Tell_them_to_shrug
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User ID: 2156
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
New cars are more comfortable, with no degradation of the frame or suspension, and there is no question about maintenance or accident history. Used cars are also rarely as good a deal as people think they are. People still want $15k for their 10-year-old basic options sedans because “they changed the oil regularly.”
It is objectively false that there is no reason to buy a new car over a used one. Both choices have their advantages.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
I don’t care about any of those things. I’m also getting secondhand embarrassment from the obsession with status and recognition evident in your post.
And you can’t convince me that a game with infinite decision making time is more mentally demanding than one that actually requires reflexive genius.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Disappointing. Also infuriating and sad in degrees, but mostly just disappointing. This is why intellectualism fails at capturing hearts and minds: you write something as out-of-touch and vain as how it’s our culture’s job to preserve “beauty” when the working class voters you hate can’t even afford a shitty townhouse for <200k or send their children to public school without fear of them being physically assaulted.
The old meme about Donald Trump being a poor man’s idea of a rich man was the biggest unintentional self-own of the halcyon days of 2016. Trump was an ugly mirror for upper class intellectuals that destroyed them completely: a status-seeking, vain, educated womanizer thoroughly convinced of his own unbeatable cunning and raw power. His existence stated, “this is what you are. I’m just honest about it.”
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
If freedom isn’t real, then neither is slavery or incarceration. I’m sure the millions of men living in prison will be happy to hear that they aren’t actually prisoners.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Channers are South Park republicans. They only align with the right as long as it’s contrarian to do so.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
As someone that has not only read but reread Atlas Shrugged, I don’t agree with your cause map of why I enjoyed the book as a teenager at all. In fact, it sounds like yet another indictment of libertarians as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” which has always been a poor effort by leftists to use their love of power dynamics and status games to try to explain values anathema to their own. My enjoyment of Rand’s work can be attributed to exactly one personality trait/flaw: I hold in very low regard the kinds of people who insist they have a right to my time or energy.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
And not at all what you claimed.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
This is all a very fluffy way to say “yes, most revenue in software development comes from marketing.”
So I’m glad we agree. Though calling the laptop class “elite” is always funny wish fulfillment from rationalists whose greatest achievement in life is becoming middle managers for a tech company. The “elite” don’t work.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
You could’ve read the text you quoted and gotten your answer. Also, no software engineer makes 7 figures unless they’re in management or counting “total compensation” in a bid to make themselves sound higher status than they actually are.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Yes, petit bourgeois status chasers have always existed. All the same, they are tumors whose existence is harshly ignored in the American mythology of the self made man. You can feel however you want about said tumors.
And software engineering isn’t harder than chemical, petroleum, electrical, or nuclear engineering, all fields that pay peanuts compared to software. As professed by my many acquaintances who jumped engineering ship to the laptop class. Your money comes from corporate marketing.
Oh, and this piece of shit in my hand that you’re fetishizing as the peak of human technology can barely copy and paste properly, hence the lack of quotations in my reply.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
I don’t know anyone that thinks highly of lawyers or software developers, for one.
Second, this status-seeking fetish of the petit bourgeois is in direct opposition to the American mythology of the rugged individual. A Wal-Mart greeter isn’t acknowledging your superiority by saying hello to you. They’re doing a job that they may or may not enjoy (you forget that many Wal-Mart greeters are bored retirees, who have the luxury of not needing to work, which places them well above the lawyers and software developers who do).
Third, “merit” is not the reason your software developer or lawyer has a bloated salary. These are two jobs that currently pay very well because they have corporate backing. And judging by the recent high amount of FAANG layoffs, that backing isn’t unconditional.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Presumably, you do more with your house than look at it and feverishly check its Zestimate every month. Perhaps even live in it.
If you want to complain that houses are too expensive, then that’s a more complicated argument.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
I can smell it in the parking lot. Not down the street. Let alone in my home a mile away.
