Indeed, it appears that he's now deleted his social profiles. Good on him! That is exactly the right thing to do at this point to follow through, so kudos to him.
TFA was published a day ago, the corresponding YT video was published 3 months ago. He had cross posted the blog (not sure about the YT) across multiple social media channels in that time, up until an hour ago (or thereabouts) when he finally deleted his socials. That was the state of things when I wrote my original comments and follow-ups. So I stand by the assertion that he was clearly interested in promoting the content, at least initially.
Unfortunately I can't edit any of those comments any longer.
100%. I get it -- I'm _also_ burned out on social media, AI, screens, the treadmill of the tech industry, etc.
But you can just stop doing those specific things. Delete your social media accounts. Put a screen time timer on your phone. Continue to work on your hobby projects or work projects without AI. There is a middle ground without going full "1980s tech Amish life conversion". Email, text messaging, Maps, basic websites, etc are all still super useful and generally non-harmful. You can still perfectly-well enjoy analog hobbies like typewriters, vinyl, film photography, etc _alongside_ common-sense modern tech.
And you look dumb to anyone paying attention when you launch a multi-pronged social media moment to tell the world that you don't think social media is worth using. It's kind of sad, like someone making a huge deal about "this is my L A S T cigarette everyone!", "this is my L A S T drink!" but all their friends are kind of cringing inside.
Also sad that he feels the need for online promotion of his paper zine about fully offline life.
> He is not fucking around for clicks in any shallow sense.
He is undeniably "fucking around for clicks." When you don't want clicks, you don't cross-post to YouTube, BlueSky, LinkedIn, your blog, etc. Clearly a lot of effort went into making this announcement social media friendly and click-worthy. He has analytics on his blog to track how many clicks he gets.
Whether it's in a "shallow sense" or not is subjective and there's no way to really argue against that. Do I think he's karma-obsessed and drooling over engagement dashboards? No. And maybe that's what you mean.
But you have to be willfully naive to deny the irony in deploying numerous completely unnecessary layers of tech, over numerous social media channels, to let everyone know that you no longer want tech and social media in your life.
His latest YouTube post, from 2 weeks after the alleged go-dark date, is also all about his personal plan to walk away from tech. Needed to make sure there is a GoPro in his face while he talks about how low-tech he yearns to be. Needs to make sure everyone on the internet sees HD digital footage of him tapping on a typewriter, carving a stamp by hand, and switching to paper bank statements.
> Your cynicism is misplaced, Chad has been a fixture on HN for well over a decade
I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt the claims in other comments that he has made incredible contributions to open source, is a good, kind person, and so forth. He deserves immense credit for these things.
None of that negates the fact that this is an incredibly performative and hypocritical way to make this particular transition. Defending it by pointing out his other virtues is just a reverse ad hominem.
This whole thing is eye-searingly performative. Whether or not he follows through and goes dark after this, this farewell is just so ridiculous.
Claims to have not used the internet or a phone since February, does all communication via USPS, declares that AI and social media make him hate himself... But somehow is continuing to post on Bluesky, continuing to update his blog, continuing to post YouTube videos, continuing to solicit donations on GoFundMe for personal matters. The account that posted this link to HN is brand new and this is the only submission -- hmm...
If you are serious about being done with tech and plan to go off-grid, you just go off grid.
Need to tie off some loose ends first? Write a paper letter to your IRL inner circle and/or business partners. Get it copied at Kinkos. Call people (use a land line if you need) and talk to them about it.
Just this last time (you swear!) you absolutely must announce this at internet scale? Then walk the walk and minimize the tech involved by typing out your farewell in plain text and posting it directly. Y'know, like we did pre-AI, pre-social media. Don't pull out a typewriter, write a sappy "Dear Internet" letter, add a bunch of likely-pre-planned "edits" in red pen, pull out your digital camera, take a photo, transfer it to your laptop, carefully adjust and crop, then finally combine it into a multimedia update that you go out of your way to promote across multiple social media channels. This announcement has obviously been tailored for maximum social media engagement -- supposedly the thing they are making a principled stand in opposition to.
This takes me back to my teenage juggling glory days. Truly the golden years in hindsight.
I grew up in Silicon Valley in the late 80s/90s and learned to juggle, as many people did back then, from the book "Juggling for the Complete Klutz." As a kid I devoured almost every Klutz Press book.
A product of Stanford people, Klutz had a small brick and mortar store in Palo Alto. It sold all of their books, of course, but also juggling equipment, magic props, and random fun stuff like rubber chickens and fake corpse legs you could hang out the trunk of your car. Absolute paradise for ~12 year old me.
But the best part was that they ran a weekly juggling club out on the back deck area. Just show up and play. I learned a lot from all of the kind folks who turned out for that. My mom would drop me off every week, and I'd run out there excited to show the older guys what I learned that week. I wasn't a prodigy or anything but I was decent. Got to the point where I was juggling 4 clubs and I could hang with the club passers if they kept the pattern tame (and were skilled enough to catch my slop). Of course I also got proficient at other juggling-adjacent stuff like yo-yo, devil sticks, contact juggling... Just pure joy, really a cherished memory.
I was at the shop enough that my friend and I ended up being recruited to model for the 1998 edition of the Klutz Yo Yo book. There are 2 photos of me in there, I think. I was pissed that my friend was more photogenic and they ended up using way more of his photos than mine.
I would agree that the proper next step after getting comfortable with 3 balls is to learn 3 clubs, not 4 balls. It's much easier to go 3 balls -> 3 clubs than 3 balls -> 4 balls. So many fun things to do with clubs, and of course once you learn clubs you have learned torches/knives which never fail to impress.
TFA was published a day ago, the corresponding YT video was published 3 months ago. He had cross posted the blog (not sure about the YT) across multiple social media channels in that time, up until an hour ago (or thereabouts) when he finally deleted his socials. That was the state of things when I wrote my original comments and follow-ups. So I stand by the assertion that he was clearly interested in promoting the content, at least initially.
Unfortunately I can't edit any of those comments any longer.