Once you reach a certain level of wealth, I suspect relationships are more important for happiness than accumulating even more.
If there was a button you could push that would give you $10M, but also cause many thousands of people to constantly express their hatred for you online, would you push it? Would the average person choose to push it? How would it change their expected happiness?
A great thing about a pseudonym is if I don't like how an argument is going, I can just disengage and pretend it doesn't exist. Internet discussions are like sand on the beach. Pick some up, let it run through your fingers. There's nothing special about that fistful.
I wouldn't like the dilemma of either choosing to have a backbone, and being in constant confrontation, or choosing to disengage and ceding the frame of the discussion to someone else. With a pseudonym you're more free to be wrong or just stop caring.
> If there was a button you could push that would give you $10M, but also cause many thousands of people to constantly express their hatred for you online, would you push it? Would the average person choose to push it? How would it change their expected happiness?
Bring that button over here and let me press it 10 times. I know I haven't hurt anyone physically (i.e. don't give me 10m but 100 people get cancer - I don't want that!).
$10m will buy be a nice small house somewhere remotely (200k-300k), I will stop working, I will spend my life reading books.. let's say $2k-$3k per year (I will also buy a couple expensive ones each year)(hey after all my name IS Henry Bemis!! look it up!).
Food-drink-travel.. let's say another $30k-$40k per year.
Gun & ammo & permit.. I have no idea how much they cost, but let's add 5k for all.
A Honda Accord (or similar inexpensive forever-car) $5k? $10k?
I'm not young.. so by the time I die there will be many millions to spare as well (charity, donations, inheritance, etc.)
Bring that button forward and see you never again :)
> If there was a button you could push that would give you $10M, but also cause many thousands of people to constantly express their hatred for you online, would you push it? Would the average person choose to push it? How would it change their expected happiness?
I see the point, but you'd need to change that "many thousands" to more like "many tens/hundreds of millions" for it to be deterring (assuming these people are randomly picked, and not all people you'd "want" to have relationships with).
It's not about thick skin here. With only a few thousand random people talking bad about you, there is a significant chance that you and your potential relationships will never see a single message from them. Getting into the millions is talking about thick skin, but thousands is just free money.
The original post didn't specify direct messages or other mechanisms that you would be notified about the messages. Just that people are talking about you on the internet.
>The original post didn't specify direct messages or other mechanisms that you would be notified about the messages. Just that people are talking about you on the internet.
It didn't specify a lack of DMs either. What sort of things do haters typically like to do? Note that I wrote the original comment. I was thinking along the lines of people writing hateful replies to your social media content and @mentioning you.
Fair enough. At least in my case it would be an easy decision, as my social media usage stops at hackernews. Or even if I did use something like twitter, I'd just make a new account. How would they know the new account is me?
Though, not all haters go directly after people. I'd even say those are in the minority. Most congregate to one another and form some bond over the shared dislike of said person/thing. Maybe start a subreddit, parody twitter account, or the like. Some just post complaints about the person without ever @mentioning them. I'm positive not every Elon Musk complaint tweet on twitter directly @mentions him.
A thousand people constantly mentioning online how they hate you would ruin most of your chances at establishing new relationships as well, people just have to make a single google search to see everyone hating you and that will put them off getting to know you deeper.
You would be unable to get a job, unable to get investors, unable to find a nice girlfriend etc, you could find a gold digger though. Note that unlike Trump and Musk etc you wouldn't have thousands of people that spouts praise about you in addition to all those haters, just the haters.
“A thousand people constantly mentioning online how they hate you would ruin most of your chances at establishing new relationships as well, people just have to make a single google search to see everyone hating you and that will put them off getting to know you deeper”
Is googling people after you meet them extremely common? I’m not sure that I’ve ever done so in my life, and the stakes that you raise feel wildly disproportionate.
It really depends who those thousand people are. Even with 50,000 random people talking about you, the vast majority of people you interact with will have never see their messages ever. There would need to be significant overlap in the communities of you, the bad talkers, and your relationships. And that's just to see the message, not for it to be convincing.
