TheRichterScales
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 19 months, 2009–2026
2:46 · 1.2M views · Dec 18, 2007
A cappella parody song by The Richter Scales, set to Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire', lampooning the Web 2.0 startup bubble. It won a Webby for viral video in 2007.
Resurfaces in threads on startups, valuations and hype cycles as a funny, prescient bubble satire.
20 comments from Hacker News
this video Always appropriate. On a side note, really hard to know whether this is a bubble or not. I don't want to take either side, but you cannot refute that a billion dollars for a startup that did not gain any significant revenue seems like a lot of money.
I'm auditing the class as well and I like it quite a lot. Make sure to not get TLDR discouraged and at least scroll all the way down for the (very amusing) video that was played in class. Direct link: this video from 2007 but still semi-relevant :)
This comment is probably to be downvoted as off topic, but in case anyone missed this gem. Here Comes Another Bubble: this video
Of course it is. FTX collapses (November 2-11, 2022), crypto hustle-scam is over, the decision is made to release whatever there is at the moment at OpenAI to start the next cycle, a few weeks later (November 30, 2022) there we go. Same thing as always: some investors -- mostly white males -- get filthy rich meanwhile some others get exploited -- this time it's Kenyan workers -- and many, many people get hoodwinked and then lose their shirt. Same story, different hype. this video did everyone forget? I guess. At we got something out of web2.0 ... but we also got a genocide and a few warped elections / referendums out of it so the jury is still out how history will see it. Crypto was a net negative for humankind in every possible way (except a few people walked away with tons of money of course but at what cost) and now we are facing down this terrible wave of AI. Yay?
Thiel says: "Back in 2008, we heard talk of another tech bubble, because people thought Facebook was overvalued at $500 million. Flash forward to today, and it’s clearly worth a lot more than that." Did this happen? Who in 2008 was talking about Facebook at $500 million, and complaining it was overvalued? People around that time were talking about Facebook at $15 billion being overvalued (e.g. [LINK] , this video ).