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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

#351

Post by dylan604 »

ticmasta wrote: post #298
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 love Silicon Valley as much as I loathe Big Bang Theory. Talk about a show that plays to what "regular" people think nerds are like. I am absolutely dumbfounded how popular it is. Then again, Chuck Lorre has a track record for that type of garbage...

If it has a "studio audience" laugh track, I'm out.* If the joke is funny, I don't need a laugh track to tell me about it. If it's not funny, it's not funny, and a laugh track doesn't make it funny. If it's so esoteric of a joke that I missed, then I missed it. Silicon Valley has a lot of these. "Is it Apple Maps bad?" There was one about Theranos that if you had no idea what Theranos is/was, then you'd never have a chance to understand the insult.

*with the occasional rule breaking exception

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

#352

Post by lupire »

revscat wrote: post #140
komali2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me, it was the episode where they were doing agile development complete with story cards. I had been in so many of those exact same meetings. It was hysterical but also... refreshing? Someone got it , the ridiculousness of it all wrapped up in earnest desire to implement A Better Process.

But the joke on the show is that Jared is the only person who actually level-headed enough to succeed at a business goal, but the developers just made everything into a joke and a pissing contest, and still let themselves be manipulated by the system they thought was too dumb for them. When the company literally falls off the back of a truck in a later season, another character says "This wouldn't have happened if Jared were still here."

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

#353

Post by dylan604 »

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 kind of have this feeling for most of Mike Judge's stuff. I think we've all been in an Office Space situation. Being from the same part of Texas that King Of The Hill is based on, I totally know people that I could swear Judge based the characters off of for the show. At this point, Idiocracy should be moved from the comedy category and into the prophecy/documentary category.

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

#354

Post by pjbk »

r00fus wrote: post #306
wturner wrote: post #252

Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show recently wrote a new book titled "Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us ..."

As much as other people didn't like it I really loved Fake Steve Jobs.

Just like the show, many times the fake Steve was more real than the real Steve, and spot on how some things eventually unfolded. Dan is an excellent journalist and a candid visionary.

Finished Lab Rats last week, and contrary to Disrupted which was a very enjoyable modern age tragicomedy-autobiography, it hit home very bad and left me with a sense of despair. IMHO it should be an obligatory reading for everyone in tech these days.

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

#355

Post by holywoly »

snowwrestler wrote: post #63

Amazing anecdote from a 2016 New Yorker article on the show: > During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me.... > “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred ma…

Any shows of the same style on Hollywood?

Do the show producers feel something similar to some in their own industry or their surreality is just reality for them? Are they brave enough to mock powerful people they may wish to work with later?

Would be fun to watch one on Hollywood and they should have very intimate details to bare.

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

#356

Post by jjeaff »

ticmasta wrote: post #296
devmunchies wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really like the historical/tech story lines but the soap-opera interpersonal relationships wrecked it for me. The whole "broken imperfection" thing often goes to far and really detracts from the story.

I agree. It feels like it's trying to be a film festival movie about a tumultuous relationship and "complicated" hero/heroine that just has the beginning of the personal computer age as a backdrop.

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

#357

Post by scarejunba »

swampthinker wrote: post #130

My favorite Silicon Valley anecdote: "During the review process once the footage [of Techcrunch Disrupt] was woven in, another editor criticized the crowd shots for not featuring any women and blamed Berg for the oversight. '...Those were real shots of the real place, and we didn't frame women out.The world we're depicting is f---ed up.' said Berg" https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/hbos-si... Sorry…

Funny. When I read this the first time, I looked up the writing credits (including/excluding/only guest writers) and heir genders and there was a picture painted there that was quite amusing :)

Not at all surprising considering it’s Hollywood, but amusing nonetheless.

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

#358

Post by anon2775 »

throw7 wrote: post #122
snowwrestler wrote: post #63

Amazing anecdote from a 2016 New Yorker article on the show: > During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me.... > “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred ma…

Reminds me of Steven Tyler reacting to Spinal Tap: Tyler expounded on his reaction in a rare Library of Congress interview made public back in 2012. "That movie bummed me out," he said, "because I thought, 'How dare they? That's all real, and they're mocking it.'" To be fair, Silicon Valley (the show) never interested me... kinda found it to be boring. But it _is_ hilarious when you run into these art imitates life i…

It's not hilarious when Dr. Strangelove turns out to be a factually-correct mocumentary, although Dr. Strangelove is hilarious.

Watch the Daniel Ellsberg series on TRNN on YT about his latest book... you are in for so many shocks, you may want to dismiss him as lying and/or crazy.

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

#359

Post by anon2775 »

Fricken wrote: post #247
tootie wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mike Judge is just an absolute artistic genius. Even though it's all light-hearted pop culture, the breadth of his work is just so amazing.

All of his work is about middle class suburban white people, and their lives. There's nothing wrong with that, 'write what you know', but 'breadth' isn't really the term to describe it.

Identity politics... smh.

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

#360

Post by scarejunba »

duderific wrote: post #258
Judgmentality wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Idiocracy is coming true?

"In “Idiocracy,” the secretary of state is sponsored by Carl’s Jr., a company whose chairman very nearly became our current secretary of labor. In 2505, the Oval Office is occupied by an ex-wrestler and porn star named Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho; our president has been on the business end of a Stone Cold Stunner and once appeared in a nonpornographic segment of an otherwise soft-core Playboy VHS tap…

This is a level of superficial similarity that I could use to say Judge Dredd is coming true.
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