What's fearmongering? There's no claim that AI will destroy the world here - only a claim that cheap omnipresent AI will make most of society worse - which is hard to dispute.
And Google’s ad-driven money-making machine is making society worse as well, but OP had no problem with this.
It’s a bit of a fad to do these things in the name of AI. I think it’s great OP chooses a more fulfilling life that will surely make them happier, but it feels a bit pretentious.
This doesn't have to be true. Washington State, for example defines the amount of property tax revenue to be charged and then divides that in proportion to everyone's taxable value.
So if everyone's value goes up 40% your property tax bill stays the same. If your area climbed faster than others, it goes up but not by 40%.
If property prices increase 40%, then cost of living increases, government needs to collect additional revenue to pay employees a living wage, and that feeds into taxes. Even without higher order effects, the above chain was literally about net increases in property taxes to fund more services and saying it's fine because property values increase (in specific locations, too). But property values are not a tangible thing for anyone who doesn't want to sell.
> is it OK to change your price because the responder is from an area that is mostly black? No, it's not.
That's only because that's enshrined in law. Discriminating based on wealth or geography is not. Nor is discriminating based on political party affiliation.
> Anything else leads to discrimination and other awful behaviors that we've had to pass laws to change.
Only in the most egregious of cases.
Keep in mind that discounts for seniors, veterans, medical workers, etc are all discriminatory. You're giving a different price between two groups. It's really the equivalent of listing the price as $100, and then charging $110 if you're not in one of those groups.
Everything is egregious. Private equity is buying up everything, and the only things it doesn't control are what big data got to first. Everything is owned by soulless amoral demons who never sleep.
Employers are mining data to find the exact minimum salary each candidate will accept.
Airlines are working to charge every customer the maximum they can stomach.
Landlords are using companies to fix prices while claiming they're not fixing prices.
Grocery stores want in on it. Healthcare wants in on it. Everything is doing what you claim the "most egregious cases" are.
> they could have more efficiently got the Jews out of the Germany before things got to the point where things got more extreme. This could have resulted in fewer Jews dying.
Wrap it up folks, we've officially reached the worst take on the internet.
This ignores all of history - this isn't how the Nazis operated then and isn't how fascists have ever worked. Forced eviction and taking property is still a crime against humanity, and it's not like other countries were welcoming large numbers of jews with open arms.
Killing people as punishment for poor choices they enact on their own bodies is such a medieval take that it frankly can only be satirical or gallows humor.
But it does fit with the puritanical punishment fetishizing culture that the USA has fostered. Instead of rehabilitating people let's just liquidate them. Sure why not.
And that would be relevant if someone use sqlite as the default database backend for multiuser applications with stored procedures.
That's the problem here: Systems built on sharing the database over a networked filesystem, where one user can not just modify all the data, but can also execute code on all users machines.
Dark patterns are called that for a reason. Having to click "next page" is a point of friction that slows and stops consumption. Pageless increases engagement in an addictive way - it's why companies do it.
I disagree that any of this is "overly broad" - it's all long overdue
I respectfully disagree. I’ve clicked way too many “next page”s (or refreshed pages, or whatever) to be aware that while the friction is real, it’s not the actually addictive component.
Endless scrolling aids, but isn’t what makes a system addictive. Continuous relevance gamble “maybe the next one is good, or the one after” is the actual driver, and “I stop at this page” is a weak stopper condition. Not negligible (as proven by testing) but not the fundamental piece.
Actually, I found an experiment that directly contradicts your statement. So my disagreement is IMHO valid and your appeal to "mountains of telemetry" is not. To me it seems that you've just parroted the chorus without trying to understand the problem by decomposing it into pieces and trying to attribute the potential causes. Which just happens to be something that I spent some time doing (total amateur hour and N=1 but sort of worked for my purposes).
Etsy ran A/B tests with and without endless scrolling. Same content source. Infinite scroll haven't produced any increased engagement: surprisingly, it decreased it - people searched less. Potential reason: it was a store, not a social media feed, the feed wasn't addictive in its nature (decreased relevancy, lower chances of finding something good buried down further and further) and the whole alternative pagination design didn't help at all. This is my interpretation, but c'mon - if you're appealing to the telemetry: here's the telemetry, how'd you explain it?
In the neighboring comment, I was mistaken in that it would still increase length of browsing a bit, turns out it was off-putting.
With addictive content, endless scroll makes it more addictive and increases consumption.
