My brother committed suicide after facing a prison sentence. It is a really difficult thing that when you meet people (even for years afterwards, it still happens to this day 13 years on) and they just want to talk about the circumstances behind his suicide and the things that get him to that point. Having people consistently drag it up for you really hurts at times.
I also have experienced the name-calling thing. My mother, at times, ends up calling me by my brother's name. I think that is the hardest thing at times, because clearly she's not over it (he shot himself with her in the next room).
I really do feel for Noah. It's not something you ever truly get over (here I am posting about it 13 years on), just something you just got to learn to deal with. I found that for me, I had to find a healthy coping mechanism/hobby to get through those first few years. Life still goes on man.
11yrs for me; I actually grew kind of used to the name-calling thing. I don't go home a whole lot but try to spend a few days with my parents 1-3x a year, and I feel like all is back to normal when they call me my brother's name. We're all "home" again.
Different experiences for different people :)
(P.S. My brother was not facing incarceration but had significant mental illness, just feel like I can identify with the loss. Do not believe anybody really close will, you like said, truly get over it. Time really does not heal all wounds.)
Good luck. It surprises me that the US supports such a vicious law enforcement system compared to the rest of the developed world - I'm a Brit and ours leans the other way towards being a bit easy going.
It should be noted that I live in Australia, so our law enforcement system is relatively lax too.
However, my father also died of a heart attack a little over a year beforehand, so I'm sure that was part of it, but I'm sure the jail term was about 90% of what was on his mind at the time.
I only wanted to share just in case Noah ever reads this. Things do eventually get better.
How can you compare the death of a man shot by police on the underground because of been confused with a terrorist, with a person driven to suicide because they are facing a jail sentence?
Wow, what a touching, yet sobering story. It sounds almost as if people used him as a stand-in for Aaron. The tragic part of it is that the only way he could really get away from it is to either disassociate himself from Aaron and the people who know about him (kinda hard considering Noah seems to be involved in the tech field also) or to become even bigger than Aaron (a daunting task which shouldn't be necessary). I wish Noah the best of luck establishing his own identity.
This is so sad. I wonder if Noah has considered moving abroad for a bit - in my experience, very few people in the London tech scene know who Aaron Swartz was, or if they've heard the name they will struggle to remember the story behind it. Maybe people will disagree, but I don't think the story had quite the same cultural resonance outside the USA.
I cant help but think it quite easy to stay anonymous as a programmer. That its the default. I never really understood what people mean by the "tech scene". Its like you guys meet up or something.
I have rarely meet other programmers apart from the few ones at work, and usually we don't socialise outside of work. I think this is the norm. I haven't noticed any kind of scene. The average programmer is quite anonymous. You code, and then you go home. Maybe you go drinking with your flatmates, one of who might be a plumber and the other a teacher. They don't talk to you about about plumbing, and you don't talk to them about programming. You talk about football or whatever.
I think it might help Noah to just live the life of the average programmer, and not go to all these political or tech conventions where your brother image has a life of its own. Not to socialise exclusively with people who are in the same line of work as you are.
Do you live in the Bay Area or Silicon Valley? I think it is a lot different there.
Also, some people participate in the "scene" while others don't. I used to go to more meet-ups and hacks-a-thons, but not so much anymore. I am not sure which is the norm.
Yeah, it seems like a "Silicon Valley" thing. The whole thing seems quite mysterious to me. I worked in (4) random cities in the UK. But even in London, I didn't notice a scene.
Maybe its also a thing more with web development and start ups. Where the whole company can be mostly tech people, and where most people are young (so socialize outside of work more).
Could you provide more details about the Leeds scene please? I've been working here for a few months as a programmer and am interested in getting involved.
Sky have recently started big investment in the area, as you're probably aware, and do a Tech Event most months with various guest speakers, the next one of those is focusing on JS if that's your thing - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/leedstechhub-javascript-ticke...
An annual Hack Day takes place, but that's usually later on in the year - http://leedshack.org - but other hack days have appeared at other times during the year (they tend to be corporate sponsored ones but if you get past the recruitment element of them, they can be fun.)
It's not a Silicon Valley thing. There are tech scenes in the smallest of places, you just need to pay attention. The UK is brimming with tech scenes, especially London.
