My Friend Aaron
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
A short story about a brilliant, addicted friend who builds an AI-powered prediction market.
The narrator recounts his friendship with Aaron, a brilliant but academically unmotivated classmate with an addictive personality. After years apart, Aaron has lost his inheritance on prediction markets. He decides to build his own exchange, learning programming and using hackathon AI credits. Aaron creates thousands of AI bots that bet on his own life, wearing camcorder glasses to stream his activities. The bots build a simulated news site, "The Aaron Times." The narrator gets a job at a big tech company as Aaron's simulation continues.
The story explores themes of addiction, intelligence wasted, and the blurring line between simulation and reality.
What commenters are saying
Commenters praised the story as compelling, well-written, and original. Many noted it resonated because they know an "Aaron", someone bright, schemes-driven, and averse to work who chases get-rich-quick ideas. Several connected it to Black Mirror or assassination markets. A thread discussed the fine line between prediction markets and assassination markets, citing historical examples and noting the incentive problem when a pot gets large enough to motivate action. One commenter read the ambitionlessness of the line "I thought Aaron's credits would run out" as psychic damage.