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If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

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Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#211

Post by devmunchies »

cknoxrun wrote: post #195
garmaine wrote: post #146

I find it hits a bit close to home, so much so as to ruin the comedy sometimes... it’d be funny if it weren’t so true, which is depressing. Still watch it, and love it though. And super impressed that a Hollywood production finally understood Northern California. That never happens (see: The Social Network, Hackers, every Steve Jobs movie, etc.)

I would highly suggest checking out Halt and Catch Fire. It's a period piece, but I think it captures the spirit of Northern California. The first 2 seasons are in Texas before they jump ship to San Francisco.

ditto. Its starts off with a young ex-IBM executive trying to build the first IBM compatible machine and everything that goes with launching the new product. Later seasons go into things like server farms, early gaming, and social networking.

really underrated show.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#212

Post by hindsightbias »

komali2 wrote: post #90
ng12 wrote: post #28

I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny Valley ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ). It's humorous and absurd, but at the same time so close to reality it's unsettling.

It was the yogurt scene that did it for me. When one of the main characters yells at the other about how all the small spoons are missing, and he can't get the big spoons into the greek yogurt jam section. Not only did I have that exact same conversation with my coworker the day previously about the exact brand of yogurt, on post-analysis we're pretty sure our company has stocked the exact same spoons they used in th…

In Austin, my coworkers would always stop at lunch and look if Mike Judge was nearby. We were convinced he just followed us around for Office Space and King of the Hill material.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#214

Post by DanBC »

saagarjha wrote: post #93
ng12 wrote: post #28

I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny Valley ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ). It's humorous and absurd, but at the same time so close to reality it's unsettling.

I think that's the whole point. It's meant to be satire, so it (the show) draws attentions to the quirks of Silicon Valley (the place) by exaggerating them.

Except a bunch of satire can't exagerate the excess, or even show it faithfully, because no-one would believe it.

This is what Iannucci says about making more of The Thick of It -- it's impossible to do because current politicians are self satarising in ways that are unbelievable if you put them on screen, even if those things actually happened in real life.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#215

Post by Symbiote »

> This kind of back-channel relationship—satirists texting casually with the satirized—is a departure from much of comedic history.

_Yes, Minister_, which satirizes the British government, supposedly had close access to several people in government, though it was probably careful rather than casual.

The clips on Youtube are all distorted, don't bother with them, but find S01E04 "Big Brother".

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#216

Post by screye »

danans wrote: post #69

Love the show partly for how deeply researched its identity and culturally driven jokes are. Here are a few: Erlich passing Dinesh off as Latino to get a deal on a graffiti logo design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzmVFF58Mo Dinesh recounting to a puzzled Gilfolye about how he was a "cool" kid back in Pakistan, and why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKz0M6SmQ8c The latter one, in particular, implies that the w…

They ring true. Some moments don't even have to exaggerated to be funny. That is exactly how being "cool" works in parts of India, and just the fact is enough to make a person from the west crack up.

Dinesh is one of the few nerdy Indian stereotypes that I do not mind. All the others seem like caricatures and generalizations of South Asians. Dinesh on the other hand, could be sitting right across my table, coding....

If The Big Short is considered a great "documentary" for the 2008 crisis, then SV does even better for the Valley.

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#218

Post by Aeolun »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #147
amyjess wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office Space and Silicon Valley, sure, but Idiocracy has aged _horribly_. That movie is full of memes that haven't been relevant since the mid-00s (and specifically, the humor in the movie has a distinct Bush-era vibe which straight-up feels foreign in 2018... it feels like a period piece even though it's set in the future), and I lost whatever enjoyment of it that I had left when actual Neo-Nazis began using the mov…

Yeah, Idiocracy is kind of insidiously awful because it thinks that cultural changes are actually genetic . You don't have to follow its arguments very far at all to come to the conclusion that ignorance can be fixed, not by education, but by restricting breeding rights. We all know where that leads. (Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/603/ )

A more healthy and smart society?

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#219

Post by suddensleep »

screye wrote: post #198
polartx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple years ago I found myself at a user conference party for the funded SaaS company I worked for. The concert was complete with open cocktail bar, Cirque du Soleil aerial performers, and (you guessed it), Flo-Rida. For a while I couldn't decide if it was life imitating art, or a tongue-in-cheek nod to the stereotype we were seen as. But it wasn't the latter, the founder/president wasn't that self-aware.

Flo-Rida performed at NIPS. The top academic ML conference. I can't imagine who thought that the community of some of the world's biggest nerds wanted to listen to Flo-Rida !?

I was at NeurIPS last year, and I can actually confirm that the line to see Flo-Rida went around the block. It's unclear to me whether or not there was genuine interest in the performance, but there was certainly interest in the event.

Say what you will about the world's biggest nerds, but irony, whether purposeful or inexplicably accidental, is not lost on them.

Ninja Edit: New conference name :)

Re: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley

#220

Post by hindsightbias »

duderific wrote: post #156
alexilliamson wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't get enough credit. The fact that King of the Hill and Silicon Valley come from the same person is astounding and suggests a comic breadth that is hard to grasp.

Not to mention Idiocracy, which is pretty much coming true even as we speak.

Chairman of Sony Pictures interrupts Judge interview to take blame for spiking Idiocracy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/magazine/mike-judge-the-b...

“I should’ve made it 10 years later and set in the present.”

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