Minecraft creator Notch shares the darker side of life after a big exit

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/29/minecraft-creator-notch-shares-the-darker-side-of-life-after-a-big-exit/

by us0r • 11 years ago

155 138 11 years ago

cies• 11 years ago

Good luck Notch! If you want to get yr normal life back, then just donate all to charity (Watsi?)... Choice is yours. :)

bshimmin4• 11 years ago

Perhaps he needs to meet up with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for a nice lunch over which they can explain to him how to do good, mature things with his staggering wealth, rather than behaving like a baby.

striking2• 11 years ago

Money is not happiness. You would do well to understand that we are all human.

And I assume that's what he's trying to do, is find a mature way to spend his money. In a way that makes the world better.

bshimmin4• 11 years ago

He's not doing a brilliantly good job of spending his money maturely so far. Unless spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in night clubs counts as mature.

PhasmaFelis3• 11 years ago

Money is not happiness. You would do well to understand that we are all human.

I thought that was bshimmin's point. Notch thought that Microsoft money would make him happy, and he hasn't yet figured out how to deal with the fact that it doesn't.

Killswitch2• 11 years ago

Yeah because having wealth means you can't be a normal person with normal feelings. Fuck notch, he's rich, right? Suck it up buddy! /s

forloop2• 11 years ago

Probably because his problems are a subset which most people would consider trivial.

So yes, fuck notch and his inability to maximise his personal utility.

codingdave• 11 years ago

I don't think negativity and an attitude of superiority is universal after getting a big exit. I have know a few people who have done very well for themselves, and while they do develop caution when discussing money or business, in general they have had improved outlooks on life, and become friendlier people, spending more time following their personal interests and passions.

So for Notch, I hope this is just a cherry picked selection of tweets to make a point, because if that is how he is truly feeling most of the time, he needs therapy.... or maybe just a hobby.

ivraatiems• 11 years ago

These are a string of very recent tweets all sent in a row. Definitely not cherry-picked. Sorry :(

tw042• 11 years ago

That doesn't make them not cherry picked. If there's two years of down-to-earth tweets, and then this, they're cherry picked.

noir_lord• 11 years ago

My "holy shit I have more money than I ever expected" plan is to buy a 60ft classic motor yacht and then go get my masters ticket so I can crew it myself then spend the rest of my life traveling from port to port around the world, no big houses, fast cars or any of that jazz, just me, just a comfortable boat and the rest of the world to visit at my own pace.

PhasmaFelis3• 11 years ago

Yeah, this is kind of depressing. He had struck me as such a down-to-earth guy, before. There was a good few years when he was still living in the same house and working his old dev job part-time, because he wanted to keep in touch with things instead of just being a zillionaire.

Apparently the appeal faded, and now he's decided, hey, why not act like a zillionaire? And he's discovered that it makes him miserable, but it hasn't yet occurred to him that he doesn't have to act like a zillionaire.

aw3c2• 11 years ago

I was hoping for some long article or interview, not a couple of embedded tweets.

Profan• 11 years ago

I reckon this would imply some sort of effort on the author's part, can't have that can we?!

Well, my snark side, these twittericles are getting a bit old.

I do hope notch bounces back, everyone has their ups and downs, and it's really hard to judge what's actually going on from an outside context, especially through a medium as scattered as Twitter.

PhasmaFelis3• 11 years ago

There was a really interesting, and more even-handed, Forbes article about six months back: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-mar...

omonra3• 11 years ago

I'm actually pretty grateful to the editor who compiled them.

I don't care for Twitter and would have no way of reading this story otherwise.

SmellyGeekBoy5• 11 years ago

Agreed, I should think that anyone interested in his personal life already follows him on Twitter and would have already seen this. Hopefully it will lead to a bigger interview / blog post from the man himself on the subject as it's certainly interesting (to me at least, and I imagine a lot of the HN crowd).

thorn• 11 years ago

Huh. My sympathies to Notch. And my disrespect to this kind of news.

bhouston2• 11 years ago

It is too bad he didn't figure out a way to settle down. Once you have a family and out of the party scene, things are much more normal. You have a routine and good priorities and a plan for the future. I think unlimited money combined with being in the high intensity and fairly superficial rich person's party circuit is likely not something that leads to fulfillment.

