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The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

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161–170 of 170 posts

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#161
post #94

I’ve never watched any of those videos but One thing I don’t understand is how ‘victims’ decide to fully trust and follow advice of random YouTube celebrities. Why are they not just a little sceptical?

The videos are incredibly well produced, super slick editing. Makes it seem more exciting and profound than it really is. Not related to this article, but one of the most effective recruiting tools terror groups have is slickly produced marketing videos. They appeal strongly to individuals with a vulnerability that the group seems to address in their videos, such as not fitting in or existential boredom.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#162
post #10

There's nothing wrong with hard work. But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever. To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been…

> there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed Know your pay-offs. Gambling your health to enrich someone else, while you scrape by with pennies, is a last resort. Gambling your health for tremendous gains is a fair choice. These are gambles humans leaving Africa and navigating the oceans made. (The cost of loss was death.) It’s a risk we’ll face expanding to the M…

Exploring outer space is inherently risky, there's no safe choice and no guarantee you are going to succeed either.

Leaving a crapsack country is also inherently risky to a lesser degree. There are no legal, safe options to do it, but at least you probably know a buch of people who succeeded.

But, if you already are part of a profession where even mediocre practicioners have 50+% odds of making it into the 2-3% of top earners amongst the general population, it is an imbecile's choice to wreck your health for a lottery ticket to make it into the top 0.001% with 0.001% odds of winning; specially if you can still apply the same talent, passion and effort without the health wrecking by cutting an order of magnitude to your goal.

IF you did read the article and still came out thinking like that, chances are you are trying to rationalize a past (or present) bad life-choice.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#163
post #10

There's nothing wrong with hard work. But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever. To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been…

There's nothing wrong with hard work, nor does work have any intrinsic value (despite what the Puritans and many others would have you believe). You need to work hard enough to earn enough money to ensure you have everything you need to survive, plus whatever extra work it takes to earn what you need to live "comfortably" (which means different things to different people). You should also work hard enough so that you can save for retirement and contingencies that might prevent you from working in the future to ensure you have what you need.

Unfortunately many in our modern society are caught up with tying the idea of "accomplishment" with work and "productivity". Accomplishment is a completely subjective idea, as is personal satisfaction and happiness. I've found that most people who seek to lose themselves in their work or derive satisfaction out of being as "productive" as possible are usually very unhappy people overworking themselves in an effort to distract themselves from their unfulfilled lives. I am not referring to those who truly enjoy what they do, and thus can "work" all the time and find actual fulfillment. People like this (artists, writers, ect) would be engaged in this "work" whether or not they were getting paid. I'm referring to the people who put in an extra 20 hours of overtime at an office job they don't particularly like, or work a "side hustle" in their few, spare hours because they have been convinced that if they aren't being "productive" all the time that they are being lazy, or that their time is being wasted.

For most people work is a means to an end - not something that can or should define you as a human being.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#164
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only ever "worth it" if it works out. It's never "worth it" if it didn't. This is basically the survivor fallacy: you didn't win because you risked ruining yourself, you won because you got lucky. Risking to ruin yourself just meant you increased your chances of winning (while also significantly increasing your chances of losing). Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit" for…

> Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit" for years may create a handful of winners but it will also cause a ridiculous amount of ruined lives (not to mention families and relationships) Totally agree. Telling people to "eat shit" is terrible universal advice. > if you lose the roulette, you're probably in no state to lament to anyone how terrible of an idea it was to play in th…

> That said, just because something depends predominantly on luck doesn't mean it is never worth it.

I mean, you can do some back-of-the-napkin math and at least get a ballpark figure on the worthiness of an endeavor. 'Expected Value' is the term in stats. It's not too convoluted to run through the math here, but you can expand it as you need. Yes, things like 'freedom' and 'autonomy' are hard to quantify, but you can estimate them somewhat.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What depends? on..what?! I don't understand.. (I really tried) uh.. I don't understand your last sentence either. Assuming you meant 'But you have to be brutal to have the desired effect of getting through to the terrible singers, plain honesty - considerate, respectful honesty[0] wouldn't work', well, he didn't get through, did he. Instead they thought he must be just being rude deliberately and didn't mean what he…

Whether or not he is being rude depends on your interpretation of his intentions based on assumptions about how the performer will react. Are you implying those people are auditioning ironically and know they are bad singers? It does not seem rude to me to try and change the course of someone's life who is _drastically_ underperforming. Is the definition of rude hurting someone's feelings? That doesn't follow the imp…

Are you implying those people are auditioning ironically and know they are bad singers? - No. I have absolutely no idea why you ask that.

