
> how terrible of an idea it was to play in the first place_

Agree again.

That said, just because something depends predominantly on luck doesn't mean
it is never worth it. Terrible universal advice _can_ be decent advice to
specific people. If, as you said, you are fortunate enough to have downside
protection from family, it can be less risky than it generally is. On the
other hand, if you are sure you'd be happier having tried and lost than never
tried at all (and know just how bad this flavor of losing can be), it may be
the only choice.

Most people aren't like that. But some are. My point is to avoid over-
correcting. Don't "eat shit" because a shithead on the Internet told you too.
But if you really feel that's what you must do, don't not do it because
someone on the Internet told you not to.

Side note: anecdote comes to mind. Advice is a person talking to their younger
selves.

~~~
pluma
Sure, but this can be reduced to "it's worth the risk if you have a financial
safety net to fall back to if you fail or burn out". In other words "the high
risk discourages people who are not already well-off and the high reward
primarily benefits those who are".

Or more simply: if you have a few tens or hundres of thousands of dollars you
can fall back to even if everything goes wrong, it's worth the chance to
become a millionaire/billionaire. If you don't have that safety net, you'll
most likely ruin your life unless you're extraordinarily lucky (i.e. lucky
enough to win even without the advantages nearly all the other winners already
had).

Meritocracy is biased towards affluent starting positions.

------
kirse
Ecclesiastes 4:6 - "Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls
with toil and (anxious) chasing after the wind."

In fact, just read the whole book of Ecclesiastes if you want some sobering
realities on the nature of the hustle, the grind, the striving for material
things:

[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+2&version=NASB)

~~~
ak39
This is all well and good if the grind is about next level “material things”.
A bigger house, another car, private schooling for the kids, that holiday etc.
But there’s a huge proportion of humanity that has to grind just to keep their
heads above water. One uninsured medical incident and it’s tickets for them.

~~~
mkesper
But that's a problem of the system and cannot be overcome by 'working harder'.

------
knaik94
The problem with hustle porn is really how little emphasis is put on luck.
They show a grind that translates directly into results, not really talking
about dealing with failure due to things outside of one's control. Yes hard
work gets you primed for new opportunities, but luck still plays a role in
which opportunities you come across.

~~~
andrewl
Luck is a part of it for sure. And survivorship bias isn't usually discussed
in motivational stories. XKCD has something on it:

[https://xkcd.com/1827/](https://xkcd.com/1827/)

~~~
paulpauper
No one wants to listen to a Ted talk in which a successful person attributes
his success to luck (although in invoking Cunningham's law I'm sure one
exists)

~~~
pluma
...which begs the question, what is the point of a Ted talk about success
stories if they're really just stories of being lucky without admitting that
fact?

It's a nice bedtime story, yeah, but people look at this crap for inspiration
and guidance. "I want to be like that guy" except nothing in the story can be
replicated to recreate the same outcome.

EDIT: Is "envy porn" a phrase yet?

------
autokad
I disagree with the article.

I got nowhere fast in life by just sitting around waiting for things to
happen. I had all sorts of excuses on why I wasn't succeeding, the article
likes to supply plenty, and they are just poisonous thoughts.

then i lit a fire under my butt. I wanted to be a principle engineer, so I did
research by looking at profiles on linkedin and found a masters at a great
school would make that path easier. I spent time waiting in the subway,
nights, and weekends studying and applied. I got rejected. I kept improving my
application, I got accepted.

I changed my mind on what I wanted to be and wanted to be a data scientist,
preferably a top tech. lots of rejections, lots of no response. took me years
of trying different things and spending my nights and weekends doing kaggle
competitions and learning. eventually I got what I wanted.

hustling alone didnt get me where I wanted to be, but resting around on my
laurels and blaming other things for my lack of success would have done
nothing. worse than nothing, it would have made me a bitter failure.

the article suggests the hustle culture is a symptom of a failed work system
because people are afraid to loose their job. I disagree. I think its because
many recognize we are in a rare window in time that we can do so much with our
effort. we may have to change our expectations, we may have to fail a bit
before we get there, but if we keep trying better things will happen.

~~~
mattpk
I agree with you for the most part, but there definitely is a toxic extreme of
"hustle culture", in which people believe the sheer amount of "hard work" is
the only coefficient.

~~~
syshum
All things in moderation.

There is an extreme amount of entitlement and apathy in the US today as well.

