Look how horrible Instagram is now…mostly just narcissistic self-promotion and ads. Seems to be a good avatar for society right now.
Anyway, all of this begs the question: what is the end result of a burnout society? It won’t be pretty. Or maybe it’ll be glorious, and the next generation will completely revolt against it. Bring back the slacker and the early-90s, Reality Bites vibes! Winona forever.
I also fail to see why Elon Musk and Bezos are not worthy of some admiration, especially the latter; your bringing up Carnegie and libraries in comparison is a bit ironic considering that Amazon's own impact on promoting literacy and literature, whether it be through its original business model or Kindles, is not insignificant. I get that they're annoying techbros, especially Elon, but their scientific and technological contributions to the world are of some merit (including that of the aesthetic, but that's another story) and should not be completely written off as mere "business". I know this defense is probably going to get me called several unsavory words, but I feel like this essay just smarts with doomscrolling comedown. Amazing things are still happening today, Mr. Rabkin!
The consequences of oversocialization are convergence on all fronts
I get the anti-striver message of this piece, but I think striving is a worthy pursuit if it's towards meaningful ends; the problem today is everyone's striving towards the same thing for the sake of striving itself. In other words, we ought to strive towards what we think the world should look like instead of what the world currently looks like
they still exist, strivers are now just deeper in the game of maximizing their exposure and legibility than they used to be, meaning slackers require attuned sensibilities to notice
Look how horrible Instagram is now…mostly just narcissistic self-promotion and ads. Seems to be a good avatar for society right now.
Anyway, all of this begs the question: what is the end result of a burnout society? It won’t be pretty. Or maybe it’ll be glorious, and the next generation will completely revolt against it. Bring back the slacker and the early-90s, Reality Bites vibes! Winona forever.
I also fail to see why Elon Musk and Bezos are not worthy of some admiration, especially the latter; your bringing up Carnegie and libraries in comparison is a bit ironic considering that Amazon's own impact on promoting literacy and literature, whether it be through its original business model or Kindles, is not insignificant. I get that they're annoying techbros, especially Elon, but their scientific and technological contributions to the world are of some merit (including that of the aesthetic, but that's another story) and should not be completely written off as mere "business". I know this defense is probably going to get me called several unsavory words, but I feel like this essay just smarts with doomscrolling comedown. Amazing things are still happening today, Mr. Rabkin!
The consequences of oversocialization are convergence on all fronts
I get the anti-striver message of this piece, but I think striving is a worthy pursuit if it's towards meaningful ends; the problem today is everyone's striving towards the same thing for the sake of striving itself. In other words, we ought to strive towards what we think the world should look like instead of what the world currently looks like
they still exist, strivers are now just deeper in the game of maximizing their exposure and legibility than they used to be, meaning slackers require attuned sensibilities to notice