> I still haven't come across things that see against the natural order.
So many people these days spend hours watching short-form videos spray endlessly from a screen while they stare dumbly at it. They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it.
Every time I see someone doing that, I just absolutely cannot relate to what's going on in their head at all. I'm certainly not above watching some YouTube, but the complete mindlessness of it, they watch it goes on forever, and the utter stupidity of the videos. I feel like I'm watching zombies in an opium den.
But billions of people are doing that shit every day, so what do I know?
I don't want to defend short-form video feeds too much, but "They aren't even picking which videos to watch" is overstating it. Essentially nobody behaves like: watch 100% of a video, swipe, watch 100%, swipe. The expected behavior is that you swipe away if you're not interested, which is often done within a fraction of a second. Accordingly, Tiktok's content selection algorithm heavily weighs watch time as a signal of interest in related content. That actually can create a bit of a perverse incentive; if you linger on a video long enough to report it (as in for a TOS violation) or to click the "show less like this", it can lead to being shown more videos like that.
In many ways, TikTok is kinda like channel surfing. Watch a few seconds, next channel, watch a few seconds, next channel, oh this is interesting, sure I'll watch a "How It's Made" marathon.
> In many ways, TikTok is kinda like channel surfing.
I've been making the same comparison as well. As someone not watching the videos yet still hear the videos being played, the constant switching is very noticeable much like being the one in the room that didn't have the clicker in their hand. You're not in control of the constant switching which I think makes it even that much more annoying.
Rather than just parking on the marathon, choosing to turn it off and do something else entirely is still my preferred "old man yells at clouds" option.
Ha, that’s the thing that gets me too. Also people watching mashed up YouTube clip compilations - these seem obviously designed for addiction.
The other thing is watching the videos in public with the tinny speakers blaring. Judging by reactions on the trains, this is socially acceptable to most people now ???
I find it really hard to relate to people who do that. I never want people to see/hear what I am doing on my phone or computer, especially if it's something dumb or time-wasting. And to broadcast that into the world in a public space?? its crazy how different people are
> So many people these days spend hours watching short-form videos spray endlessly from a screen while they stare dumbly at it. They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it.
This is how TV broadcasts also work, though. You could even argue there's an algorithm behind TV broadcasts too - it's just a kinda poor human-run algorithm trying to maximize viewer numbers.
Unlike many people, I still often watch TV broadcasts to relax for exactly this reason - there's no decision fatigue since I don't need to choose what to watch. Usually there's only one channel with something that's even remotely interesting and it's kind of an obvious choice.
With the (somehow sadly) added value that the TV broadcast algorithm is kinda known by everyone (morning programs, prime time etc), and that if there wasn't nothing interesting to watch, we would just do something else.
yeah but do we really need some trash reality-TV for a "shared social experience"? most of TV's programming was garbage anyway and contributed to a lot of what was/is wrong with the society
>They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it.
As a teenager, I used to torrent content I liked and scoff at my parents generation for letting tv feed then slop :)
It's hard to understand why TikTok is addictive from the outside, precisely because if you look at the app over someone's shoulder you'll see their tailored content, not yours.
Give the algorithm a couple weeks and it WILL find the weird thing that gets you to check. Maybe you find someone restoring books relaxing, or like toy commercials from where you were a kid, or are attentive on news of potential pandemics out of fear. It will learn.
The default is very very heavily weighted in Googles "Chromebook" favour. Getting a school with Windows (or Mac) exclusivity is a 4-leaf clover. Google genuinely have a pretty good product with Google Classroom though, so it's not completely lost. It's just a problem when schoolkids grow up and end up with new Windows/Mac laptops and have no idea how computers work outside of the web browser.
> I don't really get why people have the audacity to presume what other people like and do.
Part of this is that we are increasingly in self-selected communities of people just like us. Prior to the Internet and social media, you more often interacted with people that all you had in common with was spatial location and a dash of socio-economic status. It wasn't an unbiased slice of the populace, but it was at least less biased.
But today, it's much easier to have all of your social interactions limited to a social media bubble that reflects yourself.
That in turn makes it really easy to believe that whatever is true for you must be true for everyone because it seems to be largely true for all the people you see on a daily basis.
No surprise. People like being more productive when they reap some of the benefits of that increased productivity. If you're expected to be 10x more productive but don't get a raise, all you're doing is stuffing money in some executive's pocket while your job security goes down.
I'm being heavily consulted to advise management on culture change towards AI. And my number one message is this: make the number one, first and potentially only beneficiary of AI use the individual staff members themselves. If they have more time now, DO NOT start filling that with more work for them to do. If they do more all by themselves accept it as a bonus (experience says this is overwhelming what will happen anyway). Whichever way it goes, let them experience directly the benefit, and let the culture change happen organically downstream from that.
