If you’re not familiar with Tim Ferriss, you should know that there is always more to the story than the narrative he shares. He’s one of the most charismatic and charming writers and podcasters out there and has a strong ability to build trust through his writing. However, he also has a long history of stretching the truth and spinning history in his favor, often by omitting important facts.
One example: His 4 Hour Work Week book really was on the New York Times Best Seller list for a long time like he brags about in this post, but he has also bragged in other contexts about all of the manipulation and engineering (including mass purchasing books to artificially inflate sales numbers) that goes into gaming the New York Times Best Seller List.
On the topic of being famous, he’s not typically famous like a celebrity. He built his career around being a self-help guru who will bring you the secrets to success in business, life, relationships, and even cooking. He’s talked about how he selects his writing topics based on how to present solutions for people’s inner desires, like financial freedom or impressing people for dating success. He puts himself at the center of these writings, presenting himself as the conduit for these revelations. He was even early in social media and blogging and experimented with social media engagements and paid events where you get to come hang out with Tim Ferriss and learn his secrets, encouraging his fans to idolize him and his wisdom dispensing abilities.
So his relationship with his fans isn’t typical fame in the style of a celebrity or actor. He’s more of an early self-help guru who embraced social media and blogging early on. His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame.
EDIT to add why I know this: Tim Ferriss literally wrote the book on how to abuse remote work. His Four Hour Work Week book encourages readers to talk their boss into working remote then to outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants so they have more time to travel the world. It encourages things like setting up an e-mail auto responder and only responding to your coworkers once a week whine you’re “working remote” and setting up your own side job while traveling the world. If you’ve ever had a remote work job get ruined by people abusing it, chances are good that those people had read a Tim Ferriss book somewhere along the way.
I remember reading his books and thinking "This guy seems really insecure". The quote he opens the article does not surprise me at all - his books come across as if he really wants fame and is speaking to an audience who similarly needs to be smarter, more clever, richer, more loved.
However, I don't think this is unique to Tim Ferriss. I think this is the dynamic behind fame itself. People who are really secure in their worth don't spend their time looking for casual external validation from strangers, and they also don't spend their emotional energy idolizing strangers and distant figures. They spend it on their family and close friends, and seek it in return from those same people.
It's been interesting watching myself drop out of the popular discourse as I got more secure in myself and more inclined to spend time, money, and energy close to home. Pop culture isn't made for us, because who got time for that shit? Crass consumerism isn't made for us, because we don't spend money on things we don't need in an effort to feel better about ourselves. Most of the transactions that make modern America go don't make us go, because, well, if you're happy with yourself then why do you need them?
But I'm glad I realized that before getting famous. Because there was a time, in my teens and twenties, when I wanted nothing more than to be adored by the masses. And like Tim Ferriss says, there isn't always a reset button where you can suddenly become un-famous if it becomes too much of a drag.
> outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants
Literally every business is based on the idea of tacking on a margin onto someone else's work and profiting from it. Markets are based on imperfect information distribution at the end of the day.
It's likely the very company he'd be doing that too is already doing the exact same thing with their customer support (or "success" as they call it now), and their subcontractors themselves outsource various jobs. But I guess we've been conditioned to accept that as good because the boss is pocketing the difference, vs the lowly employee.
> only responding to your coworkers once a week
I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess) and so in that case is it any worse than just slacking off at work and browsing HN for that matter?
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Now should you do this? No, but not because you should feel bad for anyone. You should not do it because it's really hard to find someone good enough (and cheap enough) to deliver the same kind of quality you do and worthy of trusting them with your reputation. But if you know a magical place where to find such unicorns, go right ahead!
> Literally every business is based on the idea of tacking on a margin onto someone else's work and profiting from it.
Which is fine if everyone knows what’s happening. Nobody assumes that their grocery stores or Best Buy are operating as charities that take 0% margin.
What’s not okay is signing up to a company as an employee, being given access to their Slack and Git, and then handing those credentials and source code over to someone you hired on Fiverr so you can go vacation more. The numerous problems with this should be obvious.
