How my speed date got stolen onstage at a live comedy dating show

https://psychotechnology.substack.com/p/how-my-speed-date-got-stolen-onstage

by eatitraw • 8 months ago

15 22 8 months ago

psychotechnology.substack.com

stavros• 8 months ago

I don't understand what this post is trying to say. I'm not bothered by cringing, but sitting in silence just doesn't sound like an interesting way to interact with another person? Maybe I'm missing the whole point.

nchmy7• 8 months ago

You're not missing anything - this is just a sad human who is not good at interacting with other people, or at writing.

renewiltord• 8 months ago

I really need to go back and get some old HN posts and see if Hacker News always had LinkedIn style content. I feel like it didn't, but people are always claiming "things have changed; it wasn't like this back in the day". I feel like this is true on this count, even ten years ago.

Then again, did LinkedIn always have LinkedIn content? Perhaps some future LLM will ingest everything and capture trends for us in a pretty Google Trends way and we can say "yes, that's the moment image macros became a thing!" and "oh yeah, aug 27 2013 is when disillusionment posters died".

forgetfulness2• 8 months ago

The tone on HN used to be that “Hacker” was synonymous with “VC backed startup founder”, there used to be whole discussions centered around the founder persona and its nature, the more traditional definitions of “hacker” got paid lip service.

I’d say that LinkedIn speech was born right here.

cartoonworld• 8 months ago

At the time hacker meant informal programmer, among other things. “I’m hacking on my book review website” “I’m hacking on a desktop filesharing app.” Those hackers sometimes got a nice swing at it and this place has indeed always been a finance-friendly venue for these nerds to commingle.

It’s 2025 and things move along. People still post their file sharing tools here, but yeah I agree that it does hit different now.

Lerc• 8 months ago

I feel like it did, it was always a weird combination of hacky things and entrepreneur things, and people writing to learn how to write.

I find the tone of the posts also changes by time of day. I often wake up in the middle of the night for about an hour or two, if I browse HN then I find the new posts to be completely different (and a little antagonistic)There's a bunch of stuff that briefly climbs the page between the hours of 2am and 4am for me. It's usually gone by morning. I often wonder what time it is in what part of the world influences that tone.

polotics• 8 months ago

May I ask which timezone?

pjjpo• 8 months ago

I don't remember so many non-tech or random posts on HN 10 years ago or so. I think now, as long as you're a self-proclaimed hacker, you can post basically anything. It's less consistent than most subreddits I've seen which is a shame - on the bright side Reddit's tech subreddits seem to be much stronger than 10 years ago and serve fairly well.

karmakurtisaani• 8 months ago

"I was socially awkward in an event and mad an unpopular blog post about it - here's what it taught me about managing customer accounts"

tetrisgm2• 8 months ago

“I was not entertaining at a show, here’s what I didn’t learn”.

nchmy7• 8 months ago

I kept waiting for the guy to share some lesson that was learned, and it never came. The self-satisfied writing was less interesting than his complete disinterest in two other humans and the entire event.

What a sad existence he leads. It's as if he's stuck in the 1990s, and proud of it.

And the date wasn't even "stolen" - though smooth guy probably did steal that girl after the exceedingly low bar set by this dude.

forgetfulness2• 8 months ago

He “learned” long ago that if people don’t celebrate you for putting down someone else (or themselves), you can just remind yourself how big of an intellectual you are to give yourself that ego boost, and rationalize everything as you experiencing a more authentic life than others.

tetrisgm2• 8 months ago

I’m looking forward to his “I posted on HN, but some other posts stole upvotes from me”!

comrade1234• 8 months ago

What do you talk about in two minutes? I've never had to speed-date. Ask about hobbies? Is asking about work pedestrian? Was always curious about this.

eatitraw3• 8 months ago

The two minutes is a very short amount of time — much shorter than a typical speed dating slot of 5-10 minutes. People chat about all sorts of things: from work to previous relationships to “where are you from”-style questions.

With regular speed dating I had all sorts of chats, it usually enough for 1-3 threads of conversations.

nchmy7• 8 months ago

If someone is a skilled human, they can have a fascinating conversation with most people in 2 minutes. I'd look at the creator of Humans of New York as a shining example of how to connect with someone - I'm sure that many of the convos are much longer, but I highly doubt that the first 2 minutes are just talking about the weather.

Of course, not everyone will be open to talking at any given time. And it is probably especially difficult to have a genuine connection in a speed dating context, where the other party is probably posturing in one way or another. If you met them in any other situation, they'd probably be more open/authentic.

How my speed date got stolen onstage at a live comedy dating show

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