What counts as a 'tech scene', out of interest? I'm based in London, and don't really have any friends that are programmers, or really see much going on.
One place to look is "users groups" for whatever tools you use. So if you were in Amsterdam and you work primarily in C++ you could look up "dutch c++ users group" and come up with this: http://www.meetup.com/The-Dutch-Cpp-Group/
Another good bet is to spend a month in a coworking space. There will be events sometimes. At the friendlier ones people go to lunch together. Different spaces are different though. Some everyone kind of sticks to themselves.
You can volunteer at RailsBridge or other nonprofits. There are also "hacker spaces" that you can just hang out in and work on a project.
You can also look up conferences that are coming through your city and go to them. Many people will be from out of town, but you'll meet a few local people there too.
Search on meetup.com for a topic you are interested in, there are loads of tech meetups in London (usually with beer and food provided) and it's easy to get chatting to people so I wouldn't worry if you are going to one on your own.
A couple I would recommend are the React meet up, usually held at Facebook's office, and Functional Programming for the Web, both run by an agency (I think?) called Red Badger - but obviously that depends on what your interests are!
Thanks, I will have a look. Mostly Go and Python at the moment, so I'm sure there are some decent meetups in London somewhere. I'm Clapham based.
Have you got any experience in London with meetups for people looking for work? I will need to hire at least 2 more devs this year for my startup and have no clue where to start. Certainly don't want to use a recruiter...
I lived in SF for 6 years before moving to LA, and before then was born and raised in Silicon Valley. I have never been to these events, nor have any close friends. Of course, most of my close friends were also born in Silicon Valley - maybe it's a transplant thing?
It becomes a scene if you want to. Start a blog, do presentations, come to events, contribute to open source — soon you'll find yourself in the middle of professional social circle.
However, it's something that you can choose to do or not to do, and something that is not at all necessary to be a good professional developer.
(I am European and moved to Australia 4 years ago) - while I agree with you that the story did not have the same cultural resonance outside of the US, I would say that most tech people would know who Aaron Swartz was (although among the generally public hardly anyone would have a clue).
Intuitively I'd agree, but I was surprised at how many people/friends/colleagues didn't know what I was talking about when The Internet's Own Boy was released. If they weren't readers of Hacker News they almost certainly didn't pick up on the story. Again - anecdotal.
HN = what HN calls tech scene. Then you realize that most programmers don't read HN. They have never heard of Rust (and possibly Aaron). As my friend said, reading HN is the least broad professional development you can do, with minimum amount of effort. But most simply don't.
I'm in a rather large city with a big tech presence in the US, but not the Valley. Not to be crass, but the conversations I heard surround Swartz were only when he killed himself. No one talked about it as if it was a cultural touch stone and I would be fairly surprised if most of my peers remember who he is. I think it's largely a Valley/YCombinator community thing.
I live in the valley and work in the city, but I lived through the first dot com bubble. I read the entire original post without recognizing either brother. Had to google them to recall the story.
It is true most came to know about Aron after his death, but is not possible to forget some one who has sacrificed their life in the same period we live in.
I am in Myanmar. But I have been following Aaron's story since 2013. If someone is in tech, it is a good chance that they have heard about Aaron no matter where they live.
That might be his best option, for a few years at least. I doubt that enough people outside the US tech scene know Aaron's face well enough to out him. And if questioned, he could just deflect. But it would be hard to leave friends behind. And he would need to do that. Also, if he has a middle name, he could start using a nickname based on that. Swartz is a common patronymic.
Whoa. I met Noah at a very small game dev conference last May. I had no idea who he was until this moment, nor was I aware that anyone else did, but I could be wrong. It's interesting to think how that interaction would have changed, probably for the worse, if I had known more about him beforehand.
The wording of this comment seems to be, in a very small way, symptomatic of the larger problem that Noah sometimes has with people he meets or knows well. To illustrate my point, here's another way to write the same thing:
>> I had no idea that he was Aaron's brother until this moment
The original wording seems to conflate the identity of Noah's brother with his own.
Sure, that wording would be better. I wasn't sure exactly how to say it.
I think we tend to do that though for better or worse: we identify new people by one or two odd facts we know about them. And that alters how we communicate with them. In another instance at that conference, I asked the guy next to me who he was and he told me his name. He then told me he wrote a series of articles (which I had known about) and immediately my view shifted: oh that guy. And it completely changed the way I interacted because of course now I felt compelled to talk about his articles rather than something else.