> I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess)
That’s the thing about most Tim Ferriss advice: Much of it is fanciful and unrealistic. The takeaway isn’t literally that you should be responding to email once a week, it’s that you need to be pushing the limits of how much you can get away with not responding to things and ignoring conversations with your coworkers. The email autoresponder is held up as a North Star ideal of what you’re trying to do: Hide from work and avoid contributing to the team you’re on.
As for companies being happy with it: They’re generally not! The story in the book is to gradually push the limits of what you can get away with. It suggests working extra hard when you know your boss is watching and doing things like sandbagging your productivity before you go remote. The book has this whole idea that your job is only temporary anyway until your side hustle takes over and replaces your income (dropshipping T-shirts is the example used in the book) so being a productive employee isn’t a priority.
> What’s not okay is signing up to a company as an employee
Oh no, someone dared to lie to a business, the horror! Only the reverse is acceptable.
You should not do this because you haven't found a unicorn that is both cheap and worthy of entrusting with your reputation. If you find such a magical unicorn, you should absolutely do this and nobody will notice since the unicorn is upholding your standards.
How much of a "unicorn" this is depends on your own reputation, the work quality you're expected to do, and so on. If you're that stupid to hand over credentials to a bottom-of-the-barrel gig worker website, you would've lost those credentials in the next phishing campaign anyway, so the outcome for the company isn't any different - they made a stupid hire (whether said stupidity is done by the employee or the subcontractor is of little consolation).
> pushing the limits of how much you can get away with
Again that's literally what every company does - with raising prices, reducing quality (doing their own outsourcing - which this place considers ok because the boss is pocketing the margin) all the time. Every A/B test is a test of how much they can get away with.
But again we seem to have this double-standard where businesses are given leeway (and even applauded for) for a lot of noxious behavior while individuals are punished. Of course businesses have an outsized ability to control the narrative so no surprise there.
> They’re generally not!
A company is never happy though. In their ideal desires you would work 24/7 for zero pay, and even then they would not be happy that you are human and physically limited in how much output you can produce.
I've seen all the behaviors you mention in people that are working in the office - and worse, some are actually working, but so bad at it it would be better if they were actually slacking off; at least they'd enjoy themselves.
> your job is only temporary anyway
In tech it kind of is though? See layoffs and such.
Again I'm not defending the practice and I'm the first one to loathe the enshittification of everything. But if shit behavior appears to be profitable and the local maximum the market has settled on, I don't think it's fair for individuals to be held at different standards.
Is that right? I had no idea this was the core thesis of that guy’s book! I just assumed it was an “automate the boring stuff, get organized and delegate” kind of platitudes. If he’s part of the movement that has people ripping off employers and their co-workers like that then, frankly, screw him.
He’s great at double-speak. The book is generally about automating things, eliminating unnecessary things from your life, delegating to assistants and so on.
But then the examples he gives about going remote, manipulating your boss, outsourcing your work to assistants, and setting up a T-shirt drop shipping company to replace your income reveal the reality of his advice. Just imagine having one of those people as your team member and you realize how much it becomes about offloading work to the team and performing poorly, even though the headlines are feel-good advice about simplifying your life.
Even the title becomes part of the double-speak. He writes about how it's not meant to be taken literally because building your lifestyle requires hard work, but then he'll share anecdotes and stories from "readers" who are living their dream lifestyle while only spending a couple hours per week responding to e-mail.
I personally have a hard time taking anyone seriously who claim things like "4 hour work week". It is a mockery of every real successful person who has worked extremely hard especially early on and it sets a dangerous expectations/entitlement among young people. Unless you are a trust fund baby, you are not going to live a good life by working 4 hour work weeks especially in your younger years. You just won't.
The fact is that if you want to live a good life, you have to grind it out in your early years. Not saying everyone has to grind the startup culture or 80 hour week but thinking that you can swing a 4 hour workweek at 25 is just idiotic and not realistic.
I haven’t followed everything he has produced, but he has a history of identifying rising topics and riding their popularity. He leaned into the psychedelic self-help movement heavily when it was first becoming popular.