I think all these companies front-loading staff reductions are actively sabotaging themselves in the worst possible way in this regard.
I would love to hear more about your advice and the coaching you are giving to management. We also have a strong push to prove evidence of climbing productivity with clearly state future staffing goals. I would like to advocate for this, at even partially, enhancement and quality of life improvement for IC folks.
It starts with the generic pitch around culture change - "culture eats strategy for breakfast" style. Then a bit of shock and awe around how extensively AI is going to redesign business processes in the long run, leading into an argument about it being a marathon, not a sprint and at the moment everyone is treating it like a sprint, the real winners will be those gearing up for endurance. Then structuring the pathway: personal productivity as a cornerstone ebbing into pilots of implementation in areas highly aligned with AI capabilities minimised risk - all as preparation for the main game which will ultimately redesign core business processes in an AI first way.
I will say I am a bit of an outlier. I see others mostly pitching for things like small teams of "AI Champions" etc. I don't favor this because I think it will lead to dysfunctional outcomes (people trying to make the initiatives fail because they weren't "chosen" etc). So I pitch for the broad based, whole organization journey etc. But it does require a strong argument for acceptance of a slower pace of externally visible adoption.
I’m in a dreadful situation right now. Everyone in team got a claude account, but I’m a contractor so not for me (the only dev in team of 25 consultants). Someone in the team assigned me a task to review claude skill that opens up tickets for me. I’m not even using claude and official policy is no AI use for development…
Otherwise it’s been mixed bag. Pace definitely picked up and things that I actually enjoyed doing (UI) it does very well. Things that are actually hard (backend logic) it sucks and painted me in corner too many times.
> Yes that, and also, the more complicated the solution, the more likely no one reads or reviews it too carefully, and will instead depend on an LLM to ‘read’ and ‘review it’
Exactly right. It's the other end of the bikeshed continuum[1]. If you send out a two-page design doc or a hundred like pull request, the recipient will actually review it. Let AI inflate that to ten pages or a thousand lines of code and they feel like they don't have enough mental capacity to tackle it so they let it slide.
> The summary but no content thing is interesting. I’ve seen it in many forms and I’m not sure why it plays out that way.
I would guess that it's because the incentives and goals are different.
The point of a summary is to entice a listener to begin the podcast. So it has to offer the promise of interesting depth.
Once they've started listening, all the body of the podcast has to do is be soothing enough to get the user to keep listening until the next ad comes on. It has no need to actually keep the promise unless the listener is paying enough attention to hold it accountable.
If the kind of AI slop the article talks about entertains/infuriates/depresses you and you want more, you will definitely like the "kroshay" subreddit: http://reddit.com/r/kroshay
Imagine your favorite third place[1], a library, park, bar, etc. The place you regularly go to get connection to people without having to jump through all of the hoops to create and organize an actual event. It's a way to satisfy your innate need for conviviality without requiring much effort or willpower, which are always in finite supply.
You've been going to this place for years. You're a regular. You've made friends with other regulars. It feels good to be a familiar face and to see those familiar faces. A kind of warm sense of safety that we have evolved to experience since we first sat around a fire in prehistoric days. That sense of "Ah, good, I'm here nestled among my tribe."
Now imagine how it feels to walk into that room and discover that half the seats are occupied by mannequins. Each mannequin has a loudspeaker attached to it constantly playing random word salad.
Some of the regulars are still there, maybe. It's hard to see them through all the plastic limbs or hear them through the cacophony of meaningless noise.
How does being in that space make you feel? Now compare it to how you felt before the dead-eyed inanimate bodies showed up. That's what we've all lost.
I have a pet theory that much of what we're seeing culturally is that the 90s and early 2000s (at least in the US) was a window of time that offered a sense of safety and surplus. 9/11 was extremely culturally disruptive, but aside from that, for many in the US, it felt like there was "enough to go around". That environment breeds a lot of creativity, innovation, whimsy, and doing things for their own sake.
But that time has clearly ended. With climate change, the erosion of the social safety net, decay of faith in institutions, economic inequality, politics, etc., we are in an extremely tense time with a pervasive sense of scarcity. In some fundamental ways, it feels like there isn't enough to go around and people are scrabbling to get what they can while they can.
That psychological environment is not conducive to art and fun. It sucks.
I too have felt the same around me. There is this lack of faith in the institutions now, feeling of distrust. Someone on HN called this the era of shamelessness and I kind of agree to it. The top has gotten shameless and the people at the bottom are trying to scrabble whatever they can to become one of them so that they can escape this hellhole that has been created.
