131–140 of 643 posts
I’m reminded of an axiom, which I will paraphrase: Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power.
I've always thought this phrase is a bit silly. It completely erases the existence of asexual people and their goals and ambitions.
It's hard to imagine this is only the music industry. Human use sex as a weapon and a tool all the time. True, it might be more useful in the music industry but why would sex as currency only exist there? Where there are humans, there is sex. The obviousness of how that plays out may differ but the underlying theme is universal.
Any industry where there's a massive power differential between "the boss" and "the employee" will likely have this happen. US Gymnastics. Movie, TV, and music industries. US Presidents (and other politicians) and employees. Hell, you still get it in normal business. The stories my wife tells about former co-workers and bosses are disgusting and a primary reason she no longer works at a former employer.
I’m reminded of an axiom, which I will paraphrase: Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power.
Says more about the speaker than sex itself. Sounds like the words of someone with mental health issues.
It makes perfect sense. Music industry is a economics of superstars. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1803469 Very few stars get huge profits and after that it's long slim tail. Talent or high work ethic is not enough for success, "getting discovered" aka someone likes you and invests the initial money and effort is another factor. If personal effort is not enough and the artist has nothing else, selling your ass for an…
> I mean, if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes. Ew. This comment is atrocious and shows your privilege. It sounds like you haven't listened to many stories of women experiencing systemic abuse, misogyny and humiliation (and who experience most of this abuse in the music industry).…
You don’t own suffering. You’re not it’s gatekeeper. It’s not for you to decide if one person’s proposed situation doesn’t take into account the situation of one of millions of versions of suffering.
This sounds like you never played “would you rather” as a child. If comments like this leave you disgusted, you would reconsider reading public forums.
It makes perfect sense. Music industry is a economics of superstars. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1803469 Very few stars get huge profits and after that it's long slim tail. Talent or high work ethic is not enough for success, "getting discovered" aka someone likes you and invests the initial money and effort is another factor. If personal effort is not enough and the artist has nothing else, selling your ass for an…
> ... very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes The most powerful world in the dictionary is "no". As an entirely self-made / self-taught person I know the power of that word. That you consider it a "pretty darn reasonable transaction" tells about your ethics and morality, not about the ethics and morality of a "very high percentage of HN crowd". Regarding fame/money, here's Ruyard Kipling's take on…
Any time you have an industry where the number of people who want to do the work vastly outstrips demand and where there are gatekeepers, you are going to get a culture of abuse. It comes in various forms: sexual or other inappropriate favors for advancement, verbal abuse, or just abusive working conditions like sweatshop hours and burnout culture.
You've perfectly described capitalism where every capitalist state consciously constrains the number of available jobs, maintaining a stable unemployment % among the populace.
Once they've done that, people are always fighting each other and compromising their dignity and morals - some to get ahead, some to simply stay afloat and have a family.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes. Ew. This comment is atrocious and shows your privilege. It sounds like you haven't listened to many stories of women experiencing systemic abuse, misogyny and humiliation (and who experience most of this abuse in the music industry).…
> very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes FWIW, I believe GP was not making any gender distinction..
However, the distinction is that people with tangible experience with sexual abuse perceive this differently. And unfortunately, women have disproportionate experience with sexual abuse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I mean, if Jeff Besos would come to you and say: I invest into your startup $100M if I can fuck you into the ass tree times, very high percentage of HN crowd would immediately say yes. Ew. This comment is atrocious and shows your privilege. It sounds like you haven't listened to many stories of women experiencing systemic abuse, misogyny and humiliation (and who experience most of this abuse in the music industry).…
To me your comment is illustrating your privilege. Prostituting oneself three times to be financially set for life could be a perfectly acceptable trade off for millions of people. The fact that you wouldn’t even consider it shows that you haven’t gone hungry for a while.
"I give you $1 bn if you kill that one kid" and you answer "I'll never kill a kid, no matter how much you pay me" to which I reply: "Your answer is illustrating your privilege".
Certainly you see the gigantic sophism in your comment?
It makes perfect sense. Music industry is a economics of superstars. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1803469 Very few stars get huge profits and after that it's long slim tail. Talent or high work ethic is not enough for success, "getting discovered" aka someone likes you and invests the initial money and effort is another factor. If personal effort is not enough and the artist has nothing else, selling your ass for an…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thousands of employees devote already 1/3 of their life doing a work they despise just so they can avoid starving. Getting literally fucked to save 40 years of bad work doesn't sound too bad.
Except that most sexual assault victims just get literally fucked and don't save 40 years of bad work. People generally perceive winner-take-all economies like the music industry through this same fallacious lens: they assume that the star experience is the norm and ignore the long tail. The music industry is a high-profile but economically tiny; it is not representative of the wider economy, and the star experience…
And to be honest there are people here who loudly won't even do a three-hour whiteboard interview for a high-paying gig that isn't a sure thing.
I just watched Fran Lebowitz's Netflix special and according to her you couldn't even get a job as a waitress in NYC in the '70s without sexual favors. Basically a generation of service industry management looked at sexually assaulting job applicants as a perk.