1. Your source of fame is one-dimensional. You're famous for a handful of achievements, they're unambiguously positive, and that's pretty much all that most of us remember.

2. Nobody perceives you as having power over them.

3. They hope that you'll make a 4.4 release of bsdiff with an improved suffix array construction algorithm. Maybe divsufsort, as it looked good in "SACABench: Benchmarking Suffix Array Construction" (2019).

At least, that's my personal guess. :P

But that kind of fame doesn't really garner enough envy for people to develop much of a hatred toward you. Also, when someone badmouths a really famous person, that badmouthing can get some traction on its own just from the namedropping. When someone badmouths a niche-famous person, it's hard to get much traction. So their envy/ hatred doesn't really go anywhere.

I do wonder if there should be a third category, for people whose hatred and envy are so deep that they represent a real danger to their target. I will be happy to never have that kind of fame.

I feel this is very important point pg didn't consider in his essay. The degree of fame one has amplifies the fanboyism and hate they receive, because the more famous someone is, the more status can a fan or hater get with their peers by displaying obsession about said celebrity.

I think another example would be two famous people in a particular industry. With one, you can't find a reddit thread mentioning his work without somebody chiming in to whine about how he presents his opinions; they'll complain the way he expresses himself is that other people who disagree with him are wrong, which irks some people. The other is extremely fastidious about his public image, and he tends to exude a sentiment that what he's saying is just his opinion, and I don't pick up the same level of hater activity. The attack surface just isn't there.

^^ I tried to keep it vague, just for fun, but I guarantee some people can parse out who these two people are.

(Or I'm not using the word properly which might be the case because I'm not native English -- I have friends who are as well known/successful on their field as you are (apprx.) and I'd never call them famous.)

But it's interesting to ponder when the whackos start to gather and why.

Firstly, there's definitely a point in which you attract fanboys but not haters, and if your popularity/fame is in a smaller niche, you may never end attracting the latter at all. Generally, someone tends to get haters when they go 'mainstream', and their work is shown to people that don't like it/can't see why it's popular or successful.

Number 2 on the list probably has some relevance too. For both fanboys and haters, since it's entirely likely every creator has both people who'd love them/their work if they found it and those that'd hate it, and also likely that not everyone in those camps has come across it yet.

In addition to that though, I think there are two more factors that play into how much of a hatedom you have, and I guess also how many fans you have too.

1. How you deal with attacks or criticism. If you ignore the trolls and haters and respond in a civil way to critics, you'll get a lot fewer haters than if you lash out at people. A lot of the folks with more... dedicated critics fall into the latter group. See Chris Chan, Darksyde Phil, Derek Savage, that guy who makes Yandere Simulator, etc.

2. The topic of your success/supposed expertise. If your work is seen as political, it will get a more backlash than if it's about some hobby/interest than most people are neutral about. For instance, I've recently posted two things that got popular; some videos about glitches in a certain video game, and an article calling out web developers/software engineers for using frameworks in situations where they didn't need to.

The former got mostly praise and questions, the latter has brought about a ton of personal attacks and criticism.

Someone who writes a successful article about why Donald Trump got elected/is popular is going to get a lot more hate than someone who writes about quantum mechanics.

I'd say it's a mix of those factors myself.

Most ventures fail. Startup ventures fail even more often. If your goal was to be right most often, you would just bet that every new thing would fail. So there's something inherently illogical about being a fanboy about anything. A fanboy is definitely doing more than just looking at the odds and making a rational decision, they are putting their faith in something.

Because a fanboy derives their enthusiasm from more than simple reason and the odds, they become a threat to anyone that eschews emotion and solely uses traditional valuation models. Fanboys are hated not because they believe in a product or idea, but because they ignore tradition.

Apple haters have a point: Apple hardware is far more expensive than similar performance on other systems. So using a traditional objective metric such as performance per dollar, Apple is objectively worse.

However, most Apple Fanboys know they are paying a premium. They love Apple for other, less quantifiable reasons, such as design quality, beautiful integration, good marketing, and the vision of making a more human machine.

The metrics that Apple fanboys value are at complete odds with many traditional computer enthusiasts, who value specs and raw performance power.

Therefore, a "fanboy" of anything (whether that's Apple, Tesla, or the startup of the day), is not necessarily being uncritical, they are just using less commonly accepted metrics of value.