There’s quite a flap over Paul Graham’s recent essay.

The attacking author quotes a comment on Reddit (always a good sign) as a good summary of the essay of why we should all be terribly offended.

“I work with young startup founders in their twenties. They’re geniuses, and play by their own rules. Oh… you haven’t founded a company? You suck.”

I kinda feel like there is a reading comprehension problem here. Paul added a “Cliff’s Notes” version of the article to clarify, but I’m going to boil down what I got.

The point I got from the essay is:

“I work with young startup founders in their twenties [note: he works with me and a mess of other founders who are also in their thirties... at least 1 or 2 are in their forties]. They seem stressed, but they seem happier and more alive. I think it might be a socio-biological thing– human beings are meant to be working in smaller groups, with clearer goals, and more ‘on the line’. Small businesses and startups seem like the best place to find this environment.”

Period.

Saying stuff like “happier and more alive” (which PG did not– I’m paraphrasing) does not mean that everyone else is miserable and dead inside.

Anyways, this isn’t a wild idea. There are piles of studies out there that have found a correlation between self-employment and satisfaction/happiness. Incidentally, there’s also a strong correlation between self-employment and making less money (but that’s good news, because there are ALSO studies that show that money doesn’t do much for happiness once you manage to have enough coming in to cover the necessities)

Don Norman recently wrote a fine piece entitled “Why is 37Signals So Arrogant?“. As a student of link/click bait, I have to applaud him. Bravo! It’s right up there with Jason Calacanis’ post about firing anyone who isn’t a workaholic (his followup is a bit more measured).

So I’m going to do one better than Don Norman, and tell you exactly why 37Signals is so arrogant.

But, first I’m going to tell you that they’re not. At least not in the way that Norman is saying. 37Signals listens VERY HARD to their users. It’s amazing to note that up until recently (correct me if I’m wrong) Jason Fried read (and sometimes responded to) every single support email. In light of this, to say that 37Signals doesn’t listen to their users is absurd.

Norman and Nielsen have always argued that the best way to understand users is to watch them use your product. I tend to agree- but dealing with support yourself as a product developer is a close second– it’s an amazing way to feel the pain and confusion of your users. Most product developers hire a cheap support staff as soon as they can manage– to get themselves out of the muck. These guys didn’t.

But, come on. Read their blog. Take a look at DHH’s (in)famous “Fuck You” Slide. These guys are clearly arrogant.

Here’s why.

Take a look at the people that most people envy. Hell, start in high school and work your way up. How many times have you said, “why is that girl dating that absolute JERK?” Look at all of the people who are successful in this world and you’ll find a fairly common theme. There is a decided absence of humble and self-deprecating people. There aren’t a lot of people on top who are frequently saying, “I am wrong and you are right”.

So it’s easy to say that as software geeks we are above that. We grew up on the wrong end of “nice guys finish last” and we’re going to be bigger than that. But look at the giants of our world. Steve Jobs. Linus Torvalds. Paul Graham. Joel Spolsky. Bill Gates. Jakob Neilsen. There are certainly degrees of it in this collection of stars, but every single one of them speaks and acts with near-absolute assurance and authority. They embrace controversy and sometimes provoke it. Every single one of ‘em has been called arrogant.

As masters of marketing, the fellas at 37Signals are (either consciously or unconsciously) lumping themselves in with the guys at the top of the food chain. They are the high school equivalent of the insensitive guy in the letterman’s jacket who always gets the girl. They are talking the talk, stirring the pot, saying surprising things, pissing people off, and daring the world to prove them wrong.

You might not like them, but you’re looking at them and listening to them– which is more than you can say for the thousands of other 10-person profitable software companies out there.

I would like to finish by saying that I’m better than you. I’m right. You’re wrong. My [insert language/platform/dev tool] is better than your [insert language/platform/dev tool].

Thanks for listening.

I love the idea of contextual advertising, and I think Adsense has been a boon to entrepreneurship across the world. But it’s clearly broken. Today we received some nice feedback about RescueTime:

This is the 3rd such email we’ve received, and given that the concept of PPC advertising is increasingly well understood, is not an uncommon sentiment. Internet software has to be free, right? If so, how can a thankful user reward a company?

I wonder how advertisers feel about this? It’s no wonder that Adsense earnings are sharply dropping.

I have a hard time getting high-and-mighty about the paparazzi crap that I see in grocery store lines, given that I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the train-wreck controversies of online celebrities. I just…. can’t…. look…. away!

Over the past two weeks, one of the big memes in the echo chamber is related to stealing photos… It seems a small a capella band created a fun/goofy song about the Web 2.0 Bubble, set to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The video is a montage of photos of assorted Web 2.0 personalities, logos, etc. It’s cute. I’ll embed it below (note: this is the first time I’ve EVER embedded a YouTube video!).

IANAL, so I can’t really speak to whether this use falls under “fair use” and parody laws. I think the band in question truly believed that it does and did their best to make it right once they realized that they might be in a bit of a “gray area” (read their blog post here).

