I think this short story resonates because probably most people know an Aaron - the type that is incessantly looking for some kind of scheme, some kind of get rich quick thing, and will spend exponentially far more effort and misery suffered avoiding real employment than it would take actually just sucking it up and working, and often (usually) with much, much worse results. Yet they persist. A few of them become successful founders, probably, depending on their background. But most don't.
When I was around that age, my Aaron was this kid who matched a similar description, very bright but utterly averse to any kind of work whatsoever, never finished his education, did okay in school but underperformed a lot.
I remember a few of his dumbest schemes - one, he would get gift visa cards, run the balance down to pennies, then as a restaurant server for some crappy chain, would charge a customer with a big tip, put it on the drained card, and due to some weird quirk with the way they processed tips back then, the money would hit his paycheck before the decline would happen. I pointed out it was stupid easy to get caught by the bank and his restaurant but he insisted it was genius and foolproof. Got caught in a month or two, fired, nearly got in a lot of legal trouble but somehow got out of it.
His all time dumbest 'scheme' was when a major automaker was going into bankruptcy at some point during the financial crisis, the stock was pennies. So he invested all his savings, some thousands of dollars, into buying the stocks. Even being so young and barely financially literate at that point I was aghast, tried to explain that when the bankruptcy finishes, his stock will be worth nothing. No, no, he assured me - imagine - this stock was $20 before, when it's $20 again I'll be a gazillionaire. I tried very very hard to convince him that was not correct and of course he lost everything. Shortly after he got into dealing marijuana but by that point I had determined he wasn't worth hanging out with anymore. No idea what happened to him.
What’s funny is that there was a bankrupt auto company that was memed back into existence. Hertz, by all logic, was absolutely doomed. Retail traders brought it back from near-certain liquidation and could have made a ton of money. Not sure how many actually sold.
This was GM and as I roughly remember it there was no chance of this happening, because they just formed a new company and issued new stock after bankruptcy. Maybe hard for a young person at that time to understand, and the SEC probably shouldn't have allowed trading by the point he got into it, but it was all over the news and google was in its hayday, the information was easily available.
Fantastic writing, very well done. Every small, incremental decision is believable. You can see how the psychosis evolves.
It made me think of Justin.tv, which was Justin Kan streaming himself. There weren’t betting markets, but today there would be.
Twitch—what it ended up as–shows how much people crave community. Like other social media, there are many examples in chats of people with believed friendships and parasocial relationships with streamers. For smaller streams, sometimes these are real casual friendships. For larger ones, it’s the dark other side of Aaron.
Anyway, I’m glad prediction markets didn’t exist in those days. I wish they didn’t now (we don’t need more outlets for gambling, in my opinion), but this was a great story nonetheless.
I like it because each individual piece can happen and we probably all know people by now that have some aspect of Aaron - massive AI use, or into prediction markets, or live streaming, or just a friend who we have learned over time lacks scruples, or have watched them fade in response to life's challenges. The combination of all of these is then easy to imagine and that idea makes a good story.
Powerful. And written so well, I thought it was real at first, I even forgot about the "this is a short story at the top" and googled Aaron's different betting websites
I learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market in the early 2010s. It wasn't phrased like a prediction market focusing on when a person would die, but more like a bounty. If the bounty/pot got big enough, eventually it would be worth it for someone to do it.
Even thinking/writing about this now, it still makes obvious sense and I'm surprised it hasn't been seriously made yet with crypto: if there's a pot of billions, contributed to by millions, the incentive becomes not just about the money, but the adoration, protection and power that would come with doing so many people a favour.
I think all the big targets for this kind of thing have the legal or government muscle to get in your way? Millions of people usually don't agree on someone dying unless they're powerful.
Every prediction market is an assassination market. They claim to trade on "information" but it's more like "influence", and easiest way to influence an event is usually by sabotage.
Hey you don't have to reply to each comment with a generic reply. It's a fine piece sure but let's not inflate this thread x2 with just "thank you for your words".
Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Shut up and Dance."
Great story and creating the character Aaron. You did an excellent job in making a very believable person that I think most of us have run into in tech adjacent spaces.
There's a difference between intelligent and smart, the latter including being able to use your intelligence for a practical, real-life purpose, like improving your own life.
OP here - longtime HN user. I submitted this story to a writing contest a few months back, but didn’t hear anything from them.
I posted it here on a punt and getting front page of HN is 10x the feeling any writing contest could give me!
Thanks to all who read and commented, and glad to hear it resonates with some of you!
My god, for a minute there I thought this was real.. This resonates, I bet a number of us know or Are an “Aaron”. Thanks for this.
This is incredibly well written had me hooked till the end (probably because I thought it was a real life incident. :)
I think this short story resonates because probably most people know an Aaron - the type that is incessantly looking for some kind of scheme, some kind of get rich quick thing, and will spend exponentially far more effort and misery suffered avoiding real employment than it would take actually just sucking it up and working, and often (usually) with much, much worse results. Yet they persist. A few of them become successful founders, probably, depending on their background. But most don't.
When I was around that age, my Aaron was this kid who matched a similar description, very bright but utterly averse to any kind of work whatsoever, never finished his education, did okay in school but underperformed a lot.
