HN Explorer

Tell HN: Read Maxim and other trashy "guy" rags.

117 points by mahmud ↗ HN
I went out to get a haircut today and had a chance to scan through crap magazines before my appointment.

Extremely worthwhile.

Anybody who is out of business ideas, specially "social apps" will do well consuming that garbage from time to time. It's simply full of insight into the mindset of a sizable segment of society. The ads within the pages are full of hints on what works.

I had a short stint as a reseller for luxury motorcycles, and I am 100% certain that my business would have benefited from an earlier exposure to these publications.

61 comments

[ 0.31 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] thread
jacquesm
Mahmud, please do an autobiography! Cigarette black marketeer, lisper, salesman of luxury motor cycles, business advisor and to top it off, a window cleaner.

No doubt many other things beside, if you can spare the time, do it, I'll pre-order at any fair price.

There has to be a very interesting story at the root of all that. Alternatively, if you bring the stories I'll supply the campfire.

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jacquesm
> Its sad, you can't believe that a reality(or life) other than one similar to yours exists.

How on earth did you distill that from what I wrote?

Had it occurred to you that I'm genuinely interested and that I think that Mahmud's story really must be something that I would enjoy to hear / read?

As for not being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I think I could qualify for that category easily.

skowmunk
I must have been on one of my out of earth experiences, when I read your comment.

I misinterpreted and read sarcasm in what you wrote. Apologies for that.

jacquesm
No problem. I have a lot of out-of-band contacts with HN'ers, Mahmud is one of them and I meant every word I wrote there. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to, email in my profile, I'd like to understand how I triggered your sarcasm-o-meter so I can avoid doing so in the future.
skowmunk
I can see now that you meant it really and in a good way.

".....I can avoid doing so in the future......"

It is me who should work on not coming to a conclusion too quickly, without knowing the background. But, Thanks. It was also a good lesson for me by observation in how to react, in an indignant but respectable manner, when somebody accuses you of something that you are not.

drinian
I had the pleasure of downing a few pints with Mahmud at a HN meet last year, and will second that request in an instant.
mahmud
Live first, write biographies later.

Hack first, write manuals later.

Drinian, are you the bg guy? :-)

MaysonL
The unlived life is not worth examining... ;)
mahmud
I wish I made that comment.
MaysonL
The first time I thought it, a few decades ago[HS or college], I thought it was original. I just Googled it, and the earliest attribution I found was to John Keats. (Interestingly enough, this thread has made it to the second page of the results). The quote seems to have its own Facebook page.
mazuhl
The quote having it's own Facebook page is probably because of the changes they made fairly recently with people's profiles/interests.

I think the quote, an unlived life is not worth examining, is nice and deep. I take it to mean that, not just a boring life, biographies of young people are premature.

As an example, the 24 year old who chases a small bag of air around a grassy field, has a 5-book biography planned.[1]

The man who created the Red Army, lost the struggle against Stalin, inspired revolutionaries around the world and was brutally murdered aged 60... He managed a measly 3 part biography.[2][3]

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/478... [2] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=inauthor:%22Isaac+Deutscher... [3] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n23/neal-ascherson/victory-in-defea...

kmt
I think I might be that bg guy. :) Will be delighted to catch up; email me if interested (I'm around).
chopsueyar
That's how Facebook feels about API docs, too.
mahmud
Ouch, I feel sorry for the bunch of people who just followed me on twitter, thinking I am Mr Fun Stories. Hint: I only tweet to bitch about compilers or APIs. Like everything in #lisp, it's smug despair and violent indifference.
GVRV
I've been following you for a while on Twitter, and I think it's a shame that you don't tweet/blog about your thoughts more often. I think there's a group of very intelligent, experienced hackers on HN who should share their thoughts/ideas more often as it would benefit the whole community. I would much prefer to read something by them than some the submissions that make it to the front page which is obviously link-bait with meaningless content.
skowmunk
Yep, I agree, there are so many opportunities floating all around us. Its always a matter of us discovering them and then most importantly executing them, in a way that translates those opportunities into monetizable services.
_Lemon_
Could you expand on what you saw, generally what your thought process was, and how you feel it could apply to business ideas and social apps in general?