Regardless, what struck me was the strident and downright venomous response from some photographers and other “artists”. It sounds exactly like the venom spewed by real estate agents towards RedFin. It sounds a lot like some movie studios and musicians when they talk about what’s happening in their industry. These people aren’t angry at just this little a capella band. They are angry at the entire world for evolving past their business model. They’re angry about becoming obsolete. How obsolete they become depends on how well they adapt to the world– not how loudly they demand that the world adapt to THEM. Off the top of my head, here are a few things that are changing the business of professional photography:

• Cheap startup costs. Used to be that a professional photographer had to invest thousands in cameras, lenses, and development equipment. It still isn’t cheap to have good equipment, but it’s cheaper.
• Time and expenses of developing photos is greatly reduced (thanks to digital photography and Photoshop).
• There is a growing pile of semi-pro photographers who are happy to give away their photos or sell them royalty-free for a few bucks.ne?
• There are great marketplaces out there for cheap/good stock photography. iStockPhoto, anyone?
• Print media is dying. Slowly, but it’s dying.
• The global marketplace. For many photos, you just don’t need an onshore photographer. If I want a cool close-up shot of a keyboard and mouse, there are plenty of great photographers in Eastern Europe that have probably already have taken just such a photo and are delighted to sell it for a few bucks, royalty free.

Is the photography/stock photo business dead? Not by a long shot, and not for a long time… But clearly there’s a shakeup in the works.

Here’s that embedded video. If you haven’t already seen it, enjoy:

Alan Steele (ex-Jobster colleague) tweets:

“using a mac for the first time in many years. so far i don’t see what all the fuss is about. it’s just another desktop…”

I tend to agree. A computer is a means to an end, and an XP Windows box usually gets me to my “end” just fine.

There are certainly some differences among the platforms, but I think it mostly comes down to how the Mac makes the user FEEL (which is partially a UI thing and partially a marketing coup by Apple). [Note: During the writing of this meandering post, my PC made me feel pretty annoyed by popping up a modal window prompting me to restart my fooking computer *3* times.]

Which leads me to one of my favorite blog posts by Seth Godin.

Aren’t convinced that Apple can manipulate your feelings? Think you’re above all that? You should check out the priming studies done by John Bargh. Here’s a good description of one (some lazy Googling only yielded one good overview– from some Christian blog. Please note: I am a Pastafarian and do not read Christian blogs if I can help it):

Bargh and several colleagues chose a group of undergraduates as subjects and gave them two scrambled-sentence tests. The first test was sprinkled with rude words like “disturb,” “bother,” and “intrude.” The second test was sprinkled with polite words like “respect,” “considerate,” and “yield.”

In both cases, the tests were indiscreet. None of the subjects picked up on the word trend consciously. But it primed them subconsciously.

After taking the five-minute test, students were asked to walk down the hall and talk to the person running the experiment about their next assignment. An actor was strategically engaged in conversation with the experimenter when the students would arrive. And the goal was to see how long it would take students to interrupt.

Bargh wanted to know if the subjects who were primed with polite words would take longer to interrupt the conversation than those primed with rude words. They thought the subconscious priming would have a slight affect. But the affect was pretty profound in quantitative terms.

The people primed with rude words interrupted, on average, after only five minutes. But 82% of the people primed with polite words never interrupted at all. Who knows how long they would have patiently and politely waited if the researchers hadn’t give the test a ten-minute time limit. [Note by Tony: Those damn ethics committees... Milgram would never be able to get away with his experiment today!]

From a product/marketing point of view, I’m forced to conclude that we’re getting “primed” every day in thousands of subtle ways… And that I’m probably as susceptible as the next guy.

We’re definitely getting off-topic here, but there’s another pretty frightening study about priming ((source)):

In a separate study, when African-American students were asked to identify their race on a pre-test questioner, the simple act of checking the box next to African American was enough to prime them with negative cultural stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement. The number of items they got right was cut in HALF. Malcolm Gladwell makes a strong point that priming is a powerful thing. Personally I think this has incredible implications in our society. If ‘smart’ is really just a frame of mind, these social cues (such as African American=less intelligent) are shaping not only the results of standardized tests, but the way we interact with each other in business and other professional fields.

The idea that priming can actually effect performance on intelligence-based tests is pretty damn horrifying. Makes me think twice about the multicultural efforts we endured in school… Maybe we should be emphasizing our sameness rather than our differences (if those differences come with baggage that actually inhibit performance/success through priming)? Of course, it’d be better yet to get rid of the baggage.

So, er…. Returning to my original point, which was… Oh yeah! Something about Macs, right? Apple has invested considerable time and effort trying to understand how people want to feel and making damn sure their products (and their marketing) makes them feel that way. That (plus a marginally better OS with less legacy issues and less drivers to deal with) is what the fuss is about (IMO).