Derek Sivers is famous for founding a long-forgotten and insipidly-named website ‘CD Baby’ (yeah that is what it is called, and typing it once makes me mad), which he sold in 2008 for $22 million, so now he’s an expert on everything. This is similar to Nassim Taleb, who is held up as some sort of luminary because a long time ago he made some money in the stock market (despite never producing any proof he ever did, but people take his word for it), so he must be smart at everything and have profound and unique insights into the world. If only because these individuals were successful financially that anyone cares what they have to think.
His 2016 article I’m a very slow thinker, recently went viral.
There really isn’t anything to analyze here, because he doesn’t say anything. Slow thinking does not imply better thinking. It’s not that there are ‘slow thinkers’ or ‘fast thinkers’, but rather it depends on one’s situation. If you want to find a lot of slow thinkers, go to any special ed class. How many of them do you think will become millionaires or academically successful? Well, one sold his website for $22 million, but aside from him, how many others.
In a post about why he does not use Facebook, he writes:
I’ve been online since 1994. I remember when everyone thought mp3.com was everything, and a few years later it was gone. Then everyone thought MySpace was everything, and a few years later it was moot. Now it’s Facebook, Instagram, and Google, but eventually they’ll all be moot, too. It’s the natural cycle of things.
Wow two examples (myspace.com and mp3.com). How convincing. How about Microsoft, which 40 years later is doing better than ever. Or Apple, which recently eclipsed $1 trillion in market valuation. Or how about a little-known company called IBM, which was founded in 1911. And incorrect usage of the word ‘moot’, to boot.
That’s what happens when you have these mental midgets who are elevated to high status. They come into some money and think they are the Oracle of Delphi. The only reason why I’m posting about this guy is because a lot of people have recently linked to him.
Maybe I’m being too hard on him, but from the articles I read, all his ‘advice’ is vague and banal, and in the example I gave above, just flat out wrong. And that he always alludes to selling his company, is evidence he is using it as a crutch to build credibility when the content itself conveys none. If one were to read his articles without knowing beforehand he sold a company for a lot of money, they would be thoroughly unimpressed. For all the hype this guy gets, he is really overrated.