I understand that it may be obvious and I'm sure I'd have plenty of ideas myself, I'm just curious of the mindset and psyche behind your (as another person) thinking.

[dead] access_denied
A while ago I listened to my neighbour rambling about our neighbourhood. He knew about every fish-pond anyone has in his garden around here. He knew how much it costs, what fish, how many ect Apparently there is a form of competitiveness that goes like this: I can enjoy my pond more than you, because mine is better. The competition is in the enjoyment, not the coolness of the pond itself. Subtle difference. The thing is, I live here for years and I had no idea.

I guess you could make a SN for these folks. It would be foto-heavy and have some sort of competition inbuild.

mahmud
The revelation that ordinary people, the type you run into everyday, might be aspiring to live the lives shown in popular rags and television. It's completely accepted that what's shown on pages is something to be desired, and if one can't obtain them, then a lesser quality item of similar fashion is to be accepted as substitute.

In concrete terms: people don't open Maxim and laugh. They open it and get inspired. They know the girl on the cover by name, they know the brand of futuristic car she's posing against, and one of them commented he "just bought" a clone advertised in there.

Poiesis
They open it and get inspired. They know...he "just bought" a clone advertised in there.

I'm inspired to buy a clone; sign me up! :)

More seriously, I understand that we are among people here for whom it is fashionable to reject popular culture. Or, if not strictly being fashionable, are certainly not overly concerned with some of the more commercial aspects of culture.

It's just a bunch of ads with enough wrapped around for it to be read by its target demographic. It's easy to read more into this than it really merits. Yes, so-called "ordinary people" read such magazines and see the ads, and perhaps want the stuff. That's what it's designed to do.

There is a lot of money thrown into trying to get people to buy stuff. This is not news. Nor is it news that most of us are trying to improve our financial position, whether as means or end.

I don't I'm quite expressing well what I'm trying to say here. It's not that I don't understand what you mean when you seem a bit bewildered at some of the advertisements (that incidentally probably weren't targeted for you). But it doesn't seem like it would be a huge surprise to realize that advertising really works pretty well, generally speaking.

It's unfortunately one reason I fear for the U.S. political future; it seems distressingly easy to change people's minds simply by throwing enough money at the problem.

aspir
It sometimes seem as though these magazines are outrageous and worthless. All the content is typically big ticket spending and dating supermodels. But, they sell and do very well. It says a great deal about the male psychology and how to position a product. Obviously these magazines are doing something correctly, otherwise they wouldn't exist in their volume.
vkdelta
Mahmud, It has happened to quite a few times because I never take appointments at such places.

I am not a coder but I think there is a big opportunity for making applications/services for people who want to consume trash. There is huge chunk of society who needs it and it is not-so surprising seeing how much money luxury brands make.

jiganti
A lot of times I get ideas from considering these types of experiences with how people operate. If it's a magazine, a social situation or a TV commercial, they might collide with the abstract thoughts floating around in your head at just the right angle, producing a great idea.

People talk a lot about swimming around in your thoughts to conceive ideas. This is something that I definitely support; people spend way too little time letting their mind wander, and so they end up only being able to think in the shower or in line at Starbucks. Setting aside more time to do this, along with refusing to whip out the smartphone to read HN or check in with foursquare every time something isn't immediately demanding your attention, will give your mind a better chance to conceive new ideas and consider old ones.

That said, often it takes a little fuel to jump start your thought process. Something specific to consider, to trigger memories and begin a train of thought. As people in the startup industry tend to be more technically inclined and thus, occasionally lose sight of their market's intellectual abilities and social tendencies, it can be refreshing to embed yourself in the types of things people do that you expect to use your product.

yters
One way I've come up with some of my best ideas is at school working on a boring, hard project with a major deadline looming. Those tend to be the best times to start day dreaming and procrastinating.
DevX101
I think the broader point is that entrepreneurs should expose themselves to as many domains outside their comfort zones as possible. As hackers/entrepreneurs we're generally pretty good at seeing a solution to a problem. The issue is, that we don't see enough problems, because many of us are confined to a relatively narrow experiences many of which are echo chambers for what we're already interested in/agree with.

Why do you think there are SO MANY productivity apps? Because it's something programmers often need to work with to get shit done. Same for coding tools, etc etc...