Hmm, to me it reads as: Having never seen and committed to memory the face of Aaron, I did not consider his brother as anything other than an individual whom I had interacted with for the first time.
Your comment (to me at least) seems to suggest Noah wanted everyone to associate Noah with Aaron, and in the same moment wanted to be unhappy by said association, which doesn't seem like a fair thing to say about Noah.
>> ... I did not consider his brother as anything other than an individual whom I had interacted with for the first time...
Agreed. And to continue his/her presumed train of thought, in my own words:
" Whoah! ... but now I realise that the guy I met was really somebody. He was Aaron's brother."
>> Your comment (to me at least) seems to suggest Noah wanted everyone to associate Noah with Aaron ...
I have no idea how you arrived at this interpretation of my comment. Though I can agree that if I had been making such a suggestion it would have been unfair to Noah.
Anyway, I don't believe it is worth pursuing this further. We have at least demonstrated that, in all good faith, it is easy to interpret the same thing in different ways.
Heh, yeah. Met him at Mozfest a few years back. Noticed the last name but figured it was a coincidence, so I didn't ask. When I watched The Internet's Own Boy months later (and by the way, everybody who hasn't watched it really should) I realized he was Aaron's brother.
He's really laid back and an overall cool guy to talk to. I'm glad I didn't know - Aaron was a great guy, but being identified as your dead brother's brother must be miserable...
Obviously not of the same gravity, but a good part of my childhood was spent being called by my big brother's name. Family, friends, teachers, you name it. It's a hard one, because I think my brother is an amazing guy, and evidently so do other people, but it's ultimately belittling.
A math teacher, who had my brother for a single year, called me by his name for the whole three years I knew/had her. By that point, it's not just offending, you just start thinking your identity is just a proxy for the other person's, it's downright depressing.
My brother and I look very much alike, to the point that to the untrained eye we would look like twins at certain points of our lives. Although around my teens, this had some unfortunate consequences, such as girls my age I fancied who would meet my older brother and see a better physical version of me in him, and forget about me. I can't really blame them, but again, not exactly uplifting.
It isn't an issue at all these days, we have very different lives and personalities, we live thousands of miles away, but mostly, my brother is alive and well, and I guess, not famous ; but it's definitely had an effect on me when I was younger.
I guess I came here to relate, but the truth is I can't even begin to imagine the added constant reminder of a deceased relative, no matter how amazing they used to be, or maybe even particularly so. The fact that those reminders are people who, by and large, had nothing remotely resembling a relationship with the person in question, especially not of the kind siblings would, must be incredibly hurtful.
I feel deeply for Noah and I genuinely wish he can affirm his own identity, and that people will make an effort to do so after reading his touching story.
This has happened to me a lot in my life--in fact one of my high school teachers called me my brother's name the entire school year. But I didn't feel belittled. Some people are just bad with names.
I've figured out how to break people of the habit: call them the name of their sibling. This fixes it real quick like.
One of my high school teachers had a rule that any time he called a student by a sibling's name, they got a point of extra credit.
It happened most class periods to somebody, and that was with him being very deliberate about asking people to point it out and trying very hard not to do it.
> just start thinking your identity is just a proxy for the other person's,
I think that is why a lot of siblings end up doing opposite things -- ones likes math, the other start painting, one goes into the Army, the other one is anti-military. One likes to wear bright colors, the other likes all black. One goes to school on the East coast, the other goes to the West.
Obviously people are different and will do and like different things -- but from my circle of acquintances it goes a bit beyond that when it comes to siblings. I think at some level, that is a way for individuals to define themselves, and that is in relation to their environment -- "I am who I am because I am not ...".
I guess it's a cultural thing. My sisters all went to the same schools and had mostly the same teachers. The sibling association was never a problem. If anything, it was a good feeling. They felt more connected or something.
Very interesting reflection on identity in the modern world as it relates to family, fame, and trajedy. I have to say that the situation does feel very familiar to me based on some other readings and historical examples. I'll explain. The most prominent correlative is with respect to Hunter S. Thompson. He created Raoul Duke as a character, and Gonzo Journalism as the method by which to report and embellish/comment on the world.
