Little Things That Irk You VI: The Rage Awakens

[Brad]

When life gives you lemons, squirt them in people's eyes.

[Asura]

With you on all those except the last one. There are surely a few people that get where they are by luck, e.g. Trump inheriting a fortune. But many people work daftly hard to set themselves up and then get called lucky.

I disagree, if I'm honest.

People who are successful and work hard often say this, that they're "self-made" or they "pulled themselves up by the bootstraps", but I find people often ignore that for every successful person who has worked hard, there are probably 3 who were not successful who worked just as hard, perhaps harder.

I believe that success is, in part, down to making a number of lucky dice rolls - however, you should work hard because that gives you more rolls of the dice. Working hard and working smart gives you even more rolls of the dice, and it's true that the more times you roll the dice, the greater the chances are you'll be successful... But some people roll the dice only once and get a six, whereas some people spend their whole lives rolling and only get a 1.

So certainly people should be proud if they're successful and that was borne of hard work. I respect people like that. But if I was truly financially successful (i.e. was a 1%er), I would try to always consider that my work just created the chance for me to be successful. Luck did the rest.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep, strongly with Asura on this. A lot of people work hard and it doesn’t pay off. Working hard and getting really good at stuff makes you better able for opportunities that arise. But luck plays such a massive part of who gets those opportunities and who doesn’t. That and being born rich, which goes back to Zaki’s point. A stupid amount of self-made stories seem to begin with a 1million loan from their parents or, at the very least, being wealthy enough to be able to work at something without actually needing to pay bills or worry about the consequences of failure.

[Blobcat]

A stupid amount of self-made stories seem to begin with a 1million loan from their parents or, at the very least, being wealthy enough to be able to work at something without actually needing to pay bills or worry about the consequences of failure.

As the saying goes; it's easier to make money when you have money.

[Zaki]

"I started with nothing but a dollar in my pocket and a 100k in the bank".

[Asura]

"I started with nothing but a dollar in my pocket and a 100k in the bank".

It's like that quote from the IT Crowd:

"When I started off this business, I had only two things: A dream...

... and ten million pounds."

[charlesr]

Ok yeah good points. Thanks

[dvdx2]

I have seen friends at both end of the spectrum (not enough money / too much money) and the two extremes are both grim for different reasons. Most of the ones with the money are extremely tight and mean people too; I’ve seen wealthy guys round dodge in the bar and calculate their portions of restaurant bills to the last penny. Success for some people, Is nothing to do with making money/having money either, but for me, flaunting wealth in public is an awful, awful human trait. It makes my piss boil at times, but it’s usually more funny than annoying!

[Brad]

I disagree with Charles and asura.

Luck on its own simply isn't enough.
Neither is working hard and even if you have both it's still not enough long term. You need to be smart too. I don't mean Einstein levels of smart but I've seen people who work their arses off, get given opportunity after opportunity and still fail because they make one bad choice after another because they're just not smart enough. Anecdotal evidence is all I have though

[Dogg Thang]

I also agree with this. I’ve also seen people with money and luck blow it because, on some level, they want to. Took me many years to realise how big fear of success is and have also seen it in myself. Anyone can fail. Success is way more work and pressure. People need drive to succeed.

To sum up, there are lots of factors and lots of variables. Personally, I thinking working hard really helps but maybe not as much as being born rich and/or having a load of luck. Sustained success and definitely genuine success from nothing (which is a VERY rare thing) takes drive.

[kryss]

When life gives you lemons, squirt them in people's eyes and steal their wallets.

Fixed that for you.

[The Moleman]

A few of these stories popped up on my feed recently about Rian Johnson and the "toxic Star Wars fanbase".

I have genuine grievances with The Last Jedi, I thought it was terrible but even my objective dislike of it seems to group me with the fringe wierdos that send death threats and take it to other extremes.

It's 7 months since release and we STILL can't talk about how bad a film it was...

[dvdx2]

A few of these stories popped up on my feed recently about Rian Johnson and the "toxic Star Wars fanbase".

I have genuine grievances with The Last Jedi, I thought it was terrible but even my objective dislike of it seems to group me with the fringe wierdos that send death threats and take it to other extremes.

It's 7 months since release and we STILL can't talk about how bad a film it was...

Yeah it was pretty bad.....

[Dogg Thang]

Oh sure, many people can talk about it. But I’m guessing from your use of the words “genuine grievance” about a film you didn’t like and put toxic in quotation marks like it’s not a real thing suggests you might not be one of them.

[randombs]

I bought Doom on PS4 and it auto updated to the 4K version so became 80GB. Maybe I can redownload it and not let it update...