Hey all :) creator here (and yes, you can reach me at linus@heyyyyyyyyyyyy.com).
Was talking with a friend last night and I bought this domain on a whim because I thought it would be funny. And then spent a couple hours making this landing page and it's since turned into this elaborate joke. Hope it added something to your day~ haha
The song is awesome, but the clip is cringy as can be.
From the awkward dancing, nonsensical acrobating and sunglassing to Rick himself. Even though the song's got a good beat, he can't seem to move to it no matter how hard the editor tries to cut or how cool he tries to look. And I'm always surprised by such a deep voice coming from such a skimpy guy, which contributes to the joke.
> Interested? Reach out to hey@heyyyyyyyyyyyy.com to start our hand-crafted, three-month-long, white-glove onboarding process which comes with a complementary bottle of champagne, a traditional mud massage, a door handle from a vintage Rolls-Royce Phantom, a portrait of a dead European royalty framed in gold, Leonardo Da Vinci's left thumb, and of course, your very own heyyyyyyyyyyyy.com email.
I feel like if you read that part, it is pretty obvious that this thing isn't real.
I like it, but my very scientific algorithms I have developed with the use of science suggest it needs 479% more Arthur Fonzarelli on the home page to achieve legendary status.
Hey, thanks! I used a CSS library [0] I wrote myself last year that I use for a bunch of other projects of mine, most famously lyrics.rip [1] and free.linus.zone (my free-busy calendar I wrote myself) [2]. It gives the site the "faux-3D" aesthetic.
I was entertained until I clicked a link and awoke my baby in the next room with sudden audio. Trying to get back into the YouTube app to stop Premium background audio playback was .. hectic.
Site seemed slightly entertaining, baby is awake, I'm not currently amused ;)
Hi, I can't register. Each time I click, a weird old video opens. Can someone help me ? I tried to contact the creator of the site to tell him that he messed up with his register link.
After a thorough dive into the source code, it seems to be an issue with click events with the attribute 'rick', rolling off the JS call-stack incorrectly.
Enjoyable to see these mockery sites. The original Hey marketing was just asking to get mocked. Hopefully they take it in good spirit. The lesson learned I think is, don’t act like God unless you want to get mocked for it.
I like this parody, but I don’t understand what you are saying about Hey’s original marketing. What’s particularly arrogant about product designers saying they’ve identified and solved a problem?
My biggest gripe about Hey is that it’s marketed as an email client, but it’s actually a proprietary database you get access to through something that looks like an email address.
I’m exaggerating a bit. But I don’t understand why they built a service and not a client.
For me, email is about being not locked into a specific client. And Hey requires a separate client than the one for my existing email addresses.
It's not marketed as an email client - they're marketing for a certain experience.
> For me, email is about being not locked into a specific client. And Hey requires a separate client than the one for my existing email addresses.
The graveyard of services acquired or dead (or both) is littered with those who attempted to 1) bring about radical change to email 2) without disrupting the current ecosystem of mail clients and hosts. It clearly almost never worked for anyone, so I at least applaud them for going out of their way, loudly trying to veer off of said graveyard. It speaks to the experience they're selling. It may not have appealed to you, but they aren't short of the ones it appealed to.
Now, whether it'll work out for them, that's another topic :D
> But I don’t understand why they built a service and not a client.
Some of the core features aren't feasible with a simple client. For example screening new contacts by default, merging/renaming threads only for you, adding notes to a thread, save bits of content…
A client could certainly handle this, but it may not translate to other instances of the client.
> merging/renaming threads only for you
An advertised feature that did not even work on their release. Maybe they fixed it by now, I don't know, I did not end up buying the product. The initial release was quite buggy.
Yes, I don’t think they’re proceeding in order of report. I‘ve had any significant reported bugs fixed within hours. A couple minor ones are persistent. I assume whatever issue you saw with thread management was fixed quickly as it’s a core feature in the marketing, and demonstrated live by Jason in his product demo streams.
I see Hey marketing as "Email" more than a client or an app. Yes, it's a weird positioning, but to be fair it's also a weird service.
They're not about better managing your existing inbox, and I also think completely changing the management of a third party email services while staying within the standards is a lost battle. Hey doesn't solve my issues with email either, but I am sympathic to people trying to rebuild an experience beyond what existing clients can do.
Part of the issue was how they handled the "application" to be one of the first users. It was quite pretentious. They wanted you to express yourself in some novel, poetic way to convince them you are worthy of testing their golden new service. It was silly. In the end, it was also meaningless, everyone got invites anyway. But, the arrogance lingers.
Yes, I linked to that page. “ To get on the list, email iwant@hey.com and tell us how you feel about email. Could be a love story, or a hate story — or both. Could be long, could be short. It’s your story, so it’s up to you.”
I wouldn’t call that novel or poetic but I understand resenting it.
Regardless, it’s quite pretentious to expect people to put forth creative and expressive energy for something they’re possibly going to end up paying you money for anyway.
It’s an interesting question. I’m willing to spend time and energy on top of money for a lot of things. For software, it feels more extra than, say, going to the grocery store, but I don’t know if that actually makes it wrong for a software company to require the effort. And that’s complicated by the value some derive from small exercises like that.
