You can do it, be resilient and stubborn, go against the grain and things start to work out.
The correct advice to give is "don't do it. It's really hard and you'll probably fail".
Anyone who quits after receiving that advice was never going to make it anyway.
Is this genuinely the advice you'd give to someone who's less experienced in life? No wonder society is the way it is, most people have extremely low ambitions and then don't even bother working on those.
Maybe an intermediate position is to say, "Before you attempt to beat the odds, make sure you can survive the odds beating you." Because the odds are, they will.
everyone has their own status quos and goals.
I remember a few of his dumbest schemes - one, he would get gift visa cards, run the balance down to pennies, then as a restaurant server for some crappy chain, would charge a customer with a big tip, put it on the drained card, and due to some weird quirk with the way they processed tips back then, the money would hit his paycheck before the decline would happen. I pointed out it was stupid easy to get caught by the bank and his restaurant but he insisted it was genius and foolproof. Got caught in a month or two, fired, nearly got in a lot of legal trouble but somehow got out of it.
His all time dumbest 'scheme' was when a major automaker was going into bankruptcy at some point during the financial crisis, the stock was pennies. So he invested all his savings, some thousands of dollars, into buying the stocks. Even being so young and barely financially literate at that point I was aghast, tried to explain that when the bankruptcy finishes, his stock will be worth nothing. No, no, he assured me - imagine - this stock was $20 before, when it's $20 again I'll be a gazillionaire. I tried very very hard to convince him that was not correct and of course he lost everything. Shortly after he got into dealing marijuana but by that point I had determined he wasn't worth hanging out with anymore. No idea what happened to him.
It made me think of Justin.tv, which was Justin Kan streaming himself. There weren’t betting markets, but today there would be.
Twitch—what it ended up as–shows how much people crave community. Like other social media, there are many examples in chats of people with believed friendships and parasocial relationships with streamers. For smaller streams, sometimes these are real casual friendships. For larger ones, it’s the dark other side of Aaron.
Anyway, I’m glad prediction markets didn’t exist in those days. I wish they didn’t now (we don’t need more outlets for gambling, in my opinion), but this was a great story nonetheless.
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I had spent my whole life dreaming of making my own overnight success on the internet, but had taught someone with no ethics how to do it instead.
This is such a great line and one I know so many people related to as soon as they read it.
You're a great writer, thank you for this today.
I can't tell what I felt in the ending paragraph, but I can be sure of this is the strongest outcome I felt, from an web page.
Congrats, again.
Even thinking/writing about this now, it still makes obvious sense and I'm surprised it hasn't been seriously made yet with crypto: if there's a pot of billions, contributed to by millions, the incentive becomes not just about the money, but the adoration, protection and power that would come with doing so many people a favour.
I am absolutely not a writer so take this with a big grain of salt. Something about narrator felt like they weren't a real character and the whole story was just Aaron's third person. Maybe because the narrator didn't seem to have any intentional effect on Aaron's trajectory? Not sure if that was meant as a way to deepen that aspect of the story, but at times it felt a little awkward.
I don't really know anybody like that, but there are certainly aspects of that personality that I can understand. I've never had much desire to get into bitcoin, meme stocks, prediction markets, and other forms of gambling - though at times I have felt a bit of FOMO.
Another aspect I liked about the story is that when he goes from being a failure to being a success (at least in his own mind and to his followers) - despite having the same qualities that he has had for the whole story - he goes from being a character that you pity to one that you resent.
Well written. Certainly bridges the gap between fiction and a plausible and believable first person narrative.
Are you familiar with the US magazine The Sun? https://www.thesunmagazine.org/ I have read several short story submissions at The Sun; typically first person submissions which blur the lines between true first person stories, and fiction.
Try to submit your story to The Sun.
That’s cathartic for some. For me, the narrator rather resembles one of the local tech millionaires, envious of the billionaires. The story doesn’t seem to know the narrator’s dishonesty.
However, taste modulates wildly.
