On September 18, 2018, Raymond Hou (Raymond) published a birthday essay on the the 柚智夫妻 WeChat public account about what had made him most sad that year: several friends who had once been close gradually removed him from their Facebook friends, including an old ally from his circle of off-campus instructors. Raymond framed the essay as “a failure story I had never told.” At the beginning, he explained that he rarely talked about failure because failure itself is not shameful: “Just turn a corner and keep a clear conscience.”1 This happened near the end of his studies at NCKU, as his career as an instructor and workshop organizer was taking shape; see Six Years at National Cheng Kung University: Changing Majors Twice and Extending Graduation and Beijing Eve: 柚智夫妻 Public Account and ‘365-Day Countdown’ (2018–2020) for context.
Event Summary (De-Identified)
After Raymond founded N Power Workshop, an in-person workshop where students served as presenters, around 2013–2014, more and more students around him began seeing “sharer” and “instructor” as possible occupations and often asked him how to start. The friend in the essay (referred to here as an old ally) was one of them and actively asked Raymond to introduce organizations that might host a course. Raymond shared everything he had done at the beginning and suggested that the friend start small and independently, charge a basic fee to screen participants, and treat early sessions as practice and an opportunity to build a reputation. The friend expressed concern about criticism for “still being a beginner but calling myself an instructor and charging a fee.” Raymond sensed a difference in their beliefs, but still made introductions and helped arrange several courses.
A few months later, Raymond happened to see a promoted event for the friend’s course on Facebook. When he went to congratulate the friend, he discovered they were no longer friends. Later, a mutual student told him that the friend had asked the audience not to contact Raymond in the future, saying that Raymond’s sharing “had no theoretical basis and was just a stream of experiences.” Raymond called this one of the “cruel lessons in friendship” in his essay. To protect the people involved, this entry records only the pattern and significance, not the targeted disparaging language.
Self-Doubt and Repair
Raymond could not let go of the shock for a while. At the time, he was still an undergraduate who had not graduated, while the other person had just been accepted into a graduate program in a related field. The gap in academic credentials and legitimacy amplified his self-doubt: did his experience count for anything? For a period afterward, he began every talk with a disclaimer, proactively saying that much of what he shared was generalized from personal experience, and that listeners could reject or ignore it if it lacked theoretical grounding. This defensive opening reflected an insecurity he had not yet worked through.
The turning point came during another talk. A PhD researcher with an academic background raised a hand and pointed out that a method Raymond had mentioned corresponded to an existing theory. The researcher said it was interesting and recommended further reading. Raymond initially expected another public challenge; only after listening did he let go of the insecurity. He distilled a criterion from the exchange: people willing to respect and exchange different experiences are strong; those who look down on or block another person’s path are not. This interaction helped him stop measuring the value of his experience by academic credentials.
Raymond’s Interpretation and Framing
At the end of the essay, Raymond interpreted the distancing in the relationship as a natural parting of ways: old allies drift apart over time, share less in common, and may even become competitors in the same market. Distancing was an outcome, not necessarily anyone’s fault. He offered two principles. First, he acknowledged that he was “not easy to get along with”: he was casual in life but had many principles and high standards at work, and relationship costs came with that; he chose to accept them. Second, he took the right to judge back into his own hands: whether something counted as failure was for the person involved to define, not something to hand to other people. He also cited the popular internet writer Mimon’s phrases “Either endure it or leave” and “Change the way you think and life will open up” as a note on his state of mind (these were references to the period; the person involved has since become controversial).
The essay ends with a clear sense of time and distance: the world is large and has many time zones; there is no need to force incompatible people together and wear down each other’s energy. He redirected his effort toward people and things worth cherishing. He chose to “replace resentment with action,” turning the sting of being rejected into motivation to keep improving. This approach of “not arguing, but responding with one’s work” would recur when he later faced outside criticism.
Significance and Impact
This friendship rupture on Raymond’s 24th birthday is one of the few failure stories he has publicly described that directly touches on betrayal and self-doubt. Its value lies not in the event itself, but in how he handled it. It made him directly answer a question that would follow him for a long time: when people use degrees, theory, or credentials to deny the legitimacy of “experience-based knowledge,” how should one respond? His answer was not to rely on the other person’s approval or on a title for credibility. It was to recognize experience itself as a source of knowledge and leave judgment to himself and his work. This insight echoes his later method of “turning tacit knowledge into explicit assets” and his reflection on single standards of success; related concepts appear in Growth Mindset, Learning Methods, Communication and Expression, and Super Individual.
Source
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “[332-Day Countdown] Society Can Give You a Cruel Lesson in Friendship When You Least Expect It,” WeChat public-account article, 2018-09-18. View original ↩