teaching college students, i get a good sense of what they see as the paths to success and prosperity. over the last few years it's a whole lot of crypto, resale hustles, dropshipping, AI slop factory stuff. success to them largely seems to mean "finding an exploit" or tricking other people - ThreadSky

paleopragmatist.bsky.social • 11 days ago

teaching college students, i get a good sense of what they see as the paths to success and prosperity.

over the last few years it's a whole lot of crypto, resale hustles, dropshipping, AI slop factory stuff. success to them largely seems to mean "finding an exploit" or tricking other people

Reposted from Nice and normal

I don't know if there's ever been a culture more in love with charlatans than ours. "Success" defined entirely by how good you are at tricking people into giving you money. An entire country of aspiring slop merchants

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paleopragmatist.bsky.social•11 days ago

i get that the idea seems to be "if you want to really make it, you have to be in on the ground floor." that's probably true. but it's not "develop a good product" or "build a reputation as a provider of a service" so much as "find a trick and milk it before anyone realizes what you're doing"

robot-bastard.bsky.social•11 days ago

"if you can't find a ground floor, then sucker somebody into giving you money and put up your own building!"

paleopragmatist.bsky.social•11 days ago

in the most severe cases, the idea of "success" seems to mean nothing less than "eye-popping short-term rate of return" - i think the memestock moment fundamentally rewired a certain kind of person's brain to a far greater degree, and there's a lot of that kind of person out there

paleopragmatist.bsky.social•11 days ago

'rentmaxxing' is a great word, because i do think it's closely related to the general spirit of self-optimization/quantification, micromanagement, etc.

in itself i don't think -maxxing is bad, but we should put it to ends that don't impose significant social costs

https://bsky.app/profile/paradisepsychounit.bsky.social/post/3lpjwzbuois2p

paleopragmatist.bsky.social•11 days ago

this is also a lot of it: we're seeing the business equivalent of a degenerative research program

https://bsky.app/profile/mezentine.bsky.social/post/3lpjxksmtfc22

paranoidporygon.bsky.social•11 days ago

That's basically how I've been putting it: we have entered an era where the only valorized business ventures are rent-seeking in nature, and if you do anything else -- make a product or sell a service, even if you own your own business -- you're a fucking rube.

robot-bastard.bsky.social•11 days ago

...because products and services get copied by people who do the thing cheaper, and by the time customers figure out your original was better than a cheap knockoff you're out of business.

paranoidporygon.bsky.social•11 days ago

that's true in a lot of cases but not really related to what I'm getting at here. mostly concerned with how we have a generation that would rather be used car salesmen than scientists.

mezentine.bsky.social•11 days ago

One of the foundational pillars of the memestock guys's ideology is that the rich are engaging in market manipulation to make vast amounts of money for no labor at all all the time anyway, and because that's actually true its a very compelling worldview to fall into.

mezentine.bsky.social•11 days ago

Its the memestocks on the tail of the ZIRP era where the other kind of success story was "Sell your startup that doesn't make money for eighty five million dollars after 2 years." combined with the price of like all desirable houses crossing the $1 million threshold.

pi3832.bsky.social•11 days ago

Maybe this is the real damage that video games have done. You can only win if someone else loses. Exploiting flaws in the game is key to victory.

editr.bsky.social•11 days ago

every kid I talk to wants to have a youtube channel and / or be an influencer. Nobody wants to work anymore, they just want quick and easy money

conandoyle.bsky.social•11 days ago

We need to teach more how even Isaac Newton lost a fortune on the South Sea Bubble!

jabooby.bsky.social•11 days ago

That is incredibly fucking bleak.

wanderlib.bsky.social•11 days ago

The standing job advice is "loyalty is not rewarded, jump ships often. "

It's not crazy that charlatan looks like a better option than "constantly fight a losing battle against shitty bosses."

And we've spent the past 30 years painting most "honest" work as getting screwed (and aren't wrong).

zas.bsky.social•11 days ago

Office Space has somehow managed to age very well and poorly at the same time lol

wanderlib.bsky.social•11 days ago

The lesson of Office Space is people really fucking hate ennui.

And corporations seem hellbent on increasing it.

beccasmullet.bsky.social•11 days ago

It's been astonishing to me, because there have been, and will be again, millions of great jobs modernizing our power grid and integrating renewable energy into it. There's a terrible shortage of electricians and electrical engineers. These are good jobs that pay really well. Nobody wants them.

2ez2dance.bsky.social•11 days ago

Moreover, this is a viewpoint that was consciously promoted by the bourgeoisie as it killed hope during the Cold War

caseinsensit1ve.bsky.social•11 days ago

Look around. Can we blame them? America has known that the path to prosperity has functionally been mortared shut since the 90s, and this generation is the first to have grown up with that knowledge being the only thing they've ever known. This is how you respond to that.

peldin.bsky.social•11 days ago

The thing is, that largely is the only option for people without capital.

enceladusty.bsky.social•11 days ago

Being honest is for suckers, providing real value doesn’t pay.

unlabeledelder.bsky.social•11 days ago

They aren't wrong. Just look at who the richest, most powerful people in the world are. Total hucksters.

beneprism.rip•11 days ago

We elected a con man president, twice

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