He succeeded, however, my take on the ending is that the whole world went crazy and that's why his idea ultimately proved successful.
One thing that I give you as feedback, maybe for another version, or for future stories, would be to develop a bit more on why keep the friendship with Aaron. I know it was there some reasons, but for me it was a bit harder to follow. But even this is a small thing.
Tell us if you have something else written to share.
Thanks for your feedback (I got similar feedback from my friend and my partner who both write). I agree that this felt like a bit of a hole in the story as I was writing it, that I never managed to satisfactorily patch up.
> Tell us if you have something else written to share.
This is my first piece of long-form fiction, have submitted a couple of new pieces to competitions since, and aim to post those and more soon!
https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2006/12/i875/4998_big_v...
Thanks for sharing it, and good luck!
I also didn't see the notice it was a short story. So I was a bit puzzled when reading how Aaron built his own exchange as a novice programmer. To me building an exchange is high up on the scale of programming difficulty. Its one of those things you have to do extremely well or else no one will trust your platform.
IMHO, with the second paragraph, Aaron starts to fade into background. While you increasingly describe your character in-depth, but also more and more often seem to advert an urge to apologize for ... something. I wonder what that is!?
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[...]The story is written really well. Lots of other people have said great stuff about it, so I get some room to criticize a bit too!
I just wonder about how you constructed the ending. It seemed like a different ending was coming in, and then the sudden <spoiler> out of nowhere is almost a diablo ex machina. It's just someone who comes out of nowhere, does one thing, and vanishes again, right at the end of the story, just to finish it. It's like "and then he woke up, and realized it was all a dream" ; except not quite as bad as that makes it sound. Intellectually (sherlock holmes reader style) you could see it coming, but somehow story-arc-wise not so much.
I was totally on board with the story right up to that point though, so definitely good craft.
(edit: was it deliberately a Shaggy Dog Story? If so the fact that there is a trope called "shoot the shaggy dog" is almost too on the nose, so I'm wondering if you had that in mind! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShootTheShaggyDo... )
I agree with you that the ending is a bit rushed, which I think can come off as forced. I’d like to blame the word count for the competition I submitted this into… :D
I’d been thinking about the idea for this story for a couple of weeks before I actually started writing it, from which I had quite a visceral idea for the ending. So I guess in some ways I could have tried to weave it in more, but I also did kind of want it to be a shocker / surprise!
Matt Levine says that prediction markets don't just predict future events. They also create strong incentives to make them happen (or not happen).
If you already knew that then the end was, I won't say predictable (hehe) - I was a bit surprised - but also not out of left field.
>What I'm saying is: that the sum total of blog posts I have actually published (for myself, not for work) is zero.
thanks for publishing this story. it kept me hooked throughout. i hope you continue to publish more.
Thanks, a good read!
Great story and creating the character Aaron. You did an excellent job in making a very believable person that I think most of us have run into in tech adjacent spaces.
Different kind of story I reckon.
(Ref: https://www.quotes.net/mquote/3799 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkoPq5AOCOA )
>rhythmically ejected spurts of bright red blood
Yeah man, like in music, synesthesia, I get you.
Unsurprisingly the author also makes music: https://rorz.io/music
One of his songs is called "Do androids dream of real sheep?"
What a fresh take on that classic quote! Made me spurt my kombucha, lol.
How can someone be SO talented. Thanks for sharing.
== It's a fake story ==
Do you not read any fiction at all? Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
I posted it here on a punt and getting front page of HN is 10x the feeling any writing contest could give me!
Thanks to all who read and commented, and glad to hear it resonates with some of you!
[EDIT]: There've been a lot more comments since I wrote this one. I want you all to know that I've read every single comment and am ever so grateful for everyone who responded here / took the time to read the story!
I also didn't see that it said "This is a short story" at the top, so I read more than half thinking it was nonfiction. Heh.
Breath of fresh air between all the AI """writing""".
Thanks OP, great read