Another example: just yesterday someone posted the report recommending an income tax receipt. Within 24 hours, there was a pretty neat app out for that. The issue wasn't that someone couldn't do it -- but that the 'need' wasn't previously well defined to people capable of solving that problem.

So get your ass out there. Find out problems and interests people unlike you have. Maybe you'll stumble upon your next big thing.

jonhendry
Exactly. If you think of your life as a problem space, adopting a new hobby or interest is a way of expanding that problem space.

Right now, maybe you're reasonably content with things in your life. You've explored your problem space and solved anything causing stupid problems. Add a hobby, and you increase your problem space, and you may find new itches, that you didn't have before, that need scratching (to mix metaphors).

jayliew
Recently I've set out on a quest to actively find new ideas; going as far as making it a goal to find one new idea a day (no matter how crazy, for the sake of flexing my brain and getting it better at stumbling on opportunities). This is as opposed to my previous method of passively reading about things and hoping that as things accumulate in my head, I will subconsciously one day while taking a shower have a eureka moment and think of an awesome idea (which does happen, just not as frequent as I would like).

I've found that by just sitting down and clearing my head and forcing myself to think really hard, trying to connect the dots half-baked ideas and just mixing it up with random thoughts, I've gotten a whole lot better at thinking up of ideas. Patrick (patio11)'s article about his not understanding why people complain they can't find ideas really gave me a good kick in the side and motivated me to do this: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/03/20/running-a-software-busin... and I do find his comment about "walking in a store to find what people buy" a great starting point! I also have this book which I recommend 'A Whack on the Side of the Head' http://amzn.to/bm6vW4 which certainly did literally help me look at ideas in a different light and generate new ideas.

As a part of my effort to just find new opportunities, I've been documenting meta-algorithms to find algorithms (if a business idea/model is an algorithm). An entry I just added is:

* Learn a new concept, algorithm, (e.g. 'Programming Collective Intelligence' http://amzn.to/cMLnKj), and apply it to some problem in a different field (e.g. non-technical things in real life, or things I use such as Facebook, Twitter, etc). <-- An example of this: I read up on Shazam's clever algorithm and tried to use that method to solve something else.

Does anyone else collect such meta algorithms?

xutopia
My local ruby user group invites people from various practices to discuss their frameworks and give us business advice.

So many people really do live in a ghetto.

GVRV
Hmm.. I've looked at these mags from time to time, but I still don't understand what you're pointing to. Most of the advertising in these mags would fool you into thinking that the average reader of this magazine is a 20 year old with a million dollar paycheck only interested in pleasing his woman.

I'm not sure most readers of these mags can even relate to the luxury goods advertised. Anyways, how does that help my startup? From what I've read, most of the articles in the mags are highly stylized/fictionalized, I wouldn't trust them to validate a demand, I would much rather sit down 1 on 1 with a small number of people, rather than base that decision on these mags. (Maybe I still don't know if this is what you mean?)

atomical
I think he is talking about the psychology of the magazines from a marketing standpoint. There is a lot of sociology literature about the idiotic ideals they portray. You could check out that instead to get a grasp on the mindset of the reader or at the very least what the reader will be receptive to.

Do these magazines attempt to create a market or do they validate a demand? That would be my question.

mahmud
You understood me well.

Do these magazines attempt to create a market or do they validate a demand?

This is the first question that came to my mind, and the answer came to me immediately by looking left and right. It was Saturday afternoon, and while I was there to remove a nasty afro-mohawk that I grew out of boredom, the gentlemen crowding the shop where almost lifted out of the pages, and seem to be following fashions proscribed therein. They're not millionaires, they were your average Joes, but I could flip through pages and find everyone's fashion and accessories; from phones, to shoes, choice of clothes. There was even a guy who had his eye-brows done before he went on to sit underneath one of those "insert head, wait for an hour" bowls that look like a giant reading lamp, or a space helmet (my girl gets those and I never imagined apparently straight men would be into that. Does it blow air or does it vacuum?)

Maybe it takes an outsider to see a world differently, but to me it was a wake up call to keep an eye on that part of society.

