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!

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.

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.

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.

Best line in the story:

I had spent my whole life dreaming of making my own overnight success on the internet, but had taught someone with no ethics how to do it instead.

This is such a great line and one I know so many people related to as soon as they read it.

You're a great writer, thank you for this today.

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

Am not a native English speaker, and I don't read stories much. Mostly the reason why I am at HN is to seek for tech news and learn something. But your story made a record to stuck me at a single page for 15+ mins. I need to tell you that i do have minor problem with my eyes, thus can't keep up with a almost-static screen for 5+ mins. But this one made me rub my eyes every 30 seconds but keep reading on.

I can't tell what I felt in the ending paragraph, but I can be sure of this is the strongest outcome I felt, from an web page.

Congrats, again.

Not sure why, but I thought this was going to be a friend of Aaron Swartz writing in memory of him.

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.

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

I really enjoyed this piece. I thought the idea was creative and believable. It really sucked me in and kept the momentum going. I have a feeling it's going to stick with me for a while.

I am absolutely not a writer so take this with a big grain of salt. Something about narrator felt like they weren't a real character and the whole story was just Aaron's third person. Maybe because the narrator didn't seem to have any intentional effect on Aaron's trajectory? Not sure if that was meant as a way to deepen that aspect of the story, but at times it felt a little awkward.

Kind of reminds me a bit of the story from Better Call Saul. Someone who has the ability and opportunity to earn an honest living, but is addicted to endorphin rush of taking risks, cheating the system, fame, etc.

I don't really know anybody like that, but there are certainly aspects of that personality that I can understand. I've never had much desire to get into bitcoin, meme stocks, prediction markets, and other forms of gambling - though at times I have felt a bit of FOMO.

Another aspect I liked about the story is that when he goes from being a failure to being a success (at least in his own mind and to his followers) - despite having the same qualities that he has had for the whole story - he goes from being a character that you pity to one that you resent.

To OP:

Well written. Certainly bridges the gap between fiction and a plausible and believable first person narrative.

Are you familiar with the US magazine The Sun? https://www.thesunmagazine.org/ I have read several short story submissions at The Sun; typically first person submissions which blur the lines between true first person stories, and fiction.

Try to submit your story to The Sun.

Reads a bit like an elevated resentment fantasy. A mostly ethical narrator narrating his friend’s morally deserved doom that keeps the narrator’s own hands mostly clean. And with the narrator holding a medal at the end.

That’s cathartic for some. For me, the narrator rather resembles one of the local tech millionaires, envious of the billionaires. The story doesn’t seem to know the narrator’s dishonesty.

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.

I clicked this because my name is Aaron and stayed around because it was such a captivating story all the way through to the end.

I enjoyed it. I have known a number of Aarons.

Thanks for sharing it, and good luck!

I use to read a lot, big novels and short stories, and I know when I see something that is good. Yours is.

One thing that I give you as feedback, maybe for another version, or for future stories, would be to develop a bit more on why keep the friendship with Aaron. I know it was there some reasons, but for me it was a bit harder to follow. But even this is a small thing.

Tell us if you have something else written to share.

This is like a story from "Big Vern" in Viz, but instead of Vern being a violent London heavy, it's basically Ho from Slow Horses.

https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2006/12/i875/4998_big_v...

Very enjoyable. I was waiting for Aaron to have a heart attack, same outcome, less contrived maybe.

Great story! Loved reading it.

I also didn't see the notice it was a short story. So I was a bit puzzled when reading how Aaron built his own exchange as a novice programmer. To me building an exchange is high up on the scale of programming difficulty. Its one of those things you have to do extremely well or else no one will trust your platform.

Nice. Story and your writing style tell more about you as about Aaron.

IMHO, with the second paragraph, Aaron starts to fade into background. While you increasingly describe your character in-depth, but also more and more often seem to advert an urge to apologize for ... something. I wonder what that is!?

Strangely, doesn't load for me with some Vercel/NextJS error. Disabling Javascript displays the whole post, though.

I might have known an "aaron" or two like that.I've also known an actual "Aaron" who was famous for being extremely ethical and I initially clicked thinking it'd be a reminisce about that one.

The story is written really well. Lots of other people have said great stuff about it, so I get some room to criticize a bit too!

I just wonder about how you constructed the ending. It seemed like a different ending was coming in, and then the sudden <spoiler> out of nowhere is almost a diablo ex machina. It's just someone who comes out of nowhere, does one thing, and vanishes again, right at the end of the story, just to finish it. It's like "and then he woke up, and realized it was all a dream" ; except not quite as bad as that makes it sound. Intellectually (sherlock holmes reader style) you could see it coming, but somehow story-arc-wise not so much.

I was totally on board with the story right up to that point though, so definitely good craft.

(edit: was it deliberately a Shaggy Dog Story? If so the fact that there is a trope called "shoot the shaggy dog" is almost too on the nose, so I'm wondering if you had that in mind! https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShootTheShaggyDo... )

I had to stop reading to leave the office and head home. I finished reading it while having dinner! It would make an excellent Black Mirror episode.

Prediction markets are a very powerful concept (and reality). With great power comes great responsibility.

I initially missed the line saying it was a short story and read through most of it as personal experience until the last couple of paragraphs. That made it even more exciting, but it is still very good as a fictional story.

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.

I'm not sure if this is a consequence of reading about The Truman Show but, is every comment here made by a bot?

I won $10,000 betting on whether you would publish this story on hacker news. Thanks!

What a great story. You have a very pleasant, flowing style. I didn't even notice it until I reached the end, it really captivated me

anyone else gets an error? error loading dynamically imported module: https://rorz.io/_next/static/chunks/link-CKkD60iF.js

Hooked me with the first couple sentences, and I just had to keep going, as I just wanted to know what happens next.

Thanks, a good read!

Very good from start to finish, it reminds me of a darker version of the real story told in the 2009 documentary We Live In Public about Josh Harris.

I legitimately thought this was real for about half of it and it made it very engaging, well done.

I just sent this to my 16 year old. Thank you for writing and sharing this

Where did Aaron get the millions of dollars' worth of tokens from? The grannies?!?

I almost missed my metro stop because I couldn't stop reading.

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

Gripping! Wonderful surprise to read this today

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

Great writing. Felt like it could be a Black Mirror episode

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.

I don't have my reading glasses on, so at first I read the title as "My Friend Arson".

Different kind of story I reckon.

Exceptionally well written! I was instantly hooked.

This guy aaron doesnt sound very smart to me

Black Mirror adaptation when?

Very fun read. Thanks for posting it!

was it his mom?

I thought the story was non-fiction until I got to the point about how the bots attracted real users to Aaron's platform. That part was really stretching it.

Spooky and riveting!

Loved it!

Good story and the classic problem with nearly all betting markets having viaticals embedded

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

Great short story!!

you're not black mirror lil bro

Before you read and waste your time:

== It's a fake story ==

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.

> 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.