3 ms·

>I don't see anywhere I've talked about our "incredible journey" on the post either? This is a little baffling. I'll step in to defend the OP because I know wh

>I don't see anywhere I've talked about our "incredible journey" on the post either? This is a little baffling. I'll step in to defend the OP because I know where they are coming from: your article is a drop in an ocean of a certain genre of article that HN has encountered over the years and we've devised certain aphorisms to describe them, and by association, describe the authors. One of those is that the author is complaining, praising, making a statement about something that shows they are severely out of touch with reality. Usually it's some kind of a self-congratulatory or self-aggrandizing thing that completely glosses over red flags - like say somebody building a very eco-unsustainable house in British Columbia's mountain ranges while fawning over how eco-friendly they are in the details, missing the larger scale of problems they are (intentionally?) ignoring. Being flush with tech money does funny things to people. Often times, however, we've seen the opposite, "Our Great Journey", which has been parodied over the years elsewhere, not just HN. It describes a PR puff piece style that glosses over the fact that a company has failed/not been profitable in it's mission and is being sold off to another company. The founders, of course, would never dare say it in those direct terms, and so the PR speak is written, copied, and eventually parodied. And eventually we arrive to what OP is commenting on, where the language used to describe rather mediocre and boring jobs is flourished with fanciful titles/words (like "empathy superpowers"). It begs to be mocked because it's such an extravagant literal style that, at this point, we can't take seriously anymore. We've seen too much of this bullshit and it cannot be unseen. We've seen too many associations of this kind of phrasing with people who really are out of touch and whatever plights they have should at worst be ridiculed, at best be completely ignored. Basically, it's all so tiresome. As for your post, there's not enough meat on it. Using social media as a launchpad to talk about "toxic positivity" is fairly benign - you can find just about any stupid shit on Instagram to talk about and segue into whatever moral grandstanding you want to convey. You can find both for- and against- examples. Hell, you don't even need to give examples, you can just say such-and-such is happening, and people will nod and go with it, because who are they to know better, right?

lauraekelly_ 4y ago
Hey, thanks for this!
samhw 4y ago
I suspect, as with other writing I've seen before, that (a) they have no real thoughts about this topic (indeed it strikes me as very difficult for anyone to form a genuine thought about), and (b) therefore they are mechanically churning out 'content' (euch), emulating whatever examples they have seen. That's what explains so many in the comments feeling that it was produced by GPT-3. And, let's be honest, this is only an unusually pure rendition of that genre of writing: formulaic, saccharine but detectably hollow, devoid of substance, strung together with stale clichés, seemingly written to typify an attitude (one of cultish overfriendliness without boundaries) more than what we would traditionally recognise as a 'point'. The discomfiting feeling you get when reading it is the feeling that the author doesn't care about any of this. And that you don't blame her. It's an egg laid by a caged hen, full of sad hormones and stress. You can feel it in the way that there's nothing there above the phrasal or (at most) sentential level: no overarching purpose, every sentence out for itself with no overarching strategy from above, like an Elizabethan commonplace book full of random helpful platitudes. It's why I recommended Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language'. I have never read bad writing, truly bad writing, produced by someone speaking sincerely and plainly of a subject they care about, saying something about it which they think ought to be said.
- lauraekelly_ 4y ago
  I would like to say a second thank you for your response here. The way you've expressed this gives me food for thought on how I spread my time and energy, and how it manifests in terms of quality. I'm leaving this behind me tomorrow and taking what I have found useful so I've actually screen-shotted this comment in particular to take away with me. The way you've worded the issue is thoughtful and I'm not able to respond to it point by point here but I appreciate it.
  - samhw 4y ago
    Ah, thank you - I had this thread open in a tab all day, and I'm a compulsive procrastinator (not just some amateur crastinator), hence the intermittent participation! It reads as quite pompous now that I read it back, but hey, I think that of all my comments, so I'm very happy if it was any use to you. Wishing you all the best, and that you find an opportunity to put your skills to better, worthier use. Here's to artists, chefs, and saints :)

lauraekelly_ 4y ago

Hey, thanks for this!

samhw 4y ago

I suspect, as with other writing I've seen before, that (a) they have no real thoughts about this topic (indeed it strikes me as very difficult for anyone to form a genuine thought about), and (b) therefore they are mechanically churning out 'content' (euch), emulating whatever examples they have seen. That's what explains so many in the comments feeling that it was produced by GPT-3. And, let's be honest, this is only an unusually pure rendition of that genre of writing: formulaic, saccharine but detectably hollow, devoid of substance, strung together with stale clichés, seemingly written to typify an attitude (one of cultish overfriendliness without boundaries) more than what we would traditionally recognise as a 'point'. The discomfiting feeling you get when reading it is the feeling that the author doesn't care about any of this. And that you don't blame her. It's an egg laid by a caged hen, full of sad hormones and stress. You can feel it in the way that there's nothing there above the phrasal or (at most) sentential level: no overarching purpose, every sentence out for itself with no overarching strategy from above, like an Elizabethan commonplace book full of random helpful platitudes. It's why I recommended Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language'. I have never read bad writing, truly bad writing, produced by someone speaking sincerely and plainly of a subject they care about, saying something about it which they think ought to be said.

lauraekelly_ 4y ago
I would like to say a second thank you for your response here. The way you've expressed this gives me food for thought on how I spread my time and energy, and how it manifests in terms of quality. I'm leaving this behind me tomorrow and taking what I have found useful so I've actually screen-shotted this comment in particular to take away with me. The way you've worded the issue is thoughtful and I'm not able to respond to it point by point here but I appreciate it.
- samhw 4y ago
  Ah, thank you - I had this thread open in a tab all day, and I'm a compulsive procrastinator (not just some amateur crastinator), hence the intermittent participation! It reads as quite pompous now that I read it back, but hey, I think that of all my comments, so I'm very happy if it was any use to you. Wishing you all the best, and that you find an opportunity to put your skills to better, worthier use. Here's to artists, chefs, and saints :)