I know a bunch of fairly well off people and those with prioritized family lives seem to be the ones who are dealing with it the best.

FreeHugs• 11 years ago

I find the idea of a "family life" nothing but boring.

Ygg2• 11 years ago

That depends on what you find meaningful. Some like to build model houses, other like to report from dangerous places, some or out to help people and some just have children.

irln7• 11 years ago

When you're young you might feel the tedium of taking care of a kiddo...drudgery of the daily regime. But as you get older you realize that the effort or lack thereof you put into those tasks can give life great meaning or be your biggest regret.

SmellyGeekBoy5• 11 years ago

Would be interesting to find out how old you are? I'm 31, all my friends are married and popping out babies and while I'm in a very happy long term relationship, I honestly don't see the appeal (thankfully my partner agrees).

I'm just wondering if something will prompt us to wake up one day and change our minds, but it certainly hasn't happened yet.

omonra3• 11 years ago

Yep - exactly.

I think a lot of it has to do with the self-perception that as a man with significantly increased wealth, your pool of women who would be interested in you is vastly expanded.

But then you realize that the women aren't interested in 'you' but the wealth itself - which brings a whole different set of problems.

tw042• 11 years ago

So... I get that for someone famous, but notch REALLY isn't famous. If I asked basically any member of my family who "notch" is, I would bet that the number of people who could tell me would be 0. If I even surveyed my "geek" friends, I would be the rate of return would be under 50%.

If he doesn't flaunt the cash, he could very easily find someone who likes "him for who he is". Hell, go rent a normal apartment, get a 9-5 job for a while, and "pretend" you aren't rich for a couple of months.

fdanconia• 11 years ago

Money amplifies who you really are.

drtse4• 11 years ago

Someone downvoted you, go figure, even if maybe you expressed it simply, your comment is spot on.

zzalpha• 11 years ago

Once you have a family and out of the party scene, things are much more normal.

Careful. I'm fairly sure that's actually the technical definition of begging the question. That is, because you assume settling down and having kids is "normal", naturally doing that will, you know, make things "more normal".

In fact, I'll put money down that if he had that house with the white picket fence and 2.5 children and suddenly became a billionaire, odda are most of his problems would still exist. Friends would still be alienated. People would still be jealous. The only difference is he'd have a wife who might (hopefully) support him and a couple dependents to worry about.

elixerprog93• 11 years ago

From his feed:

"like three people thanked me for the two million kronor after tax bonus i gave from my own private money. Others said I was cheap."

Per Google, the exchange rate for Swedish Kronor to US Dollars is 0.12, so 2,000,000 Kronor works out to $240,000, which while certainly a nice and possibly even life-changing bonus is hardly enough to retire on in Sweden given the cost of living.

Considering the company sold for more than $2.5 billion and Mojang had so few employees, Notch could have easily made all of them millionaires while still walking away himself a billionaire. In fact, probably the only reason they didn't all end up rich is because Notch never gave any of his employees any equity in the company whatsoever.

Honestly, "cheap" isn't a completely inaccurate description of his conduct here. But it was his company, and now it's his money, and he can do as he pleases with it, but publicly complainig that his former employees aren't especially grateful to him, despite his relative stinginess (no stock options at all?), is silly.

sp332• 11 years ago

Who said anything about retiring?

