this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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If there is no point to being cute with the stupid assemblage of trash then what is gained for beating the stupid assemblage of trash? Ape-man catharsis? The jackasses did it because they were in on the game of anthropomorphizing an assemblage of trash too, and breaking it was probably at least as much fun as taking the assemblage of trash out hitchhiking. But what those local yocals showed the world about their casually cruel jocularity was that in Europe and Canada, you can play makebelieve with the assemblage of trash, but in America, the assemblage of trash is an outsider not conforming to the status quo but still requiring a modicum of consideration and thought to engage with, and when that kind of book readin' deep thinkin' faggit rocks up on our shores the cultural instinct is treating it like an assemblage of trash even if its a mother of three. Then celebrate our rude 'tude havin' selves and lord it over the effete Entire Rest Of The Planet.
Forgive me if I don't take lectures about cultural moments from contrarion fucking sports websites. I guess as a piece of comedy writing its enjoyable but as an actual argument it makes Americans look like filthy fucking imaginationless troglodytes. And what makes that come off worse is the celebration of that streak in us. To break toys after seeing other people playing makebelieve. To laugh at the concept of applying even rhetorical compassion to an inanimate object, as if people haven't had a rich spiritual and at times familial connection with the inanimate world for thousands of years.
I get that you posted this probably alluding to LLMs and as a Beehawfuck I know I am coming off really pissy here and I must apologize. Its not that I don't appreciate the joke or have wholly missed the punchline. If an eightball loaded with GPT were inserted into my life asking for hitchhiking, I would punt it into somebody else's fucking lightcone. But this stupid trashcan hitchhiker thing wasn't selling the idea of replacing the people closest to me or their knowledge bases. It was the rare sort of toy adults around the world had the opportunity to play with. And as much as I enjoy the comedy writing, reading this fart sniffer sports blogger dissing all but a particular subset of crude Ugly American-stereotype assholes, with the soft-jingo touch suggesting Canadians are basically morons that Americans babysit (which as an attitude looks PARTICULARLY evil and chauvanistic of late), I kinda had to speak up.
Edit: I let the bad day I'm having affect this comment. I don't believe in deleting comments unless its something I feel reflects a whole different me that isn't me anymore, and I've got nothing like that on Fediverse. I stand by my thoughts and feelings here but they were expressed perhaps with a bit much vitriol. Please excuse me. I have no real enmity to the OP here.
well duh if you break down an analogy it breaks down dawg.
I think dgerard has hit upon a microcosm with this post. I’ve half joked about it elsewhere but this project of collective fun and whimsy and its fate is a crystallization of the life of liberal optimism from early 2015 onward. Hillary was predicted to win, Marvel movies hadn’t majorly fallen out of favor yet, and most people weren’t hip to the tech industry being the sociopathic behemoth that it always has been. But then, as we know, all that rosy-cute whimsy was shot to shreds like a Cincinnati gorilla.
Look where we are today. Canada and Europe are also facing the rising tide of fascism. Western governments are still by and large facilitating a genocide through Israel. That the author, probably not some scholar of geopolitics, had the wisdom in 2015 that liberal optimism was a pile of garbage should be lauded.
I understand that the ~Vibe of this thing wandering around and then getting knocked over in America was on point but I'm not sure I can connect the defacement of a little trashcan with some broad rejection of the liberal status quo. If I have to make one clear connection between now and then its that we're talking about a culture that delighted in breaking this stupid thing that wasn't hurting anybody, and then that culture elected Trump. I doubt much thought was put into it, rather the opposite of thought. "I've seen the little attention getting robot on social media and I'm going to break it now to put an end to what I see as frivolous decadence, then let smarter people come up with a post-hoc justification about why this Had To Happen that makes our personal trauma and impulses toward sociopathy into a linearly constructed causative sequence that justifies the occurance."
I also had this exact feeling about 'the world falling apart and how everyone who likes X thing are stupid sheeple', but X thing was the musical genre diminuitively referred to now as Stomp Clap Hey music. Hated the shit during its heyday. It symbolized elder millenials burying their heads in the sand and ignoring the general shit situation of the planet to reread Harry Potter books and call Trump a poo head on websites. To me it seemed to appeal to people who were formerly "free spirits" and "deep thinkers" who were reaching their mid-30s and finally able to advance in their careers and afford homes, so they were beginning to feel like their upbringings during thr financial crisis were just bad dreams. If it had been within my ability to crush "Stomp Clap Hey" music and kill the collective enjoyment of it I would have. But I realized it was just... fucking... music... I could ignore it. And whether or not it meant all those things I felt it did, ruining it for other people would have been wrong. So I stopped badmouthing it and now we call it Stomp Clap Hey and the thinkers who give a shit are thinkering over that I guess.
I still remember the outcry when Harambe was shot. Shit truly does feel like the point where everything began turning to shit.
Someone I know argued that Harambe's death led to Trump's election, and its been burned into my mind ever since:
this comment has a rancid attitude no matter how much civility filler you try to spackle on top
I've gotten fond of my own voice lately, which usually ends up with me lurking for a few months. I stand by my sentiment but clearly I had a bug up my ass. Thanks for keeping it real.
this is a garbage can with telemetry
all of the technology that came after it is also a garbage can with telemetry