GVRV
If I'm understanding correctly, it's what every surviving media outlet does - validate a demand. People magazine gives middle aged women something to dream about, Maxim does the same thing for guys, reading signal vs. noise does the same for aspiring founders. Because the audience is actively seeking something, there's a good chance they will follow whatever they're being fed by the media outlet. Some of these audiences are less receptive than others, but I understand how it's helpful to understand that market.

Also, I think it blows air but not sure. :)

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araneae
Agreed. I enjoy Maxim but I can't say it's helped me to develop app ideas. At all.

Also... why are you assuming that everyone here needs helping writing apps for a male audience? Wouldn't you be helping them tap into a goldmine by suggesting they read, say, Glamour?

mahmud
You might not find app ideas in popular rags, but it's my belief that you will find ways to frame, present and market the product.

There is this "society" of men, the readers of Maxim and clients of that barber, that all seem to share the same "buying ideals". People openly talked about what they bought and what they intend to buy, what's "hot" and what's not. Most telling was when they passed around an issue to share pictures they thought were funny/cool, etc. I say tap into this "culture" and use its language to position yourself. You can grab a few phrases from a trendy/insider lingo, if not for anything, then for Adwords or SEO.

I think my exuberance can be excused :-)

P.S. Thanks for the Glamour reference.

patio11
You can also get a lot from Cosmo. (Insert "10 Surprising Reasons I'm Not Joking" here.)
mahmud
Notice how the Top-10 format itself, a classic cover item, has only recently been admitted into the link-bait hall of fame.
davidedicillo
I agree. Too many people seems to forget that most of the population aren't geek, they don't live online and they don't think like the average HN user. Guess what, may seems stupid, but stupid can makes millions...
peteforde
I strongly recommend that you folks read Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto" if you haven't already:

http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Drugs-Cocoa-Puffs-Manifesto/dp/074...

Some will adore his writing style, others will hate it. As an essayist, his prose is about as far from PG's style as possible... which is exactly why I'm suggesting it.

Off the top of my head, he goes into extensive, gratuitous quasi-intellectual breakdowns of everything from MTV's The Real World to G'n'R cover bands.

In the chapter on sugary breakfast cereals, Chuck notes that "an inordinate number of cereal commercials are based on the premise that a given cereal is so delicious that a fictional creature would want to steal it." Have truer words ever been written? He continues:

"Being cool is mostly ridiculous, and so is sugared cereal. That's why we like it."

"I eat sugared cereal almost exclusively. This is because I'm the opposite of a 'no-nonsense' guy. I'm an 'all-nonsense' guy. When a button falls off my shirt, I immediately throw it away and buy a new one. I can't swim; to me, twelve feet of water is no different than twelve feet of hydrochloric acid. However, I can stay awake for 72 straight hours. When flipping channels during commercial breaks, I can innately sense the perfect moment to return to watch I was watching. So the rub is that I have all these semicritical flaws and I have these weirdly specific gifts, and it seems like most Americans are similarly polarized by what the can (and cannot) do. There are no-nonsense people, and there are nonsense people. And it's my experience that nonsense people tend to consume Cocoa Krispies and Lucky Charms and Cap'n Crunch (nonsense food, if you will). Consequently, we nonsense types spend hours and hours staring at cardboard creatures like the Trix Rabbit and absorbing his ethos, slowly ingesting the principles of exclusionary coolness while rapidly ingesting sugar-saturated spoonfuls of Vitamin B-12."

If you're still reading... kudos! My point is transcribing this is simply that we geeks tend to see the world in a more or less specific way unless we consciously eat some Trix once in a while.

MikeCapone
It doesn't sound like something I'd usually read, which is exactly why I just put a 'hold' on it at my local public library branch. Gotta experiment sometimes. Thanks for the suggestion.
skowmunk
Loved that excerpt. Gotta check it out some time.
yters
Yeah, I've noticed exactly this. I've been raised to think my sober, analytic take on life is the "mature" point of view and the one that produces value in the world. All the "nonsense" people are the value consumers.

However, when I get off my high horse I realize we've all got our idiosyncracies and the real value detractors are those who can't see their own nonsense for what it is. In a sense, the "nonsense" people have the most sensible view of life.

gabrielroth
Whatever you do, don't take sex advice from them.