The last time he popped up on one of my feeds he was talking to someone about the benefits of sobriety and moderating alcohol consumption, so he might be pivoting toward the next wave of reducing drug and alcohol use, though I don’t know.
sounds like micro-dosing, now I’m caught flat footed in this thread wondering if I should have a negative view of it, in my mind responsible performance enhancement is not the same as dangerous or irresponsible drug abuse and addiction, but if I’m wrong I would like to figure it out sooner rather than later
This is spot on. I was an impressionable young male that loved that book and took to heart the ideas. Looking back it’s a mixed bag - the ideas teach you about delegation and thinking like an owner, but the bigger message that work sucks and you should figure out how to avoid it kinda hurts people who would be more ambitious.
An OG “digital nomad blogger bro” that took it all the way to the top!
At the end of the day his voice is a refreshing twist and a net positive but with a ton of caveats.
I've had my 15 minutes of fame, twice. 30 minutes I guess. Each time I met people that freaked me out.
In 2018, after the news picked up my story, I met the "true" inventor uber. This guy emailed 100s of documents as proof, newspaper clippings, a bunch of pictures with people circled in red, after all that I said "I'm not entirely sure which part you invented." This man "randomly" bumped into me in a cafe to explain it to me. He had driven hundreds of miles to be there.
On my second stint a few years later, I went to a Dan Lyons' book signing with my wife. Dan spotted me in the audience and asked me to come up on stage and tell my story to the audience. I was completely unprepared.
Later a lady accosted me to get my address and phone number so she can send me stuff. She was persistent, so I said I can give her my email so we can communicate further. It didn't sit well with her. A few days later I got an email from her. It was a few thousand words of threats, and I was going to be reported for violating Australia's laws. She had contacted ABC Australia to get my story retracted. I'm in California...
Most of his reasons are related to “you have to deal with crazy people who focus their crazy on you”.
Tim Ferris is known for somewhat hyperbolic self-help content. He talks about the millions of people who follow him or consume his content regularly.
I’d suggest that the audience for people who obsessively consume this kind of self-help content is probably self-selected for a high proportion of crazy people.
So, his experience is probably well outside the norm.
> So, his experience is probably well outside the norm.
Absolutely not. I've been a minor OSS celebrity for a while and even on that scale, it attracted a good number online stalkers and harassers.
Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave, as well as rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you / put you down, simply because they think they deserved the limelight more than you.
I was once in a high up position for a somewhat popular project. I can confirm that it attracts obsessive people with anger issues.
It scales with popularity and changes with demographic. I’ve known non-famous CEOs who needed security details when visiting any conference or public event because they had stalkers who would reliably appear and try to get close to them.
Even on HN I had a stalker. With a previous handle I wrote a long comment about a subject that someone found insightful. They scanned my whole comment history until they found a comment where I mentioned a company I had worked for, then did a process of elimination to figure out who I was, then started contacting me through email and other channels demanding more conversation and writing on the topic to answer their questions. It was very unsettling. I’m now more careful to leave out any identifying facts on HN.
> Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave
I was interviewed by a semi-famous YouTuber in Taiwan (~100k subs) and reaped a ton of benefits. Had one bad encounter though: one of the viewers came into my restaurant and had a super bizarre interaction with me about it, standing next to me and talking well after close while I washed dishes, repeating talking points from the video and not getting increasingly strong hints to leave. Had to straight up throw him out in the end.
Never really felt unsafe, but it was bizarre to have such an uncomfortable interaction with someone fawning over me like that, all because they saw me in a video with only 150k videos!
Plenty of celebrities that have nothing to do with self-help also attract their share of mentally ill folks, so I'm not sure that he's as far out of the norm as you think.
A few folks in my social circles are _very_ minor public figures, more in the vein of "occasionally does a talking head segment on CNN" than "wins an Oscar" and even many of them have had to deal with obsessive attention from the unwell, threats, and people assuming they're rich and begging for money.
I think the general idea is sound, although I have changed my mind with our current economic system where one needs to fend for his own with no safety net. I mean upon seeing Chris Rock say in an interview saying that he would be willing to kill to become famous, I am reconsidering this issue.I refused once an opportunity to act with some big shot crew saying that I would not tolerate people and the way they deal with well-known, famouse people. I could not imagine how I could deal with the pressure. Now after 60 I am just looking back at missed opportunities but still content that 'I did it my way', and hope my children would have better future.
Run any popular web community and you’ll see the amount of craze. Got some random guy sending 100+ emails that will sue and will talk to USA gov because I break the law - for putting ads on my website.
