7 ms·

Sorry Soylent dudes: After the revolution the clueless tech elite will be doomed

25 points by edoloughlin 11y ago

PaulHoule 11y ago
I dunno, there is a real kind of liberation you can have if you are on some diet that is all planned out. I did a week's fast and was amazed at how much free time I had now that I wasn't eating or shopping for food or preparing food or cleaning the plates, thinking about what I was going to eat or travelling to or waiting for food at restaurants. Of course you can do it more wholesomely and cheaper than Soylent if you follow the bean plan of Tim Ferris.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
keithwhor 11y ago
This author is really, really bitter. I've never tried Soylent, I'm not particularly interested, but it doesn't bother me that some people want cost-effective meal replacements. I tried, I really did, but I could not find cohesive thesis or argument here. Just rhetoric comparing personal preference with mental illness (??). An intentionally inflammatory piece meant only to provoke ire and get a few hits... seems like Donald Trump's tactics are rubbing off on the folks on the other side of the pond. ;) Edit: Oh. I forgot this is a thing. Writers being intentionally negative and provocative, belittling other cultures and groups (somewhat hypocritically?) to entertain other similarly negative people within their niche. Misery loves company.
- hitekker 11y ago
  Agreed. I'm not a fan of soylent, nor do I care of the woes of the Tech elite, but this as pointless a piece as any I can imagine. Got to rake in those page views, I suppose.
- ibejoeb 11y ago
  The thesis is that Silicon Valley is repackaging unglamourous, tried-and-true ideas in hipster-friendly format, i.e., by disparaging the mainstream delivery of the equivalent services. The author asserts that this methodology is shallow, transparent, and elitist. Soylent is Slimfast, Airbnb is vacation rental, Tinder is personals... It is abrasive, but he's got a (rather recycled) point. I'm not sure if the abrasive tone is intrinsic or simply giving his target a taste of its own medicine. The Soylent snippets really are a little ridiculous. "The home manufacturing center had been by far the most liberating to eliminate..." Allow me to bear your burden of having a refrigerator... I get turned off by a lot of technocrat stuff, too. I do think that Uber and Airbnb are novel ways of delivering old services. I huff at Airbnb when I get the marketing emails about being in a caring world and all that stuff. The takeaway, for me, is that with the proliferation of all of this new tech, the average consumer is becoming more keen to grandiose claims. Don't tell me that Soylent is a revolution and that I ought to have ditched my oven; tell me why it's a better product than Slimfast, because that's what you're really up against.
iwasanewt 11y ago
> And so I come to Soylent, the meal replacement plan that has taken the SlimFast concept of feeding you unpleasant gloop in place of real food and welded it to a dumbass ideology drunk with libertarianism, confused futurism and startup bro stupidity. This is the tone of the entire article.
ubercore 11y ago
I don't get it. Maybe as a casual soylent user I'm defensive myself, but I don't understand why the author is so personally offended by this? Disclosure: I stopped reading part way through. Soylent is a meal replacement that can feed people a meal for under $3. With a year long shelf life. That's a pretty impressive product (I know one can diy and careful plan one's own "perfect" meal, but many won't, and many can't). The use of algal oil as a major source of macronutrients is _huge_, in environmental terms as well as our ability as a species to distribute sustenance to everyone. The personal choices of the founder really don't concern me. The value judgements the author uses to make his point just hurts the point itself. * Soylent _is_ liberating in a lot of ways, as are any other meal replacement. * It's still possible to love food and enjoy human contact, even while eating it for every planned meal. * Because he wants to get rid of his kitchen doesn't mean you have to. There's kind of a pernicious implication that soylent isn't "manly" enough (gendered language used by me for effect here; it's not incidental). Real men know how to grow food and hunt food and cook it over an open fire! You're all going to die because you relied on Soylent! You are not a real human being, you are a robot! I mean, I got carried away at the end there snarking back at the author, but that's exactly my point. How helpful is this snark other than as a rhetorical tactic to fill up space and manipulate people's points of view? Why can't we all, like, live and let live, dudes?
- kstenerud 11y ago
  It's not the soylent. You really have to read the whole article to see what he's talking about.
  - ubercore 11y ago
    Ok, I just read the whole thing. Was this comment a troll to get me to read it? I still don't get it.
    - lost_name 11y ago
      The problem on both ends is the tone, I think. The soylent guy is using really strong language to get you to think things are better his way -- he replaces his clothes rather than cleaning them, he replaced his kitchen/fridge/groceries with his shakes, he replaced the need for preparing solid foods with eating out on every occasion. The author suggests he's disconnected from reality, because everything he says is only possible because he can afford it. In fact, soylent didn't permit him any of this, except possibly the ability to afford to live like this in the first place.
ianstallings 11y ago
This guy is a very angry person without anything constructive to say as far as I can tell. His other articles reflect the same tone. Juvenile ranting, imho. If there's something to actually discuss here please fill me in.
meesles 11y ago
I really didn't like the tone of this article, it was super abrasive and the guy sounded personally offended over what the Soylent CEO was doing. "When the clean water starts to run out, the world crumbles, and our tech is no longer there to act as a crutch, the out-of-touch tech elite will be the first against the wall." From the title, I think this is the boiled down point he's trying to make? I find this ridiculous considering the 'tech elite' are actively trying to solve these global issues along with engineers and all matter of scientists across the globe. All that being said, I don't think anyone needs to take too much offense at his tone. Take a look at his other 'articles' and you can tell that he's just another blogger.
antod 11y ago
I'm starting to get a little annoyed at how the perception of 'tech' seems to now be becoming synonymous with AC free nutjobs, hipsters, social media hype and rich Silicon Valley vultures. Very little of which is actually anything to do with 'tech'. I'd even prefer that old Revenge of the Nerds stereotype to this. Oh well, back to shooing the kids off my lawn...

