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>It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels li

>It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels like a biological limit I genuinely think this is a factor in some ways. 500 years ago, what were people worried about? Their immediate concerns, those of family, and neighbors. Realistically, there was no way to get caught up in the minute-by-minute concerns of people in other cities, other states, other countries, other continents. Things changed more slowly and the only time you heard about about a tragedy was if it was truly enormous - or very local. Now, there is this constant vying for attention/support/outrage/etc. It's exhausting. People genuinely expect you to care about the back-and-forth between two celebrities you've never met, or some event halfway across the world, or some new thing that released now like literally now. I think that a lot of people have subconsciously hit their limit. They can't muster the energy needed to genuinely think about or care about a lot of this stuff because they're bombarded with so much of it. And over time, I think that shifts thinking. "Why did I not care when X happened?" leads to "Those people don't matter/are less than human" instead of the real "Because I'm completely exhausted from so much happening".

fragmede 1y ago
> People genuinely expect you to care about the back-and-forth between two celebrities you've never met Maybe this is some unknown privilege of mine or some bubble I live in, but I only know about celebrity gossip when people ask me if I've heard about it and I say no, or not really. You get to choose what to give your attention to, and you don't have to just because other people expect you to. I still have friends and acquaintances, we just talk about other stuff.
- kmacdough 1y ago
  I similarly don't have those specific expectations, but plenty of others. I'm expected to understand the most recent updates in Gaza, and the latest DOGE cuts. People act smug when I don't have a good understanding of current medical theory on cholesterol. I'm expected to have a nuanced opinion on trans kids in sports despite having no kids, and knowing exactly zero trans people. I mean I generally believe in letting people be who they are, but beyond that I really have no business talking about it.
alabastervlog 1y ago
I think a lot of harm has been caused by "automation" actually meaning "distributing parts of the same tasks among a bunch of people". As far as I can tell that's one of the main outcomes of "efficiencies" from computerization of offices, among other places: they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with.
- phkahler 1y ago
  >> they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with. A previous generations old guy told me about this. He worked in the defense industry 50 years ago. You know, they had secretaries or admins that would handle all sorts of things for the engineers. Then the government changed the way they did contracts and companies couldn't bill for "overhead" any more. So the engineers (who bill to the project) had to start handling all those other things themselves and most of the support staff went away. It's not that hard to handle any one thing, but if you do get the chance to work somewhere with a person that can "just handle that for you" it's really kind of amazing how much mental energy that frees up for your main tasks.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    You’re describing the change from personnel to human resources. Its this little linguistic trick the C-suite foisted on the rest of us. You dehumanize then exploit. Resources, after all, are meant to be exploited.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      Those are unnecessarily emotionally charged definitions and implications of “resources” and “exploit”. I am a resource for my kids, my spouse, and the rest of my friends and family. I am also a resource to my employer and other customers. In any organization, a resource can vary from things such as land, chemicals, machines, humans, books, etc. The term Human Resources seems accurate to a refer to a group of people that deal with the humans in the organization. I do not see why “resources” is seen as having a negative connotation in this context. Of course, just like a family can mistreat a resourceful family member, so can any organization mistreat a human resource.
icelancer 1y ago
People are expected to care about things they have zero control over and have ~zero impact on their lives or their family's lives. It's ridiculous. I get a ton of crap for not reading the news or caring about stuff happening 3500 miles away that I can't do anything about.
- cafard 1y ago
  An archduke shot in Bosnia, or an incident near a bridge in northern China?
  - numb7rs 1y ago
    This is a good point, but the average person is unlikely to hear about a skirmish on a different continent, and then know they should start stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. The problem is with the volume of information. It's impossible to take all of it in, so you need to pick and choose, and stay within your own limits. Some people might have the capacity read a whole newspaper's worth a day, others can only manage the local headlines.
  - dsego 1y ago
    There is a great netflix documentary made in 2018 called "the long road to war". By the time the shooting happened a lot of other pieces had fallen into place. Basically, there were people in military circles and in the government that dictated the geoplitics game based on which country has leverage, who has the train tracks or a port to handle the logistics of war, and there was a certain zeitgeist, an egregore if you will, and things were ripe for conflict.
  - mieubrisse 1y ago
    I think the problem is signal-to-noise. For every thing that actually turns out to matter, there are hundreds of thousands of things that you're told are Important but turn out not to be. It's basically impossible to filter "Which remote events are actually important vs just ragebait?" until after the fact.
  - icelancer 1y ago
smokel 1y ago
> 500 years ago, what were people worried about? It wasn't so much different from our time. Read "Don Quixote" [1] and be amazed. Whether the updates you read are actually playing out live, or happening in a book doesn't make much of a difference, unless you are actually influencing events. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  I think there is a difference in the shear density and speed of information. With modern news and social media apps, information can be pushed into someone in a way that just wasn't possible that long ago.
  - 1dom 1y ago
    I agree, I think it relates to the number of channels we're exposed to at any one time. Think about the rate at which that has changed over the past 20, 200 and 20,000 years. Now think how our biology has changed to handle that. And then think how our social structures and work time expectations have changed over the same time periods.
  - smokel 1y ago
    That may be true, but I'm not entirely convinced about the difference. Just moving your head around in a forest also gives an amazing amount of input. And if you're being chased by a tiger through a jungle, you cross about 1,000 different species of plants and small animals.
hadlock 1y ago
Another way to look at this is, "millenials have kids/lives now and don't have the bandwidth to be rage-baited near-constantly" and also "Gen Z grew up in the rage baiting era, they're immune by default". There's no policy outcome for this particular piece of rage bait so very few people are going to suit up and white knight about supplemental ai slop. If it were a fake front page news article people might care more. Getting mad about people not getting mad is also very low tier rage-bait.