Even with super celebrities and literally millions of people talking about them, there are tons of celebrities I've never even heard of, let alone know what people think about them. Even the ones I know of, very few do I know the majority opinion of. Probably like 10.
Also, all celebrities have thousands of haters. Yet, I don't see them failing to achieve the things you mention to be hard/impossible in this position. At least due to the haters.
I just typed "Colleen Hoover" (the writer in the article) and the worst I saw in my search results was someone saying she read all of her books and they suck. Sure, maybe the BookTok bubble hates her, but you have to be pretty deep into it. I also typed for comparison the names of several infamous developers, and the only one who would raise an eyebrow among non-tech people is the one who was convicted of murder.
> You would be unable to get a job, unable to get investors, unable to find a nice girlfriend
If I have $10M I don't need the first two, and being rich opens my dating pool to dating other equally-rich people in similar situations.
> You would be unable to get a job, unable to get investors, unable to find a nice girlfriend etc
Idk. The whole thing is a pretty contrived. If the haters have some real issue they can point to then maybe. But otherwise you find someone who looks at you and not the hate spewed and you are groovy.
Also how intense hatered we are talking about? Like "sneaks through your window while you are asleep and stabs you, then goes to prison smiling" level of hate? Even a few of that caliber is pretty life changing. Or more like the "writes mean things in the comment section when your name or face comes up" kind of hater? Because having a few thousand of those is just usual influencer situation.
I'm early 30s actually. I think I would probably take the money myself, not 100% sure though.
Your sentiment seems common in this thread, but it doesn't square well with how worked up people seem to get with online beefs in practice, and how hard people seem to work in order to avoid getting downvoted (cc subreddit echochambers on reddit). I suspect in theory people don't care what others think, in practice things are a little different.
If the online hate doesn't translate into physical violence and security threats - than, at least for me, the answer is a simple 'yes'. I would be surprised to find out if it isn't the case for but a statistically small sample of the population.
Romance novel author becomes the Taylor Swift of literature: she is worshipped by her fan base, which makes her writing incredibly lucrative despite its midness, and resented and hated by others because her output is mid yet lucrative and popular. The hate has now gotten to her and made her reticent to release more novels.
Based on a very quick skim: It seems that she blew up more than she intended. Many people on Tiktok hate her books -- they're said to be lowbrow, and to normalize domestic abuse. She feels an obligation to continue for the sake of her fans and employees, so she's trying not to let the criticism bother her as much.
Her books were unexpectedly popular, drawing rabid fans and equally virulent critics. J-F-Christ ten thousand words to set the scene, soft focus, travelogue, have tea, visit the home, and more, to say only that. J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon and many others managed to continue to write undisturbed. They also don't invite reporters into their homes for interviews.
Perhaps the main reason I use the Edge browser is because the built in copilot is pretty good at this kind of thing… I can summarize any webpage with a single click (or two…).
Err... there's a share button although the URL is super long, without shortening it looks very awkward to share elsewhere. If you open copilot's URL [1] you can just paste and URL without asking anything, and it will return a summary.
Okay, here is the summary I got. Not very enlightening....
This summer, Colleen Hoover’s literary sensation takes a new form: a film adaptation of her novel “It Ends with Us”, starring Blake Lively, is set to hit theaters on August 9. The anticipation is high, but alongside devoted readers, there are also TikTok haters wondering what’s next for the prolific author.
In a recent event titled “Mani-fest 2024: Main Character Energy”, organized by the nail polish brand Olive and June, Hoover collaborated on a new collection inspired by her books. Attendees at the event could create vision boards, contribute to a “gratitude wall,” build bouquets, and receive free Olive and June products. However, most were there for one reason: to meet Hoover herself.
Despite her immense success, there’s a lingering question: Why did Colleen Hoover stop writing? The answer remains elusive, leaving fans curious about her future literary endeavors. Perhaps the film adaptation will reignite her creative spark, or maybe she’s exploring new paths beyond the written word. Either way, CoHorts eagerly await her next move.
This misses the conflict that gives this article meaning.
It's about an average self-published indie author who blew up in popularity (kind of like the author of 50 shades of gray). Pro writers don't understand why but the people/market have spoken.
