Ripping Off the Hey.com Band-Aid

The author describes how, as a teenager, he was drawn to Ruby on Rails because of its promise of speed and its philosophy of convention over configuration. He credits DHH's clear thinking and consistency with inspiring him, viewing DHH as an idol who produced software millions found valuable.

When HEY launched, the author agreed that email sucks and signed up, but found the service merely 'whelmed' — just email with sender blocking, spam filtering, and folders, offering no genuinely new ideas. He stayed anyway to support DHH and enjoy a cool domain.

That changed when DHH began voicing highly controversial opinions: he believes Europe belongs to white people and that immigrants are largely stupid criminals. The author links examples from DHH's blog but declines to quote them directly. He critiques DHH for failing to see nuance, arguing that critical thinking means recognizing the world is not black and white.

Despite fearing a flood of spam after removing HEY's sender-blocking filters, the author found that fear was unfounded and switched away from the service.