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Comment by sfpotter | Hacker News Reader

The irony being that the show is made by Apple... How many people are de facto severed by their 9-to-5 soulless tech job, come home and binge watch a TV show made by another soulless tech corp about being severed by a 9-to-5 soulless tech job and... I don't get it.

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It sorta reminds me of the series "Electric Dreams" on Amazon Prime. Select stories from Philip K. Dick! Great stuff!

The hubris of Amazon airing the "Autofac" episode though, holy crap. I mean if ANYONE on this planet is the likely source of some "Autofac"-styled nightmare its Amazon. Makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

Didn't know about that series, will be looking it up!

It's being financed by Apple. Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson are still the artists creating the show.

It is also approved by Apple. But to the GP's point nearly 5 years later I still dont think they should have done Apple TV+. How many billons invested into Apple TV+ programme that still didn't get any return of investment while they could have done a lot better job elsewhere.

These people are actors, not tech people. Apple TV probably gave them the best deal when they were selling their show. It really is as simple as that, the people creating these shows have consultants in the tech-industry, but this is acting. There are a ton of Apple TV exclusives, and they are getting paid very well. You have companies like Paramount+ that will start to fund a show, then pull the plug (it's not tech, but the Comedy Central show Workaholics had hired an entire crew and was 5 weeks away from making their movie with Paramount+, and they pulled the plug).

Entertainment is far removed from tech, and I find it funny that such intelligent people from HN would ever think that a Hollywood produced show could ever make it concentrating only on the tech world, leaving everyone else that pays for these services wondering what anyone is talking about.

If it ends up a public service by providing some excellent art to the masses, I truly do not care if the return on investment was low or negative for one of the most profitable businesses in history. There’s more to life than “numbers go up” after all.

Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.

Yes. Das Kapital by Marx is of course available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Critique-Political-Economy-1/...

My favorite example is probably the commercial success of the board game Monopoly. But Amazon advertising a version of 1984 is also up there.

This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

All artistic mediums are plagued in some way. For film and TV, this is the incredible cost of production, which necessitates the involvement of large corporations.

Flow would like a miaow.

I don't see your point. The work at Apple is mysterious and important.

Yes, it is all a meaningless cycle - companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars want to keep making more and more engaging content and make you spend as much time on them as possible and keep using their services forever. At the same time, people who have busy careers and soul-sucking tech jobs at companies cannot or do not simply afford to spend so much time on these things.

If you're one of those - make your call. I decided to not touch any of these TV shows and fall into the web of content until I retire from the tech industry, which I assume will start in my 50's.

cool story, but severance is a really good show, though.

   that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.

~ Brave New World, a Huxley

> How many people are de facto severed by their 9-to-5 soulless tech job, come home and binge watch a TV show

...everyone I know who works at Apple is incredibly proud of and satisfied with the work they do. (They're also richly remunerated.)

How could they not be? The work is mysterious and important.

Edit: but other than the secrecy I agree that Apple and Lumon have little in common in terms of employees. Apple employees seem generally inspired to be doing the work they are doing, it's not soulless, and it's not 9-5.

I think Lumon is supposed to look like Apple, but Severance Adam Scott just doesn't look like an Apple employee. He's permanently making a face that looks like he's on a BBC adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide.

Maybe it's just the makeup.

Huh, I can't see a single resemblance between Lumon's workplace and what I know about Apple's. The idea of people in suits at Apple simply does not compute.

That's because "dressing like a California tech worker" on TV codes as Big Bang Theory, but dressing like an office worker in a way nobody actually does codes as professional.

That's part of Apple's DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Meh. If you work at Apple (likely as a software engineer given the audience), then you're likely in the top 1% of earners. That means you have more optionality than almost anyone else finance wise. If you're not able to make the changes you need to live a fulfilling life, that's a you problem. And by that, I mean that you have agency, you just need to act upon it and stop being scared.

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