It's intriguing because it means anyone can make it and write a bestseller and get rich. A lot of the article is describing her fancy house.
This prompted fame but also scrutiny and hate. Her book shows domestic violence as if it was OK. It would be fine if it remained niche with small number of readers but maybe not after it goes viral on TT and really popular among young Americans (girls presumably?). Presumably this perpetuates family dysfunction and mental trauma across generations. Then she additionally monetizes that book by selling themed nail polish and apparently even a coloring book for kids which naturally enrages some people.
I meant that someone asked for a summary, and you said that you like Edge because it will give you good summaries, but you didn't post the actual thing the OP had asked for :P
Ironically, perhaps they were trying not to scrape the AI answers, avoiding violating its copyright. If only the AIs were so thoughtful.
Or, perhaps there was a more long-term intent. Knowing AIs hallucinate, not copy/pasting their answers prevents the hallucinations from becoming facts on the web.
I use another tool for summaries myself (Kagi) but I tend not to actually post them here, because I think posting machine generated text is frowned upon here. Maybe I'm wrong, though?
am i alone as a pretty literate person (my kindle is my constant companion) in having never heard of her? i don't mean to badmouth her - no doubt it is me missing out.
Romance novels tend to not be considered real literature by 'serious' critics and promotion is mainly directed to women and girls directly.
Maybe you don't read the right magazines, get profiled as being a woman by ad networks, things like that. Could also be that your social circles don't read romances for some reason or other.
It's an underrated genre though, some romance novels are a lot of fun.
For a long time women writing novels about being a woman (in the Occident) have been perceived as dangerous, revolutionary, socially corrosive. Once the feminist movements got representation in politics it has mutated more into a general disregard, it's not real literature, it's not sophisticated, it's not worthy a distinguished white male's attention, things like that. But the publishers know that there is a huge amount of money to be made so they catch some of these writers and make them successes through 'side channels'.
Something similar goes for e.g. Clive Barker. Prolific, very good writer, but few know more than the first Hellraiser movie and perhaps the remake. I think one important reason for this is that he clearly writes from a gay perspective and sometimes shows a rather open interest for BDSM and other things that flip gender hierarchies.
I gotta say... I would have quit writing the moment I became successful enough to be required to sit at book signings. I can't imagine sitting there all day long, bored out of my skull, faking like I care about these people. I got out of recruiting because of how utterly disingenuous the career is and how boring the work was, and the non-creative parts of being an author have zero appeal to me.
Would it surprise you to learn that many authors actually adore their readers, and are grateful for every single one who cares enough to read and appreciate their work? I, personally, enjoy greeting strangers for hours on end, especially when we've a niche interest in common.
I don't think the author is "faking," only fatiguing.
It seems pretty natural to appreciate fans while it's something that can also get pretty tiring after a while--especially fans who are obsessive in various ways.
Honestly, it would really surprise me. I would be willing to believe that someone gets kicks of signing those books. But that they actually "adore" people who came, every single one of them, no way.
Also, neither author nor reader gets any real conversation about mutual interest in these. That is just not how they work.
I don't even for a second believe that most authors care to the degree that they feign for the purpose of keeping up their popularity. Book signings are about keeping up brand loyalty and ego stroking.
I never minded doing book signings at events but it usually only lasted 30 minutes or so. That said, I did one full-length book (and a second edition) with a publisher and would never do another full-length given it's not really a career benefit at this point.
>Some people are so poor, all they have is money.
Once you reach a certain level of wealth, I suspect relationships are more important for happiness than accumulating even more.
If there was a button you could push that would give you $10M, but also cause many thousands of people to constantly express their hatred for you online, would you push it? Would the average person choose to push it? How would it change their expected happiness?
A great thing about a pseudonym is if I don't like how an argument is going, I can just disengage and pretend it doesn't exist. Internet discussions are like sand on the beach. Pick some up, let it run through your fingers. There's nothing special about that fistful.
I wouldn't like the dilemma of either choosing to have a backbone, and being in constant confrontation, or choosing to disengage and ceding the frame of the discussion to someone else. With a pseudonym you're more free to be wrong or just stop caring.