

Notice the “free market” vanishes when it’s a thing they don’t like. Suddenly we need strong authority to ensure it’s “fair”.
Notice the “free market” vanishes when it’s a thing they don’t like. Suddenly we need strong authority to ensure it’s “fair”.
Infinite scroll is suited for current events putting negative pressures against content creation. Content creation became an economy. Commoditization of content sucked the life out of it all.
The music can come screeching to a halt for the US tech industry. They haven’t been innovating for a long time. Just relying on monopolization, rehashing old shit, or straight up VC baiting with useless garbage. The rest of the world needs to continue to realize they can do tech too. They can produce novel and actually useful things. Whereas the US industry has been strangling itself to death with anti-competition.
Especially with regards to AI. Once more others realize the milestone innovations in this field comes from academic research which is then taken by the private sector for profit. Others can realize and follow this path. They can spin up quicker than they think. With the education system being systematically dismantled in a pivot to identity politics protectionism over innovation, the future looks rather grim for the US. Bright for others though.
There was definitely a time when people were smarter. I read a comment on r/xennials that stuck with me. They were lamenting the loss of a the culture of their youth. I’m not sure I can rephrase it as well as they said it.
Basically they were describing how it used to be about how we questioned things. Like the show The X-Files. It was about seeking the truth. They noted how that show was reflective of how reality was. There was this common mindset that the answers are out there. That we can work together even to seek the answers and we will find them inevitably.
You see that doesn’t make much sense in 2025 because everyone has the answer to anything and everything. Except it’s their own answer. Not the answer. More than ever their answer is one which is derived from their internet / social media bubble.
There is no longer some big unknown out there full of mysteries to unravel. Not anymore. The zeitgeist right now is that I have my own world view and that’s the one. I know how the system works. I know the way. It’s the way I see the world. So why doesn’t everyone else come join my world view??? Are they stupid?
In the past we didn’t know everything. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had any illusion that they did. Nor could they whip out their pocket rectangle and find answers immediately.
In the past people had to be more open minded. They had to be honest about not knowing. Without modern media they had to be seekers of knowledge. As opposed to over confident purveyors relying on a quick internet search (these days a simple GPT query). The modern zeitgeist is one where everybody talks. Nobody listens. 8 billion deaf ears listening and learning nothing. Just waiting for their turn to talk. Everyone learned everything and they’re so damn sure of it.
Stupid people think they know it all. Smarter people are unsure of what they know. Of course there were stupid people before. But they knew they were stupid. Today the stupids can mask it by repeating words from the podcast, the tiktoks, the youtube videos they just watched.
It’s not uniquely an American problem. The American symptoms are quite a sight to beheld though.
Make solutions in search of problems while collecting big tech premiums. If anyone accuses you of wasteful spending call them science illiterate to turn the public against them to divert the attention away from yourself.
Dear
Penthouse Forumreddit, I’m a 20 year-old college student and I never thought I’d be writing to thePenthouse Forumreddit, but…
It’s the lowest common denominator of smut entertainment. The tech companies have managed to veil it all in prestige. It should be called gossip media or something.
Instead people think there’s some kind of real human connection. Some kind of deep discussions happening.
Yeah obviously we’ve completely lost the plot a long time ago. Nobody even remembers when tech was bands of ragtag nerds making something out of nothing. Now they are the rich whose only purpose to is extract more wealth. Tech what? Who even knows anymore.
That includes the average tech workers. If that angers you then you’re lost too.
Nobody has noticed that there’s more bragging about compensation than accomplishments. It used to be the other way around. Nerds eagerly showing off to anyone who will listen about whatever thing they cooked up. It’s been this way for the past long time long before this LLM AI era.
Yeah it worked for the first part of internet history. You talked to people from all over the world.
Now people use the internet like a carnival freak show exhibition. They don’t talk to others. They scroll to gawk at what oddities and tap the glass and jeer at the inhuman thing. Social media is designed this way.
So a bunch of chuds managed to take their weekend pedo hunting and turn it into a shitty startup.