I'm not sure why you think this is a slam dunk. Fruity flavors increase the adoption of vaping because it tastes better, but that doesn't work when you apply it to broccoli. Doesn't mean we shouldn't regulate flavored vapes.
Yes, exactly, with addictive content it boosts the engagement even further. We all agree about that. And - my point here I’m trying to convey - with nonaddictive content it doesn’t do that. Which is why I’m saying “we need to classify better”. I don’t understand why you’re against a more nuanced approach, when the goal is to allow non-harmful cases. I’m very much favor of regulation, just a more careful one.
Vaping analogy is not perfect, as it doesn’t hold true in some aspects, but... Nobody makes vapes that go unpleasantly sour for a while after a fourth puff. But if they do we’d better not ban them from adding flavors, when the flavoring here does the right thing.
We’d still want to regulate vaping on other aspects (such as harm to health, which - unlike speech - doesn’t get protections), but that’s another, different story.
(Sigh) And what exactly does it show? What makes you think you interpret the statistics correctly?
It shows a correlation that suggests - at best - that certain design patterns decrease friction and increases duration of engagement, making system more captive. It does NOT show that those design patterns are captive (= are a problem) by themselves.
Have those mountains of telemetry ever included an experiment where the addictive component was intentionally not present or maybe even designed to be anti-addictive (next element becomes increasingly less likely to be interesting/relevant past some threshold, frustrating the viewer) but the endless scrolling remains, so we test on its presence alone? Ideally, with an engagement-optimized feed as a separate control.
I don't know of such experiments, so I cannot counter your point with a definitive proof. But your interpretation isn't a proof either - there are multiple factors and no control to tell them apart. Those mountains of telemetry didn't have a goal of isolating factors to determine their actual effect, they just had to optimize engagement, find the best combo that works.
If someone ran something like that - I'd love to hear about it, and what they show. I'm utterly confident (as someone who had dealt with various addictions) that it'll show endless scrolling would have mild effects at best (maybe just a bit longer engagement compared to classic pagination as telemetry suggests, but I expect it to pale in comparison to an actual addictive/engagement-increasing feed source logic).
> What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
If only we had 20+ years of scientific and societal evidence to show that regardless of what you think is "on the surface", the effects are catastrophic to mental health, democracy, the concept of truth, and everything else.
There's a huge component of the left which is quite directly 'anti-authority', which they see in 'the right' in classical form.
It's a form of personal identity less than ideology.
You can spot them often by their total silence on Russian (or Chinese) Imperialism (and racism), as they try to blame the CIA for all the world's problems.
His politics have been remarkably consistent over time. He’s always been a slightly left-leaning, anti-war civil libertarian who is deeply suspicious of government, particularly the US government. He’s been posting lately about how Trump has been starting or expanding unjust wars and cracking down on press freedom. That’s hardly a “right-wing fringe” slant.
Since 2016, he's appeared repeatedly in conservative outlets (including pushing conspiracy theories about Ukraine), gotten fired for uncritically pushing unsubstantiated claims from the Trump campaign as journalism, hosted a video podcast giving a voice to folks like RFK Jr.
Other than speaking up against the surveillance state, he's been solidly aligned with conservative viewpoints.
I'm not the biggest fan of him, but him showing up on conservative outlets because the other ones wouldn't platform him (due to going against US Dept of State propaganda) does not mean he is "conservative".
Please make an actual argument; tell us what "conservative" views he holds.
The source of that talking point was a young black protester who wanted real investment into black communities to stop the biggest killer of black Americans: criminals in their own communities. He wanted a structural solution rather than a media circus about an issue (police violence) that is minuscule in comparison to structural racism and would be rotated out of the conversation as soon as the media moved on.
Greenwald's main point seems to be that the conversation about race was used cynically to attack one of his coworkers for completely spurious reasons, and I don't see anything false about that.
If anything, ignoring the cycles of crime and poverty that black Americans are disproportionately victim to in favor of occasional media spectacles is completely on brand for America's dominant right wing neoliberal ideology.
Unfortunately to many, everything is a team sport, and that isn't an accident. It is a result of decades of carefully crafted propaganda by the powers-that-be. It's why otherwise intelligent people repeat idiotic tropes like "echoing propaganda", because a designated bad person says something, by definition that statement is false and making any similar statement puts you in league with that bad person and makes you bad. It's also an easy way to dismiss objectively factual statements and arguments without substantively engaging with them in any way. The same goes for appearing on outlets that are considered to be on the other team, working with someone on the other team on an issue (even if that issue isn't itself objectionable) and even talking cordially with members of the other team. It is an incredibly useful way to keep people on board with whatever team play is called by the team owners and also keep them from developing or expressing any independent thoughts whatsoever.
