Very Important People

Posted30 days agoActive24 days ago

gmays

26 points

11 comments

dirt.fyiNewsstory

informativeneutral

Debate

50/100

Social HierarchyInfluencersNews

Key topics

Social Hierarchy

Influencers

News

The notion of "Very Important People" has sparked a heated debate, with some readers dismissing the article as superficial celebrity worship, while others see it as a thought-provoking commentary on class, fame, and social status. As commenters dug in, their perspectives ranged from outrage and insularity to enthusiastic agreement, with one reader even confessing to feeling a primal urge to "throw potatoes" at VIPs, leveling the playing field. The discussion reveals that envy and the human desire for social status are complex, deeply ingrained forces that drive our behaviors, from exhibitionism to ritualistic displays like weddings. Amidst the disagreement, a consensus emerges that the article has tapped into something fundamental about human nature.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Very active discussion

First comment

Peak period

96-108h

Avg / period

Comment distribution32 data points

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Based on 32 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Dec 6, 2025 at 2:46 AM EST
30 days ago
Step 01
02First comment
Dec 10, 2025 at 2:14 AM EST
4d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
21 comments in 96-108h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Dec 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM EST
24 days ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (11 comments)

Showing 32 comments

fellowniusmonk

26 days ago

1 reply

What is the point of this article? It rings incredibly false and superficial to me. The headspace this person in seems like pure misery.

Papazsazsa

26 days ago

2 replies

It's social commentary about class, fame, and fate – all things very relevant to hackers and news.

fellowniusmonk

26 days ago

2 replies

It's just weird celebrity worship dressed up by arguing that celebrity is somehow this innate characteristic his specific friend Adam can spot. This is tabloid ontology.

I've worked in the celebrity space for a long time, there is no there there, the dehumanizing of celebrities (and oneself) via worship, para-socializing or unearned castigation is all brain rot.

This attempt to hide ungrounded "People Magazine" supermarket aisle foolishness behind pseudo gonzo journalism is such a lipstick on a pig move.

ibash

26 days ago

1 reply

[delayed]

fellowniusmonk

26 days ago

It's in the frame and it's mid. There is enough ambiguity of interpretation (as is the nature of gonzo writing) and one instance of saying willow smith talks like a homeless person to trick people into missing the frame the article adopts, the takedown and the worship are the same.

Papazsazsa

25 days ago

I too work in the attention economy and found the essay relevant and an enjoyable reminder of some of the genx era/Pitchfork era commentary.

lurk2

26 days ago

1 reply

[delayed]

Papazsazsa

25 days ago

mock-possum

26 days ago

1 reply

I find this kind of attitude insufferable to be honest. This is really hard to read.

cwmoore

26 days ago

“I've seen almost zero famous people in my life.“

frankest

26 days ago

1 reply

Envy is worth talking about. It seems to pull a lot of people, like one of the strings in string theory. They want to be envied so they live an exhibitionist life, or they were surpassed by someone they thought was their equal and now they hate the gap. Is it possible people who feel envy then decide to be more exhibitionist, so they can be envied in the future?

I wonder what value envy provided to evolution? Did it motivate primates to do more than they are already doing? Is it a by-product of social status behaviors?

wseqyrku

26 days ago

2 replies

> by-product of social status behaviors

I think that's the one. There's entire rituals to show social status. For example, weddings. That's all it is for.

lucyjojo

26 days ago

on an individual, or societal pov, i heavily doubt this is the case... it might be true in some subsets of some societies (royalty? maybe, not sure), or maybe in some periods of times. but this view seems extremely reductive.

frankest

26 days ago

Weddings are also a social commitment exercise to the couple. Imagine if you had break a promise you made in front of everyone both of you know, after spending a whole lot of money. It’s loss aversion and social shame that possibly made a lot of couples stick together. Even so, posing with your best clothes, food, locations, entertainment and donning all of your jewelry (all of your wealth in gold in some country) does likely play the Envy string too.

advael

26 days ago

1 reply

I don't think I'm completely oblivious to social status, but I've never understood at a deep level the way most people seem to process concepts like "fame" and "celebrity". I have never had the experience of being awestruck by a person, or elevating them above personhood, though I admire plenty of people. With the few brushes with, maybe we can say "microcelebrity" I've had myself, the opportunities and status benefits, while nice, seemed not worth the bizarre distorting effect on social reality it has, like the thing where someone's heard of me and talks to me like they know me when we've never met is uncomfortable at best, and most people considered various degrees of famous I've met who I came to respect seemed to be similarly jaded with this awestruck or even worshipful reaction some people seem to have when they idolize someone. I really think this whole cluster of behaviors is unhealthy and weird, and the fact that mass-communication technologies and the massive societal resources bent toward persuasion (both commercial and political) have drastically amplified it is probably one of the major causal factors in the polycrisis of the modern world

Papazsazsa

25 days ago

1 reply

Celebrity is a commercial, political, and creative 'hack' for mass media – which isn't always unhealthy to consume e.g. good books, films, music, etc.

I agree some people take it way too far, but I personally don't have a problem if Oprah promotes an important novel I wrote.

advael

25 days ago

1 reply

This is a phenomenon that, like many social phenomena, seems to scale superlinearly, and you've described a gradient of economic advantage along which this will tend to accelerate. These properties suggest to me that an attitude like "it's fine as long as it's not taken too far" is at best pretty naive

Papazsazsa

25 days ago

1 reply

Schelling points are a known outcome of many types of phenomena, especially competitive ones.

advael

25 days ago

1 reply

This statement is, while true, quite vacuous. What's your point?

Papazsazsa

25 days ago

Dealing with reality.

lurk2

26 days ago

2 replies

[delayed]

Arainach

26 days ago

1 reply

By leaving out the following paragraph you're doing an injustice, framing a humorous anecdote as an attack:

>Then I remembered that I'd heard it before. A homeless guy had been saying this exact same thing down by the beach, although I had to admit the message benefited from the wireless microphone, the giant festival stage, and the thousands of screaming fans.

It's a poignant observation about how similarly inane arguments are perceived as evidence of mental illness or deep insights based on the social perception of the speaker.

The author of this article is a solid storyteller who brings in a number of human elements that make it compelling. Meandering storytelling is intentional - this isn't an article for a scientific journal.

lurk2

26 days ago

1 reply

[delayed]

Arainach

26 days ago

1 reply

Writing isn't always about terse summaries of information. If you want that, have an LLM summarize it.

Good writing expresses concepts and ideas in engaging ways. You could write a few paragraphs summarizing theology, philosophy, and family dynamics that could be read in 10 minutes, but that doesn't come close to matching or replacing Dostoyevsky.

Doing everything as efficiently as possible misses the point. It's similar to how handwritten notes are slower but are retained more because of the process and taking the time to make them and read them.

lurk2

26 days ago

[delayed]

thorn

24 days ago

You missed the point of this text. It is not a scientific article, nor text pretending to be a revelation in any way. It is just a process or the episode of life, the author shared with us. And the writing (style) is excellent too.

Gualdrapo

26 days ago

1 reply

So they saw something that could be a person drowning and did nothing about it?

cwmoore

26 days ago

No one seems to notice so it’s probably a bouy.

4ndrewl

26 days ago

"Like most unfamous people, I feel compelled to meet as many famous people as I can."

Is this how people are, or how LLMs think people are like?

pastapliiats