SmellyGeekBoy5• 11 years ago

I'd agree, but remember that the others weren't all in it from the beginning. Notch had already done all the groundwork and the game was massively successful before "Mojang" was even a thing. I think $240,000 bonus on top of their (I assume at least competitive) salaries seems incredibly generous to me - not to mention that they're all still gainfully employed after the sale.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a fan and don't have any loyalty either way, it would be good to hear from someone on the inside.

elixerprog93• 11 years ago

I'm not trying to hate on Notch, just observing that even a small % of equity would have been enough to cover his employees.

rootlocus5• 11 years ago

From what I heard, his "groundwork" was a terrible mess of spaghetti code that was awfully hard to work with. Most likely the only thing he left behind was the IP and fan base.

rcraft2• 11 years ago

I thought the consensus on HN was that developers would much rather collect competitive salaries instead of options.

This comment from earlier this week comes to mind (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10132343):

"Most people will negotiate for more salary because they understand that options will just fuck them over. Money won't."

No surprise, I guess people want it both ways. Competitive salary AND lots of options.

elixerprog93• 11 years ago

Notch never offered them the choice.

lambda• 11 years ago

I'm not sure there necessarily is a "consensus" on HN.

However, in general, people feel that you shouldn't take a very large salary cut just for a few options. Most startups are not going to have a significant exit. Some (like Zynga), will manage to find a way of screwing you out of options if they do have a substantial exit. Only a few will have options that have a very large upside.

So, if your options only add up to some very small percentage of the company, they shouldn't be given in lieu of a very large amount of salary. Sure, you're working on something exciting at a startup and there is some potential upside, so maybe take a 10% salary cut and a few options to compensate for it. But don't take a 50% salary cut (or a 100% cut, where you're only paid in options), and look at your options and say "it's worth it because these have a chance of being worth millions."

dustingetz• 11 years ago

you've missed some nuance. Options at a startup-of-the-day are not valued. Options at companies that are clearly valuable are highly desirable.

ryanackley2• 11 years ago

A part of me considers this a geek tabloid piece. "Hey everyone, this famous geek is rich and miserable. Omg!" I feel a little guilty even commenting.

Another part of me is disgusted with the way he resents his former employees. There does seem to be a miser mentality at play here. He deserved his success but would he had gotten there without the right people? I sense absolutely no gratitude. Most of them were most likely required to work at Microsoft for a certain period of time to receive their bonuses.

staticelf• 11 years ago

He deserved his success but would he had gotten there without the right people?

Not that I care much about this issue, but yes the game was very popular before any company was created.

serve_yay• 11 years ago

Not giving equity strikes me as a tactical error, because the hurt feelings seem to be worth a lot more to him than the money he now has and apparently isn't interested in. I understand the justification for not doing it, but it seems like he's paying a different price for it now.

wolfgke• 11 years ago

At least in Germany (I assume in Sweden it's the same, but IANAL) it is legally very involved to offer equity - this is the reason why it's highly unusual to have equity as part of the compensation.

gambiting• 11 years ago

Just as a sidenote - nobody gives employees equity in EU. I've worked and know many people who work in IT and being given equity is pretty much unheard of. It's pretty much a US-only practice.

myth_buster• 11 years ago

I think the main reason behind this is a lack of purpose.

The transition period between completion of a long time project and the beginning of your next will leave everyone vulnerable.

Once he finds the purpose and focus, all these would not matter.

nathan_f772• 11 years ago

Also probably the lack of a significant other or close friends to share your experiences with. I knew that feeling, and it doesn't matter how much money or purpose you have.

ablation• 11 years ago

Geez. What an terrible article.

rootlocus5• 11 years ago

I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for the guy. He thought his success was a testament to his engineering greatness, acting like he was John Carmack. Money doesn't buy character, decency or real friends. Notch is feeling the sting of his arrogance? He doesn't have my sympathy.

j-pb• 11 years ago

He was just really lucky. He stole most of the ideas from older games, and repackaged them in a horrible turd of a codebase, acting like he invented programming.

That guy build a folder tree in the filesystem because of "performance", which means he put a trie on a b-tree because he didn't know about the latter.

Also so much for "I'm going to open source this, once I'm rich and famous".

