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Comment by seeingfurther | Hacker News Reader

We don't need a verified data source to tell us the average person wipes their backside once a day with toilet paper. We know it to be generally true such that some people wipe more, some less, others use baby wipes, but the take away is that the TP market is huge!

Would it help if she said 'the average cell phone user checks their cell phone A LOT every day'?

The whole article about 'misinformation' only focuses on one fact that she supposedly misinformed us about. I bet dollars to donuts we all agree people check their phones very frequently, which is all that slide was driving at.

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I'm not sure you are 100% following the point of the article.

I don't think there is a point to this article other than nitpicking. We can all agree she sourced the data from a quote from Danielle Levitas, and that it wasn't scientific or necessarily Danielle's intent. But the point of the slide still stands and this is an obnoxious fluff piece of an article. Mary has her issues but this is silly.

What she did is something we call "bullshitting" or "making it up" because if the data in question really was regarding non-smartphone users then she would have to be either terribly misguided (putting it lightly) or flat out lying.

Whether incompetence or unscrupulousness, it doesn't matter. She shouldn't be uttering such false information promoted so specifically if she promotes her talk or her talk is viewed as a state of the industry report.

So you don't think the average person checks their cell phone 150 times a day?

again, what he or she thinks is not the point

What she thinks IS the point.

She's been in this industry since before most of this site could code.

She is not god or a soothsayer but when she talks about trends people know she has been analyzing the market for a long time and they trust her opinions and facts. She makes one comment on a slide at a private event about people checking their cell phones and all of a sudden you guys are like Chris Hansen busting a pedophile. Relax.

If you want to comment on things tangential to the article as Bram's, that's fine. The point of the article is to harangue Mary for one item which we all KNOW is true.

The downvotes sting Tikhon. Say it ain't so.

ha i never downvoted you. I actually don't have enough karma on this account to downvote. by he or she i meant the commenter above, not Meeker

There's a big difference between "Hey by the way guys I THINK and from what I OBSERVE the average person takes their phone out 150 times a day" and "Hey guys the AVERAGE SMARTPHONE USER TAKES THEIR PHONE OUT 150 TIMES A DAY [in the fine print: source is total BS, it doesn't say anything about average smartphone users]"

Take it from someone who probably is 2.5 times the avg age of the avg yc user and therefore was around when she made a name for herself the first time: Meeker is 99% bullshit and 1% luck

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