So while extreme "hustle culture" is bad, and working yourself to death is
very bad, the idea that you might have to "work Saturdays" in your 20's to get
ahead also should not be considered an "extreme" position.

But to many people working even 40 hours a week is considered "too much work",
being away from facebook for more than 2 hours is a burden, etc.

------
walrus01
What I really don't get is people that will work themselves to death, 60-80
hours a week for products and market segments that I personally consider to be
bullshit.

If you're under age 30 and working long hours building a dating site app, some
iOS or Android game with pay-to-win mechanics, or writing software so that
peoples' clicks on ads can be tracked better, are you really doing anything to
improve the world?

There should not be an extreme sense of urgency and deadline-looming rush when
what you're developing is a third rate clash of clans clone.

But I read all the time how the video game development industry pushes people
like this, until they burn out. There was a huge scandal about the 3D artists
employed by a studio which produced the animated comedy movie "sausage party":

[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sau...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=sausage+party+animators+abuse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

With the benefit of age and 20 years of experience in the industry, I'm not
going to go into "emergency rush" mode for anything short of an ACTUAL
emergency.

------
thrwia22
I am so glad about the way the topic got addressed in this article. What it
basically says you just need to live life and needn't bash yourself and
constantly rape yourself for the sake of fitness-like ghost benefits of "life-
hacking". Overworking, early waking up, self-sleep deprivation for the sake of
productivity won't do you any good, and won't make you happy.

I was trapped by the hustler-porn during 2012-2014, got a job due to it,
amassed some good money and it didn't make me happy at all. I was trying to
think of myself as a better person because I struggled more and I was creating
the struggle out of nothing just to overcome it and thus I, though I never
admitted that to myself or showed that to anyone else, was actually amassing
my pride trying to rise myself above others, thus falling myself into pride in
the negative sense.

Article is very brief and not detailed about the alternative to hustler
lifestyle. I guess it's simple - "do ya thang", don't overwork, value living,
value some joys, sleep well and just be a _somewhat_ good man I guess. Not
everyone will become a millionare. And "_somewhat_ good" is a keyword heere,
not "100% good", but "_somewhat_ good"

I'd also like to highlight and cite 3 great things been said in the article,
which pretty much sum up (as I think about it) what Hussein tried to say in
it:

>When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re
struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that
isn’t going anywhere.

>the myth that “if you work sufficiently hard, you’ll be one of these major
influencers and one of these top people.”

>So some people end up thinking they have to do particular things that their
colleagues don’t do to justify why they haven’t wasted their day.”

------
thrwia22
I'd also like to notice that while the article says some good things it
nonetheless falls itself into the trap of "generational thinking", where it
clearly says that life-hacking hustling is the problem of some ghostly
"millenials". Then suddenly equating "millenials" with "young people",
obviously forgetting that if you say A you cant escape saying B and if you
argue along the lines of "generational logic" (and that's failed logic) you
can't not mention "Z" people, who also work hard already these days. Aren't
they "millenials"? Why? Ah, I get ya, they have been growing with tech, while
"millenials" only picked tech just before teens. So that makes "Z" totally
different brand of people /s. Not shared environment, not shared culture, but
the year you were born is what defines you and defines whether you were
growing "with tech". And growing with tech makes you completely (or very)
different /s. Totally makes sense. I've read that some of the people going
along the lines of this failed "generational" logic even go as far as stating
that anyone born in 1998 is a millenial while anyone born in 1999 is already a
Z.

In all serious, this "generational" bullshit stereotypizes people, similarly
to how racism tries to solely define people in terms of their skin shade.
That's total bullshit, there are completely different people among people born
in 1980-1998 and some were already growing with tech, some didn't, some born
in 1999 haven't seen tech to this day, some did, some've grown with it. Some
of those born in 1960-1980 grew with tech too, they also are very prey-
fallible to these types of "motivational" videos. And it's plain ridiculous to
call someone a "young, cause millenial" cause they were born in 1980 but a
1979-borns are "not young, cause boomers". "Generational racism" (I'd go as
far as to define it like that) just doesn't add anything to any conversation,
enforces stereotypes and need to be fought against.

I encourage you to fight against it too. Generational racism wont do any good
to people. Thanks!

------
Animats
See "Stakhanovite movement", the USSR's version from the 1930s. This is not a
new idea. Or a good one. Even the USSR dumped it.

