Don't throw stones on me, but... Why on HN?
(besides, I am as saddened as you are. I truly loved his as an actor and comedian - I just used his acronym scene from Good Morning Vietnam 4 days ago in a presentation I gave).
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Depression is a fairly relevant topic for this audience (most audiences, really, but I've seen quite a bit of it in hackerdom, though I'm lucky enough to never have suffered from it myself in the clinical sense).
If that doesn't work for you, he was an avid gamer, often talking in interviews about his Doom, Quake, etc, playing back in the day and his daughter is named Zelda (after the game). That has to earn him some nerd points, right?
Because he was brilliant, witty and profoundly original. Smart people building shit care about all those things and the people who embody them.
Case in point, you used his content a few days ago.
His death is deeply saddening to me.
Man, can we quit frivolously downvoting people (when they aren't being jerks) in this thread? Robin Williams apparently committed suicide. We are going to honor his passing by crapping on people in the discussion about him? Seriously?
I just never understand and am always disgusted by the human habit of saying nice things of the dead, now that we can no longer actually do anything for them, and then turning around and being ugly to everyone within reach. We seem to mostly be nice when it no longer matters at all.
Just because it's Hacker News doesn't mean the only thing we care about is hacking.
Just because you care about something, it doesn't mean it belongs to hacker news. Otherwise, let the porn stuff begin.
HN is a community.
I heard about it in the car on a sports radio show. People were calling in to a sports show to talk about Robin Williams.
Sometimes the purpose of a community is not the thing it was formed for, but just to be a community.
Probably his proximity to the SF Bay area too. It was quite common to see him in San Francisco and I'm sure many of the posters on HN had crossed paths with him at one point or another.
Visiting California as a kid, one of only the things I distinctly remember is his trolls/stuffed-animals/dolls and silly-shit placed in his window facing the street.
What a guy.
Obviously enough HN readers find it interesting, in the same way that a lot of social justice articles or articles about San Francisco real estate prices are.
Because he likely had a positive impact on you and every one of your peers. There are many lesser things that have made it to the front page of HN.
The context is very smart (if not brilliant) people who suffer from hidden depression.
> Why on HN?
Who knows. Make something up?
He was an amazing and exceptional person. That's good enough for me.
I had the same thought, but...Robin Williams.
>Don't throw stones on me, but... Why on HN?
Because breaking the rules (like what "fits HN") is part of being a hacker. Or a human.
Plus, that's how social sites work. There's no "why X is on top" -- it's on top because it was voted on top.
>Because breaking the rules (like what "fits HN") is part of being a hacker. Or a human.
This sounds like justification for having no rules. I don't know if that's a good idea.
>Plus, that's how social sites work. There's no "why X is on top" -- it's on top because it was voted on top.
This is fair enough, I think.
In any event, R.I.P. Robin Williams!
>This sounds like justification for having no rules. I don't know if that's a good idea.
Does it seem like some general anarchy has erruped on HN, and literary all kinds of posts have been voted on top?
I don't think so: it's just some rule-bending when HN voters feel like it.
I haven't suggested that general anarchy has erupted. I've suggested that "breaking the rules is part of being human" is a crappy justification for breaking rules.
Perhaps you need a better justification on a break-by-break basis, but as a general philosophical/stance-on-life justification, it holds up.
I mean, if we were to really discuss this on a substancial level you'd also have to justify what is so great about following rules in the first place. After all, people have been following stupid rules (including laws) for ages.
But if I were to do that, I'd have to go deeper. I'd have to start justifying everything that I do. And I mean everything. I'd have to justify my justifications, and justify those meta-justifications. I'd have to justify the need to justify things at all. Soon, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed because it would take me all day (perhaps longer!) to justify doing so.
I'd certainly also have to justify having this conversation with you. I can't do that, so thanks anyway.
Some dork already flagged the story, so its been knocked to page 3 or 4. Even if you don't think the content is appropriate, the problem with the flag approach is that it will keep popping up around the whole day since people think it hasn't been covered yet.