Glenn, along with many others in the left-libertarian camp, correctly identified that “wokeness” was being used to fracture the left between the old guard, focused on economic justice and ending imperialism, and the “groups” who focused solely on racial and cultural agendas and were actively hostile towards traditional left agendas. These groups were also often hostile towards traditional liberal concepts of rights, such as freedom of speech and equal treatment under the law.
I agree that his reporting on this was sub-par. It’s not his beat and he should probably leave it to others.
Yep, exactly. People who aren't super familiar with American propaganda often don't appreciate this enough, but every stupid network here will feature you if you pissed off the other team, and when Biden's necrotic ass is overseeing our waning genocidaire state, anyone who speaks out against his baby annihilation tendencies is going to end up having to slum it up on Fox because they're desperate enough to feature you.
He endorsed Bernie through 2023 when he (accurately) noted Sanders shifting away from anti-war/anti-imperialism positions, which seems to be Greenwald’s #1 focus. He was opposed to what he saw as the Biden admin’s role in perpetuating the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Biden-era “counter-disinformation” initiatives, which he is unsurprisingly opposed to. He maintains these positions under Trump while conservatives have moved against them; they are not “conservative” positions.
I’m not opposed to people hosting interviews with political opponents, and reasonable people shouldn’t be opposed to that either.
By 2023, it's not "hosting interviews with political opponents" - it's obvious that giving a voice and publicity to people like RFK Jr. is actively harmful to society. Freedom of speech means we don't throw RFK in jail, but no one has to publicize his views.
I disagree with you. It’s important to understand the perspectives of people actively involved in politics. Even (perhaps especially) those with fringe beliefs.
In the past, I would have agreed with you. But I've seen that argument used in bad faith so many times since 2000, I've come to see it as an excuse to introduce bad ideas and move the overton window. Every oligarch seems to be in favor of absolute freedom of speech until they control the media in question, then it's hard right for thee.
See that's the thing: bad faith requests for presence in the marketplace of ideas almost always more the discourse towards authoritarian views, reactionary and racist views. Smashing it metaphorically means that monarchists and authoritarians flood the marketplace with garbage.
We as a society still have the idea that we must protect ourselves from socialist and communist views, but we have no similar immune system for reactionary authoritarianism.
Socialist, communist, and reactionary views should all be equally allowed, along with bizarre views like Posadism and whatever Alex Jones believes.
I want to see a debate stage with Haz Al-Din, AOC, Ezra Klein, Thomas Massie, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Fuentes. Let the best one win.
> We as a society still have the idea that we must protect ourselves from socialist and communist views
And this is why only reactionaries gain a foothold. Powerful people benefit from it, so reactionary views are let in while the rest of the “window” remains intact. Smash the window.
I think actually discussing and debating things is precisely how you get an informed society. We only need be concerned when people 'begin by denouncing all argument, or forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments with force.' That certainly doesn't seem to be the case with RFK, to say the least.
Your comment reminds me of a joke from the Soviet Union: "This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: Was it possible to criticize Hitler? We’re answering: Sure. The same way as you criticized Stalin. You had to lock yourself in your bedroom, hide under two, or better three covers, place a pillow, or better two pillows on top of the blankets over your head, and then whisper whatever your soul wishes about the dictator, strictly adhering to a five-minute limit." [1]
The USSR had constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech: "Article 50. In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations." [2] But there are rights, and then there is ability to exercise those rights.
I'm not entirely sure I'd agree with that definition of sealioning, but I'll respond to your definition. In general I see nothing wrong with pushing an agenda, so long as one is not simply ignoring other possibilities. For instance no less than Einstein rejected, to his death, a probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
All of those famous quotes like 'God does not play dice' or 'Spooky action at a distance' were mocking and sardonic swipes at alternative views, alternative views which were overwhelmingly supported by evidence, and ones that eventually we came to hold as most correct. He simply believed that the universe must be deterministic and rational.
And I don't think he did anything wrong there. The quotes were sardonic, but he genuinely engaged in good faith against different views - even if it would probably have been impossible to sway him from his own. And that's okay - people can see the world in different ways. And while evidence must be weighted, it need not dictate one's views.
That's what sealioning does. It makes it seem like you're ignoring a possibility unless you wholeheartedly engage with a disingenuous possibility. I'd get banned from HN if I tried to demonstrate because I'm not very good at it, but the original comic that coined the term is good.