Dwolb• 11 years ago

I get that it's isolating, hard to trust people, and difficult to find tasks rewarding when you can have everything you've ever wanted ...but it can't be all that bad because this problem can be self-remedied.

Theoretically Notch could bring himself out of the stratosphere by removing enough money from his account that he can be perceptibly normal. e.g. donate most of his fortune and leaving himself only enough to qualify as 'FU money'

byuu2• 11 years ago

Exactly. I can't feel bad for people complaining about having too much money, when it's such a simple problem to solve if you really mean it. And there are so many people who really need that money, too.

Even at my meager $70k income, I've gotten some sense that after a certain point, money's not going to greatly increase my quality of life. And if I had billions, I wouldn't give the money all away either, but at least I wouldn't complain about what a burden it was, living in my $70 million Beverly Hills mansion. That empathy has to go both ways, and those words are really grating to the truly less fortunate in life who can't even put food on the table reliably.

nathan_f772• 11 years ago

I was just looking at that $70 million mansion, and comparing it with my $25 hotel room in Thailand. The bathroom here is super modern, and the shower is amazing. Have just spent the last few hours rewatching The Office with my wife. Stuff like that doesn't depend on how much money you have. You can be lonely with billions of dollars, and you certainly have the right to complain about it.

I don't really know if I would be any happier with 17 bathrooms and a home cinema with seating for 30 people. Especially not if you're constantly second guessing your friends' motives when they come over to watch movies.

Yeah, I think I'd probably settle for a $4 million house in a great location. You know, nothing too fancy. Oh, and a jacuzzi way up high with a view of the mountains and the ocean.

josscrowcroft2• 11 years ago

When Open Exchange Rates [0] began making decent returns - not a $2.5billion exit trajectory by any means, but certainly enough to set me apart from my peers - I felt I was on the path to something great. I thought something like "Now that I don't need to trade my time for money, I'll be [popular, happy, fulfilled, 'enough']... and I'll grow automatically."

I awoke years later (thankfully only two) to find that I had none of what it would take to be happy, or to grow as a man, and a seeming eternity of free time stretching out before me to enjoy my comfortable isolation.

I only had to taste the false freedom of wealth - really just an appetiser - to know that no amount of resources would fulfil me if I could not meet basic emotional needs, go through pain and challenge, be vulnerable, build relationships, and self-nurture. God forbid I ever come into the kind of money he has - but if I do, I pray I would have the courage to start from scratch to build the life that nourishes my spirit.

I think many will take a high position, point a finger at this man, and feel good about themselves. It's easy to look at him and say "High value problems," and "He has nothing to complain about," or even "He should be X/do Y...", etc. The real tragedy for me is that his issue can be so socially unacceptable.

I rate him for being open and vulnerable about this part of the journey and hope he finds the peace he deserves.

[0] https://openexchangerates.org

cryoshon6• 11 years ago

Honestly, I expect the rich to just buy a damn therapist rather than complain to the rest of us. They have enough money to pay someone to care, but they yap to us and expect it for free.

sowbug• 11 years ago

You mentioned money five times in two sentences. This is in a conversation about a person trying to talk about feelings.

chii• 11 years ago

and as someone who may not have their money problem solved, it makes it difficult to discuss the possibility that feelings of this nature a real problem. It's similar to the privilege problem that man faces - no man can really understand their privilege and the position a women is in when she is discriminated, because men don't face that problem and never has.

josscrowcroft2• 11 years ago

I was sorry to read this.

From my perspective, this comment broadly captures what is so tragic for me about his situation and the potential pitfalls of isolation-by-riches: the apparent fact that the majority of people discount a wealthy man's cry for help (read "willingness to be vulnerable"), dehumanising him and robbing him of an opportunity to heal - whether through therapy, community, or some other significant life change.

hobs• 11 years ago

They do that because they measure the rich person's woes and find that they are considerably less than theirs, its basically that they don't appreciate the person in the sedan chair complaining about the heat.

