Comment by skybrian
21 hours ago
That was very weird. In the post where he was arguably "shilling," he seems to have signposted pretty well that it was dumb, but he will take the money they offered:
> $GAS is not equity and does not give you any ownership interest in Gas Town or my work. This post is for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any token. Crypto markets are volatile and speculative — do not risk money you can’t afford to lose.
...
> Note: The next few sections are about online gambling in all its forms, where “investing” is the buy-and-hold long-form “acceptable” form of gambling because it’s tied to world GDP growth. Cryptocurrencies are subject to wild swings and spikes, and the currency tied to Gas Town is on a wild swing up. But it’s still gambling, and this stuff is only for people who are into that… which is not me, and should probably not be you either.
In the next post he said he wasn't going to shill it any more, and then the price collapsed and people sent him death threats on Twitter. It probably would have collapsed anyway. Perhaps there was supposedly some implicit bargain that he shouldn't take the money if he wasn't going to shill? Well, there's certainly no rule saying you have to do that.
I think he's not very much to blame for taking the money from degenerate gamblers, and the cryptocurrency idiots are mostly to blame for their own mistakes.
> I think he's not very much to blame for taking the money from degenerate gamblers, and the cryptocurrency idiots are mostly to blame for their own mistakes.
I empathize with the disdain for crypto idiots, but I still think the people running or promoting these scams deserve most of the blame. "There's a market for my poison" is every dopamine dealer's excuse.
Yeah, and I don't want to be involved in that shit. Yeggae can go fuck off.
“Degenerate gamblers” is the kind of stigma that stops people and their families getting help for addiction. Even if you believe it’s a moral failing, the families deserve better.
Very true. Although, I wonder how much of that sort of thing was going on in this case? Did people actually bet money they couldn't afford to lose on this crazy scheme?
[dead]
I'm fairly certain those disclaimers were added after he got some pushback from the original post.
One of them clearly was (marked "Edit: "). I don't know about the others.
He is still an evil scammer scamming people.
In the same way signposting and credibly warning "I murder people" does not make ok to murder people.
Do you have the same attitude towards all forms of gambling?
Yegge wrote in his blog post (viewed by many who ended up buying in) that it is an investment and that he wishes the investors will become "filthy rich". He wrote the post as an introduction to the concept of BAGS for an audience that is unfamiliar with it. He onboarded people to the platform and to his pump and dump scheme (in which he pumped, and dumped, then announced he's walking away from it).
You left out that part of the post and only mentioned the disclaimer he added at the top after he got pushback on his messaging. Are you influenced by his celebrity?
> I think he's not very much to blame for taking the money from degenerate gamblers, and the cryptocurrency idiots are mostly to blame for their own mistakes.
So drug dealers are not to blame for taking the money from degenerate addicts! Let's free everyone and disband the DEA, we'll save billions of dollars.
Oh wait nvm this line of thinking only applies to sv people
He pumped, and dumped. He stopped shilling at the moment that the dump was proceeding. That's what pump and dump grifters do.
Details https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/22/steve-yegges-gas-town-vib...
Maybe I'd care about his opinion if he didn't take the money. I consider this worse than OSS taking VC money. At least those don't have a scam auto-builtin to the structure beyond normal capitalistic parasitism.
Also, 275k lines for a markdown todo app. Anyone defending this is an idiot. I'll just say that. Go ahead, defend it. Go do a code review on `beads`. Don't say it's alright, but gastown is madness. He fucking sucks.