The original comic didn't really resonate with me for a couple of reasons. The first is that the obvious metaphors it seems to have (which I assume you're alluding to here) are in quite poor taste. The second is because I think public debate is critical for a healthy society, and so am quite averse to anything that justifies making statements and then being unwilling to engage with challenges to them. Obviously outright harassment would be not only wrong but also illegal, so I think that's largely a nonexistent extreme.
In general I think if people were more regularly challenged on their claims, it might help reign in some of the self radicalization, intolerance, and so forth that's growing in society. When somebody only acknowledges 'friendly' voices, you end up in a scenario where they're effectively surrounding themselves with a baseline that's heavily biased, but that baseline will (from their perspective) be normal. That's just not healthy.
I think they're currently victims of a genocidal effort, but also like most conflicts it's one where both sides can be wrong. The narrative of good guys and bad guys is always shown to be nonsense in hindsight.
RFK was also a lifelong Democrat. Not that long ago anti-war, pro free speech, anti 'big brother', anti illegal-immigration, anti political violence, anti mega-corp (especially big pharma), and other such stuff was all part of a very typical liberal 'resume.' Now it's more or less the exact opposite on many of these points.
It's not people's views that are really changing, but those of the parties. A complete liberal from not that long ago would now be deemed a conservative by the DNC. I think that's a problem for the DNC that needs to be tackled, because it's self defeating.
2028, after this presidency, should be an overwhelmingly massive landslide the likes of Reagan-Mondale. But it's going to be a coin flip, and this sort of otherizing is precisely why.
RFK is a socialite born into centre left 'American Nobility', who, throughout his life was able to get by by being 'the face' of whatever organization, on the magazine cover of whatever.
Eventually, he touched a real nerve by speaking against vaccines, and had an instant following of very devoted crazy people.
He grifted that carefully for a while and partnered with DJT - a very similar kind of grifter of a different kind.
Neither of them are particularly principled, it's not reasonable to put them into some kind of camp.
RFK probably does have some very legit ideas about 'organic and environmentalism' I have no doubt, but they're behind layers of egoistic and geriatric incoherence. Just like DJT.
Greenwald might be just as close to RFK than he is to Snowden, who is relatively consistent. (Assange surely is).
Or, perhaps people can see the same evidence and come to different perspectives and conclusions. All without it being some malicious conspiracy, insanity, stupidity, or however you would like to frame it. If you look at society on a holistic level, it looks pretty bad. Mental illness rates are skyrocketing, testosterone is plummeting, IQ is declining, obesity is skyrocketing, and so on and so forth. The status quo isn't doing so hot.
Why? Well it's fairly obvious that some things like the internet are having some sort of a role, but in general nobody knows for certain. And so it's, at the minimum, quite reasonable to suggest that something, or more likely - some thingS, that we believe are completely safe, are not.
In living memory we believed that lobotomy was a great idea as a cure for various mental issues, that DDT was perfectly harmless - to the point that you'd have children playing in the large DDT fog clouds from neighborhood sprays, and so on. To imagine we now aren't doing the same thing, in ways that will seem equally absurd in the future, requires quite an unreasonable degree of arrogance and/or ignorance of the past and present.
"It's obvious that the internets is doing something so let's blame vaccines for autism ...
... because hey, look at the thing we used to do that was bad!"
Is exactly the kind of absolutely horrible logic that RFK Jr. spews to his acolytes that causes the problems.
It's fine to be be an antagonist, but you have to have a high bar, which RFK Jr does not have, therefore, he's a liar and a scammer, along with the rest of them.
He's chosen for his position for his 'Tabloid PR' and appeal to people who want 'slogan solutions' to problems of our era.
We have to understand things before we start throwing around sand.
Are you capable of having a debate without relying on straw men and ad hominem? You probably lack the ability to understand how you seem to people who don't already agree with you. This sort of behavior and attitude is why 2028 will be close, even though it shouldn't be.
You need to look up what 'ad hominem' and 'straw' men are because you've also misused those terms.
--> "Why? Well it's fairly obvious that some things like the internet are having some sort of a role," <--
This is nonsense. That's not sraw man or ad hominem.
Your attempt to defend RFK Jrs nonsense and misrepresentation of reality, but using your own 'stream of consciousness logic' is exactly the problem with RFK Jr himself. Done with bad faith, at scale, it's destructive tabloidism.
>A complete liberal from not that long ago would now be deemed a conservative by the DNC.