A wealthy person is still a person, but when another looks at their burden and finds it lighter than their own, they often don't pity them because they perceive they can much more easily mobilize their own help (see: an article about a billionaire's emotional state vs European immigration crisis.)

Basically, the "pitfall" of isolation by riches is a problem a large portion of humans would like to have.

cryoshon6• 11 years ago

Nobody is robbing Notch of his opportunity to heal. We as internet commentators can't do that. We're not really dehumanizing him, either-- just pointing out that his burden is light relative to most.

If you're having trouble carrying a light weight, sure, get help. It just seems pretty childish to complain to an open microphone about a something so petty. I have no doubt these emotions are very tough for Notch, and I see that I would probably have the same problems in his situation.

But seriously, this isn't the kind of thing you say to a wide audience without being completely out of touch. He should know better.

wordbank2• 11 years ago

This kind of attitude is the exact source of his suffering.

charlesdm• 11 years ago

Just because one is wealthy does not mean that all your problems will suddenly go away. Yes, you won't end up on the street because you can't pay your rent, but it does create a ton of new problems that can lead to isolation.

A few that come to mind, that I've noticed with wealthy friends:

1. Time. You'll probably have plenty. You're free. What do you do all day when your old friends are working? That probably means making new friends. But it can also lead to disconnects with old friends. Most people don't understand.

2. Ulterior motives of people. Imagine you meet a person - any person. Most relatively wealthy people will assume this person wants something from them. Guess what, people DO usually want something from them. This can lead to problems bonding and/or having relationships.

3. Investing and taxes: what if I invest badly and lose all my capital? Ok, so you invest in a property in Spain and a few years later sell it. You pay $x tax. For some silly reason the authorities don't agree, and want to levy additional tax x2. On top of that, your tax lawyer isn't great, and you need to go find a new one. It'll drag on for years, going through the courts.

etc etc

Many people would say, cry me a river. Obviously it's better to be wealthy than to be poor, but it's not all it's made out to be. No therapist is going to fix that.

Problems are problems, and I personally respect that everyone has their own set of issues in life. Wealth can be a burden.

crdoconnor• 11 years ago

Just because one is wealthy does not mean that all your problems will suddenly go away.

Nope. It does mean that you lose the right to complain though.

libria• 11 years ago

I think people find it difficult to empathize because there's a cake-and-eat-it-too problem here. He wants to enjoy his (well-deserved) wealth without the loneliness that comes with it. He can mitigate many of these problems instantly by giving up his fortune and 9 to 5'ing.

Or buy a nightclub like Jamie Zawinski, or travel the world taking photos like Tom Anderson.

cryoshon6• 11 years ago

This is just another iteration of the timeless "people invent new problems when the old problems are taken care of" law of human nature. We're all subject to it, but most of us carry it well enough to know when to shut up.

In this iteration, the rich complain that their former problems have been solved, but have been replaced by other problems as a result of solving those initial problems. It is a fallacy to assume that these new problems are of the same magnitude of the other problems, and they really should not be treated with the same set of thoughts. The problems of emotional awkwardness with newfound vast wealth are not the same magnitude as the problems of building a company, and those are not the same magnitude as overcoming past emotional abuse, or struggling to feed your family, or trying to avert emergently approaching death. See how I've captured several logs of magnitude here?

The conflation of magnitude is what causes the negative reactions when rich people complain. They are complaining about things at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These are philosophical (academic/only relevant under very narrow circumstances) problems that are in all likelihood completely unsolvable by complaining to others. These are the kinds of problems that are solvable with critical introspection, discussion with close others, and discussion with professionals. You get no points for throwing yourself onto the pyre and wailing to the world-- there is tumblr for that, and it isn't a realistic shot at solving the problems.

Anyways, a more direct response to your points:

1. I've been in this situation, and just ended it recently. There were no disconnects with old friends... I think you'd have to have shitty friends for this to be a problem.

2. Everyone already has ulterior motives and purposes for each other. Sometimes all you want from the other person is friendship, and if it's a mutual feeling, it's great. This is human nature-- everyone does want something from everyone else. The more you have, the more they want.