A lot of people are reasonably well-known in certain circles because of some show, podcast, book, etc. that's become something of a hit often with some calculated controversy. And, as you say, collects something of a following.
There are also a ton of people who have never especially groomed the mass market though they're pretty well known in their industry.
Becoming well known even in a smallish circle of a few hundred or thousand people will likely immediately lead to stalkers and crazies coming out after you. My theory is they are directly drawn to people who make some sort of splash, for whatever reason, even if it’s local and small.
While it’s possible that being famous for producing self help content does draw more crazies to you it certainly seems like crazies are drawn to famous regardless of what people are famous for.
Like John Lennon just made music and he got shot and killed for it. Jodie Foster naively signed up for an erotic role in a movie and was stalked for it.
I met a top-tier actor once in 2014 because he was working on something non-Hollywood-related with a friend of mine. Out of curiosity, I looked at his Twitter feed to see if he had anything to say publicly about that project.
It was insane. It was full of people randomly asking to meet up with him in tons of different cities, people asking him to review their movie scripts/theatrical projects, people asking him for money, and women either offering to have sex with him or asking him to marry them. All in public, and just day after day like that.
This is actually one of my all time favorite blog posts, and his concept of the tribe, the village, and the city, is a mental model I often come back to when thinking about the dysfunction in large communities.
Interesting read. In modern life almost everyone experiences at least a brief if perhaps isolated/niche version of fame. We are just so heavily connected in so many different networks, it just statistically is likely to happen at some point.
It is a mixed bag for sure, but in terms of risk/reward it is best to have an accurate understanding of both sides so you can make damn sure you are optimizing for the right thing.
He didn't mention one of the biggest reasons for not becoming famous: you'll have less room for mistakes. Take Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, as an example. He made some racist remarks, a mistake he could’ve recovered from if he wasn’t famous. But because he is, he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over.
I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of his situation. He didn’t just make a single comment that marked him for life. He’s been doubling down for years and seems to be constantly running head-first into drama.
I didn’t have any opinions on his as a person other than enjoying some of his comics years ago. Then he started showing up in Twitter debates over and over again and there’s no erasing years of bizarre claims and statements from his public opinion. He’s definitely embracing his fame as a platform to push those views, not suffering victimization for one mistake years ago.
Yeah, Scott Adams may not be a good example for the point I was trying to make, which is: Being under the public eye—all the time—has to be one of the top reasons to not be famous. The cost of any mistake is much higher when you are famous.
Another reason is to have normal interactions with other people. If you are famous you can't have normal interactions because you're treated with deference.
> Take Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, as an example. He made some racist remarks, a mistake he could’ve recovered from if he wasn’t famous. But because he is, he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over.
From my echo chamber, I would rather claim that by these "politically incorrect" remarks and the controversies following it, he rather got a second wave of fans.
> He made some racist remarks, a mistake he could’ve recovered from if he wasn’t famous.
My knowledge of the USA is imperfect. Certain stereotypes of the USA from the perspective of Americans do make it across the Atlantic to here. Are they correct or incorrect when they say the worse part of Thanksgiving is having to meet the racist in-laws?
Unless that stereotype is completely invented (and I accept that it might be, after all the UK had Boris Johnson), then "could've" doesn't imply "would've".
Doomed for life, lol. The point of putting yourself out there is to show the world who you are, so you can connect with the right people. He showed the world a bit more, and better targeted his group of people. I bet there are plenty of people that still connect with him.
Dude did not just make one racist comment. I’ve read some of his books and they’re dripping with racism. He’s been consistently racist for decades and still is.
> he’s now marked for life, and there's no do-over.
sincere apologies, show of remorse, and substantially + genuinely changing the toxic behaviors goes a long way. there are several celebrities who have done "unforgivable" things and yet been forgiven by the public. the problem is that the kind of person liable to make such remarks is not the kind of person likely to do some introspection to realize they're being a terrible person.
Yes, you can do some repair, but the point is, it is much harder if you're famous. Being under the public eye—all the time—has to be one of the top reasons to not be famous.
I disagree with this framing, but I do think it's a relevant example - being famous seems to change the math on "changing your mind" for some people.
If Scott Adams had said some racist things at a work dinner, gotten written up, maybe he'd have moved past it... but now being Controversial™ is a core part of his brand, he's doubled down and doubled down...