> I'm also a bit confused about how the people on the top think this will play out.
I don't know if they are really capable of thinking of the second and third order effects of what they're doing. There is something psychologically broken about many of the ultra-rich today where their behavior comes across as compulsive.
When you have a hole in your soul that can't be filled with a billion dollars, it simply can't be filled, and that black hole drives much of their behavior. You look at people like Trump and Musk, and they seem... miserable. Like, have you ever heard Trump have a genuine laugh of joy? Not the sort of sneering snicker of a bully, but one that comes from delight? Because I haven't.
We are all at the mercy of their actions, but it's almost like they're at the mercy of their irrational compulsions too.
Not that I'm saying they are deserving of sympathy or aren't responsible for their actions. But if we're looking for someone to pump the brakes on the crazy that's happening these days, it's sure as hell not going to be those hollow men.
I don't like being conspiratorial but it genuinely feels like the people at the top know some major catastrophe is coming and are just grabbing whatever resources they can while they can before retreating to their bunkers. Even the white house is trying to build a massive underground bunker using the ballroom on top as a excuse. I don't see why else they would all be willingly destroying society as they are right now unless they don't think it matters.
The whole structure has changed. We are not even in the web 2.0 anymore and regressed to a client-server model where what we see is dictated from central platforms with little interaction between actual users.
This was not a natural evolution of the web but the consequence of low-tech people accessing the web passively via a tiny touchscreen.
More like a consequence of capitalism, as big tech companies used their massive capital to instrumentalize and develop knowledge to keep mostly everyone dependent and addicted to their systems. Due to the way capitalism work, when a push back against it through public policies was staged, they bought their way out of regulation of their toxic platforms and were allowed to retain their monopolies.
Capitalism as unbridled greed is a bad meme. Sweden is a capitalist country. Germany is a capitalist country. In the US, we are moving from a high-trust society to a low-trust society, which is why the effects of capitalism are moving from a rising tide lifting all boats to a zero-sum game where my success means your suffering.
Tragedy of the Commons. It was around 2012 when my reactionary boomer relatives started trying to friend me on Facebook, wondering what the kids were all talking about.
Realizing that the average CS graduate can't expect to make 100k on a career of centering divs has been more disruptive to the the American psyche than 9/11.
It's not that the average CS grad can't expect to make 100k, it's that when that was the case 100k was a meaningful amount, now the same purchasing power requires 235k and almost nobody is making 235k in any job role, career pursuit, or field of study. Those that are making 235k aren't experiencing the same lifestyle because they don't exist in the same context, they exist in a context where they're surrounded by depression, scarcity, scrounging, and know that their time could be up at any moment.
The world is in a different place, and while it's funny to joke about how privileged tech people are, the net effect is that we've lost one of the most accessible refuges into a decent career for people. Many of us in tech, including myself, got into this without even a CS degree using free resources online and through libraries to learn about computers and build skills. It's basically inconceivable for anyone who is ambitious and a self-starter to build a career outside of extremely competitive, hierarchical, formal lines in 2026 except maybe as a social media influencer, which is probably why most people under 25 say their dream/goal is to become an influencer. It's their only shot at not being stuck in a state of permanent grinding misery to uphold wealthy elites.
I wasn't joking, just trying to compact my thoughts. The lifestyle and abundance we sold the last generation of university students turned out to be wholly out of reach for all but the luckiest and most well-connected, and that disillusion is why we feel so much like crap, even when we point out we're still objectively far ahead of the global average.
This sounds like a bit of romance for the past, and if any software developers are thinking about "grinding misery", it wasn't any better in the past. My salary as a junior developer in the early 2000s was about $60k, on average. I met someone who had given up a $100k networking job (to do church ministry), and I remember $100k feeling like a number that was just not ever going to be in the realm of possibility for me. Now all the numbers have gone up, but the relatively percentages are about the same. (Except commercial rent, that is a terrible value in my area, but housing prices are reasonable.)
If you feel that way then you have to question what it is that you’re doing that puts you in a place where you are made to feel that way. Many people (most that I know) don’t feel that way. It may be the online communities that you are in or the news you consume, and the great news about that is that is stuff that is not only optional; you choose to consume it. You can just stop consuming it.
It's significantly an Anglosphere thing. Look at the recent world happiness survey and all the English-speaking countries are taking a nose dive in relative ranking versus other countries. Meanwhile world GDP is increasing.
I have a handful of idiosyncratic hypotheses, that I view as stacking on top of the more general cause of inflation and inequality:
- Western hegemony is weakening. Russia is attacking, China is gaining in strength, and many former backwaters are gaining ground. This creates uncertainty. In 1991, the US was the supreme undisputed hegemon.