That also was never raised as a concern by my multiple neighbors complaining about it, so I’m not willing to entertain that grievance.
Homeowners created the system we live in such that it directly benefits them. So I’m fresh out of sympathy when you play the “that’s just the way it is” card, as though homeowners are blameless victims of circumstance. Again, crocodile tears don’t move me.
Any other investment, caveat emptor is in full effect. But when it comes to real estate, oh no, suddenly we need RULES. After all, poor Real Estate Mogul Wannabe #1,298,745 needs to eat. It’s not his fault they opened a gas station across from the slums he purchased at auction.
I still remember when they opened a perfectly legal Royal Farms across the street from the entrance to my quiet suburban neighborhood. Of course, the high maintenance, self-serving losers in my neighborhood went ballistic. I also remember getting a flier on my mailbox that read, “GOOD CHICKEN MEANS BAD NEIGHBORS.” It’s been 5 years now, and all that happened was I got a very convenient gas stop on the way to work, while the property value has doubled. May the morons I share a neighborhood with get ass cancer.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
The ONLY reason the middle class has jumped head first into real estate investment is because of the government consistently enacting zoning regulations to deliberately benefit homeowners at the expense of everyone else, which likewise benefits a community’s most consistent voters. Anyone else who borrowed an amount of money 3-4x their salary as part of a 30-year loan, wiped down the countertops, then cried crocodile tears when their “investment” didn’t make them millionaires, would rightly be told they were an irresponsible idiot.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
The Reddit censors have the overwhelming support of the Reddit community. No one misses this place anymore than they miss /r/coontown.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
As more intelligent men than me have observed, the culture is controlled by young, attractive, fertile women and the men granted access to their wombs. “Woke” culture only exists so long as it doesn’t obstruct or offend either of these two groups. And we’re nowhere near the point that the college educated, secular, progressive, urban elite are tired of purity spirals.
Just look at what a flaming dumpster fire of propaganda Reddit has turned into since the days of Ellen Pao. This isn’t 2010 when no one knew what a Reddit was and Ron Paul was popular: these are normies posting what normal people think in 2023. The fact that this single, insignificant thread from /r/slatestarcodex has now had to quietly move camp in the middle of the night TWICE, as though we’re some lost brigade of confederate vagabonds being sheparded safely out of Union territory by Stonewall Jackson, is a testament to how deeply unpopular the kind of ideas posted here are.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
The government is not seriously opposed to policing as it exists now. A few token laws about no longer pulling people over for registrations that expired within the last 60 days is not an outright condemnation by the government of our police force’s ability to police effectively.
It is also generally baked into our government’s managerial principles that people, not machines, should be making the decisions that can meaningfully impact lives. You’re as likely to see an AI running the police as you are an AI presiding as judge over a major criminal trial or as the governor of a state.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Who cares?
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Tech isn’t “special,” just contemptible. I observed it all too much in high school and college: the desperate, one-sided infatuation of a large group of nerdy, undersexed men toward their handful of female peers. I have no reason to believe this becomes less contemptible as these young nerds became old, working nerds, though the inflated salaries likely does a number to their egos and baseline confidence.
As I said, these men are typically very bad at cold socializing outside of work, so they become desperate and obnoxious to those around them who are just trying to do a job, since their priority is finding a willing fuck monkey while they’re young.
Tell_them_to_shrug
1yr ago
Amen, brother. Workplace romances are cancer, though it doesn’t surprise me they would be so common in “tech.” The people who flock to that industry aren’t exactly known for their adaptability to adult social spaces, and the workplace gives them a captive audience with at least a shared interest in profession. It’s “easy mode” for nerds, to an extent.
I also innately detest the kinds of people who try to shit where they eat. It’s an annoyance for those of us just trying to do a job when Boy and Girl are going through a rough patch and can’t work together properly (though they love to insist they can keep it professional, that’s always a lie).
When you use it as a point in golf’s favor, obviously in comparison to other sports, then yes.
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