I remember a few of his dumbest schemes - one, he would get gift visa cards, run the balance down to pennies, then as a restaurant server for some crappy chain, would charge a customer with a big tip, put it on the drained card, and due to some weird quirk with the way they processed tips back then, the money would hit his paycheck before the decline would happen. I pointed out it was stupid easy to get caught by the bank and his restaurant but he insisted it was genius and foolproof. Got caught in a month or two, fired, nearly got in a lot of legal trouble but somehow got out of it.
His all time dumbest 'scheme' was when a major automaker was going into bankruptcy at some point during the financial crisis, the stock was pennies. So he invested all his savings, some thousands of dollars, into buying the stocks. Even being so young and barely financially literate at that point I was aghast, tried to explain that when the bankruptcy finishes, his stock will be worth nothing. No, no, he assured me - imagine - this stock was $20 before, when it's $20 again I'll be a gazillionaire. I tried very very hard to convince him that was not correct and of course he lost everything. Shortly after he got into dealing marijuana but by that point I had determined he wasn't worth hanging out with anymore. No idea what happened to him.
What’s funny is that there was a bankrupt auto company that was memed back into existence. Hertz, by all logic, was absolutely doomed. Retail traders brought it back from near-certain liquidation and could have made a ton of money. Not sure how many actually sold.
This was GM and as I roughly remember it there was no chance of this happening, because they just formed a new company and issued new stock after bankruptcy. Maybe hard for a young person at that time to understand, and the SEC probably shouldn't have allowed trading by the point he got into it, but it was all over the news and google was in its hayday, the information was easily available.
Fantastic writing, very well done. Every small, incremental decision is believable. You can see how the psychosis evolves.
It made me think of Justin.tv, which was Justin Kan streaming himself. There weren’t betting markets, but today there would be.
Twitch—what it ended up as–shows how much people crave community. Like other social media, there are many examples in chats of people with believed friendships and parasocial relationships with streamers. For smaller streams, sometimes these are real casual friendships. For larger ones, it’s the dark other side of Aaron.
Anyway, I’m glad prediction markets didn’t exist in those days. I wish they didn’t now (we don’t need more outlets for gambling, in my opinion), but this was a great story nonetheless.
Thank you for your kind words!
I like it because each individual piece can happen and we probably all know people by now that have some aspect of Aaron - massive AI use, or into prediction markets, or live streaming, or just a friend who we have learned over time lacks scruples, or have watched them fade in response to life's challenges. The combination of all of these is then easy to imagine and that idea makes a good story.
Thank you for reading it!
Powerful. And written so well, I thought it was real at first, I even forgot about the "this is a short story at the top" and googled Aaron's different betting websites
Thank you, very kind of you to say!
Great story; it's amazing how many of us sympathize with or have had an Aaron in our lives.
Murder is always systematically kind of a dramatic act. We are definitely going to get a prediction market murder in <5 years, I think.
I learned about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market in the early 2010s. It wasn't phrased like a prediction market focusing on when a person would die, but more like a bounty. If the bounty/pot got big enough, eventually it would be worth it for someone to do it.
Even thinking/writing about this now, it still makes obvious sense and I'm surprised it hasn't been seriously made yet with crypto: if there's a pot of billions, contributed to by millions, the incentive becomes not just about the money, but the adoration, protection and power that would come with doing so many people a favour.
I think all the big targets for this kind of thing have the legal or government muscle to get in your way? Millions of people usually don't agree on someone dying unless they're powerful.
Every prediction market is an assassination market. They claim to trade on "information" but it's more like "influence", and easiest way to influence an event is usually by sabotage.
a tale as old as time. e.g., fixing a fight or a game
from your first post, a couple of days ago:
>What I'm saying is: that the sum total of blog posts I have actually published (for myself, not for work) is zero.
thanks for publishing this story. it kept me hooked throughout. i hope you continue to publish more.
Ah - thanks! I aim to keep it up!
Thank you for this piece! I'll be thinking about Aaron during lunch today.
Thank you for your kind words.
Hey you don't have to reply to each comment with a generic reply. It's a fine piece sure but let's not inflate this thread x2 with just "thank you for your words".
> I thought Aaron’s credits would run out and that would be the end of it: he would finally get a job.
Upon reading these words I experienced psychic damage from the blast of concentrated ambitionlessness.
Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Shut up and Dance."
Great story and creating the character Aaron. You did an excellent job in making a very believable person that I think most of us have run into in tech adjacent spaces.
I appreciate you referencing Charlie Brooker as he is undoubtedly a subconscious influence on my writing! Thanks for your comment.
This guy aaron doesnt sound very smart to me
There's a difference between intelligent and smart, the latter including being able to use your intelligence for a practical, real-life purpose, like improving your own life.
Very fun read. Thanks for posting it!
Appreciate the comment :)
Great short story!!
Thank you!
Spooky and riveting!
Thank you very much.
Man this piece should win an Emmy or something, it's so original and well written. I also couldn't spot much AI in there. Props to the author.
>rhythmically ejected spurts of bright red blood
Yeah man, like in music, synesthesia, I get you.
Unsurprisingly the author also makes music: https://rorz.io/music
One of his songs is called "Do androids dream of real sheep?"
What a fresh take on that classic quote! Made me spurt my kombucha, lol.
How can someone be SO talented. Thanks for sharing.
Such kind words…! I’m so honoured and humbled. Thank you.
P.S. - I didn’t use LLMs to write it, no! :)