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Makes me wonder what it’s like to identify with the villains in media. Zuck looking at the metaverse and thinking hey that’s a good idea! Or Thanos wasn’t so ba
by jessetemp 4mo ago
Makes me wonder what it’s like to identify with the villains in media. Zuck looking at the metaverse and thinking hey that’s a good idea! Or Thanos wasn’t so bad. Those rebel scum had it coming. Homelander is the good guy!
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoor you know, naming your company PALANTIR
- mystraline 4mo agoOr, Anduril. All the techbros love them some Lord of the Rings.
- ethbr1 4mo ago> All the techbros love them some Lord of the Rings. While being completely oblivious to the literary themes. But as the meme goes, tech bro philosophy is just sophomore know-it-all-shallowly-ism. Because reading deeply would require spending more time, which is a well-known anti-pattern.
- reactordev 4mo agoI don’t believe any of them have actually read it, but rather watched the WETA production on film.
- noworriesnate 4mo agoI think the movie was every bit as deep as the books. Remember how terrifying it was for Frodo to be seen by Sauron’s eye? No, they know exactly what they’re doing and they don’t care.
- reactordev 4mo agoExcept the movies leave out entire characters... In the books Frodo was a wealthy middle-aged hobbit. Not some boy hobbit. Book Aragorn was eagerly awaiting his time to be king. Movie Aragorn didn't want anything to do with it. Book, Denethor is being controlled by Sauron via the Palantir, in the movies he's a brutish, cruel, tyrant.
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoThey justify it as defending their way of life, which can align with Tolkien a little bit with some mental gymnastics > I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. but overall Tolkien was against war, being a veteran of WWI himself, and the LOTR saga is about the heroism of the meek. Peter Thiel clearly loves the sword for its sharpness, it drips from everything his companies do.
- kreyenborgi 4mo ago> Thiel clearly loves the sword for its sharpness Palantir ceo too: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/alex-karp-wielding-a-sword https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/alex-karp-wielding-a-sword
- micromacrofoot 4mo agothese people have never matured past childhood
- rnjesus 4mo agothe world makes a lot more sense once you realise there is no such thing as “adults”
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoI disagree! I would call many people adults. They're largely responsible and care about the impact they have on the world and other people. It's certainly a murky thing to define, which is why I used "mature." Many adults are people who have not matured beyond childhood. This I agree with.
- jessetemp 4mo agoI had no idea it was a lord of the rings reference. Here’s an apt quote from wikipedia: “The [palantir] stones were an unreliable guide to action, since what was not shown could be more important than what was selectively presented.”
- Noumenon72 4mo agoJust for the overly suspicious among us, I looked up the edit that introduced that quote[1] and it doesn't appear to have been added as a dig against the company. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Palant%C3%ADr&diff=prev&oldid=937807919 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Palant%C3%ADr&dif...
- losvedir 4mo agoWell they weren't necessarily bad. I think the Numenor (?) Kings of Westernesse (?), I dunno whatever the old Gondor kings were called, used them effectively. It was just Sauron that took over and made them dangerous. So, effective but dangerous in the wrong hand. Yeah, I guess, even that is pretty prophetic, heh.
- kridsdale1 4mo agoSo did the Numenorian bros Palantir call each other up just to be like WHAAZZZUUPPPPPPPPP
- micromacrofoot 4mo agoIt's another example of how the intentions of the good can be easily lead astray by the corruption power brings. Using it as the name of a military contractor misses the point so hard I almost expect it to be intentional, but I suspect it's just teenage-boy level foolishness.
- PaulHoule 4mo agoIt's not just "just" when people as mature as teenagers are running politics and business.
- micromacrofoot 4mo agosadly it's always been this way
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
- CobrastanJorji 4mo ago"The Stones of Seeing do not lie, and not even the Lord of Barad-dûr can make them do so. He can, maybe, by his will choose what things shall be seen by weaker minds, or cause them to mistake the meaning of what they see." It really is the perfect name. It's exactly what I would have chosen, if I hated the company and was given a choice of names. But it's a terrible product name for any media literate customer.
- overgard 4mo agoJust a regular reminder Peter Thiel thinks that Greta Thunberg is the antichrist and hesitated when asked if humanity should survive because the question is "layered". This is not a person that should be powerful.
- Dependance 4mo agoEvery story, even ours, needs a bad guy. Best villains don't think they are villains. They just do what they must/should/want (in that order, depending on their intensity), because they can.
- ribosometronome 4mo ago>identify with the villains in media. Zuck looking at the metaverse and thinking hey that’s a good idea! Are there many stories where the bad guys create the metaverse? AFAIK, Stephenson coined the term in Snow Crash and there it was built by the main character and his buds. The Matrix, I suppose? Though I think Zuck's (immediate) vision and who he identifies as is way more Hiro Protagonist or James Halliday.
- jessetemp 4mo agoYou might be right. It’s been a while since I read snow crash. I just remember the metaverse as a sort sad state of society, but I don’t remember if the evil corp stuff was in there or just in the world at large
- jazzyjackson 4mo agoReady Player One
- nullsex 4mo agoZuck was gushing about Ready Player One. It's as if the villain was written for him.
- ribosometronome 4mo agoRPO's "bad guys" weren't the creators of the metaverse but a corp trying to win the contest to take it over. Halliday is flawed but a large part of the novel centers around that and he intentionally creates the contest in part to try ensure the metaverse ends up in appropriate hands, no?
- jaggederest 4mo agoFunnily enough, Snow Crash was the origin of the metaverse as a term.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]