Michael Heilemann
binarybonsai.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Michael Heilemann writes about design, technology, Apple devices, and software usability.
What HN saysHN links it for his post on Twitter's Chewbacca incident and his statistics on it; commenters mainly discuss what it says about HN readers.
15HN people shared it
2linked it in comments
16stories submitted
167story points
13 years agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Lessons of the Chewbacca Incident4 people · 92 points · first shared 2010 · 30 comments on HN
- 2Writing on the iPad: A Story of Love, Heartache & Infuriating Bugs2 people · 41 points · first shared 2010 · 6 comments on HN
- 3George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It's Okay1 people · 13 points · first shared 2010 · 5 comments on HN
- 4How it looks and feels is supposed to tell you how it works1 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 5#NewTwitter simply too crowded?1 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · 1 comments on HN
- 6An Acrobat Scripting Rant1 people · 3 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 7Vol Libre - a CG animated short from SIGGRAPH 19801 people · 3 points · first shared 2009 · discussion on HN
- 8The Amazon Doctrine1 people · 2 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 9Hollywood's Setting Sun1 people · 2 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 10Action or State?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 11Romancing The User1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 12The Blackberry Playbook and Our Natural Predators1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 13Circles (an opinion on iOS 7's signal strength meter)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · 1 comments on HN
- 14The tortured indecision1 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jasonlotito · 2010-09-28
Link directly to the article: http://binarybonsai.com/2010/09/27/chewie-stats/
jdietrich · 2010-10-03
I agree with you to an extent - we certainly fall for most of the same psychological tricks.
We are also clearly exceptional as a demographic. We are dramatically better educated and more literate than the mean. We're mostly male, whereas the internet is now a female majority population[1]. There is evidence to show that we behave very differently when presented with long-form content[2].
While I'm perfectly prepared to accept that our actual preferences are far more homogenous than our expressed preferences, I think the predominant error made by "our kind" is forgetting just how strange we are as a group and as individuals, at least in terms of our abilities and our expressed preferences.
As regards 'elitism', I've seen an awful lot of startups fail because they overestimated their users, but never once seen one that underestimates them. Amongst the HN community, people's first reaction to Bingo Card Creator seemed to be "who the hell pays money for that?". If it takes a bit of arrogance and disdain for us to grok the level of the average user, then so be it - no offence to HNers, but we're not exactly overflowing with humility are we?
[1] http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000574
[2] http://binarybonsai.com/2010/09/27/chewie-stats/