[HN Gopher] Vanity Activities
___________________________________________________________________
Vanity Activities
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 54 points
Date : 2025-12-01 18:57 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (quarter--mile.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (quarter--mile.com)
| boberoni wrote:
| I too have hobbies.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| On a related note: I've run businesses for close to 20 years,
| most of those spent selling to other businesses, and I still fail
| to understand what the entirety of LinkedIn is for and if there
| is any of it that wouldn't fall under the author's definition of
| "Vanity activities".
|
| If anyone has a clue, please enlighten me.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Definitely all the posting and activity on there seems very
| strange and is not something I'm remotely interested in
| participating in. But recruiters have often found me through
| LinkedIn and connected me with jobs, so it's still useful
| overall and I keep my profile up to date.
| mooreds wrote:
| I have a friend who calls LinkedIn "a rolodex that other people
| keep up to date".
|
| There is some value in posting on LinkedIn, but the real value
| is that you can go back and find people who are weak
| connections when you are looking to hire, purchase services, or
| ask favors.
|
| I think everyone should join LinkedIn and connect to every one
| of their colleagues that they would work with again. Then, once
| in a while, keep that connection alive by sending a message or
| commenting on a post.
|
| It's a long game, but will pay dividends should you ever need
| to chat with them.
| balamatom wrote:
| >what the entirety of LinkedIn is for
|
| Signalling allegiance.
| mooreds wrote:
| Some good points in here, but with respect to networking, the
| author misses the forest for the trees.
|
| Sure, when you go to networking events, you aren't certain you
| are going to get a job from the folks you meet.
|
| What you are doing is increasing your luck surface area. Hiring
| is not an entirely rational process, but if someone doesn't know
| you exist, they won't hire you (how could they?).
|
| From there, it follows that meeting someone and letting them know
| you exist increases the chances (however small) that they can and
| will assist you on your career path. And a networking
| opportunity, where you meet someone face to face (and can meet
| them repeatedly) is a far better way to let someone know you
| exist than sending them your resume.
|
| There are other ways to raise your profile that don't involve
| networking events and you can argue that they are better, but
| that's a cost-benefit analysis you should consider.
| wavemode wrote:
| "Networking", in the abstract, can be good for finding a job.
| As they say, it's who you know not what you know.
|
| That being said, industry networking _events_ , like
| conferences and such, are almost not at all useful for that
| purpose. In my experience they're mostly used for B2B sales
| (which is a kind of networking, I guess).
| toast0 wrote:
| I feel like networking _at_ events is valuable, but networking
| events are less so with some exceptions. You ideally want to
| bump into someone with a high value network, but most of the
| people going to networking events are going to the events
| because they don 't have a high value network.
|
| An exception would be mixers for interns and juniors; few
| people have a developed network at that point, so even those
| with a couple good contacts are interested in expanding, and
| there's a lot of potential.
| asa400 wrote:
| > Hiring is not an entirely rational process
|
| Agreed! I'd go so far as to say hiring is irrational in the
| aggregate.
|
| The usual "rational" artifacts, if we can call them that
| (coding challenges, resumes, etc.) serve almost exclusively to
| eliminate candidates rather than boost good candidates. Firms
| are generally ok with false negatives from these artifacts as
| simply the cost of doing business.
|
| > From there, it follows that meeting someone and letting them
| know you exist increases the chances (however small) that they
| can and will assist you on your career path.
|
| I've seen this described as "people hire who they vibe with",
| and I've yet to see it play otherwise in my career. I'm not
| saying this is good, or fair, or desirable. It just is.
|
| The folks who get offers are the ones who can meet people, tell
| stories (even true ones!), listen, and demonstrate that they
| can empathize with and contribute to messy, flawed
| organizations.
|
| Humans have yet to invent a technology more powerful than
| social relationships, and I think technologists downplay this
| at their own peril.
| manmal wrote:
| Why not just cold-message people from a potential employer when
| you're applying there? Works way better than it should, and is
| more targeted than talking to people 99% of who you'll never
| see again, at an event.
| mooreds wrote:
| What is your go-to text for such a cold message? I haven't
| seen that work but am always interested in new techniques.
| titanomachy wrote:
| I have this debate with people about news and podcasts sometimes
| (news was one of the examples in TFA). People say they are doing
| it to remain informed, and it's a high-value activity, but I
| argue it's mostly entertainment since it rarely affects any
| decision-making.
|
| This is not a hardline position, but I'm surprised at how
| vehemently people insist that their news habit has benefits
| beyond entertainment.
|
| (To be clear, I have nothing against entertainment.)
