<story><title>What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages</title><url>https://blog.roastmylandingpage.com/landing-page-roasts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aosaigh</author><text>(Rant) What a snobby, begrudging comments section. Well done to OP for writing a detailed summary of a succesful productised service that they got off the ground as well as a solid list of actionable tasks you can take to improve your own product.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve outlined how their clients have loved the service, it&amp;#x27;s been financially successful and everyone is happy, yet all people here do is complain about a) how this is the downfall of the internet b) there&amp;#x27;s some technical or editorial minutiae of the post itself they dislike c) how they could have done it better d) what they&amp;#x27;re doing is just plain wrong or unimportant.&lt;p&gt;If HN had its way, every product and service on the planet would be devoid of marketing, sales or design and the only way you could buy it was via the command line. Infuriating.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>Ah, the contrarian dynamic strikes again:&lt;p&gt;(1) an initial wave of objections to the article;&lt;p&gt;(2) a second wave of objections to the objections;&lt;p&gt;(3) those get upvoted, so that&lt;p&gt;(4) the most popular comment becomes the one about how the site is so negative, all people do is complain, etc., producing&lt;p&gt;(5) irony!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=24215601&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=24215601&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25434665&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25434665&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=true&amp;amp;sort=byDate&amp;amp;type=comment&amp;amp;query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=true&amp;amp;sor...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you study this phenomenon, it becomes clear that the difference between (1) and (2) is not negativity, just timing. And the upvotes of (3) are negative in the same way. Negativity about negativity is not positive. It&amp;#x27;s an idempotent operation.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: I hope it&amp;#x27;s clear that I don&amp;#x27;t mean to pick on you or anyone else personally! This is a systemic problem that we&amp;#x27;re all part of—that&amp;#x27;s kind of the whole point actually.)&lt;p&gt;If we want a solution to the ambient negativity that can afflict HN threads—which we do—we need to tackle it a little more deeply. We all need to become aware of how the same negativity that we perceive in others exists in ourselves, and without cheap avoidances like &amp;quot;well, the others do it worse&amp;quot;. It always seems like others do it worse; everyone experiences that. It is the chief way we avoid looking at ourselves.&lt;p&gt;If we admit that we&amp;#x27;re all just mirroring our own denied negativity to each other, we can start taking steps to a solution. Not that we&amp;#x27;d never be negative any more—but maybe we can get less mechanical in our responses if we learn something about how the mechanism works &lt;i&gt;in ourselves&lt;/i&gt;. Denouncing it in others doesn&amp;#x27;t work—that&amp;#x27;s how the problem recreates itself: all this disowned negativity keeps circulating through the system, when what&amp;#x27;s needed is for people to work with it internally so that it can start to shift a little.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why the site guidelines now include this line: &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;Please don&amp;#x27;t sneer, including at the rest of the community.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; – as a baby step in that direction. The HN community has been around for long enough that I think we can take this as a task to work on together. It would be a big step towards optimizing this place for curiosity (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=true&amp;amp;sort=byDate&amp;amp;type=comment&amp;amp;query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=true&amp;amp;sor...&lt;/a&gt;), which is what we&amp;#x27;re all here for.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;newsguidelines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;newsguidelines.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>What I learnt roasting 200 landing pages</title><url>https://blog.roastmylandingpage.com/landing-page-roasts/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aosaigh</author><text>(Rant) What a snobby, begrudging comments section. Well done to OP for writing a detailed summary of a succesful productised service that they got off the ground as well as a solid list of actionable tasks you can take to improve your own product.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve outlined how their clients have loved the service, it&amp;#x27;s been financially successful and everyone is happy, yet all people here do is complain about a) how this is the downfall of the internet b) there&amp;#x27;s some technical or editorial minutiae of the post itself they dislike c) how they could have done it better d) what they&amp;#x27;re doing is just plain wrong or unimportant.&lt;p&gt;If HN had its way, every product and service on the planet would be devoid of marketing, sales or design and the only way you could buy it was via the command line. Infuriating.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>duxup</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll admit I felt a less than positive impulse from the title of the article.&lt;p&gt;Probably the &amp;#x27;roasting&amp;#x27; part reminded me of bikeshedding &amp;#x2F; every yokel with their own advice that occurs surrounding a font or button color or something ....  that&amp;#x27;s kinda a horrible peeve for a lot of folks and came to mind for me.&lt;p&gt;But the article and ideas seems sensible.&lt;p&gt;Landing pages are hard, I think there&amp;#x27;s a lot of magic and weird theory out there on them.  I did enjoy how focused and down to earth this article &amp;#x2F; his advice was.&lt;p&gt;Anyone who felt similarly I suggest giving the article a read, it&amp;#x27;s pretty good IMO.   Probably not going to turn a landing page into a customer magnet but nothing really does that and I think the advice is good &amp;#x2F; I find it useful.</text></comment>