I mean common. The supposed marked for life people are coming back again and again. Even or especially when the supposed mistake is genuine ideological convinction they are actively propagating.
I’m actively involved in two communities. The first is the NetHack roguelike community, and the second is the fan community of a German internet broadcaster that has existed, in one form or another, for about 25 years.
On average, I’d say both communities are equally kind and welcoming. I’d also argue that both contain roughly the same proportion of people who are unhinged and tend to go way over the top. The difference lies in how they go over the top.
In the NetHack community, you have people who start and immediately abandon 200,000 games during a tournament because they’re trying to roll the ideal starting conditions for a very specific playstyle. Then there are the Bobby Fischer types who create their own ultra-hard forks of the game because vanilla NetHack is too easy for them. There’s also plenty of criticism. Not everyone is happy with everything, but it’s mostly civil. The worst you usually get is something like, “The dev team sucks; they ruined the game with their latest changes.”
By contrast, in the internet broadcaster’s community there’s a very toxic minority that claims to have stopped watching years ago, yet continues to hate on the creators because the channel took a direction they didn’t like. Employees get mobbed and bullied, everything is torn down, and there’s a concerted effort to ruin the fun for everyone else.
I mean, I can understand that if you spent your formative teenage years “with” these people, it really hurts when that influence disappears. But can a parasocial relationship really go that far, that you drift into this kind of behavior?
How can someone be so hurt that they hold a grudge for years, keep hate-watching the creators, and invest so much time and energy into such a destructive hobby?
What an unbearably tedious fellow he is.
What was worse? The boasting, the pathetic pleading for understanding, or the sanctimonious preaching? Too rich, too famous, too hurt; how bad?
It's 2025. Did he become less tedious since he wrote this piece?
Wow, I thought his first book was insufferable, but I've never read his blog: after reading the first half, that's just who this guy is. The structure he outlines seems so alien to me, and out of touch. People get lucky then think their luck really isn't luck, and then the just swallow their own tail. He's created lifestyle porn for impressionable young men who will never have his luck. I think he's got a good grift. Good for him, he won.
I get so much scam bait and phishing emails that I don’t bother reading I can’t imagine even bothering to read threats and similar crazy person emails.
The four hour workweek was inspirational for me starting my own business in 2009. My business now employs 250 full time people and helps thousands of clients. I remember HN back then was all entrepreneurs like me and everyone was excited about the free market. I feel like now a lot of people in countries with too much government regulations are here and are downers to people who want to build their own thing.
This post is on the money. Being wealthy has almost all of the benefits of being famous.
> I remember HN back then was all entrepreneurs like me and everyone was excited about the free market. I feel like now a lot of people in countries with too much government regulations are here and are downers to people who want to build their own thing.
Since I am perhaps such a "downer person" who lives in such a country: what should such people then do?
Having been briefly regionally known when I was a kid, I can tell you that it gets fucking annoying having to deal with your adoring public after the novelty of it wears off. Sometimes you're just in line for the toilet and really need to piss.
One example: His 4 Hour Work Week book really was on the New York Times Best Seller list for a long time like he brags about in this post, but he has also bragged in other contexts about all of the manipulation and engineering (including mass purchasing books to artificially inflate sales numbers) that goes into gaming the New York Times Best Seller List.
On the topic of being famous, he’s not typically famous like a celebrity. He built his career around being a self-help guru who will bring you the secrets to success in business, life, relationships, and even cooking. He’s talked about how he selects his writing topics based on how to present solutions for people’s inner desires, like financial freedom or impressing people for dating success. He puts himself at the center of these writings, presenting himself as the conduit for these revelations. He was even early in social media and blogging and experimented with social media engagements and paid events where you get to come hang out with Tim Ferriss and learn his secrets, encouraging his fans to idolize him and his wisdom dispensing abilities.
So his relationship with his fans isn’t typical fame in the style of a celebrity or actor. He’s more of an early self-help guru who embraced social media and blogging early on. His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame.
