It was the strangest thing. I was walking by union square a few years ago when I saw him going into his pitch. It really was a site to see. His booming voice drew me and about 20+ other people in, where we stood around watching him peel carrots for at least 5 minutes. Not sure why, but I felt like I had to buy one. It was a dance really. The way he used the peeler was mesmerizing.
On the good news side, if your peeler ever breaks, it's also sold in most supermarkets in Europe and Asia - and most of the ones you can buy here aren't made of scrap metal, but of ergonomic, comfortable plastic.
Its interesting to me on an intellectual level to compare your way of describing the peeler to his way of describing the peeler. You describe breakage as an intrinsic feature of peelers, much like 1970s Ford might describe defects as an intrinsic feature of cars.
He describes his peelers as being remarkable accomplishments of Swiss engineering that do not break, period, and repeatedly contrasts it with the peelers you can buy in most supermarkets in Europe and Asia. I can just about quote it from memory: "This isn't a cheap peeler. If you want a cheap peeler you can buy one at any dollar store. This peeler was made in Switzerland and nothing from Switzerland was ever cheap. You don't buy this peeler because it is cheap and you can replace it when it wears out, you buy it because it will be the last peeler you ever buy."
Now it might be the case that you and he are still talking about the same peeler. I think that this demonstrates one little technique which makes him a really good salesman for the peeler. I think that this technique is a useful one to stick in the quiver -- it works with positioning software, too. He is so consummately good at selling that I think we could learn a lot from him, including this one little technique, which is why I consider him noteworthy to HN.
On being the Last X You Will Every Buy: I use a variation of the same to position my software. Most software in my vertical is licensed in such a way that it requires repurchase every year. There are a bunch of reasons for this -- suffice it to say that most IP in my vertical is treated that way, software is largely produced by the existing IP makers, and they ported their license terms from their existing businesses without much regard to how software changes the game. I think my customers hate that business model with a burning passion, largely because my customers tell me they hate that business model with a burning passion. I licensed my software perpetually and position it, very explicitly, as The Last X You Will Ever Buy. I think this is one reason why I can get away with charging more than almost any of my competitors, announce a price increase, and have customers send me mail telling me how cheap I am.
I'm from Switzerland. Those peelers are available in all supermarkets here - both the plain metal ones and more advanced ones with moulded plastic handles. Typically the plastic ones are more reliable.
I was not suggesting that it will necessarily break, but there are many ways to find yourself needing a new peeler. You could lose it. You could lend it to someone who doesn't give it back. Your girlfriend could borrow it and then break up with you before having given it back (though hopefully it won't be because of the peeler). Or it could just break - the handle won't break, of course, but the blade might eventually get dull, or the joint between the blade and the handle might get loose.
I agree that this guy was a good salesman, by the way, and that we can learn from that.
For some reason, the "if your peeler ever breaks" sentiment feels attached to the "made of ... plastic" one. It would never occur to me to worry about a "scrap metal" peeler breaking.
Wait, those are the peelers we're talking about? I thought it was some fancy device that's super-exclusive or something. I'm from Asia and those things are a dime a dozen (sometimes literally) there...
That being said, the ones in Taiwan are generally cheap, made of plastic, and have blades that will dull quickly. For how cheap they are it's not a big deal, but if you can have a quality peeler made of stainless steel with a good blade, I'd pay for it.
eh? I was surprised (and a little disappointed) to see that this is exactly the potato peeler my mother showed me 25 years ago. She still has it, she still uses it, it really lasts a lifetime. I'm not nearly as good with the peeler as this guy though
Considering there were only 14 posts on this article, I don't think "HN Salesmanship hero" is in any way accurate... Perhaps he's the posters hero, or some subset of HN, but I don't think it's useful to assume all of HN thinks a certain way.
He certainly has a very good technique though, and I imagine was great to watch.
The peeler man is autonomy personified. Clearly he could have not sold peelers, and clearly he could have not worked on the street. But he did, seemingly not driven by money alone, but by a fascination for exchanging his story for your attention.
It's hard to properly mourn such an inspiring and humble performance. This is not willy loman. The peeler man's craft was an art form in a city where hyper capitalism and over commodification enslave most of its residents.
I had relatives in the city over the last weekend. They had a checklist of stuff they wanted to see, and they managed to see everything but the Peeler Guy.
Then maybe you should have called him a NY Times salesmanship hero - if you think that the NY Times, as an aggregate organisation, thinks he's a salesmanship hero.
I'm not saying that there wasn't some discussion of his salesmanship, but it's a long way, imho, from being a "salesman who's been discussed" (an achievement in and of itself) to being a "salesmanship hero".
I think a more appropriate headline for this article would have been "Peeler man, previously discussed on HN, passes"
Respect where it's due. I have no more respect for a guy who sold potato peelers than for anyone else, whether or not he had good street sales skills. The fact that he was mentioned on HN and his sales skill was discussed doesn't make him a hero - and certainly not my hero. It's a sad thing when anyone dies, but I feel no need to put dead people on a pedestal. Do you?
I maintain that the title of this thread is unnecessary hyperbole, and if we're talking about respect, I'd appreciate it if the hordes of people who are downmodding me in some sort of sheeple momentum voting would take a second and consider whether my comments really deserve that kind of downvoting (which should only be reserved for things that are truly offensive, trolling, or spammy).