I view it very much as a 'persona' and, in my opinion, most all highly intelligent individuals - especially those in the public eye - must have one (or quickly develop one) in order to cope with the needs of being self-confident to carry forward with beliefs and goals and values, yet also be able to "put down the microphone" and live a wholesome, personal life. This is the elements of celebrity and notariety that are weaved into the essay, and it's very touching to see the care expressed toward himself, his brother, and trying to understand and work through the behavior of outsiders. Aaron, from what I saw and recall, had a very prominent persona. It's pretty much 'immortality' in the Achilles sense.
To me, and this is just from one musician and writer who has embraced using pen names and personas for years, this article is very useful to give some thought and consideration to how, generally speaking, US society and culture has decided to value 'authenticity' and 'transparency' to the point of being a little bit intrusive. I'm possibly under-stating it, but I also don't want to get too far away from what the essay is conveying to me. It's an affirmation of a perspective I formed and was guided to form as a youth in the arts: Notariety, whatever its source, has significant baggage.
There is for lack of a better term a profound weakness of identity that's really common today. I think it stems from people having mostly superficial relationships. Where if you grew up in a small tight knit community people make reference to things you said or did at really young ages (4-8) which you can't really escape from, but at the same time there is no need to. Because, in some ways your still that person, or perhaps that person became you.
But, move out into the world and people are judging you on what breaks down to reputation and at most few hours of interactions. Which makes it easy to pretend to be someone else.
That's not to say it's purely a bad thing. When people identify strongly with a group it's easy to lump 'others' into a meaningless category and then do bad things. Still, being able to ignore someone you just met's option as worthless is arguably a valuable skill.
in my opinion, most all highly intelligent individuals - especially those in the public eye - must have one
I think I understand this. I used to run a small but active online community. So not fame at all, not even "guy in a tiny band that has 15 people show up for their shows" famous. Less than that even. But sometimes I'd go to parties and people would know who I was and I didn't know them. That kind of thing.
And I did start to develop a hint of a persona. Like you say it was kind of a must. Having strangers that know who you are coming up and talking to you is definitely flattering and also definitely a bit intimidating so you quickly develop a... a mode you go into or something.
Not a calculated Raoul Duke thing at all. In my case it was more like the different "personas" any person has - the personality you wear at work vs. the one you wear around your parents vs. the one you wear around your significant others. I was always being myself, but you definitely calibrate yourself a little differently for different groups.
I've often felt a bit abnormal for doing this. I guess I only ever see each person in one mode, so I had no idea if other people do it or not. Nice to know at least some other people do.
Yeah, totally normal, I think. I think that's just basic social mammal stuff - you calibrate your actions to your social surroundings. I mean even our dog has totally separate personalities when he's around us at home versus how he acts around other dogs. And it's not even the same personality for each of the other dogs - some dogs have calming effects on him, some make him hyperactive.
I think the thing is in reality, there is no "true self" or "true identity" but there might be layers of identity that turn on or off depending on the situation. It's not like your persona mode is fake or anything. The only real sting is when a persona is based on lies or contradicts a larger part of your personality is when you get into trouble.
In the way you responded and described your experience, I think the term I should've included, at least from an academic basis, is that of "code switching" because it's a pretty interesting concept to me. The big key was the 'work' versus 'home' concept of self. It's totally reasonable to want to compartmentalize, I think it's pretty ingrained in our species, so talking about it as a fact of life is pretty useful.
It's also something that's been much remarked-upon by various minority groups. I've heard a lot of African-American comedians, friends, and commentators mention how they have feel the need "act white" when they're not around other black people. You hear the exact same thing from LGBT folks as well - they often choose to "act straight" by default in a lot of environments.
I've seen this a lot firsthand myself. It's also a good reminder that having the option to code switch is a real privilege. For some people it's not a coping skill, it's a literal survival tactic.
Yep! You really did summarize a great deal of the concept, and particularly well with the groups which seem to have the most frequent need (desire?) to utilize code switching. I've got several different modes based on personal or professional situations (definitely privilege), and I think it really started to click as a 'tool' about the time I got fluent in French language and culture. Very eye opening, and has been useful when getting to know and be collegiate with folks from minority or disenfranchised backgrounds.