EDIT to add why I know this: Tim Ferriss literally wrote the book on how to abuse remote work. His Four Hour Work Week book encourages readers to talk their boss into working remote then to outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants so they have more time to travel the world. It encourages things like setting up an e-mail auto responder and only responding to your coworkers once a week whine you’re “working remote” and setting up your own side job while traveling the world. If you’ve ever had a remote work job get ruined by people abusing it, chances are good that those people had read a Tim Ferriss book somewhere along the way.
However, I don't think this is unique to Tim Ferriss. I think this is the dynamic behind fame itself. People who are really secure in their worth don't spend their time looking for casual external validation from strangers, and they also don't spend their emotional energy idolizing strangers and distant figures. They spend it on their family and close friends, and seek it in return from those same people.
It's been interesting watching myself drop out of the popular discourse as I got more secure in myself and more inclined to spend time, money, and energy close to home. Pop culture isn't made for us, because who got time for that shit? Crass consumerism isn't made for us, because we don't spend money on things we don't need in an effort to feel better about ourselves. Most of the transactions that make modern America go don't make us go, because, well, if you're happy with yourself then why do you need them?
But I'm glad I realized that before getting famous. Because there was a time, in my teens and twenties, when I wanted nothing more than to be adored by the masses. And like Tim Ferriss says, there isn't always a reset button where you can suddenly become un-famous if it becomes too much of a drag.
Literally every business is based on the idea of tacking on a margin onto someone else's work and profiting from it. Markets are based on imperfect information distribution at the end of the day.
It's likely the very company he'd be doing that too is already doing the exact same thing with their customer support (or "success" as they call it now), and their subcontractors themselves outsource various jobs. But I guess we've been conditioned to accept that as good because the boss is pocketing the difference, vs the lowly employee.
> only responding to your coworkers once a week
I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess) and so in that case is it any worse than just slacking off at work and browsing HN for that matter?
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Now should you do this? No, but not because you should feel bad for anyone. You should not do it because it's really hard to find someone good enough (and cheap enough) to deliver the same kind of quality you do and worthy of trusting them with your reputation. But if you know a magical place where to find such unicorns, go right ahead!
Which is fine if everyone knows what’s happening. Nobody assumes that their grocery stores or Best Buy are operating as charities that take 0% margin.
What’s not okay is signing up to a company as an employee, being given access to their Slack and Git, and then handing those credentials and source code over to someone you hired on Fiverr so you can go vacation more. The numerous problems with this should be obvious.
> I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess)
That’s the thing about most Tim Ferriss advice: Much of it is fanciful and unrealistic. The takeaway isn’t literally that you should be responding to email once a week, it’s that you need to be pushing the limits of how much you can get away with not responding to things and ignoring conversations with your coworkers. The email autoresponder is held up as a North Star ideal of what you’re trying to do: Hide from work and avoid contributing to the team you’re on.
As for companies being happy with it: They’re generally not! The story in the book is to gradually push the limits of what you can get away with. It suggests working extra hard when you know your boss is watching and doing things like sandbagging your productivity before you go remote. The book has this whole idea that your job is only temporary anyway until your side hustle takes over and replaces your income (dropshipping T-shirts is the example used in the book) so being a productive employee isn’t a priority.
Oh no, someone dared to lie to a business, the horror! Only the reverse is acceptable.
You should not do this because you haven't found a unicorn that is both cheap and worthy of entrusting with your reputation. If you find such a magical unicorn, you should absolutely do this and nobody will notice since the unicorn is upholding your standards.
How much of a "unicorn" this is depends on your own reputation, the work quality you're expected to do, and so on. If you're that stupid to hand over credentials to a bottom-of-the-barrel gig worker website, you would've lost those credentials in the next phishing campaign anyway, so the outcome for the company isn't any different - they made a stupid hire (whether said stupidity is done by the employee or the subcontractor is of little consolation).
> pushing the limits of how much you can get away with
Again that's literally what every company does - with raising prices, reducing quality (doing their own outsourcing - which this place considers ok because the boss is pocketing the margin) all the time. Every A/B test is a test of how much they can get away with.
But again we seem to have this double-standard where businesses are given leeway (and even applauded for) for a lot of noxious behavior while individuals are punished. Of course businesses have an outsized ability to control the narrative so no surprise there.
> They’re generally not!
A company is never happy though. In their ideal desires you would work 24/7 for zero pay, and even then they would not be happy that you are human and physically limited in how much output you can produce.
