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How hustle culture took over advertising

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191–200 of 266 posts

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you haven't built up your own security through wealth, you're [going to be] fucked. Another approach is to build security through self sufficiency and community based initiatives. For example, growing your own food wherever possible, or community gardens on common land. There is a long list of examples and ideas where future security, defining that as decent quality of life, health and education, doesn't need to…

Almost no one in the US has a problem with getting enough food. Maybe substandard nutrition, but no one is going to starve. Healthcare and education are areas where a common option could make a major difference in people's lives. But I think the "community" has to be pretty large to make a meaningful impact.

About 15% of the US population is "food-insecure" as defined by the USFDA. That's 40,000,000 people.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#192

So, this is the industry that: - puts flashing colored boxes in front of our faces at any possible opportunity - requires us to click through multiple popups to access almost any for-profit website - has normalized the act of wasting human life at a mass scale by injecting multi-minute time-wasting sessions in activities "How hustle culture took over"? It's a hustle by default. I'd call it a swindle.

Hatred of advertising at a larger scale, nice. How are those people on said websites (and almost any other medium) supposed to make money?

Lots of ways. By contributing to society, perhaps?

This advertising model hasn't been around for very long. It's baffling how suddenly nobody can even conceive of how the world would work without malicious advertising and culture-wide psyops digging into everyone's brains. The advertising model is one of the worst inventions in history.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#193

I'm American but I've lived overseas for nearly a decade, and I hardly ever go back. In recent years when I meet other Americans who are visiting my city, I often get this vague feeling that they're just trying too hard in one way or another. Maybe they're working too hard, or trying too hard to impress someone, or get attention, or assert themselves. I don't know if I've changed or if America is changed or if it's s…

I think we're all increasingly aware that our society and infrastructure are crumbling, and no matter how "rich" the country as a whole is, if you haven't built up your own security through wealth, you're [going to be] fucked. And that awareness translates into people being willing to overwork themselves, so they don't lose their spot in the rat race; and corporations with money to spend on workers are well-positione…

Society is crumbling...? I'm pretty sure the data doesn't back that up.

We face many problems, to be sure, but this is nothing new.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#194
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid that without some systemic-level changes, donating less time to work and more towards infrastructure maintenance would only be giving free gifts to corporations and small entrepreneurs alike, who will be happy to put the improved infrastructure to use in making more money for themselves. We need a way for improving things where, when a community improves its own space, the gains don't immediately get priva…

I think we're on the same page. I interpreted "infrastructure" primarily to be social and political infrastructure, not physical infrastructure. Fixing it would undoubtedly need to include greater resistance to exploitation by powerful private interests.

I think this conclusion really works for both physical and social infrastructure. It's cool to work on either, but it's cooler if you don't feel like being an unpaid volunteer in someone else's business.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#195

I'm American but I've lived overseas for nearly a decade, and I hardly ever go back. In recent years when I meet other Americans who are visiting my city, I often get this vague feeling that they're just trying too hard in one way or another. Maybe they're working too hard, or trying too hard to impress someone, or get attention, or assert themselves. I don't know if I've changed or if America is changed or if it's s…

Here's the secret: it's total BS.

"Hustle" is almost always BS. And real hustle is a red flag. If people can't get what needs to get done within predefined work hours, it's either a reflection of incompetency or poor time management.

I worked at one of the ad holding companies mentioned for a few years, and the magic behind the curtain is that there's no magic behind the curtain.

Agencies by and large blow smoke up the clients' behinds as a matter of standard practice. And the clients typically know this (though I'm not sure they know the full extent of it), but put up with it because the work they are engaging an agency for makes more sense to outsource to the agencies, and since all agencies are posturing, they simply pick who they think BS'ed best (as if that's a reflection of what will actually get done).

When I was there, it was all about BSing digital competency and foresight. Everyone was trying to claim a better finger on the pulse of change. Now that change has somewhat slowed down (no major hardware upsets in the past few or next few years), it makes sense to start behaving more like a commoditized service and trying to brand oneself as offering greater efficiency than one's counterparts.

