Comment by KyeRussell

If anything’s true about Internet / hacker / open source culture at the time, it’s that the bar was lower for someone to have a following of devoted fetishists willing to spread the Good Word. People can call it 20/20 hindsight all they want, and some of it is, but looking at all these sacred cows for what they are through a modern lens is important. ESR was, and is, a tool. So much of what was written and highly regarded Back Then is just poorly written self-congratulatory nerdy fairytales with an arguable connection to reality.