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Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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There are days when dealing with capitalism feels like a parody version of real life. The fuckton layers of parties involved in any given process, the underpaid CS who don't have enough time to read what you're saying and/or are too constrained to give more than boilerplate answers, the technological systems that are badly designed or go in and out of maintenance whenever. There's so much convoluted nonsense. And this on top of it being in the US, a country whose power brokers are actively pulverizing it for their short term ends.
Dead Internet Theory is one thing, but some days, it feels like capitalism resembles something like what I might call "Dead Management Theory" - like nobody is actually in charge, in a meaningful capacity that can smoothly operate what actually needs to occur. I'm exaggerating of course (just as I don't literally believe in Dead Internet Theory), obviously some things continue to function, but it feels very empty at times in terms of organization and clerical efficiency. I don't think it's that management is literally missing exactly, but it's like there's this molasses effect on the process, due to all the layers of bullshit, that if something is a little off, it's a way bigger deal than it should be? Like for a fictional representation, when Peter Gibbons forgets about TPS reports and gets reminded about it by eight different bosses. It feels sorta like that. Like there's more organizational going through the motions than there is practical functionality.
See this a lot in my job which focusses on unemployment benefits. An application has to go through at least three different orgs and can take up to two months or more to be completed. And if something goes wrong between the instances, good luck. Sometimes it seems like nobody can fix it then and it's all finger pointing. For what it's worth it drives us employees insane too. Like driving a car with square tires: you can't move forward.
Makes sense that it would bug the employees as well. I'd imagine you want to be able to solve problems for people, so struggling to be able to due to processes that are multi-layered and unwieldy, I can see how that'd be frustrating.
The word you are looking for is "Kafkaesque." I've only read The Trial but he really nailed that feeling down.
I feel like living in western society at the moment is a mashup of 1984, The Trial, and Dr. Strangelove.
Interesting, I've never read The Trial, but now I'm curious. I have definitely seen Dr. Strangelove though. I think the most unrealistic part of Dr. Strangelove is the idea that the US president has good intentions lol. But the general circus act absurdity of it, yeah. In the US, the health secretary being anti-vax definitely feels like parody writing (though since it's real, it's less funny and more just ridiculously dangerous).
You should it dances back and forth between entertaining with its hyperbole and absurdity and then being excruciatingly dull with its descriptions of bureaucratic processes that make you want to pull your hair out.