I've seen all the behaviors you mention in people that are working in the office - and worse, some are actually working, but so bad at it it would be better if they were actually slacking off; at least they'd enjoy themselves.
> your job is only temporary anyway
In tech it kind of is though? See layoffs and such.
Again I'm not defending the practice and I'm the first one to loathe the enshittification of everything. But if shit behavior appears to be profitable and the local maximum the market has settled on, I don't think it's fair for individuals to be held at different standards.
But then the examples he gives about going remote, manipulating your boss, outsourcing your work to assistants, and setting up a T-shirt drop shipping company to replace your income reveal the reality of his advice. Just imagine having one of those people as your team member and you realize how much it becomes about offloading work to the team and performing poorly, even though the headlines are feel-good advice about simplifying your life.
Even the title becomes part of the double-speak. He writes about how it's not meant to be taken literally because building your lifestyle requires hard work, but then he'll share anecdotes and stories from "readers" who are living their dream lifestyle while only spending a couple hours per week responding to e-mail.
The fact is that if you want to live a good life, you have to grind it out in your early years. Not saying everyone has to grind the startup culture or 80 hour week but thinking that you can swing a 4 hour workweek at 25 is just idiotic and not realistic.
The last time he popped up on one of my feeds he was talking to someone about the benefits of sobriety and moderating alcohol consumption, so he might be pivoting toward the next wave of reducing drug and alcohol use, though I don’t know.
An OG “digital nomad blogger bro” that took it all the way to the top!
At the end of the day his voice is a refreshing twist and a net positive but with a ton of caveats.
In 2018, after the news picked up my story, I met the "true" inventor uber. This guy emailed 100s of documents as proof, newspaper clippings, a bunch of pictures with people circled in red, after all that I said "I'm not entirely sure which part you invented." This man "randomly" bumped into me in a cafe to explain it to me. He had driven hundreds of miles to be there.
On my second stint a few years later, I went to a Dan Lyons' book signing with my wife. Dan spotted me in the audience and asked me to come up on stage and tell my story to the audience. I was completely unprepared.
Later a lady accosted me to get my address and phone number so she can send me stuff. She was persistent, so I said I can give her my email so we can communicate further. It didn't sit well with her. A few days later I got an email from her. It was a few thousand words of threats, and I was going to be reported for violating Australia's laws. She had contacted ABC Australia to get my story retracted. I'm in California...
Tim Ferris is known for somewhat hyperbolic self-help content. He talks about the millions of people who follow him or consume his content regularly.
I’d suggest that the audience for people who obsessively consume this kind of self-help content is probably self-selected for a high proportion of crazy people.
So, his experience is probably well outside the norm.
Absolutely not. I've been a minor OSS celebrity for a while and even on that scale, it attracted a good number online stalkers and harassers.
Basically, if you're ever "newspaper famous", there will be completely unhinged people convinced that you're the one talking to them through their microwave, as well as rational people who make it their life mission to follow your around and "expose" you / put you down, simply because they think they deserved the limelight more than you.
Look into any kind of OSS drama and you'll realize the OSS community may have a higher proportion of crazies.
It scales with popularity and changes with demographic. I’ve known non-famous CEOs who needed security details when visiting any conference or public event because they had stalkers who would reliably appear and try to get close to them.
Even on HN I had a stalker. With a previous handle I wrote a long comment about a subject that someone found insightful. They scanned my whole comment history until they found a comment where I mentioned a company I had worked for, then did a process of elimination to figure out who I was, then started contacting me through email and other channels demanding more conversation and writing on the topic to answer their questions. It was very unsettling. I’m now more careful to leave out any identifying facts on HN.
I was interviewed by a semi-famous YouTuber in Taiwan (~100k subs) and reaped a ton of benefits. Had one bad encounter though: one of the viewers came into my restaurant and had a super bizarre interaction with me about it, standing next to me and talking well after close while I washed dishes, repeating talking points from the video and not getting increasingly strong hints to leave. Had to straight up throw him out in the end.
Never really felt unsafe, but it was bizarre to have such an uncomfortable interaction with someone fawning over me like that, all because they saw me in a video with only 150k videos!
^ those are not rational people.