You say this like it isn't inherent to the nature of liberalism versus conservatism. A liberal of a prior generation is almost always conservative compared to liberals of the current generation. It just feels different this time because you're actually witnessing it change in real time rather than learning about it from history.
But in this case we're rather going in quite the opposite direction! For instance broad opposition to free speech has no place in any sort of formulation of liberalism, and so you find yourself in a scenario where a certain brand of liberal today would hold values deemed quite conservative, even by the standards of the past.
But this is also not particularly unprecedented. In the early 20th century the Republican and Democrat parties largely swapped roles. There was no formal agreement or acknowledgement of such. It happened quite organically, spurred along by decades of relatively significant events. I think we're seeing the outlines of such happening again, in much the same way.
When one debates aforementioned 'certain brand' types today, it often feels like a blast to the past. They share many of the characteristics of the die hard conservatives of times past - self assuredness bordering on divine authority, seemingly blissful ignorance of their numerous self-declared 'enemies', that trademark rabid intolerance, and more. The main thing that's changed is the dogma of choice.
First, the conversation was about the DNC, so what centrist Dems think is more important than "Progressives, radlibs, and the ultra-left". But beyond that, what specific policies are you talking about? Because without naming specific parts of the DNC platform, what you're saying sounds completely indistinguishable from "my niece corrected my pronoun usage and that made me angry".
Your point about the DNC is taken, although these groups do have sway there, as Yglesias often complains about.
Support for hate speech laws is common among leftists who primarily focus on social causes, as is support for “deplatforming” political opponents. Some also support German-style laws regarding politically extreme speech, which is funny, because those laws would almost certainly be used against them if they weren’t plainly unconstitutional.
I'm afraid I'm still not following you. In what previous generation did conservatives support hate speech laws? Because the topic being discussed was how a position can gradually over time change from liberal to conservative or vice versa. And from my perspective, it seems like you're just jumping at an opportunity you saw to complain about some fringe leftist position that you don't like.
> Who besides the conservatives right now is broadly opposed to free speech?
But to answer your question about conservative opposition to free speech, some conservatives are now showing support for hate speech laws, specifically laws against antisemitic speech, which is new. So this is actually a current “both sides” issue. Time will tell if the poles fully reverse on this; I think it depends on what form post-Trump politics takes.
Edit: wow, TIL. Apparently there were local laws against “race hatred” on the books in the early 1900s, and some conservative segregationists found that they could use those laws against “anti-white” speech (like supporting integration) in the 40s and 50s. So believe it or not, they became supportive of these laws until the Warren court overturned them, thanks to the work of the ACLU.
Mind you their version of "antisemitism" that they are banning is not hate speech, it is actually the opposite of hate speech and their ban makes hate speech mandatory.
Fair enough if you consider your comment a start of a new thread, but that is ignoring the context in which the comment you replied was made.
>specifically laws against antisemitic speech
As a Jewish person, I have a bridge that fights antisemitism to sell you if you genuinely believe this. Just the simple fact that they are only against antisemitism and not all hate speech should tell you there is no genuine conservative desire for hate speech laws. And your second example is just more evidence of that. Conservatives cynically abusing existing laws does not show a conservative value eventually becoming liberal or vice versa. You can argue it shows how these laws create problems, but it isn't evidence of any sort of switch in values.
This is similar to how many on the left don’t believe that “hate speech” restrictions should apply to speech against whites. This is the problem with laws that apply to the realm of speech and ideas; it is a very small step towards abuse that undermines equal treatment under the law, the free exchange of information, and the democratic process.
Both major US factions like to use selective enforcement and/or targeted taxation or regulation to attack their political rivals, while wrapping their actions in flowery language. This is a longstanding tradition here. If you don’t see it, I urge you to take a closer look and shed your bias.
Edit: I’ll add that this selective application is probably what creates the illusion of a change in values. In reality, it’s two tribes jockeying for power using whatever tools happen to be in front of them; naturally, the available tools shift over time. The ideological justification for a particular position or action is created after the fact.
>This is similar to how many on the left don’t believe that “hate speech” restrictions should apply to speech against whites.
These comparisons always seem to set up an equivalency between mainstream Republicans saying something extreme and what a random leftist said to their 50 followers on Bluesky. Like seriously, what mainstream Democrat is advocating for hate speech laws which only apply to non-white people?
Officially, there were only some small things like a house resolution that supported one-sided (minority only) hate crime protection, as well as some papers and op-eds that suggested that hate crime protection should only apply to minorities. These were about hate crimes, not hate speech, of course. It’s been a while, and I can’t find any records of statements from mainstream Dems.