------
paulpauper
hyper-competitive, individualistic meritocratic culture and economy. Equating
wealth and social status with virtue and worth.

people set unrealistic individual expectations.

survivroship bias. It's not that these business leaders are superior people,
but many of them are lucky. Hustle helps, but so does luck, whether it's
having a really high IQ (for tech jobs), family wealth (when starting business
and having a safety net if the business fails), or 'right place at right time'
(a domain name name + some simple coding could have made you rich in the mid-
late 90's ,whereas nowadays you need a full-scale app with tons of stuff to
maybe have a shot at a small amount of funding or a small acquisition).

------
apocalypstyx
Don't look for gold, sell shovels. (Or today, sell self-help and life-style
brands.)

~~~
p1necone
I dunno if the comparison is quite right, at least shovels were actually
useful in the gold rush.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
Shovelbot 3000. It uses the latest cutting edge techniques in computer vision
to determine the best angle to dig. Except that it can’t actually dig holes.

~~~
peterkelly
And it has a tendency to get bricked by auto-installed firmware updates, which
you can't disable as it requires a working wifi connection to operate.

------
jdorfman
I use to believe this bs. I thought people who took vacations were slackers
and people who left the office before I did were lazy. In 2014 I started
cutting my medication (bipolar 1 disorder) in half so I could sleep less and
work more. Long story short, ended up back-firing leading to a 9 month leave
of absence. In the end it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Working
smart is the way to go IMO.

------
auntad
While I appreciate the sentiment of this post, I'd like to see some real stats
on "hustle porn" culture's effects. My impression is that the author is
pitching doom and gloom where there might be only a small - and increasingly
diminishing - problem.

I'm not constantly peppered by this phenomenon on my feeds. In fact, lately
I've been find more of the opposite: the growing culture of valuing 8 hours of
sleep, mental health, and the like. This trend seems to be especially strong
in the world of entrepreneurs. YC's Startup School had a talk on "How To Win"
[1] - all about how to stay sane and healthy as a founder. Podcasts like
ZenFounder [2] are teaching more of the same and building up that field. And I
haven't even read it yet, but the popularity of books like It Doesn't Have to
Be Crazy at Work [3] represent a growing movement of successful people - who
I'd say still work quite hard - that avoid these pitfalls and are very loud in
teaching others how to do the same.

I'm sure, as the author suggests, there're people who take all the
motivational talk to an extreme. But there's an alternative that I hope many
of us are following: don't just blindly work hard - because working hard is
important - but work smart, too.

[1]
[https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53](https://www.startupschool.org/videos/53)

[2] [https://zenfounder.com/](https://zenfounder.com/)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-
Work/dp/00628747...](https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-
Work/dp/0062874780)

~~~
spamizbad
That could be because you consume media on the bleeding edge of these trends.

"Hustle Porn" was quite popular in tech several years ago. It lost its luster
and it's no surprise that the hustlers have now moved into broader markets.

------
zn44
I’ve never watched any of those videos but One thing I don’t understand is how
‘victims’ decide to fully trust and follow advice of random YouTube
celebrities. Why are they not just a little sceptical?

------
SOLAR_FIELDS
The discussion around the content of the article here is interesting, but the
thing that stuck out to me the most was this quote:

 _“No amount of grifting or endless working” will help alleviate the gender
pay gap, which, according to the World Economic Forum, won’t close for another
200 years_

I read on here all the time that the “gender pay gap” doesn’t exist. So which
one is it?

~~~
jldugger
I see it as there being two kinds of gender pay gaps. The first one is the gap
between comparable men and women in the same job at the same employer. You
might call this gender bias, since the only discriminate factor here is
gender. This is generally a small gap, though this is not true for all job
titles. And it's pretty rare to find the gap disfavor men, so we should
probably investigate why this emerges.

The second one is the wide chasm between what men make on average and what
women make. If you find it confusing why these two are different, consider
nurses vs doctors. These two jobs vary by pay and gender balance, and for this
combined population women make less money on average. This is something we
probably want to be concerned about as a society, but likely cannot solve it
with enforcement of existing laws as it has myriad factors like degree
selection, gender role norms, employer selection, time in workforce, labor
participation by age, overtime availability, and everything in the first
category. I call this systemic bias, because there's not one bad actor we need
to punish here. Rather, it emerges as the a rational equilibrium, in response
to societal level pressures -- not all of which are rational themselves. This
is the sphere where we cross our fingers that maybe Computer Engineer Barbie
will adjust things a percentage point while we search for the hundred other,
much harder things we need to do to unbias society.

