Literally every fucking time there's an article in the press someone posts this stupid Paul Graham article as if it's an original or clever contribution to the discussion.
Yes, that last sentence was a bit harsh, but stay with me. Constantly saying "Hey guys, PR exists" except in code is one of those weird HN tics that drives me crazy. Allow me to elaborate.
1) The concept of public relations is not novel or unheard of. Like at all. PR companies have thousands of employees, are traded on public stock markets, and so on. It's an often sophisticated and well established professional discipline. I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an executive at a PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject.
Pointing out that PR exists is like noticing there's a bright shining light in the sky half of the time, it's completely devoid of insight. Of course when companies are mentioned favorably in the press it's likely that PR was involved. That's literally intrinsic to the concept of companies being in the press. The details of how that works might be interesting, but...
2) Even within that context the linked article is facile at best. It's pretty long but it's clearly written by someone who doesn't really have all that much exposure to or understanding of how journalism or PR works on a day to day basis. Or didn't at the time at least. He's a great writer, I loved his book, and this works just fine as a personal anecdote, but not as a canonical comment for decades on dozens of business stories.
3) And lastly, literally nobody on the planet calls a pitched press profile story a "submarine" ever, like it's thirteen years later, it didn't catch on.
Stop trying to make submarine happen. It's not going to happen.
> The concept of public relations is not novel or unheard of. Like at all. ... Pointing out that PR exists is like noticing there's a bright shining light in the sky half of the time, it's completely devoid of insight.
Many, many people have heard of PR but still believe that articles like this are written by independent, unbiased investigative journalists. The piece starts off with "At the back of my New York closet", giving you the idea that the whole thing is by Alexandra, from Alexandra's point of view, all the way to "For now, I’m happy to pretend that they’re mine."
If the public could see the degree to which this experience and the words and research in this piece was spoon-fed to the author by Rent The Runway Inc, (what does that email chain actually look like?) it would be like telling them that the bright shining light in the sky the other half of the time was not a moon but a space station - absolutely mind-blowing.
> I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an executive at a PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject.
While I appreciate your insight and would value further information on the PR industry, this disqualifies your opinion that the business you were in is not surprising.
I mean, it's not like that take is wrong. Articles like this actually are written by (relatively) unbiased journalists. It's not an investigative piece so that word wouldn't apply.
It's the New Yorker, it's a very credible source that practices real journalism. Some outlets don't as much. But these guys have very strict ethics and fact checking requirements.
True, a publicist almost certainly emailed the writers and editors a million times asking for a profile but so did literally every other company in the world, so it's not really all that dispositive.
But either way, the point is every story that involves access to a person or company is to some extent managed by that person or company. Sometimes the outlet comes up with the idea, often it's pitched. But it doesn't really matter all that much which. It's up to the outlet to decide how much work they do, how oppositional they are, and what their voice is in the story. It’s up to the person/company to decide if they want to participate and how.
Yes, in the abstract that process is sort of interesting. But its mere existence is not news.
Imagine if a fellow HN poster came along in every thread and was like "HEY GUYS DID YOU KNOW RENT THE RUNWAY PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN OWN THE COMPUTERS THE WEBSITE IS ON, THERE'S A THING CALLED CLOUD COMPUTING!! HERE'S A LINK TO A BLOG POST BY A POETRY PROFESSOR WHO WAS SURPRISED TO LEARN THIS FACT" for thirteen years, you might say, well sure, while this particular example could be an exception as you are offering up no knowledge of this actual website's server setup, in general for a company like this that's often true, and sure, actually yes, this concept of cloud computing is certainly interesting.
Yikes, slow down dude. I was posting it to point out that this is blatantly an advertisement for RtR, and that I don't want to read that kind of stuff on HN, not because I'm trying to blow your mind with this massively insightful analysis.
It's a lengthy narrative profile of building a valley/alley style startup (which happens to be the topic of this here message board) in what's arguably the world's most prestigious source of very well written long form profiles.
Reminds me of idocracy. Just wait till the subsidized free version launches. Seems so odd to value vanity over familiarty personally. Do people not have a 'favorite pair of jeans' anymore? Does breaking-in a garmet not still have the same joy and personal touch? Color me skeptical of widespread adoption. Seems more like a new york kinda thing.
Does someone know something similar for men in London? I'd be interested in this too! In the article, it sounds like it exists, but then Im not aware of it.
> When You sign up for our service, You agree that each pack will be a surprise.
The big difference is they pick what you are sent, rather than you deciding. Going through their signup questionnaire on their site, they literally do not have enough information to know what I will or won't like. It's hard to even see what exactly is in their inventory to know if what they have is even in the right ballpark. Furthermore, they also don't have stores in major cities so going and swapping on demand isn't an option. As I am not a customer, I can't say for sure, but it sounds (from reading their site) like it is roughly a week between you shipping something back and getting your next shipment, especially for someone on the East coast (they seem to be LA based), so it's purely a way to augment your clothing once in a while, not what RtR is trying to accomplish for women.
End result, broadly speaking I guess somewhat similar, but not what I’m looking for personally.