fragmede 1y ago

> People genuinely expect you to care about the back-and-forth between two celebrities you've never met Maybe this is some unknown privilege of mine or some bubble I live in, but I only know about celebrity gossip when people ask me if I've heard about it and I say no, or not really. You get to choose what to give your attention to, and you don't have to just because other people expect you to. I still have friends and acquaintances, we just talk about other stuff.

kmacdough 1y ago
I similarly don't have those specific expectations, but plenty of others. I'm expected to understand the most recent updates in Gaza, and the latest DOGE cuts. People act smug when I don't have a good understanding of current medical theory on cholesterol. I'm expected to have a nuanced opinion on trans kids in sports despite having no kids, and knowing exactly zero trans people. I mean I generally believe in letting people be who they are, but beyond that I really have no business talking about it.

alabastervlog 1y ago

I think a lot of harm has been caused by "automation" actually meaning "distributing parts of the same tasks among a bunch of people". As far as I can tell that's one of the main outcomes of "efficiencies" from computerization of offices, among other places: they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with.

phkahler 1y ago
>> they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with. A previous generations old guy told me about this. He worked in the defense industry 50 years ago. You know, they had secretaries or admins that would handle all sorts of things for the engineers. Then the government changed the way they did contracts and companies couldn't bill for "overhead" any more. So the engineers (who bill to the project) had to start handling all those other things themselves and most of the support staff went away. It's not that hard to handle any one thing, but if you do get the chance to work somewhere with a person that can "just handle that for you" it's really kind of amazing how much mental energy that frees up for your main tasks.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  You’re describing the change from personnel to human resources. Its this little linguistic trick the C-suite foisted on the rest of us. You dehumanize then exploit. Resources, after all, are meant to be exploited.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    Those are unnecessarily emotionally charged definitions and implications of “resources” and “exploit”. I am a resource for my kids, my spouse, and the rest of my friends and family. I am also a resource to my employer and other customers. In any organization, a resource can vary from things such as land, chemicals, machines, humans, books, etc. The term Human Resources seems accurate to a refer to a group of people that deal with the humans in the organization. I do not see why “resources” is seen as having a negative connotation in this context. Of course, just like a family can mistreat a resourceful family member, so can any organization mistreat a human resource.

icelancer 1y ago

People are expected to care about things they have zero control over and have ~zero impact on their lives or their family's lives. It's ridiculous. I get a ton of crap for not reading the news or caring about stuff happening 3500 miles away that I can't do anything about.

cafard 1y ago
An archduke shot in Bosnia, or an incident near a bridge in northern China?
- numb7rs 1y ago
  This is a good point, but the average person is unlikely to hear about a skirmish on a different continent, and then know they should start stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. The problem is with the volume of information. It's impossible to take all of it in, so you need to pick and choose, and stay within your own limits. Some people might have the capacity read a whole newspaper's worth a day, others can only manage the local headlines.
- dsego 1y ago
  There is a great netflix documentary made in 2018 called "the long road to war". By the time the shooting happened a lot of other pieces had fallen into place. Basically, there were people in military circles and in the government that dictated the geoplitics game based on which country has leverage, who has the train tracks or a port to handle the logistics of war, and there was a certain zeitgeist, an egregore if you will, and things were ripe for conflict.
- mieubrisse 1y ago
  I think the problem is signal-to-noise. For every thing that actually turns out to matter, there are hundreds of thousands of things that you're told are Important but turn out not to be. It's basically impossible to filter "Which remote events are actually important vs just ragebait?" until after the fact.
- icelancer 1y ago

smokel 1y ago

> 500 years ago, what were people worried about? It wasn't so much different from our time. Read "Don Quixote" [1] and be amazed. Whether the updates you read are actually playing out live, or happening in a book doesn't make much of a difference, unless you are actually influencing events. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote

Night_Thastus 1y ago
I think there is a difference in the shear density and speed of information. With modern news and social media apps, information can be pushed into someone in a way that just wasn't possible that long ago.
- 1dom 1y ago
  I agree, I think it relates to the number of channels we're exposed to at any one time. Think about the rate at which that has changed over the past 20, 200 and 20,000 years. Now think how our biology has changed to handle that. And then think how our social structures and work time expectations have changed over the same time periods.
- smokel 1y ago
  That may be true, but I'm not entirely convinced about the difference. Just moving your head around in a forest also gives an amazing amount of input. And if you're being chased by a tiger through a jungle, you cross about 1,000 different species of plants and small animals.

hadlock 1y ago

Another way to look at this is, "millenials have kids/lives now and don't have the bandwidth to be rage-baited near-constantly" and also "Gen Z grew up in the rage baiting era, they're immune by default". There's no policy outcome for this particular piece of rage bait so very few people are going to suit up and white knight about supplemental ai slop. If it were a fake front page news article people might care more. Getting mad about people not getting mad is also very low tier rage-bait.