It does not seem rude to me to try and change the course of someone's life who is _drastically_ underperforming. - Leaving aside what underperforming could mean - so, if he means well, it's just not possible for Cowell to be rude, no matter what he says? I think that's just not what the word means to people (apart from you).

That doesn't follow the implication that rudeness shouldn't happen; - I can't parse that, sorry.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not 'simply' for being honest, but for being (entertainingly) rude about it. You can be honest without being brutally honest, but it doesn't make such good TV I guess.

I read something recently along the lines of "People who brag about being 'brutally honest' are usually much more into the 'brutal' part than the rest of it."

Yeah, I've heard people talk like it's a huge virtue the way they go around being mean to people, 'daring' to speak their minds.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#167
post #10

There's nothing wrong with hard work. But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever. To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been…

I respectfully disagree with you that Gary vee is selling the idea that everyone should become an entreprenuer.

His main message is to be self aware and to be patient. In fact, in many videos he clearly makes the case that entrepreneurship has become glamourous and he warns against the dangers of faking it till you make it mentality.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#168
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only ever "worth it" if it works out. It's never "worth it" if it didn't. This is basically the survivor fallacy: you didn't win because you risked ruining yourself, you won because you got lucky. Risking to ruin yourself just meant you increased your chances of winning (while also significantly increasing your chances of losing). Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit" for…

> Teaching people they'll be successful as long as they're willing to "eat shit" for years may create a handful of winners but it will also cause a ridiculous amount of ruined lives (not to mention families and relationships) Totally agree. Telling people to "eat shit" is terrible universal advice. > if you lose the roulette, you're probably in no state to lament to anyone how terrible of an idea it was to play in th…

Sure, but this can be reduced to "it's worth the risk if you have a financial safety net to fall back to if you fail or burn out". In other words "the high risk discourages people who are not already well-off and the high reward primarily benefits those who are".

Or more simply: if you have a few tens or hundres of thousands of dollars you can fall back to even if everything goes wrong, it's worth the chance to become a millionaire/billionaire. If you don't have that safety net, you'll most likely ruin your life unless you're extraordinarily lucky (i.e. lucky enough to win even without the advantages nearly all the other winners already had).

Meritocracy is biased towards affluent starting positions.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#169
post #74
post #10

There's nothing wrong with hard work. But there is a lot wrong with the idea that you need to work until your health is impacted to succeed; if you need to work that hard, something else is off - the idea isn't good enough, you're attacking it in the wrong way, whatever. To me this ties into the gross, pervasive trend of wantrepreneurism. Shark Tank, Zuck, Elon Musk - being a founder has never been sexier, never been…

GaryV was a major investor in FaithBox, a company that knowingly incurred huge bills with my company that they'd knew be unable to pay (I run a 3PL). The switched to another warehouse for two months and did the same to them, then they "sold" to a firm in Omaha in a supposedly $0 asset-for-debt sale, and the buyers are trying to get out of paying me ~$60k. My lawyers are on it and I expect to get something out of them…

I am seeing more and more of this on youtube now. The people who advise others like this are usually flawed in their business dealings. These people usually tend to focus on soft skills without any emphasis on other skills. The soft skills is usually convincing people and leans more towards conning people with sweet talk and forceful marketing.

Re: The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’

#170
post #89

I think what gets me about Gary V's "hustle porn" ethos is that most people don't realise he had a career for AGES selling wine for his family wine business and making wine tasting videos for over a decade on youtube. He's posted over 1,000 wine tasting videos. Long before he was known as the hero of hustle porn he was spitting cali cab in his Jets bucket and waxing lyrical about the palate of said wine. I love wine…

Is this sarcasm...? Producing a 10-20 minute wine tasting video 2x weekly sounds both enjoyable and easy for people who like wine.

Definitely not sarcasm. I'm sure it would be fun initially but after doing it for a decade plus I would definitely get tired of it. And I'm a huge lover of wine and a pretty avid collector.
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