My family before me experienced sibling death in a similar prime. I only know about it as a child of one of the surviving siblings but it haunted that entire generation. Knowing all I do about how it affected my parent in their younger years I will say that you're very strong to claim your own identity. Do not use your brother as a yardstick to measure the worth of your own life because they cannot measured to each other and don't let anyone else do it to you. Your post made me very happy Noah Swartz and hope it leads you down a better path than the one I've learned of.
Thank you for adding this other dimension; children of siblings that experience this type of loss. My mother lost her brother in his prime, so this gives Noah and Aaron's relationship meaning I can just now see. For me, my uncle, like other relatives that passed before my birth, only live through stories that came through in our family's experiences afterward. I have so much gratitude for my mother, that they shared so much in their lives together, and that she could pass on such a rich history for me to build on.
How is it possible for anyone who knows who Aaron is to not know that he's dead? How could they possibly mistake his brother for him to the extent of thoughtlessly calling him the wrong name?
It is very common (especially as you get older) to mix up names for people that are in the same mental category while you are speaking. It isn't necessarily thoughtlessness. Sometimes our brains just don't work quite right.
My parents and several schoolteachers often called me by my older brother's name, or called my sisters by one anothers' names. It's not as though my parents couldn't tell their own children apart, it's just that sometimes saying a name is an autopilot thing.
I recently took a friend to the grocery store, and called her son by my son's name when I wanted him to move out of the way of someone else's cart.
I often call my own kids by the wrong names, and they look nothing alike and one is half as hold as the other. I also tell them to wash their teeth and brush their hands on occasion, too. Frequency of these kinds of brain mistakes seem to correlate with stress or how much in a hurry I am.
My parents will start with my brother's name first before getting to me, but I've also heard them make the same, inverse mistake with my brother. I have to imagine this is only a same-sex issue right? No one mixes up their daughter and son's names?
Nope, my grandma would cycle through random children and grandchildren of either gender before she'd get to me. I always thought this was unique until I read these comments today.
No, it happens with my parents. My sister and I are many years apart though, and once I went to college there was only one kid in the house, so I can kinda understand.
sheepish I do, but not often, and usually only when I'm trying to get them each to do things like clean up a room or fold laundry, or do X/Y/Z before dinner. Even as I say it I notice it, and wonder where the heck that came from.
Though it's not limited to children. I'm thinking of assuming officially my uncles first name as one of my midnames, given half the family calls me with that.
Indeed. "Wives and long-term girlfriends" is a large category for me. It's easy to keep major events straight. But often, I'll be talking about some film that I've seen, and can't remember which of them I saw it with. Or who I did what with on which trip to Amsterdam. It doesn't help that some of their names are similar.
> It is very common (especially as you get older) to mix up names for people that are in the same mental category while you are speaking
Exactly this. My mother calls me by my dead brother's name all the time. I'm pretty sure if anyone was aware of his death, she would be (given she was with him at the time).
They haven't literally forgotten that Aaron is dead. It's just that they're so strongly interested in Noah as a sort of window to Aaron that their subconscious overwrites Noah's name with the person they're actually interested in.
It probably doesn't help that he looks a lot like Aaron.
I know several people who have for years seen me and thought I was my older brother even though tbh I probably only look about 60, maybe 70% similar, if that.
I can imagine people just not letting it click and continuing to make that mistake.
This is what I was wondering too. I'm terrible with names, but I literally can't imagine that kind of mixup. Not that I doubt anything Noah wrote; I just don't get it.
I think people, maybe even Noah included, are reading a bit too much into what seems to be a simple case of crossed wires, or neurons, in this case.
Just this weekend I called my cousin, whom I've been close friends with for over a decade, by his brother's name. It was the first time I've seen him in about a year but we've been very close for very long. I was thinking about his brother in the moment I meant to use his name and it just came out. There was no thought.
I like the article. It's important to talk about this sort of thing. But the comments here... Please consider they are essentially casting judgement on people for not actively thinking to themselves, "Call them X, call them X..." in the moment X should come out of their mouths. What human actually does that in the normal course of verbal communication? Why are we expecting people to do such a thing?
There are two guys at work that look nothing like each other but get their names mixed up all the time. I have worked with them for a few years. But because they are Asian, someone accidentally called them by the opposite name, and it became a running joke ever since then. But ever since then, the accidental switching of their names has increased. Even I have to stop and think about it for a second, and I never had that problem until they started joking about it. Psychology is a really weird thing.