It's a title and initial caps is a style used for titles. Most people are too lazy to do it nowadays given the amount of titling we need to do for our electronic communications but there is assuredly still some crusty style manual out there advocating it. The New Yorker notably clings to its traditions.
> Didn't we used to quote proper nouns when they didn't appear to be nouns?
No, mostly not.
This only has a problem because of title case, and the frequency with which it causes this exact problem is one reason title case is falling out of style.
I'd love to see a similar service aimed at men. I've found myself trying to purchase fewer, more expensive (and hopefully more durable) items. Similarly to the anecdote from the article, I find myself buying stuff that's fine in store but ultimately isn't something I'd like to keep and the return policy makes it just difficult enough that I just keep or donate it.
23 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 63.4 ms ] threadhttp://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
This time it's rentable.
Yes, that last sentence was a bit harsh, but stay with me. Constantly saying "Hey guys, PR exists" except in code is one of those weird HN tics that drives me crazy. Allow me to elaborate.
1) The concept of public relations is not novel or unheard of. Like at all. PR companies have thousands of employees, are traded on public stock markets, and so on. It's an often sophisticated and well established professional discipline. I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an executive at a PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject.
Pointing out that PR exists is like noticing there's a bright shining light in the sky half of the time, it's completely devoid of insight. Of course when companies are mentioned favorably in the press it's likely that PR was involved. That's literally intrinsic to the concept of companies being in the press. The details of how that works might be interesting, but...
2) Even within that context the linked article is facile at best. It's pretty long but it's clearly written by someone who doesn't really have all that much exposure to or understanding of how journalism or PR works on a day to day basis. Or didn't at the time at least. He's a great writer, I loved his book, and this works just fine as a personal anecdote, but not as a canonical comment for decades on dozens of business stories.
3) And lastly, literally nobody on the planet calls a pitched press profile story a "submarine" ever, like it's thirteen years later, it didn't catch on.
Stop trying to make submarine happen. It's not going to happen.
I'll show myself out.
Many, many people have heard of PR but still believe that articles like this are written by independent, unbiased investigative journalists. The piece starts off with "At the back of my New York closet", giving you the idea that the whole thing is by Alexandra, from Alexandra's point of view, all the way to "For now, I’m happy to pretend that they’re mine."
If the public could see the degree to which this experience and the words and research in this piece was spoon-fed to the author by Rent The Runway Inc, (what does that email chain actually look like?) it would be like telling them that the bright shining light in the sky the other half of the time was not a moon but a space station - absolutely mind-blowing.
> I personally am aware of it because I spent 10 years as an executive at a PR firm, so I feel some ability to speak on the subject.
While I appreciate your insight and would value further information on the PR industry, this disqualifies your opinion that the business you were in is not surprising.
It's the New Yorker, it's a very credible source that practices real journalism. Some outlets don't as much. But these guys have very strict ethics and fact checking requirements.
True, a publicist almost certainly emailed the writers and editors a million times asking for a profile but so did literally every other company in the world, so it's not really all that dispositive.
But either way, the point is every story that involves access to a person or company is to some extent managed by that person or company. Sometimes the outlet comes up with the idea, often it's pitched. But it doesn't really matter all that much which. It's up to the outlet to decide how much work they do, how oppositional they are, and what their voice is in the story. It’s up to the person/company to decide if they want to participate and how.
Yes, in the abstract that process is sort of interesting. But its mere existence is not news.
Imagine if a fellow HN poster came along in every thread and was like "HEY GUYS DID YOU KNOW RENT THE RUNWAY PROBABLY DOESN'T EVEN OWN THE COMPUTERS THE WEBSITE IS ON, THERE'S A THING CALLED CLOUD COMPUTING!! HERE'S A LINK TO A BLOG POST BY A POETRY PROFESSOR WHO WAS SURPRISED TO LEARN THIS FACT" for thirteen years, you might say, well sure, while this particular example could be an exception as you are offering up no knowledge of this actual website's server setup, in general for a company like this that's often true, and sure, actually yes, this concept of cloud computing is certainly interesting.
But...
Why is an account that hasn’t posted in 7 years posting this?
This breaks the HN guideline against insinuating astroturfing without evidence. Please don't do that here—it poisons the well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[0] https://www.themrcollection.com/collections
> When You sign up for our service, You agree that each pack will be a surprise.
The big difference is they pick what you are sent, rather than you deciding. Going through their signup questionnaire on their site, they literally do not have enough information to know what I will or won't like. It's hard to even see what exactly is in their inventory to know if what they have is even in the right ballpark. Furthermore, they also don't have stores in major cities so going and swapping on demand isn't an option. As I am not a customer, I can't say for sure, but it sounds (from reading their site) like it is roughly a week between you shipping something back and getting your next shipment, especially for someone on the East coast (they seem to be LA based), so it's purely a way to augment your clothing once in a while, not what RtR is trying to accomplish for women.
End result, broadly speaking I guess somewhat similar, but not what I’m looking for personally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
No, mostly not.
This only has a problem because of title case, and the frequency with which it causes this exact problem is one reason title case is falling out of style.
Me too! I’ve looked and not found anything comparable.