I don't think email is broken for everybody. Maybe so for Jason Fried and other popular techies who get so much email because they are public figures. Not for my family and friends.
So when I read their pitch, I see another locked in platform à la Slack. The tone is quite pretentious too. Sounds more like a pitch from a clique leader to join them.
I've actually been trying to remember the URL to this website on and off for the last six years (note to self, 8 'e's), so thanks for scratching that itch.
I use this service but I think there's something wrong with their servers because I don't seem to get any emails? Oddly enough emails from my gmail account works but literally 0 of the 100+ job recruiters I've emailed has responded so I think there's something wrong.
looks like I'll be that guy. This service is by and for users of the /g/ 4chan board. Edginess is something of a feature for the projects that spawn there.
> Your message wasn't delivered to demo@bye.fyi due to an error.
>
> The response was:
>
> write EPROTO 140451178456960:error:14094438:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert internal
> error:../deps/openssl/openssl/ssl/record/rec_layer_s3.c:1544:SSL alert number 80
>
>
> If you need help, forward this to support@forwardemail.net or visit https://forwardemail.net.
Are you kidding? Nobody will take you seriously if you try to pass the 13 y hey off as the 12 y hey. How can anyone trust you when they can't even trust the domain of your email?
Haha I wonder if basecamp people would get mad and start throwing out cease and desist letters once a bunch of people start using variation of heyyyyyy...yy.com domains for their email addresses.
Considering the activity of HN users, I found these numbers highly suspicious. (But a good try anyway.) I wonder what is the best number for tempting a click. Maybe you should increase these as the site popularity grows?
Now that the post has more than 500+ upvotes, better give a number beyond 1000 for a conservative and believable value. I almost felt it was not true before clicking it, but clicked any wa. :)
Does anyone remember the exact domain for that joke website that had the picture of the wire spring doorstopper that would just play the BOINGGGGG sound when you clicked on it?
It was something like boinnnnnngggggg.com but I can’t remember it or find it in my old bookmarks.
I actually have an email with them. I use it when I have to give an email, specially in person. It's so much fun when people see this sort of email address!
While we're here, can anyone who's been using Hey for a little while share how it's been? I did the trial and liked it, but it felt a little bit micromanagey and I just didn't know if it'd get better after changing all my accounts and using the screener for a month or more.
A month or so in and it's still a lot of micromanaging. My biggest sticking point is that I'm unsure of which email address may be used for important notifications and the like so I'm hesitant to screen things out a lot of the time unless they are basically spam.
Oh yeah, that was a problem I had. My health insurance uses the same email to send marketing spam as they do to send test results, so I couldn't screen them out. Maybe they'll add some IF fields on the subject line in the future.
This is pretty great. I think DHH will get a kick out of it.
My favorite parody site made fun of web frameworks and called them "crystal node grunt gems for ninjas". The whole website was genius, but I can't seem to find it anymore. :(
Does anybody else have any more parody sites? (Or know the one I'm referring to?)
The fact that hey.com ignored the precedent of ignoring periods within emails will make hey.com emails rife with fraud when they open up. Pretending phishing and email phishing doesn't exist won't make it go away. And I certainly won't spend 2x the amount for an email subscription to reserve my first.last@hey.com vs. firstlast@hey.com
Anytime I see comments referencing “gO To rEdDiT” I can’t help but sigh at the hypocrisy. Your comment adds nothing to the thread and only reduces overall discussion quality further.
What do you hope to gain from such a comment?
To break the chain I’ll say two things:
1. The satire is on point. The original hey.com intro felt pretentious with it’s ridiculous, “Email is broken. Come join our invite only $xxx/month email instead” story.
2. Obviously enough HN users identified enough to upvote the post.
> Anytime I see comments referencing “gO To rEdDiT” I can’t help but sigh at the hypocrisy. Your comment adds nothing to the thread and only reduces overall discussion quality further.
This is completely wrong. If Reddit sucks, and people are making HN like Reddit with low effort content, then what recourse do we have other than to say so? Or should we just let HN turn into another low effort shit content site? You can disagree with whether or not this content sucks all you want, but again, the sentiment is totally off base.
We all work enough hours per day being super serious. I was auditing a mega big bank ones (top5), talking to the head of their PMO, and he offered that we sit in some comfy chairs (armchairs) instead of the typical office chairs. Then I said with a "Spanish Inquisition" voice "put him in the comfy chair" and the guy laughed so hard he was drooling. Best-pre-closing-meeting-ever. Others were just staring at use (probably have never seen this magnificent piece of TV).
I take that these witty comments are a similar thing to this serious and thought-provoking forum.
All in good spirit with high grade and good quality (I like me some Monty Python humor).
First mock that showed up shortly after Hey’s introduction was funny, I have to admit that even as a user. Not sure if it did fit on HN but whatever. But this is not only low effort, but what’s there to discuss? Is it really that interesting?
Was talking with a friend last night and I bought this domain on a whim because I thought it would be funny. And then spent a couple hours making this landing page and it's since turned into this elaborate joke. Hope it added something to your day~ haha