Eat them up, Yum yum.

Pax East 2011 from Brian Augustus on Vimeo.

Easy target

Ok, let's get this out of the way: The article about tweets spurring interest in long-form articles is exclusionary and anecdotal. He is talking about himself and his reading habits; I have similar reading habits, too. To provide my own anecdote, I didn't used to read status updates at all because they didn't exist; status updates take away from my long-form reading time. So what? The data he provides only applies to readers of blogs or people who regularly use Twitter. I can't figure out why I'm supposed to find this insightful in any broad sense.

YC

Devin Friedman muses:

But you know why I think they're really happy? Because they get to build all this stuff.

You know why I think they're really happy? They are getting a ton of money and being called geniuses by everyone. And before anyone gets started on the, 'But he said they don't buy expensive things!' line, I'd like to point out that keeping your money in a bank account is not the same as giving it all away. They want to feel like rebels.

And before anyone gets started on the, 'You're just jealous!' line, I'd like to point out that you're probably right. People like that make me feel like the starting quarterback at their high school reunion who never went to college; I sold a website when I was 11 and I am very poor now... what happened?

Worth considering is the way that these people sound like they're full of shit. I don't know that they are, but I have a strong feeling about it. All quotes are stated matter-of-fact-ly and are devoid of any self reflection- even when Friedman explicitly asks for a self reflective answer.

This seems eerily similar to the articles we read in the beginning of the semester describing the events leading up to the dot-com bust; their optimism isn't for people, it's purely selfish. Couched in egalitarian marketing speech is a laissez faire attitude toward consequence.