3. I'm not sure if this is a serious statement. This isn't a problem on most people's radars, and is really irrelevant because you mention that these people can pay others to deal with these problems for them. If the money is stressing you out, just ditch it... oh wait, you like it too much. Clam up and make do, or talk to a therapist-- one of the few people who will take this line of thought seriously.

4. Of course wealthy people can be miserable and wealth can be a burden, but the beauty of wealth is that you have far more resources to help you carry burdens. This means that when the wealth complain about their burden, the rest of us snort derisively-- it's as though they have forgotten that the weight on everyone else is heavier and more unwieldy.

jfoster• 11 years ago

Am I naive, or are these problems a degree easier to solve than problems of people who are not wealthy?

Problem 1: Use your new-found time to work on projects. These could be new companies that grow your wealth, endeavours that seek to create a change that you care about, or doing things to help people that you care about. There are other alternatives, too. Joining investment groups. Taking holidays. Consulting.

Problem 2: For chance meetings, I can see how this is a problem, but if you primarily meet new people through existing social circles, that might mitigate this effect a bit. I don't have this problem, but I have noticed that I've made lots of great friends through existing friends.

Problem 3: Could you not hire someone (or a company) to manage this sort of thing? I realize plenty of oversight would still be prudent, but it should alleviate the stress of it somewhat. Diversity in investments should mitigate the risk of losing everything. Limiting investments to areas that are well understood might also be a good idea for avoiding tax surprises.

I agree that wealthy people will definitely still have life problems, but I'm still not convinced it has to be these ones. Forms of social isolation (eg. imbalance that notch mentioned) seem much more plausible and nowhere near as easily remedied.

shkkmo3• 11 years ago

Yeah, seriously. If your money is making you so unhappy, put some in a trust for your kids and donate the rest to worthy charities. There, problem solved.

I don't really have any sympathy.

Plus, his former staff who he sold out needs to reach out to him to apologize? "So fuck all of you. Fuck you so hard."

I lost a lot of respect for that man.

andrepd3• 11 years ago

You may be getting downvoted, but you are not wrong. If money truly made him unhappy, why didn't he keep a few million in his bank account, invest another couple million or put in a trust fund, and donate the remaining money? He would still be a rich man, live for the rest of his life without working and without financial worries, and the super-richness that seemingly made him so sad and alienated his friends is gone.

As it stands, he just comes across as somebody wiping tears with a 100 dollar bill.

dang2• 11 years ago

This comment breaks the HN guidelines. It also shouldn't have been a reply to the top comment. (We detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10140066.)

Please don't post spiteful swipes here.

Squarel2• 11 years ago

I always think that being rich and/or famous must make life a PITA.

Sure, you have money to do whatever you want, but, those friends you have? You sure they are your friends, and not the friends of your wallet?

Those people you trust, you sure you still trust them not to make a quick buck from selling stories about you?

Want to head out while looking like crap? Sure you want those photos posted all over the media with the accompanying headlines about how you have let yourself go?

There is a saying about how the best way to enjoy a sunrise is by sharing it with someone....no amount of money can make that happen.

JewGoldKyle• 11 years ago

If i were looking at this question for my life, I would say I only have a handful of friends anyways. It wouldn't matter to me if they made a quick buck telling stories about me, as long as they weren't lies. Don't care about what people think of how I dress. Even the shit-o'clock hour of the morning after a run.

