My Friend Aaron

curuinor

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

stephenlf

Spooky and riveting!

moralestapia

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.

alun

Very fun read. Thanks for posting it!

greenfish6

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

corndoge

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.

andai

> 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.

23david

Great short story!!

JohnMakin

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.

shimman

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.

whiteblossom

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

variant_length

This guy aaron doesnt sound very smart to me

tyre

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.

john_strinlai

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.

sarreph

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!

Mr_Eri_Atlov

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

samizdis

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.

photonios

Exceptionally well written! I was instantly hooked.

whiteblossom

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

doright

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.