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| I agree, but also the context matters. Reading news about
| sports is basically always entertainment, with an exception of
| maybe betting, to make better bets. Reading news about housing
| market can get me in a better position to buy my next home for
| cheaper, or strenghten my negotiation position.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| This article digs on atomic habits... honestly that book changed
| my life. Stopped doing drugs, started eating healthy, started
| working out. Direct result of that book along with some
| philosophical reading.
| arn3n wrote:
| Are we really shaming having hobbies now?
| foolserrandboy wrote:
| No, the author actually says: Acknowledge that they are
| hobbies.
| grim_io wrote:
| What does that even mean?
|
| Why does the author care that much anyway? Seems like a
| person I would not enjoy talking with.
| krashidov wrote:
| yeah this was a weird article and largely a waste of my
| time
| danilafe wrote:
| It doesn't have to be one or the other. Both ethical consumption
| and going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact, and
| they're independent of one another. So, while someone "truly"
| optimizing for environmental impact would better spend their time
| avoiding meat, someone who enjoys meat can still reduce their
| environmental impact without becoming miserable. Variables like
| "income" and "environment" are just parts of the equation for the
| more important heuristic of happiness.
|
| A lot of the activities on that list are like this. Reading the
| news has a non-zero impact (hey, I'm on HN, and it definitely
| helps me keep up to date), and it's "easy" in that it fits into
| my heuristic for happiness. Same with using a metal straw, and
| same with picking between credit cards.
|
| In a sense, these activities are "free" in terms of their
| perceived difficulty, but have a positive, if small, impact. If
| they're "free", why not do them?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > going vegetarian reduce one's environmental impact
|
| Mmm, yes and no.
|
| It depends where your meat comes from. If you buy meat the way
| it's produced in the US where you have great big sheds full of
| cattle in the desert with everything trucked in, then yes.
|
| If you want permaculture, you absolutely must have livestock.
|
| If you want arable farming of any sort, you absolutely must
| have livestock.
|
| The whole thing breaks down very quickly if you don't have
| grass and clovers growing in fields, and ruminants eating them,
| breaking down the tough cellulose, and then shitting it out and
| trampling it in.
| manmal wrote:
| Won't that work better without killing & eating them young?
| satisfice wrote:
| To call reading the news "vanity" exposes the true vanity of this
| kind of post. What is the logic of assigning the word "vanity" to
| my interest to know what's going on in the world? It's vanity
| because I have no important decisions to make about the war in
| Ukraine, or the perfidy of my government?
|
| It's not vanity, it's a desire to understand my world and my
| place within it.
|
| What IS vanity is imagining that one's own tastes are the only
| tastes that matter in the world.
| card_zero wrote:
| The given definition of vain is "if they don't lead to
| something more important (e.g. profit)". I don't directly
| profit from reading the news, it's true. I'd have to make quite
| hand-wavy arguments about why it's beneficial. We can also list
| activities such as friendship, dreams, appreciating beauty, and
| feeling excited as non-profitable. Then there's having
| aspirations: what do we gain from that? Without goals, we could
| save a great deal of time and effort. Striving for profit,
| then, is a vain and non-profitable activity because of the
| unnecessariness of everything.
| satisfice wrote:
| I like your comment.
|
| I'm confused by how differently some otherwise smart people
| view the world than I do. My wife and family, by some
| definitions, are worthless. They have no economic value. But
| I look at them and feel that we lead lives of meaning and
| purpose every day. We know why we are alive and we are living
| up to it. If that's unproductive, then productivity itself
| is, I declare, vanity.