Meh.

alexvr• 11 years ago

I hope he gets out of this rut and finds a way to be happy and do more good things. It's a little painful to watch a smart guy with billions spend his time making gimmicky video games and partying and being generally unhappy.

ja272• 11 years ago

I'm been worried about him since long before the Microsoft sale. I hope he gets some real help.

highercenter• 11 years ago

When he sold it for 2.5 I felt really sorry for him, this was so much to be expected. It is very hard to be happy and live a fruitful live with such amounts of money. Most people do not understand this, they find out once they have it. I wish you all the best notch.

yarou• 11 years ago

The things you own end up owning you.

mhartl• 11 years ago

But what if Notch is his fucking khakis?

xornor• 11 years ago

If the burden is unbearable a solution is easy - he can just give everything away. Usually problems of life are not that easy to solve. This was very childish for Notch.

humanrebar2• 11 years ago

Would that even work? Who do you give it to? How to you prevent resentment from those who thought they deserved more of the money?

adventured2• 11 years ago

You can't prevent resentment, that's up to other people. Whether it's over a billion dollars, or a raise, or a new car, or anything else. The key in most cases is to stop caring so much about what other people think (assuming you're not being an overt jerk to spur the resentment). How highly you value someone's opinion should roughly match how much you value them as part of your life in general; any misalignment of that, will usually cause suffering.

You give it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Within reason you could pick a specific project that interests you (education in Sweden, or a specific disease, or clean water in Africa), and they would go after it on your money's behalf. They have the scale and systems in place to do that with large donations.

coldcode• 11 years ago

An infinite amount of money will not change anyone for the better. What you were before remains, you just have more money. If you cared deeply for things before you were rich you will still care afterwards, if you had nothing to care about before you won't suddenly care unless you have someone to kick you in ass. Notch has no one but himself.

Bill Gates didn't suddenly become a philanthropist after all his money, he married a woman who did care deeply about things enough to change her husband's direction.

Steve Jobs gained and lost enormous money but remained passionate about making better products no matter what. You might not like him but he remained the same throughout other than maybe getting a little more trusting and less crazy.

rootlocus5• 11 years ago

You would think that with an infinite amount of money, you could pursue whatever lifestyle you desire. One could easily buy land and housing anywhere on earth, and surround himself with whatever people he wishes. I can't even imagine the endless possibilities. The choice of a $70mil mansion and non-stop parties is pretty narrow-sighted. Lucky for him he still has a fortune to try again.

mikekchar3• 11 years ago

Many people (probably almost everyone who will read this post) have enough money to eat just about any kind of food they want for dinner tonight. Imagine the endless possibilities! You can go to a market and discover a whole new world. The internet can teach you how to bring it to your own house. For a little bit more, you could go to a fancy restaurant. For a one time treat, most here could easily afford to eat dinner prepared by a famous chef.

Despite this, how many will choose fast food tonight?

Fast food, sit-coms on TV, no exercise, same boring commute every day, same conversations with the same people every day. All of these things are well within our control. Do we lack imagination, or something else? Even without his fortune, we can all share in his misfortune ;-)

P.S. My boss once told me about someone who would buy anyone a hamburger in exchange for a good story. Not really, that expensive IMHO (cheaper than a movie!).

ohyes• 11 years ago

Is this really the money or is it the relative fame and lack of anything to do with his time?

It seemed like he was genuinely happy creating games. Why can't he go back to that rather than being a celebrity? I could imagine him fading from the spotlight and becoming a private person within a couple of years.

adventured2• 11 years ago

Based on one of his recent tweets, he hasn't developed the ability to deal with assholes or similar. Even with $1.5 billion he finds it difficult to deal with them, and that kind of wealth and power confers every advantage over 99.9-% of assholes on the planet one could ever ask for.

I'd guess there's a much deeper issue at play. Crippling social anxiety, an overly extreme need to be liked, etc. Then combined with his semi-fame, he's finding it difficult to create again, out of fear of rejection / mockery / jerks. The solution is to stop caring so much about what other people think (it's how people like John Carmack survive it), getting to that point appears to be his challenge.

travislm• 11 years ago

It all comes down to crippling autism coupled with narcissism.

ja272• 11 years ago

I keep hoping he'll connect with the Penny Arcade crew. Maybe go collaborate with them on a project.

alain94040• 11 years ago

Sidenote: the madness of tweetstorms (and how the press covers them) must end. I believe a simple tweet: "I hereby grant an irrevocable worldwide license to all my Twitter posts to all" will fix the problem once and for all.