A few folks in my social circles are _very_ minor public figures, more in the vein of "occasionally does a talking head segment on CNN" than "wins an Oscar" and even many of them have had to deal with obsessive attention from the unwell, threats, and people assuming they're rich and begging for money.
There are also a ton of people who have never especially groomed the mass market though they're pretty well known in their industry.
Becoming well known even in a smallish circle of a few hundred or thousand people will likely immediately lead to stalkers and crazies coming out after you. My theory is they are directly drawn to people who make some sort of splash, for whatever reason, even if it’s local and small.
Like John Lennon just made music and he got shot and killed for it. Jodie Foster naively signed up for an erotic role in a movie and was stalked for it.
It was insane. It was full of people randomly asking to meet up with him in tons of different cities, people asking him to review their movie scripts/theatrical projects, people asking him for money, and women either offering to have sex with him or asking him to marry them. All in public, and just day after day like that.
Or did Hoffmann steal from Ferriss?
It is a mixed bag for sure, but in terms of risk/reward it is best to have an accurate understanding of both sides so you can make damn sure you are optimizing for the right thing.
I didn’t have any opinions on his as a person other than enjoying some of his comics years ago. Then he started showing up in Twitter debates over and over again and there’s no erasing years of bizarre claims and statements from his public opinion. He’s definitely embracing his fame as a platform to push those views, not suffering victimization for one mistake years ago.
Another reason is to have normal interactions with other people. If you are famous you can't have normal interactions because you're treated with deference.
From my echo chamber, I would rather claim that by these "politically incorrect" remarks and the controversies following it, he rather got a second wave of fans.
My knowledge of the USA is imperfect. Certain stereotypes of the USA from the perspective of Americans do make it across the Atlantic to here. Are they correct or incorrect when they say the worse part of Thanksgiving is having to meet the racist in-laws?
Unless that stereotype is completely invented (and I accept that it might be, after all the UK had Boris Johnson), then "could've" doesn't imply "would've".
sincere apologies, show of remorse, and substantially + genuinely changing the toxic behaviors goes a long way. there are several celebrities who have done "unforgivable" things and yet been forgiven by the public. the problem is that the kind of person liable to make such remarks is not the kind of person likely to do some introspection to realize they're being a terrible person.
You're really rewriting history, here.
I have no problems forgiving people for mistakes, but no this is absolutely not one of those cases.
If Scott Adams had said some racist things at a work dinner, gotten written up, maybe he'd have moved past it... but now being Controversial™ is a core part of his brand, he's doubled down and doubled down...
Adams mistaken remarks included holocaust denial.
(Think whatever you want about the author; the observation is correct.)
On average, I’d say both communities are equally kind and welcoming. I’d also argue that both contain roughly the same proportion of people who are unhinged and tend to go way over the top. The difference lies in how they go over the top.
In the NetHack community, you have people who start and immediately abandon 200,000 games during a tournament because they’re trying to roll the ideal starting conditions for a very specific playstyle. Then there are the Bobby Fischer types who create their own ultra-hard forks of the game because vanilla NetHack is too easy for them. There’s also plenty of criticism. Not everyone is happy with everything, but it’s mostly civil. The worst you usually get is something like, “The dev team sucks; they ruined the game with their latest changes.”
By contrast, in the internet broadcaster’s community there’s a very toxic minority that claims to have stopped watching years ago, yet continues to hate on the creators because the channel took a direction they didn’t like. Employees get mobbed and bullied, everything is torn down, and there’s a concerted effort to ruin the fun for everyone else.
I mean, I can understand that if you spent your formative teenage years “with” these people, it really hurts when that influence disappears. But can a parasocial relationship really go that far, that you drift into this kind of behavior?
How can someone be so hurt that they hold a grudge for years, keep hate-watching the creators, and invest so much time and energy into such a destructive hobby?
At the age of 29 he wrote a self-help book. The most fascinating part is that the general public took it so enthusiastically and so seriously.
Really? Wisdom dispensed by a 29 years old? This aspect of general public keeps me amazed over and over again.
Yes, I even hvae his 4h-work-week-book on the shelf
It's raining downvotes!
This post is on the money. Being wealthy has almost all of the benefits of being famous.
Since I am perhaps such a "downer person" who lives in such a country: what should such people then do?