A female friend of mine was hanging out with a bunch of guys who had a lot of Maxims in their bathroom. She wound up reading an article along the lines of "Seven Ways to Drive Her Wild in Bed."

That night she hooked up with one of the guys. To her amazement, she realized midway through that he was trying every one of the techniques in the article.

jamesbritt
"Whatever you do, don't take sex advice from them."

Well, at least one of them apparently knows how to get laid.

yters
Like insider tips, seems the real lesson here is to not let your girlfriend read your Maxim.
jayliew
You didn't allude to whether she actually liked it or not - which I think is the more important point. She's the beneficiary of the knowledge the guy gained from Maxim, it would matter more that the guy acquired and used the knowledge, than where the knowledge came from :/
jonhendry
I would suggest getting a new, non-computer hobby and getting tuned in with the magazines (if any) and blogs that cover the topic.

That'd at least be more focused. Mens mags might be a bit diffuse. And it's possible that, by the time something shows up in Maxim, it's already kinda old hat.

Finally, if something shows up in Maxim, it might be because of a well-funded PR campaign, not because of genuine grassroots interest.

maxklein
I absolutely agree. Most people are not interested in developer tools or productivity tools, they just want TV quality stuff. Unfortunately, there is little software supplying this to them.
[dead] c00p3r
Try to scan your spam folder and google ads in gmail. You will be surprised even more. ^_^
Tichy
Although it has to be said, sometimes Hacker News does not seem to be that different from Men's Health and the likes. Here it is "How to get rich in four hours", in Men's Health it is "How to get great abs in 4 hours". And with Tim Ferris' next book, the two worlds will move even closer to each other.

Edit: this reminds, WHY is there no "Hacker News" for women's stuff? Where things like "the sensational new makeup" or whatever can be upvoted and so on? (No offense to women, I am talking about women's magazine readers). In theory women like to talk more than men, yet I am not aware of such a site.

dstorrs
If we're discussing (arche|stereo)types, then women like to talk more then men (i.e., face-to-face interaction). Therefore, they aren't as likely to spend time on a glorified Internet chat board like HN.
ryanpetrich
Some magazines are mostly marketing and advertising. Read them if you want to learn about marketing and advertising
gbog
I usually find good stuff on HN but sometimes it feels too US-centric, and here, even worse, it seems highly HN-centric.

Poster mahmud probably deserve a lot of respect but without context his post and the comments are useless for me, and I guess it should be the same for other occasional lurkers that happen to not know what Maxim is, nor live in the US.

Please don't misinterpret, I don't feel I have any position to say what HN should or shouldn't be, and I know that these meta-level comments are not welcome, because they do not add anything useful to the discussion. It's only that, from time to time, I have felt myself "excluded" from the HN community, because I'm not living the same life, reading the same newspaper (I read none), etc.

On the other hand, when I re-read Paul Graham's essays, they are really the kind of food for the mind that any open minded guy, reading enough English, would enjoy. It is a kind of "Humanisme" a la Diderot, that is worthwhile, that I like to find on HN -- End of the "I feel lonely" complain.

stonemetal
Not sure where you are from but it should be easy to replace Maxim with low brow mens entertainment publication. It has a large number of pictures of girls in bathing suits, beer etc.
JimboOmega
Maxim is 95% advertising, either direct or indirect; most of the articles/columns/etc are about things you should buy. Throw in a few pictures of a scantily clad woman, and a badly written sex advice column, and that's all it is.

As another poster said, it's mostly about advertising and I suppose if that is what you want to learn about, go ahead.

I have to disagree with the OP. It is not a window into the world in which "normal guys" live in by any sense. Perhaps, the world "normal guys" wished they lived in - with expensive gadgets and super models. (What is a "normal guy" anyway? Do most male hackers not like gadgets and attractive women?)

If you see an article comparing beers to pick the season/year's best, you might think it is appealing to the beer-swilling masses, but really it is there to sell beer.

I was very surprised to find Playboy a far better read, but it is. Yes, it has nudity, but it has articles I find good reads too.

Anyway if you want an insight into an untapped segment, watch daytime television. What kind of person watches daytime television? People do, and they have a lot of free time they could be spending on your site. What are they like? I don't know. But that's more insightful than something that throws advertising at basic male instincts.