[0] https://medium.com/@colunchers/quotable-tweetstorms-87770df8...

thewarrior• 11 years ago

By sheer coincidence , I just finished a watching an Oscar nominated short film called MORE which exactly parallels Notch's situation.

It's saddening and quite moving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk

I think both Notch's feelings of isolation and ennui and the resentment of those around him are both valid. One doesn't preclude the other , in fact they feed into each other.

tetraodonpuffer• 11 years ago

Money is just a force multiplier, I am not sure why there should be a "darker side of life" after a big exit, as long as you realize that one is happiest when working, having lots of money will enable one to work as much as they want on what they find important without having to have a job.

With a large amount of money one can focus fully on what one really wants to achieve in life, you can "buy time" by hiring others to work with you, you can "buy life" by setting yourself up in a very low stress environment with quality food and help with your physical needs.

It doesn't take much to figure out that a life spent partying is empty and unfulfilling, the difference between not having a lot of money and having it is that after figuring this out in one case one has to go back to their job, while in the other one can step back and work on something meaningful (to them) without concerning themselves about how to make rent or buy food while they do so.

Maybe though having a big exit / lots of money is easier if one is tendentially an introvert, for me when I read things like "how do I know if all these people around me want to be friends with me or my money" the first thing I think of is "why would I want a lot of people around me, it would just take time away from working towards my goals"

Also unless somebody is a Hollywood star it should be feasible to be anonymous enough to meet people and get to know them without them realizing you are worth gobs of money, just get a modest house somewhere not under your own name and volunteer at some local charities for a while, which is a lot more fulfilling than the party circuit anyways.

This said good luck to Notch and others in his situation in figuring things out, the more people we have working towards making the world a better place, the better it is for everybody.

dpeterson• 11 years ago

"As a liberal commie hypocrite I WILL NOT give my money away; yet I still want to be a victim. I thrive on it as liberals and commies are wont to do.

washadjeffmad• 11 years ago

Hello, Citizen! Friend Computer wishes you to know that sarcasm is treason. Treason is punishable by death.

bazillion• 11 years ago

I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with how Notch left Mojang, but he basically went home like it was completely normal and didn't say good bye to the people he'd been working with on Minecraft[1].

That's what you have to understand when you're reading these tweets: this is not a normal individual that understands typical human behavior. He has always had trouble connecting to people, and no surprise, money doesn't fix that. Remove everything else, he'd be an awesome guy to hang out with and talk about video games, but he wouldn't really know how to have a conversation around the typical personalities of this forum, since he isn't an entrepreneur by nature. For most of us, all we ever really talk about when meeting other people are: 1) Our own businesses; 2) Their businesses; 3) How we/they/everyone should start a business -- we get absolutely pumped about these topics. That's how this guy is with video games, and it makes it difficult to connect to the people who he's supposed to hang out with due to the social standing his money has given him. Why? Because the people who have made that much money almost always come from the entrepreneurial mindset, since a business is what usually took them there (or a business on top of their fame).

So, I hope Notch will somehow develop an understanding of the world that allows him to become immune to what others think he ought to be and what he ought to do, and instead he just becomes like Wozniak and becomes content with himself. It definitely won't happen if he continues to use social media as an outlet, instead of making real human connections that aren't focused on partying and spending his money. I don't imagine him getting there, though, since it seems like he isn't growing the fortitude required to handle the responsibility of the wealth he's developed. It's always painful for me to see people unable or unwilling to help themselves, and in that regard this shows that a billionaire can be in the same emotional place as a person living on the street.

[1] http://www.inquisitr.com/1589883/minecraft-officially-owned-...

dang2• 11 years ago

The Schadenfreude in this thread is shameful. Using someone else's pain as fodder for meanness merely reveals something nasty in oneself.

Fortunately we have empathetic commenters here as well.

Minecraft creator Notch shares the darker side of life after a big exit

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