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Comment by segmondy | Hacker News Reader

It's sad how wealth affected Notch or perhaps magnified his character. A long time ago, I started following him on Twitter and I think I lasted about 2 weeks before I unfollowed him. The sheer negativity and woe is me is bananas. If there's a prime example that money doesn't buy happiness, he is one.

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To be fair- The Notch you are disliking is the same person he was __before__ the influx of Micro$oft cash. At very least, he's consistent.

I don't know if that's entirely true—I followed him on twitter for a period of time before and after the sale, and post-sale his tweets got more and more unpalatable. Perhaps you're right, and he didn't change at all, but at the very least the public persona that he expressed changed.

It gets dangerous when tons of the people around you are somehow seeking to feed off your wealth and thus you get very little negative feedback anywhere. Everyone says they hate yes men. In practice most people love yes men.

> Everyone says they hate yes men. In practice most people love yes men.

Sadly true.

There's a saying that money magnifies who you already are. It's an important thought, even if it's not 100% accurate. If you know how to be happy, money can enable you to make yourself - and others around you - happy. If you're better at being angry or sad or anxious, money can make you miserable. That's a lot of people, perhaps including me. Having money and improving yourself are basically two separate efforts.

Given all that, it's pretty predictable what "jerk" plus "money" will add up to.

In my experience this is true, that money doesn't buy happiness, but it does allow you to focus on your actual problems instead of the boring old money problems that nearly everyone else has. In some cases, newfound wealth will not only not solve one's problems but may throw them into sharp relief, or worsen them by deflecting negative feedback. Many if not most lottery winners seem to be affected by this.