The parent probably meant "related to" Aaron rather than literally about Aaron, especially since they use Noah's name afterwards. Though you make a point that bears repeating that this is article is about Noah himself, especially since his trouble is with people overly associating him with Aaron.
This post seems to exemplify the attitude he's had such difficulties with.
Sad post about how he's had to deal with his brothers death while people he barely knows seemingly use him as a way to pretend they are connected to his brother and the response is "oh cool, more about Aaron".
C'mon, no need to jump down his throat. None of us would be reading this right now if the deceased were a random guy in Minnesota.
And I agree with what I believe the commenter's intention was, which is to say this piece both humanized Aaron in a way other posts don't, and it gives a window into the personal tragedy of suicide.
He can say "previously a professional Magic: the Gathering player" but really he means on hiatus. No one ever quits.
Edit:
This made me curious as to what it was like within the GP/PTQ/SCG scene for him. From my experience, almost no one in that scene would know anything about Aaron.
He's taken a great first step. By getting it all out there, he can carve his place in the world out again.
It's gotta be damn tough to lose a sibling. To lose one that so many were connected to... I have no words.
Other than, nice to meet you Noah. Hope to get to know you better and that your life improves. We don't all suck, and most of us mean well most of the time too. Draw what strength from that you can and keep doing what you are doing.
It's important that the world knows Noah. You seem like a pretty great guy actually. Take care.
Aaron stuck out his jaw and faced down the murky machinery of corruption offending some very powerful people and showed the internet user-base the power of collective action.
Then Snowden revealed that control and surveillance was already so very much worse than even the paranoid imagined.
Snowden's revelations suggest that Aaron would be just the sort of dissident the domestic spying and manipulation might target.
Whatever facts will or wont become known, we lost a great inspiring creative soul in that good man's passing.
This is unnerving. I've just discovered that I look almost identical to Aaron Swartz's brother, except he dyed his hair black and blue!! I wonder if people would ever mistake me for either of them?
{
Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.
As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
}
The comparison is apropos. I've lived in Hollywood most of my life and have to spend time in SF for work. The entertainment people get a bad rap for being superficial douchebags and chronic bullshitters, but it doesn't even compare to the SF scene. At least in Hollywood, if someone thinks they're hot shit, you can go on imdb and see if they're really as self-important as they think they are. In SF everyone is the best programmer, is working at the most important non-profit, is building the next huge app, and it's very difficult to tell if they're full of shit (hint: 99% of them are).
Is there really that much celebrity status thumping for programmers in SF? Maybe in particular circles, but I want to believe that SF has more diversity in tech than that.
Well I've been in the SF tech community for a long time and can't say I've experienced any superficial or dehumanizing things at parties. There are certainly jerks in the tech community, but there are jerks everywhere. If you avoid the jerks, you'll probably have a good time.
I don't get it. Where does this need to be on stage, and be in the middle of everything, and have everyone know you come from? If I was Einstein's brother, nobody would know and I wouldn't care -- and thus this situation wouldn't happen. Maybe I'm too far from the whole 'scene' to understand. I guess it's unfortunate for Noah that he looks pretty similar to his brother because people figure it out on their own. And it's genuinely too bad he's had such a rough past few years - much rougher than it should have been.
He wrote it happened mostly with people he considered friends already, those people would definaty know who hi was and would brag about it to have him at their party.
This is very accurate. I recently moved here and am so fed up with how superficial these meetups are. So I have boycotted from all of it now.
Better stay home and code something than waste time networking.
Does he look a lot like his brother? My brother and I are very close in age and look very similar and even our parents mix up our names sometimes. You'd never be mistaken for a dead son, daughter, spouse... but I bet this isn't uncommon for people with dead siblings, and doubly so for famous dead siblings. Something I'd never considered.
I also have experienced the name-calling thing. My mother, at times, ends up calling me by my brother's name. I think that is the hardest thing at times, because clearly she's not over it (he shot himself with her in the next room).
I really do feel for Noah. It's not something you ever truly get over (here I am posting about it 13 years on), just something you just got to learn to deal with. I found that for me, I had to find a healthy coping mechanism/hobby to get through those first few years. Life still goes on man.