Interesting nobody has mentioned Nikita. X has hired Nikita Bier, of Gas and tbh fame (https://x.com/nikitabier), as head of product some days ago.
He posted a meme earlier today which may or may not be related to this.
He posted a meme earlier today which may or may not be related to this.
Just curious. Any YC companies that have engaged in these tactics?
Frank Abagnale committed financial crimes and had a wildly popular movie made from his story.
People are talking about Nikita Bier, not a movie about Nikita Bier.
You can be hated and reviled, and media about you can still be popular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale#Veracity_of_cla...
It's all just attention seeking, there's no value in the posts, no product insight, no teaching like I see from true industry leaders.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-european-mind-cannot-comp...
The thing is, as I get older, I realize more and more that this is a distinction without a difference.
If you "ironically" stab someone, does it matter what your motivation?
The same is true for edgelord stuff. Whether you believe it internally is irrelevant, the active act of the posting is the only part that matters.
If you post fascist content to be "edgy", you're a fascist.
...well, the legal system does take intent into account.
Harming someone "ironically" would be an intentional act of the first category.
> If you post fascist content to be "edgy", you're a fascist.
Is Trump a constitutionalist because he claims to love the constitution? Is Kim Jong Un a "democratic republican"?
So trump /says/ one thing, but his actions say something very different.
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So, if you say nothing and do nothing, you cannot be defined.
If you say fascist things (even if you're "joking"), but do nothing, you are a fascist.
If you say non-fascist things but /do/ fascist things, the thing with the most active action defines you (i.e. the person doing the fascist things is a fascist).
Words mean little in the face of taking active actions.
I have the opposite opinion. Payouts have supercharged the amount of ragebait and engagement bait getting posted. There has always been a drive to post viral content, but attaching a payout to it has made many accounts go all in on being as inflammatory as they can while posting non stop. Even people who shouldn’t need the money seem to be competing with each other for the largest X payout checks and bragging about how large they got their check to be each cycle, like that’s the new meta-game.
It’s also tiresome to see people asking Grok under every post and then getting the typical LLM responses that sound kind of insightful but don’t contain much useful information when you look closely.
The bot problem is also out of control on a level behind anything I can ever remember. At this point it’s hard to believe they’re even attempting to do something about it because it’s so bad.
ha-ha, this is true, but I also find it hilarious
and I don't mind people with tons of followers monetizing it. If I see a person bait-posting - I can unsubscribe any time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/opinion/ezra-klein-show-c...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... (https://archive.ph/e1KnM)
Musk did the left a real favor by evicting them but he may never have the self awareness to realize that he scored an own goal. It's not a left-wing vs a right-wing thing, it's a high-D vs a low-D thing
or rather a system or a culture that rewards superficial narcissistic interactions (e.g narcissism is a developmental arrest according to Kohut and Kernberg) and avoids any real listening, discussion or deliberation that might build empathy and produce lasting change. (Look how Black Lives Matter turned a major concern of black people in America across space and time into a... flash in the pan)
Given that the likes of George Will and William Kristol were driven away by Trump long ago and even Rudy Giuliani and Elon Musk thrown under the bus it's not clear the right is even going to realize it got cooked by Twitter. Where are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nisbet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._I._Hayakawa ?
I have no idea why people are so negative here
Everything now is just new kinds of ways to spy on people or the same old shit repackaged in a new format. I'm dying for some actual innovation. The only new product in tech I actually like lately is the Steam Deck and later, the Ally X. Making PC gaming mobile is incredible, and I guess you could say there's nothing revolutionary there, but I dunno, it's new at least and not flagrantly a free-at-use shitpile that's going to tell AdSense my resting heart rate.
Edit: And I suppose relevant to this comment thread, a lot of new tech is just more ways to fuck with people at scale to generate revenue. Which also blows ass.
I can flame asses here and have fun, but I don't want to, I want people to be happy and enjoy their life.
It does the second thing decently well.
> We got laptops with battery life measured in days that generate almost no heat or noise.
So? Laptop's a laptop. And while they increased the battery life they also took away a ton of the ports and made them spy on you.
> We’ve had some awesome advances in memory safe programming languages.
That one I'll give you. Now if we could just get industry to actually use them instead of putting everything in fucking React.
> All sorts of hacker friendly gadgets like 3D printers and Framework devices are available in more varieties and at lower prices than ever.
That's... kind of exciting, as long as you set aside concerns about microplastics. However the Framework laptop still isn't a mainstream thing and neither is linux, so the vast majority of users are still being ravenously exploited by the tech sector's surveillance industrial complex. I do not consider this a victory until everyone is saved, not just people technically literate enough to innovate themselves out of it.
> Apple and Google are starting to ease up on some of their worst policies and give developers more options for revenue.
Oh wow they're only crushing 29 orphans per hour instead of 30, throw a fucking parade.
> You can criticize things you don’t like but saying it’s all or even mostly bad just seems completely wrong. I think one of the things that makes Reddit (and HN, and X, and some Discords and corners of YouTube) unappealing these days is the extreme toxic negativity about everything.
It IS mostly bad, and I don't say that as some bitter old hacker, I say that as someone who grew up, fell in love with technology, and then watched Big Business Assholes utterly ruin it!
The Internet is nearly UNUSABLE now for anything that isn't motherfucking commerce. Blogs and forums are dead and the majority of social networks are more anti-social than they've ever been. I don't even SEE friends on Facebook anymore, it's just a wall of generated bullshit content trying to either make me horny or piss me off, sometimes both. Instagram is a dead mall. Tiktok is psychological torture. Twitter is open mic night at the Reichstag circa 1941. We're more connected than we've ever been yet somehow I'm less informed on anything I actually give a shit about. If it doesn't make money, nobody will help you spread it around. Except Blusky and Mastadon.
Damn near every application I use daily is now written in JavaScript. Websites run by companies worth billions just don't load sometimes and that's just an understood thing that happens. Apps make my phone hot sending text messages. Every software update has the potential to completely redesign UI's almost always for the worse, and I am unable to opt out in any way. Windows is an utter nightmare to use, practically adware itself now, with parts of fucking EXPLORER written in React because even MICROSOFT can't be fucked to develop software properly now apparently.
people are negative because tech sucks lately? ahahaaha