| brokensegue wrote:
| yeah that's just a bad definition. nobody would describe
| painting for fun as "vanity". vanity metrics make sense
| because in business the goal is to make money. in life that
| is not the goal.
| cachius wrote:
| More like a desire for dopamine.
| throwforfeds wrote:
| Yeah, I think "vanity" is not totally the right term here, but
| I do think they have a point that there are diminishing returns
| with staying up on the news cycle.
|
| For instance, I think there is a difference between reading
| some news daily and consuming only news. My father was in the
| latter category growing up -- I never really saw him read a
| book, but he was always reading a paper or listening
| to/watching a news program. Personally I find that I get more
| from reading books as they're afforded the space to go into
| depth on a topic. I think the author is trying to point out
| that that surface level news consumption is fine but probably
| not as beneficial as we might want to tell ourselves.
|
| The one thing I've found most helpful news-wise, though, is
| that I find that it's one of the better ways to learn a foreign
| language to an upper-intermediate or advanced level. I relied
| heavily on RFI and other news outlets when learning French,
| with the added benefit that you're often getting international
| news the media doesn't report on here in the US.
| jerkstate wrote:
| surprisingly not listed: writing blog posts
| cachius wrote:
| Or comments on blog post aggregators
| bogrollben wrote:
| I enjoyed the article. Many comments here on HN seem to be
| missing the point.
|
| The author isn't bashing on "hobbies" and is not even bashing on
| "vanity activities". S/he is merely challenging us to acknowledge
| them for what they are. Stop kidding yourself.
|
| If you churn credit cards (for example) and are one of the 10%
| that can make it truly profitable, then good for you. The other
| 90% are probably kidding themselves. Same for the other examples.
| The author is encouraging a self-sanity check. Are you in the 10%
| or the 90%, and wherever you land, are you okay with that? If
| not, you may want to reevaluate, pick something else, or make
| peace with it. It's better than kidding yourself.
| toast0 wrote:
| IMHO, churning is clearly profitable if you pay off your card
| every month, will hit the spend requirements organically and
| are organized enough to cancel to avoid annual fees in the
| second year. Some people dive into manufactured spending to hit
| the required spending, but then you really need to consider the
| time invested.
|
| The question is more about if the rewards are meaningful. I
| think it's actually worth doing a bit of churning to get
| exposure to different banks and figure out which one you
| like... might as well get paid for that. But after a certain
| point, I value stability and routine more than $300 to jump
| through hoops... and I'm not going back to Chase no matter what
| they want to pay me.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I feel like it's hobbies with an element of virtue-signalling.
| sota_pop wrote:
| Interesting thought. However, the author starts with "In
| business...", then immediately goes on to shoehorn the idea to
| people. The logic tracks if your underlying assumption is that
| the core purpose of a human life is to "be productive" (sic
| generate profit).
| mjd wrote:
| "The number of pageviews on your website and the number of likes
| on your tweets are fun to look at and sound impressive, but
| optimizing for them completely misses the point if they don't
| lead to something more important (e.g. profit)."
|
| Profit is fun to look at and sounds impressive, but optimizing
| for it completely misses the point if it doesn't lead to
| something more important (e.g. human flourishing, or net societal
| gain)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Profit is useful. Views, likes and comments have zero value.
| That's why e-celebs with millions and millions of "followers"
| can't sell more than a dozen coffee mugs when they try to make
| money from it.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| There's something horribly broken about the styling on this site.
| Attempting to scale the page (Ctrl-+) doesn't change the font
| size. I have no idea how the page managed that, but whatever
| mechanism allowed that, browsers should kill it with fire.
| msm_ wrote:
| This page - a bit of barely styled text on a plain background -
| also doesn't work without JS at all. Even though this is not a
| SPA, the essay text is just there in HTML response. I know I'm
| yelling at the clouds here, but I find this slightly annoying
| (why do I need to run code to read this?).
| captainclam wrote:
| Author really should have figured out a better word than
| "vanity."
| TOMDM wrote:
| Feels like a pretty tidy parallel to luxury beliefs. Luxury
| activities would fit, especially since some of these are the
| activity equivalent to the belief.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Why?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-07 23:02 UTC)