My Friend Aaron

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!

[EDIT]: There've been a lot more comments since I wrote this one. I want you all to know that I've read every single comment and am ever so grateful for everyone who responded here / took the time to read the story!

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.

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 legitimately thought this was real for about half of it and it made it very engaging, well done.

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.

Not sure why, but I thought this was going to be a friend of Aaron Swartz writing in memory of him.

Best line in the story:

I had spent my whole life dreaming of making my own overnight success on the internet, but had taught someone with no ethics how to do it instead.

This is such a great line and one I know so many people related to as soon as they read it.

You're a great writer, thank you for this today.

Nice. Story and your writing style tell more about you as about Aaron.

IMHO, with the second paragraph, Aaron starts to fade into background. While you increasingly describe that character in-depth, but also more and more often seem to advert an urge to apologize for ... something.

I wonder what that is!?

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

Nice. Story and your writing style tell more about you as about Aaron.

IMHO, with the second paragraph, Aaron starts to fade into background. While you increasingly describe your character in-depth, but also more and more often seem to advert an urge to apologize for ... something. I wonder what that is!?

"Ho" from Slow Horses meets the milquetoast protagonist from Big Vern in Viz.

I use to read a lot, big novels and short stories, and I know when I see something that is good. Yours is.

One thing that I give you as feedback, maybe for another version, or for future stories, would be to develop a bit more on why keep the friendship with Aaron. I know it was there some reasons, but for me it was a bit harder to follow. But even this is a small thing.

Tell us if you have something else written to share.

I clicked on the HN link and, when I saw "short story", almost closed the tab ... but I started to read anyway. I found it compelling and disturbing from start to finish. Much as my opinions about writing count for nothing, I truly hope that you poat any future works here. A great read.

Some people have always had qualities like Aaron's, and giving them tools like AI causes them to reveal themselves by virtue of becoming that much louder. Those problems are often unfixable regardless, as they are at the level of personality. What is fixable in comparison (but likely not in practice) is not inventing new ways of allowing them to hang themselves and others. But we will invent them anyway, because a promising idea cannot be left alone for long, and consequences will be suffered as a result.

Murder is always systematically kind of a dramatic act. We are definitely going to get a prediction market murder in <5 years, I think.

Great story! Loved reading it.

I also didn't see the notice it was a short story. So I was a bit puzzled when reading how Aaron built his own exchange as a novice programmer. To me building an exchange is high up on the scale of programming difficulty. Its one of those things you have to do extremely well or else no one will trust your platform.

What a great story. You have a very pleasant, flowing style. I didn't even notice it until I reached the end, it really captivated me

Reads a bit like an elevated resentment fantasy. A mostly ethical narrator narrating his friend’s morally deserved doom that keeps the narrator’s own hands mostly clean. And with the narrator holding a medal at the end.

That’s cathartic for some. For me, the narrator rather resembles one of the local tech millionaires, envious of the billionaires. The story doesn’t seem to know the narrator’s dishonesty.

I initially missed the line saying it was a short story and read through most of it as personal experience until the last couple of paragraphs. That made it even more exciting, but it is still very good as a fictional story.

Very good from start to finish, it reminds me of a darker version of the real story told in the 2009 documentary We Live In Public about Josh Harris.

Black Mirror adaptation when?

Loved it!

Where did Aaron get the millions of dollars' worth of tokens from? The grannies?!?

Strangely, doesn't load for me with some Vercel/NextJS error. Disabling Javascript displays the whole post, though.

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.

Great writing. Felt like it could be a Black Mirror episode

For all the Aarons out there, I think it would be very interesting to hear your POV.

Exceptionally well written! I was instantly hooked.

Thank you for this piece! I'll be thinking about Aaron during lunch today.

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.

Before you read and waste your time:

== It's a fake story ==

Good story and the classic problem with nearly all betting markets having viaticals embedded

This guy aaron doesnt sound very smart to me

Very fun read. Thanks for posting it!

Great story; it's amazing how many of us sympathize with or have had an Aaron in our lives.

Spooky and riveting!

Great short story!!

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.

> 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.