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I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U
by ng12 8y ago
I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley). It's humorous and absurd, but at the same time so close to reality it's unsettling.
- polartx 8y agoA couple years ago I found myself at a user conference party for the funded SaaS company I worked for. The concert was complete with open cocktail bar, Cirque du Soleil aerial performers, and (you guessed it), Flo-Rida. For a while I couldn't decide if it was life imitating art, or a tongue-in-cheek nod to the stereotype we were seen as. But it wasn't the latter, the founder/president wasn't that self-aware.
- thrav 8y agoFlo-rida has just been smart about capitalizing on that easy valley money. I’ve been to several parties where he performs and gotten on stage with him during Dreamforce.
- dangerboysteve 8y agomaybe easy money but I'm sure he's all about the networking and trying to get into oppertunities to invest in.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoHe’s probably receiving equity in lieu of cash payment for his services.
- screye 8y agoFlo-Rida performed at NIPS. The top academic ML conference. I can't imagine who thought that the community of some of the world's biggest nerds wanted to listen to Flo-Rida !?
- suddensleep 8y agoI was at NeurIPS last year, and I can actually confirm that the line to see Flo-Rida went around the block. It's unclear to me whether or not there was genuine interest in the performance, but there was certainly interest in the event. Say what you will about the world's biggest nerds, but irony, whether purposeful or inexplicably accidental, is not lost on them. Ninja Edit: New conference name :)
- screye 8y ago> NeurIPS That was fast. I was all for a name change from a juvenile pun, but "NeurIPS" is hilariously bad. It confirms, that everyone but the press, continues calling it NIPS. > line to see Flo-Rida went around the block I mean, if it was a free (already paid for) concert, then I would go for it too.
- eanzenberg 8y agoNot just free concert but free food and booze. BTW the whole renaming of NIPS to NeurIPS could be an episode of SV, where a board of directors are all offended by names of body parts!
- r00fus 8y agoLet's just ignore the racial epithet part shall we?
- titanomachy 8y ago"Nip" used to be a somewhat common perjorative term for Japanese (i.e. Nipponese; the Japanese word for Japan is Nippon). In case anyone else was confused by this comment.
- eanzenberg 8y agoI've never heard it used in this context, but I guess people can get offended by pretty much anything these days.
- tootie 8y agoMr. Florida.
- johan_larson 8y ago"Silicon Valley" is like Silicon Valley, but it goes to 0x11.
- raverbashing 8y agoOr to 0x0B?
- johan_larson 8y agoI'd say the real place goes to 0x0B all day every day. The valley runs on hype and all-nighters.
- rusk 8y ago3?
- esmi 8y ago0x11 = 17 That’s like 6 above 11! About right in my opinion.
- walshemj 8y agoOur Hexadecimal codes go to Q - bonus points if any one gets the Traveller SF RPG in joke. Traveller is where of course Elite ripped off the initial space combat system from.
- anon2775 8y agoThat would be 11b or 2#11.
- cwkoss 8y agoit goes to 0x0G
- EADGBE 8y agoI see what you did there. Don't touch it, don't even look at it.
- vibrato 8y agoJust like all of mike judges work. A genius
- alexilliamson 8y agoHe doesn't get enough credit. The fact that King of the Hill and Silicon Valley come from the same person is astounding and suggests a comic breadth that is hard to grasp.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoAlso represented the other side of the "programming job" world in Office Space.
- carapace 8y agoAnd then the factory floor in Extract.
- zadler 8y agoHe also programmed for a time, so he had some background for Office Space and maybe Silicon Valley. But then he made KOTH so it’s not like he’s limited either.
- komali2 8y agoIt 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 the show.
- revscat 8y agoFor 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.
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y agoYup. After we had broken out the first Scrum project, my HR Manager came by specifically to tell me he had learned all about Scrum watching Silicon Valley.
- lupire 8y agoBut 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."
- hindsightbias 8y agoIn Austin, my coworkers would always stop at lunch and look if Mike Judge was nearby. We were convinced he just followed us around for Office Space and King of the Hill material.
- tootie 8y ago
- saagarjha 8y agoI think that's the whole point. It's meant to be satire, so it (the show) draws attentions to the quirks of Silicon Valley (the place) by exaggerating them.
- DanBC 8y agoExcept a bunch of satire can't exagerate the excess, or even show it faithfully, because no-one would believe it. This is what Iannucci says about making more of The Thick of It -- it's impossible to do because current politicians are self satarising in ways that are unbelievable if you put them on screen, even if those things actually happened in real life.
- Upvoter33 8y agoGreat way to summarize this experience - way too close to real in my experience. I finally got over this and just enjoyed the humorous aspects of the show. RIGBY...
- draw_down 8y agoAs I understand it that is not the meaning of the term. It’s meant to describe the phenomenon wherein the closer simulations of humans get to approximating the real thing, the less believable they are.
- cmrdporcupine 8y agoYeah I couldn't get watch it for this reason -- at the time it came out I was just emerging from the process of an acquisition into a BigCorp, and it was just too real. I found I hated the characters on screen as much as I found I hated their equivalents in real life.