Adversity and Stoicism is sort of his shtick. If you aren't aware of who he is its understandable how you'd be like "well this isn't what I wanted," and part of where HN/Reddit links can get weird for me. People who frequent a particular site know what they are in for from the title because they have the context of the person. Link sites are just places with a lot of information with some flavor but not to the same degree.
For people who need to hear these kinds of words, these messages, I'm sure this content is valuable, but for folks who don't need to hear, "Confidence is earned" it tends to come across as trite and uninspiring.
I have no idea where HN lands on that spectrum, but for me it evokes substantial eye rolling. "Yes, yes -- take risks, start small, do experiments, be the eternal student. Got it."
Not that I'm acing any of those tests, but I'm probably at a point where hearing it a thousandth time isn't realistically likely to change my perspective on those topics. Not everyone is where I'm at! But if you are, I don't imagine these kinds of words/messages are going to excite you.
Yup you aren't wrong. But there is a HUGE cottage industry around this sort of thing, be it self help books or other forms. I don't have exact figures but I'm under the impression Ryan has made a LOT of money off using the angle of stoicism/The Obstacle is the Way (he even has a book titled this) to offer the idea of inspiration for those who want it but can't seem to find it.
Does it actually work for people? Hell if I know, and the industry that has any hope of gathering that data doesn't want to know because if the answer is no and it gets out their entire money engine dies.