- Global Social media is significantly English, and the US is the center of the now globalized culture wars, so there's no linguistic barriers to the resulting pathologies. The online world feels borderless and chaotic.
- There is now sectarian strife within English-speaking countries due to different moral tribes (some of those tribes being recent immigrants) living in the same country when there wasn't before. This is a new phenomenon in living memory in the Anglosphere.
- Russia and Iran are running cognitive warfare and other operations to destabilize social cohesion in the Anglosphere. Examples: (i) online - Gucifer, Internet Research Agency, (ii) real world - paying local gangsters to attack minorities.
> what it is that you’re doing that puts you in a place where you are made to feel that way.
I live in the US, read the news, and have relationships with other people.
I lived through a global pandemic several years ago and know people who lost loved ones. Now the head of HHS in the US doesn't believe in vaccines. My kids go to school and we've had multiple lockdowns because of shootings nearby. My company and all of the similar companies I might work at have been doing rolling layoffs the past few years. A guy attempted an insurrection and then somehow got himself back in office. We started a pointless war in Iran. My tax dollars went to killing schoolchildren. I had to get air conditioning installed after being comfortable without it for a decade because of climate change. The ultra-rich have a larger fraction of wealth then we've seen at least since the era of robber barons. My daughter is trying to figure out where to go to college and I don't know what to tell her because I don't know what careers will exist after AI.
If you don't think the world is going through some shit right now, I don't know what to tell you.
> My daughter is trying to figure out where to go to college and I don't know what to tell her because I don't know what careers will exist after AI.
It is rather upsetting to see. I have a unique perspective in that I’m currently a college student in the US pursuing a degree in Computer Engineering. A lot of my peers have been of a constant plight of not having opportunity in the form of internships, co-ops, whatever it may be and I’m guilty of it myself.
From what I’ve observed, and have been personally fortunate to benefit from, connections seem to be the way amidst ATS, layoffs, shrinking budgets and otherwise. I’ve also seen a fair share of people going to graduate school, possibly out of fear of graduating into a bleak market, but some have done so to become more specialized and I think that’s a good approach, maybe something to discuss with your daughter. Just my two cents.
If you spend all day on Reddit or twitter etc., and you say “all these Reddit and twitter things are making me feel sad and anxious”, then you can’t avoid all the blame for making yourself feel that way.
> That psychological environment is not conducive to art and fun. It sucks.
I think that two significant social conditions that very strongly affect how people socialize online now are
a) there are multiple parallel well-established, invasive, unstoppable, government-sanctioned economies of theft that seek to profit at everyones expense (advertising, AI, surveilance). Why would anyone want to share anything if it's going to be stolen? Why would anyone want to be online if they're going to be spied on? Why would anyone want to look at anything if it's all advertisements?
b) it's politically en vogue for major online platforms to allow (and even propagate) hateful content because of the current political situation in the west. The companies that have grown to control the online spaces that people use are the same companies operating the economies of theft, and have demonstrated that they will happily bend the knee if it means they are allowed to continue stealing and spying and selling all this data to governments. Why would anyone want to use a platform filled with hate speech and political propaganda?
I would describe this combination of conditions as repulsive. There's no more appeal in the social internet because the bad guys won.
And yet, by most development and wellbeing metrics, America is doing better than ever before.
My theory is this:
People are just more aware of wealth disparity now. People in the 90s and 00s knew that multi-millionaires and billionaires existed, but they were faraway mystical gargoyles in Connecticut or Monaco.
What's more transparent now is that you might be making $50k and your neighbor might be making $500k. Or the kid you grew up with moved to Dubai after making a small fortune on crypto or drop-shipping, or became a YouTube/TikTok celebrity.
People didn't even know surgeons hit 7 figures, not low 6 figures, until recently. People knew Wall St suits made good money but they assumed it was $200k, not $2m or even $20m.
I remember when levels.fyi first came out and lots of people on social media were like "these numbers are completely made-up". A lot of SWEs themselves didn't even believe FAANG IC SWEs made $200-500k.
Not to mention, social media video lets you experience their lives through their literal point-of-view now.
In a way, the democratization of wealth and fame, and the transparency of information around it, has made people more anxious. We basically live in an era of epidemic FOMO.
So many people these days spend hours watching short-form videos spray endlessly from a screen while they stare dumbly at it. They aren't even picking which videos to watch, just letting the algorithm do it.
Every time I see someone doing that, I just absolutely cannot relate to what's going on in their head at all. I'm certainly not above watching some YouTube, but the complete mindlessness of it, they watch it goes on forever, and the utter stupidity of the videos. I feel like I'm watching zombies in an opium den.
But billions of people are doing that shit every day, so what do I know?
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