25 points by edoloughlin 11y ago

I dunno, there is a real kind of liberation you can have if you are on some diet that is all planned out. I did a week's fast and was amazed at how much free time I had now that I wasn't eating or shopping for food or preparing food or cleaning the plates, thinking about what I was going to eat or travelling to or waiting for food at restaurants. Of course you can do it more wholesomely and cheaper than Soylent if you follow the bean plan of Tim Ferris.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

keithwhor 11y ago

This author is really, really bitter. I've never tried Soylent, I'm not particularly interested, but it doesn't bother me that some people want cost-effective meal replacements. I tried, I really did, but I could not find cohesive thesis or argument here. Just rhetoric comparing personal preference with mental illness (??). An intentionally inflammatory piece meant only to provoke ire and get a few hits... seems like Donald Trump's tactics are rubbing off on the folks on the other side of the pond. ;) Edit: Oh. I forgot this is a thing. Writers being intentionally negative and provocative, belittling other cultures and groups (somewhat hypocritically?) to entertain other similarly negative people within their niche. Misery loves company.

hitekker 11y ago
Agreed. I'm not a fan of soylent, nor do I care of the woes of the Tech elite, but this as pointless a piece as any I can imagine. Got to rake in those page views, I suppose.
ibejoeb 11y ago
The thesis is that Silicon Valley is repackaging unglamourous, tried-and-true ideas in hipster-friendly format, i.e., by disparaging the mainstream delivery of the equivalent services. The author asserts that this methodology is shallow, transparent, and elitist. Soylent is Slimfast, Airbnb is vacation rental, Tinder is personals... It is abrasive, but he's got a (rather recycled) point. I'm not sure if the abrasive tone is intrinsic or simply giving his target a taste of its own medicine. The Soylent snippets really are a little ridiculous. "The home manufacturing center had been by far the most liberating to eliminate..." Allow me to bear your burden of having a refrigerator... I get turned off by a lot of technocrat stuff, too. I do think that Uber and Airbnb are novel ways of delivering old services. I huff at Airbnb when I get the marketing emails about being in a caring world and all that stuff. The takeaway, for me, is that with the proliferation of all of this new tech, the average consumer is becoming more keen to grandiose claims. Don't tell me that Soylent is a revolution and that I ought to have ditched my oven; tell me why it's a better product than Slimfast, because that's what you're really up against.

iwasanewt 11y ago

> And so I come to Soylent, the meal replacement plan that has taken the SlimFast concept of feeding you unpleasant gloop in place of real food and welded it to a dumbass ideology drunk with libertarianism, confused futurism and startup bro stupidity. This is the tone of the entire article.

ubercore 11y ago

I don't get it. Maybe as a casual soylent user I'm defensive myself, but I don't understand why the author is so personally offended by this? Disclosure: I stopped reading part way through. Soylent is a meal replacement that can feed people a meal for under $3. With a year long shelf life. That's a pretty impressive product (I know one can diy and careful plan one's own "perfect" meal, but many won't, and many can't). The use of algal oil as a major source of macronutrients is _huge_, in environmental terms as well as our ability as a species to distribute sustenance to everyone. The personal choices of the founder really don't concern me. The value judgements the author uses to make his point just hurts the point itself. * Soylent _is_ liberating in a lot of ways, as are any other meal replacement. * It's still possible to love food and enjoy human contact, even while eating it for every planned meal. * Because he wants to get rid of his kitchen doesn't mean you have to. There's kind of a pernicious implication that soylent isn't "manly" enough (gendered language used by me for effect here; it's not incidental). Real men know how to grow food and hunt food and cook it over an open fire! You're all going to die because you relied on Soylent! You are not a real human being, you are a robot! I mean, I got carried away at the end there snarking back at the author, but that's exactly my point. How helpful is this snark other than as a rhetorical tactic to fill up space and manipulate people's points of view? Why can't we all, like, live and let live, dudes?

kstenerud 11y ago
It's not the soylent. You really have to read the whole article to see what he's talking about.
- ubercore 11y ago
  Ok, I just read the whole thing. Was this comment a troll to get me to read it? I still don't get it.
  - lost_name 11y ago
    The problem on both ends is the tone, I think. The soylent guy is using really strong language to get you to think things are better his way -- he replaces his clothes rather than cleaning them, he replaced his kitchen/fridge/groceries with his shakes, he replaced the need for preparing solid foods with eating out on every occasion. The author suggests he's disconnected from reality, because everything he says is only possible because he can afford it. In fact, soylent didn't permit him any of this, except possibly the ability to afford to live like this in the first place.

ianstallings 11y ago

This guy is a very angry person without anything constructive to say as far as I can tell. His other articles reflect the same tone. Juvenile ranting, imho. If there's something to actually discuss here please fill me in.

meesles 11y ago

I really didn't like the tone of this article, it was super abrasive and the guy sounded personally offended over what the Soylent CEO was doing. "When the clean water starts to run out, the world crumbles, and our tech is no longer there to act as a crutch, the out-of-touch tech elite will be the first against the wall." From the title, I think this is the boiled down point he's trying to make? I find this ridiculous considering the 'tech elite' are actively trying to solve these global issues along with engineers and all matter of scientists across the globe. All that being said, I don't think anyone needs to take too much offense at his tone. Take a look at his other 'articles' and you can tell that he's just another blogger.

antod 11y ago

I'm starting to get a little annoyed at how the perception of 'tech' seems to now be becoming synonymous with AC free nutjobs, hipsters, social media hype and rich Silicon Valley vultures. Very little of which is actually anything to do with 'tech'. I'd even prefer that old Revenge of the Nerds stereotype to this. Oh well, back to shooing the kids off my lawn...