First, discussion of pop culture is not inherently unproductive, especially if you are in a creative industry. Being productive about over-engineering an automa

First, discussion of pop culture is not inherently unproductive, especially if you are in a creative industry. Being productive about over-engineering an automated deployment cluster isn’t inherently more valuable than learning about the rise and fall of trends or the animation style of popular shows and games. One of the biggest channels on freenode/open projects back in the earlier lilo days was #bay-oh, which, while populated with a bunch of proto-devops people, was almost wholly social. Even purely social interaction is productive and valuable, the career success of many people after the first dot com crash relied on being friends with everyone they knew from Ironport or whatever.