I upvoted you, but it's probably because you're insulting them. For better or worse, deaths tend to make people particularly on edge.
The word "hero", like the words "unique" and "expert" do not really mean anything anymore because they're so overused. And while I would not consider him a hero, it's always cool to see stories about people who are flat out really good at what they do.
For better or worse, deaths tend to make people particularly on edge.
I know what you mean, and to an extent these posts are a little testing, a little spiteful, to see how knee-jerk people's reactions are really going to be. You might say I'm daring the HN community to behave better than it seems to be behaving. It might cost a little karma. Oh well.
I have little respect for taboo subjects, I'm afraid. In fact, the opposite: I believe that everything should be discussable in a civil manner. I feel that taboos don't help society, and that sheeple responses to taboo subjects is one of the more despicable aspects of human nature. I have not made any statements in this thread that I believe should be considered offensive by a civilised person, and I stand behind those statements as I would if anyone else had made them.
No, I don't think it qualifies as trolling if you're defending your beliefs. Trolling is when you make a statement that you know to be wrong for the purpose of eliciting excited responses.
The New Hacker's Dictionary defines trolling as:
[From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.
Some people claim that the troll is properly a narrower category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial.
Yep, you're definitely doing it. You're resorting to the definition of the word, you've admitted it, you're now denying it only to gain more of a reaction.
Maybe you didn't care, but I knew exactly who the article was going to be about, and only because there was a lot of interesting discussion in the thread about him awhile ago.
He was one of maybe three or four people that there have been posts about that I've remembered, and it wasn't because of the NYT.
I have trouble understanding your behavior in this thread. Either God has personally dispatched you on a mission to Hacker News to make sure that nobody is called a 'hero' unless they really deserve it, or you know this guy and he stole your girlfriend or you bought his vegetable peeler and it exploded while you were using it and knocked one of your eyes out.
He isn't a hero coz you say so? He is my hero and I don't care for your definition. He is a "HN Salesmanship Hero" to me. I gained from him because he convinced me that there is a fortune to be made by selling something useful for just $5 a piece (with a brilliant spiel). You don't even have to invent it. I love his lifestyle and attitude. He convinced me that even if I were to lose everything, I could become a 'gentleman grafter' and turn life around.
I think everyone knows your position on whether or not this guy is a hero. I'm not sure how your opinion somehow equates to being the opinion of the other 99% of HN, but given the amount you've been downvoted in this thread, I'm going to assume that your guess is incorrect.
There's been something going on here recently that's incredibly troubling to me. A lot of the people who have been around HN for a long time are going off the tracks when they disagree with anything. I don't know if it's a knee jerk reaction to all the new people, or if people are just stressed out by the constant barrage of terrible economic news or what.
All that I know is that you're ordinarily a poster who has really interesting things to say, but somehow this thread has caused you to have a temper tantrum; and it doesn't suit you.
I certainly see your point. The guy wasn't one of my heroes either. But it just seems petty to continue to belabor the point after the first time it's been made.
This is one of the few times that I wish there was private messaging here. There is clearly some reflexive downvoting going on in this thread, and it really shouldn't be that way - people shouldn't be punished for having a conversation.
The violent reaction has largely been to the reflexive downmodding. I could understand that comment being at -1 or -2, but it was at -10 soon after my second response - that seems fairly unreasonable, so I deduced there was some of what you called "reflexive downvoting" going on.
I call it lynch mob behaviour and I despise it. I'm quite happy to make it my personal crusade to fight that sort of group behaviour, which brings out the worst in all of us.
For the record, I would have had the same reaction if it wasn't me that had made the first couple of heavily downvoted posts (in fact, I have in the past).
I call it lynch mob behaviour and I despise it. I'm quite happy to make it my personal crusade to fight that sort of group behaviour, which brings out the worst in all of us.
I think what people were downmodding you for was the sheer waste of screen space over such a trivial matter.
This whole thread is such an embarrassment. This sort of angry race to the right margin over some trivial disagreement is the sort of thing that's only supposed to happen on other sites.
I know you don't mean it to be, but it's indistinguishable from trolling.
The posts that had -20 karma totalled 7 lines of text - hardly a "sheer waste of screen space". The first one was a single line. I reacted to that. If those had had -1 - -3 karma, I would not have. I created all this waste of space, as you call it, in response to the excessive downmodding of these short posts. Creating the waste of space actually raised my karma on the whole, since after justifying myself enough the karma trend on those two posts reversed, and I got upvotes for some of the later posts.
On the other hand, if I'd left the initial two posts as they were, chances are they'd be at -30, -50, maybe -80 by now, and perhaps there'd be some huge righteously offended response like there has been in other cases where someone made a slightly caustic comment on a thread like this (I think we can both recall one case where this happened).
Lynch mob behaviour is real on this site. I fought vehemently it then and I'll fight it now.
I downmodded you because it seemed that you were really just playing on semantics with regards to the definition of "hero", and that you objected to the title based merely on the opinion that he is not your hero, as opposed to some objective measure of heroism.
I don't kneejerk-downmod. I have been known to kneejerk-upmod, but never the other way around.
I still have my peeler.