What I saw in my personal experience was an army of trolls baiting this kind of response from left activists, with identity-focused activists readily complying, and with others then amplifying the message through retweets. Including many who should have known better, people I had formerly respected. There was zero condemnation or pushback on this from nearly anyone on the left, in fact there was often a sort of winking agreement with the message by the time it had trickled up to candidates and officials.
The worst offenders were the grifters in the “white fragility” consulting sphere, for obvious reasons.
Anyway, just because it’s more subtle doesn’t mean it’s not still an issue. Republicans are almost always less subtle about terrible things they believe or do; this does seem to be true in general. It’s only rarely that you can get Dem officials to say awful things like “turns out I’m really good at killing people” or “we came, we saw, he died.” This is made worse by the lack of a substantial platform or position statement in many campaigns nowadays, so it’s hard to identify what anyone really stands for at all.
Feel free to take your point on this, as I have no hard proof. But I and many others saw this happen first hand.
>Anyway, just because it’s more subtle doesn’t mean it’s not still an issue. Republicans are almost always less subtle about terrible things they believe or do; this does seem to be true in general. It’s only rarely that you can get Dem officials to say awful things like “turns out I’m really good at killing people” or “we came, we saw, he died.”
It seems like you are very close to getting it, so maybe spend some time brainstorming on possible reasons why Republican politicians say "terrible... awful things" much more frequently than Democratic politicians. There's probably some other explanation there outside one side simply enjoying subtlety more than the other for no particular reason.
If you look at actions rather than words, Dems have been equally complicit in the things that are destroying the country, namely the offshoring of US industry and weakening of domestic labor, privatization of public services (especially Clinton/Third Way), the financialization of the US economy, the expansion of the security state (especially Obama), the erosion of civil liberties, the continuation of “forever wars.” They also failed to correct course after the GFC, despite holding the trifecta, probably dooming the country in the long run by using endless QE to temporarily float the economy. We needed a hard landing and we didn’t get one.
The one good thing I have to say about the Republicans is at least they don’t fuck around. They are speedrunning the inevitable collapse, and we might actually be better off for it. With the rate they are going, there will be no time to finish constructing a fully integrated police state before the bottom falls out.
I think a practical issue you have to deal with on this sort of topic is what is done versus what is said. Illegal immigration is a great example. There's no part of any official DNC that overtly supports illegal immigration, yet policies and behaviors show an intent to enable and facilitate exactly that.
On the speech issue, here [1] is a rather great bit on DNC efforts to censor speech by the WSWS/World Socialist Web Site. The article mentions the ongoing obsession with censoring "disinformation" when disinformation itself is often little more than truths that counter the official lies of the day.
This was never really true at most places, and even where it was sort of true, it's been false since 2023.
The ladder has collapsed. No more juniors to mentor and grow (in some cases no more US hiring period), and all of the carrots have been replaced with sticks. If you're lucky, the reward for doing good work and being nice is 'not being laid off', but the promo budget is gone and it's not like your boss gets a say in who's laid off so may the odds be ever in your favor.
In general, joking that people's promotions are due to their names is thinly veiled racism, especially considering it's a very real phenomenon[0].
Jokes in general are, if not explicitly against site norms, discouraged: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." [1]
I have no idea what the person's real name is, their ethnicity, where they come from. How on earth could you make a racist statement about someone, if you don't know any of those things?
If you have no idea what their real name, and their user name doesn't seem to be related to their real name, then the "joke" doesn't make any sense and would fall flat.
So either you made a joke that isn't funny or one that is offensive. Either way, there's your answer to why people didn't react positively.
I know a dude with a traditionally female name. Dude just job hops. The wide "HR bins 99/100 resumes" part of the filter doesn't seem to apply to him...
He's a fine guy, and a fine coworker, but he's not the hot shit his resume progression would suggest.
I guess that's worth being taunted in graded school.
Well I disagree, at least in Europe - i don't know the state of the US market.
Sure, promotions are harder to get, but the "ladder hasn't collapsed" and many companies I know (at least in tech) will reward above-average dedication (that average being quite low...).
I have no doubt every organization is different, and to some degree different teams in organizations are different, but I've been fortunate enough to work at several employers where "staff" or "principal" truly mean things, and still have friends at all the FAANGs and many of the other companies of similar tier. They all report what I've said - the idea of just doing good work and getting promoted is basically dead. Perhaps if you work literally on a frontier AI product it's different, but what I said is the norm.
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