Which is why if I was still in the industry today, my pitch deck would probably include a slide about how you won't hear us talking about "hustle" because it should only be necessary if you're not optimizing your work day (and including out of country examples of functioning companies working even less than standard hours and doing great work, and numbers about productivity tanking as hours go up). "So you could pick a 'hustle' agency, but are they spending their 'productive' hours on you, or are they billing you for those extra hours operating at lower efficiency? If you see an agency claiming to 'hustle', personally we'd suggest hustling in the other direction ASAP."

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#196
post #29

As a professional diesel mechanic, I find most of the points in this article pretty difficult to understand outside the context of, say, Hollywood? or maybe iPhones? Do programmers really have to show this kind of reckless drive? This hasnt been a thing in tradecraft since...forever i dont think...and if it is, its punished pretty severely. An example: if im rebuilding the idler and pitman assembly on a fourteen ton…

That's the thing, quantity of 'acceptable' quality of work is valued over how high that quality might be. The minimum time is taken to proof and bugfix, because failures are addressed after they've already come up in order to pump out more product in shorter time. It's velocity, and high enough velocity overcomes any setback that affects a companies pocketbook. Entry level and middle management is burned out but quickly turned over and refilled with fresh meat from each graduating class, those that suffer through and keep up their velocity move up, eventually reaching a point in their career where they don't have to worry about their own output but rather the output of those under them. Your immediate manager in your garage will surely understand the value of your work, but your CEO is only concerned with getting to the absolute minimum time a truck is sitting in your garage idle rather than moving product on the highway, and your manager is probably fighting him on keeping or raising minimum time every quarter.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#197
post #125

I don't think "hustling" has to be synonymous with overworking. When I think of hustling I think of my dad who used to pay for his life traveling around Europe by buying, driving, and selling cars in different countries he was visiting. Or how he was able to spot a pair of good tires in the junkyard that he could buy for 50 bucks but sell for 500. I always felt hustling meant you could see small opportunities in the…

Hustling would be if your dad was buying more and more cars at a time, making more and more profit, eventually reaching a point where if he were to flip more cars he would need to hire people, and doing so. Hustling is exponential growth, not stopping at comfortable profits.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once Patreon became a thing, I turned off all the ads on my comics and never looked back. I am by no means in even the top 50% of earners but I make more than ads ever did and feel a lot better about it.

That's awesome and great to hear. The issue I think is at scale, though.

Sometimes harmful business models die out, which results in good people losing income. We should still celebrate this progress, even with the casualties.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're all increasingly aware that our society and infrastructure are crumbling, and no matter how "rich" the country as a whole is, if you haven't built up your own security through wealth, you're [going to be] fucked. And that awareness translates into people being willing to overwork themselves, so they don't lose their spot in the rat race; and corporations with money to spend on workers are well-positione…

Society is crumbling...? I'm pretty sure the data doesn't back that up. We face many problems, to be sure, but this is nothing new.

It doesn't matter what the data says, the feeling that our society is crumbling is palpable, and that is what drives this overwork. People my age (40s) and younger do not believe that our institutions will be able to support us in our old age and retirement. We do not even believe that the earth's ecosystems will be able to support us (as a group) then. In 30 years, we as individuals better have resources accumulated to support ourselves, or we will be unable to afford basics like healthcare, shelter, and even food.

For that matter, many of my non-tech friends (in their 40s) are already only one health crisis away from being homeless. I only have two couches and they all can't stay with me. I am doing relatively well and even I feel the pressure to overwork and "make hay while the sun shines", so maybe I can help support them when they need it.

Re: How hustle culture took over advertising

#200
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that hustler was synonymous with confidence artist or a low level scammer. That it’s now considered a positive word is fascinating to me.

A hustler hustles, but one who hustles isn't always a hustler.

Poetic, but that could be said about anything;

A programmer programs, but one who programs isn't always a programmer...

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