So, re: "grifting or endless working." Not a prescription for solving systemic
gender bias. Getting up early for your teaching job or working more hours as a
nurse won't solve the fact that you're not an engineer or surgeon. A few dozen
more women in VC funded executive positions won't move the needle either.

But in general, you should probably take what folks on HN say with a grain of
salt.

~~~
kungtotte
Other things that influence the gender pay gap is that women are typically the
ones to stay at home to raise children or work part time, they're the ones to
stay home from work to tend to sick children, etc. which lowers their average
pay.

------
rhinojosa
Here's my take as a 40 year old always trying to keep pushing through the next
hurdle. Hustle early and often when you're young. Yes, do it. Try, and don't
be afraid of failure, fail often, enjoy failure, and push yourself harder when
you fail. That's my message.

Anyone that has a deeper understanding of Gary V, Simon S, know that that they
have quite a bit more background than just a message of go hustle yourself to
the ground. I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, but that's
where my (your) personal judgement comes in. Nobody is has all your answers.

Alas, the kids/family, once you have a deeply rooted family, that will take
over. Time will start shrinking and it becomes harder and harder. Not saying
it can't be done or others don't favor their mission over their family, just
that it's an issue, so address it.

Don't blindly ignore the encouragement to work hard and don't ignore how that
affects you.

------
carlospwk
I wanted to give my thoughts Gary Vaynerchuck since I read some comments about
him here. Yeah, he's super extra and too much for a lot of people. That's just
kind of the way he is, or maybe more accurately, the way he has become. He's a
showman, but with credentials.

People kind of get the wrong image of him since they tend to hear only the
'hustle' stuff of working your ass off for a few years on some project. But he
has a ton of other advice too, and much more "sensible" ones at that. Not too
long ago he changed his eating habits, lost weight and promoted healthy
living. I believe he's also put emphasis on getting enough sleep. He's said
multiple times that he knows a lot of people who make 50k a year and are
happier than many millionaires. I think he usually gives the "eat shit and
work hard" type of advice to people who are asking him for a formula to
success on their business. And it is true, you have to work hard to achieve
something exceptional.

Talking about 'hustle', I think it really depends how you define it in the
first place. You can do a bad, BS hustle by working to get Internet points and
validation from strangers on social media. Or even worse, do something to con
people out of their money. To me a positive hustle is putting in constant
work, not being afraid to sell and market your stuff, and most importantly,
starting before you are ready.

I'm not a zealot of the Vaynernation but I have found some of his messages
helpful. One of his key principals is to document your journey. I love this
idea and I've recently gotten over the fear of doing it myself, posting VLOGs
and doing things more publicly using my real name (you can search this
username and find out more). Another message is that "you could die tomorrow".
Sure, this is a bit dramatic and cliche, but it did give me courage to push on
with doing some things that I might have procrastinated on.

Overall, I find Gary's content useful for the most part, especially his
insights on social media. If you just know him from 'hustle hustle' type of
things, I suggest you try to dig a bit deeper to his videos and blogs. He does
know his stuff.

------
mikemotherwell
The problem is we compare the worst of our lives to the best of other people's
lives - be it our body, wealth, health, personality, travel, well-readness,
intelligence etc etc. No one has every area of their life in order, there's
just not enough time in a day!

This Hustle Porn is just one area where people can be led astray, and they all
come back to this same principal of belief that there are people who have
everything together.

A more generalised solution is simply to compare yourself to who you were
yesterday, not who someone else is today.

~~~
JimboOmega
I don't think looking back on the past is productive either; it's easy to say,
gee, a couple years ago, I was in a happy relationship, I liked my job, now
I'm single and trying to find a new one, I must be a failure, etc. You have to
let go of comparisons.

------
robotbikes
The energy drink pyramid scheme reminded me of Thunder Muscle from 'The
Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret'.

~~~
ryanmercer
Oh man, Todd Margaret was gold!

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two2two
It's part of the deal though. Anyone who willingly participates has a goal
where the end justifies the means. Albeit, a sell your soul type of deal at
times, but nevertheless the problem is more a lack of self-awareness for why
one might be hustling. That self-awareness is also understanding why Hustle
Porn beckons.

edit: last sentence

------
plugger
I think what gets me about Gary V's "hustle porn" ethos is that most people
don't realise he had a career for AGES selling wine for his family wine
business and making wine tasting videos for over a decade on youtube. He's
posted over 1,000 wine tasting videos. Long before he was known as the hero of
hustle porn he was spitting cali cab in his Jets bucket and waxing lyrical
about the palate of said wine. I love wine more than most but the thought of
producing a 10-20 minute tasting video roughly every 3.6 days for a decade
sounds like a sure fire way to cure yourself of imbibing. The guy's a machine.

