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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#51

Post by KronisLV »

bandoti wrote: post #34
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

Honestly, I hate to say it because it’s become an annoying topic—but the problem is social media. Full stop. People are so distracted, scrolling ad-nauseam, that the only hope and dream they have is: to become an “influencer.” They’ll sell a view of their children and family life to the highest bidding sponsor. Then, peddling products to a fresh batch of spectators who think, “Ah! Wouldn’t that be the life? I should…

> that the only hope and dream they have is: to become an “influencer.”

I might be too introverted for that sort of thing in the first place, but that sounds like hell, having to pretend in front of a bunch of strangers just to get clicks, all for clout.

Then again, I did delete Facebook too because I didn’t quite get posting bunches of vacation pics either: if there’s a cool picture or a few I can share those in the likes of WhatsApp or Discord with a more narrow and closer knit group instead of the world.

I’m guessing it’s quite different for most folks and I assume that the few of those who also do successfully become influencers are swimming in money, more than I’ll ever make.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#52

Post by account42 »

SirFatty wrote: post #7

For me, the who cares part started with the latest election cycle and current president. The zone has been flooded, I quit reading the news and cannot be bothered to care about any of it. Additionally, AI generated content, AI pictures and deepfakes have a numbing effect. I guess I can say "who cares?"

This obsession is not healthy.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#53

Post by photochemsyn »

The people who control institutions seem to care more about fiscal solvenceny of their institutions above all else. Thus, if AI chatbot generated content in media results in more visits to the site and more ad revenue, that's 'good' - the content doesn't need to be accurate or truthful, it just needs to bring in more eyeballs which translates to more ad views which translates to more revenue, which is the metric that the leaders of the institution care most about.

In a more authoritarian state bent on information control, the leaders of the institution might have a different metric, especially if they were a state-funded institution - namely, ensuring that their content didn't offend the heads of the authoritarian state, resulting in either a removal of state funding or a visit from the thought police.

Of course there is some intersectionality here - if the ad revenue is controlled by a few monopolistic corporations, then they might respond to critical investigative reporting on their industry with the removal of their advertising revenue from the media institution. In a monopolistic situation, this might not hurt their own revenue that much as consumers have nowhere else to buy products, but in a competitive market situation, refusing to advertise is likely to result in lower revenue.

For the media institution, generating fluff from a chatbot instructed not to offend either the state or the corporate conglomerate is the safe route when it comes to fiscal solvency (and staying out of prison).

Fundamentally, if the economic system is so corrupt and soul-crushing that the vast majority of people dream of acquiring enough capital to escape the system ('f-u money'), then something is very wrong with that system.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#54

Post by Barbing »

dmje wrote: post #10

On the one hand I’m nodding along and have a bunch of links bookmarked about the - for want of a better phrase - “trend to mediocrity”. It’s true that the median is where everything goes if you feed the beast the most average stuff you can find, there’s no doubt about it. On the other, there are many, many examples of artists and musicians and museums and galleries and others who are - still, always have been, always…

>There’s not a day goes by on HN that I don’t see stuff that fits this mold.

Surprised this didn’t smack me in the face when I first read the post. This very site does indeed serve as a bit of a counterpoint.

How could we compare and contrast effort and apathy across time, apples to apples? Maybe comparing farmhands or authors… e.g. the average reception of authors’ works vs. length of writing time

(bad example, maybe someone has a better one)

Re: The Who Cares Era

#55

Post by voidhorse »

MisterTea wrote: post #46
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

This is happening all over and I think a lot of it has to do with society moving from communities to larger societies where they increasingly feel less significant. They work for a large bureaucratic systems that don't give two shits about them. The small mom and pop businesses are all consolidated into cold soulless corporations who's only goal is numbers go up. So you do just enough to fulfill that goal and use the…

Yeah I think this is spot on. It's just a side effect of widespread, pervasive alienation, in the Marxist sense. With LLMs we're at the point where the last enclave of relatively alienation free work is disappearing.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#56

Post by some_furry »

0_____0 wrote: post #45
some_furry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the arrow goes the other way.

I was wondering if maybe this is the result of a tight labor market. A lot lf what I see kind of lines up with what happens if you have to make do with underskilled or otherwise sloppy staff. The throughline I think is that there's no consequence for being bad at one's job. Not to say I'm perfect - I am pretty sure I've been a mediocre employee before, but I've also never been sacked.

I have a high work ethic but I mostly keep it to myself.

That is: I don't hold strangers to my standards or expect them to feel the same way about their work that I do about mine.

I've never been sacked for poor performance, but I have been included in mass layoffs and restructurings throughout my career, which always makes one wonder if they were secretly not meeting some metric.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#57

Post by 0_____0 »

sndean wrote: post #16
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

> a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. Is this similar to the Peter principle, though? And not that it is exactly that concept, but that book is from 1969. People have been making this observation for a while. In this context, it's more comforting to really pay attention to very competent people. I had a home inspector spend ~5 hours on my house and was amazed by every little detail he discovered and…

I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago and today something crystallized about my experience there - I consistently encountered people who were good at their jobs there.

They've got a shortage of people in the trades, but their tradies seemed highly professional and efficient, the folks at the bike shops were on point, the airport staff were quick to help and super informative (gate attendant explained visibility 'minimums'!)

Re: The Who Cares Era

#58

Post by ambicapter »

safety1st wrote: post #50
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

I think it's inflation. And I don't just mean Covid era inflation. Inflation has been an on-again, off-again problem since the collapse of Bretton Woods. It's because of inflation that slowly and subtly, everything gets shittier all the time. It encourages businesses to cut corners, shave costs, and find cheap labor overseas. It encourages you to not give a fuck about your job because you haven't had a raise in 5 yea…

I’m doubtful because things always got a little worse all the time even before money existed. It’s the natural state of nature; erosion. Cleaning up after yourself and maintaining your space is a virtue for that very reason. Seems like that virtue is, itself, is in a state of disrepair (which implies an obvious course of action).

Re: The Who Cares Era

#60

Post by pm215 »

sndean wrote: post #16
0_____0 wrote: post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

> a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. Is this similar to the Peter principle, though? And not that it is exactly that concept, but that book is from 1969. People have been making this observation for a while. In this context, it's more comforting to really pay attention to very competent people. I had a home inspector spend ~5 hours on my house and was amazed by every little detail he discovered and…

Similarly, I like it when I occasionally see little bits of on the job training when I'm a customer -- the barista this morning teaching another about pouring latte art, the senior dentist nudging the trainee into what the right diagnosis was based on the symptoms I was reporting, that kind of thing. It's encouraging to see people caring about what they do and passing their skills on to other people who care about getting better.
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