~~~
rajacombinator
Is this sarcasm...? Producing a 10-20 minute wine tasting video 2x weekly
sounds both enjoyable and easy for people who like wine.

~~~
plugger
Definitely not sarcasm. I'm sure it would be fun initially but after doing it
for a decade plus I would definitely get tired of it. And I'm a huge lover of
wine and a pretty avid collector.

------
manigandham
Why must it be dangerous? Why are individuals not free to take inspiration
where they find it?

It's true that much of the "hustle" advice is rarely actionable business
strategies, but that's not much different from listening to music or having
faith in a religion and finding guidance and support within. There's also
endless amounts of education material for the people that seek it out, and if
the push they need to do so comes from a cheesy video or quote then more power
to them.

Is the judgement really necessary in all this? I find that much more counter-
productive.

------
ken
It's easy to say that this is the best possible time for a human to be alive,
when your occupation is motivational speaker. You've got YouTube, and business
class, and 7-minute workouts. The message you've got is to disregard the media
you're using to send that message.

Try working in a field where this isn't true, and tell us if you still think
this is the best time ever to be a human. Do high school teachers (who have to
_compete_ with the internet) think 2018 is the greatest?

~~~
kungtotte
It actually is the best time to be a human _in general_ , that doesn't mean
every person has a perfect life.

Things are better now than they've ever been. There's still poverty, war,
famine, disease, etc. but way fewer people die to those things than at any
point in history. 80% of the world's children get their vaccines. Girls go to
school almost as long as boys. Child mortality is dropping sharply in the
world, etc.

So does things still suck for the person who gets terminal cancer? Of course
it does. But _humanity_ is doing great.

------
sunseb
It's easy to say you should work less when you are successful.

------
youarentryan
John D. Rockefeller would take mid-day breaks to do some gardening around the
house. Work hard, but keep a balanced and cheery pace :)

------
KamiCrit
"Remember to take all things in moderation"

Work ethic is great and shows through. But you don't get far ahead when you
Karōshi [1] yourself. If it hurts, stop.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kar%C5%8Dshi)

------
amriksohata
The thumbnail comes up of a photo of Jay Shetty, he runs many inspirational
videos based on his links with ISKCON/Hare Krishnas. Bit misleading as he
never talks of working hard to the bone, but more about working and living so
you are happier in doing you work and in your life.

------
andromedavision
It's easy to want to hate on the linked Vaynerchuk video. I couldn't agree
more with the message though. Working hard is good; if there's a certain type
of life you want. There simply aren't any shortcuts; at least that's the rule
and not the exception.

------
a-saleh
This reminded me of an essay by Amy Hoy:
[https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/](https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/)

------
ackbar03
Gary v is extremely annoying. But what makes it porn is that it's what people
want to hear. Hes just selling people what they want in the end. It's a bit
sad

------
moneytide1
But it creates a competitive energy within the audience which improves
collective productivity.

------
genericone
Is Will Smith's movie Happyness hustle porn?

~~~
topkai22
It’s been a while since I watched it, but only kind of. A major component of
that movie is how he deals with and prioritizes NON work stuff (his kid.)

------
adamnemecek
I imagine it might be because it’s easier to tell yourself “you just have to
work harder” rather than to accept that it wasn’t written in the stars.

------
brian_herman__
? I thought this was a about pornography such clickbait shouldn’t be on this
site....

------
Dig1t
I disagree with this.

~~~
adjkant
"Greatest comment ever"

As others said, why? Give us some reasons.

------
robbywashere_
This is all fine and dandy but let’s be real. How many of you can solve: Given
n non-negative integers representing an elevation map where the width of each
bar is 1, compute how much water it is able to trap after raining.

In N(1) space and N time

~~~
joppy
None, because a two-dimensional bar graph can’t trap any water?

This is _completely irrelevant_ to the article being discussed.

------
golemotron
It's only 'dangerous' if you feel anointed to protect people from their
choices.

