Fuck 'em

It's a very careless thing to say "Fuck'em" to all the people that care about you enough to take an interest in how your life turns out. For the most part they aren't trying to box you into some mindless, slave-like existence, but really just want you to have a plan-B in case your rockstar/pro-snowboarder/billionaire-entrepreneur career doesn't work out.

I think many people who advise us in our young age grew up in a time when "travelling & writing" just wasn't a conceivable reality because there wasn't a market for any of that "finding yourself" bullshit. They were part of a society that was too busy putting a car in every garage and a chicken dinner in every dining room (and eventually sending kids to college and on Euro-trips).

I'm not saying you shouldn't go couch surfing across Eastern Europe if that's really what makes you feel alive, but don't dismiss an entire cultural mindset that made it possible for you to do so with a passport that will allow you across nearly every border in the world. "Travelling", for many non-westerners, means waiting for 2 years and checking with an embassy every single day to see if your Visa has been approved so your family can board a plane that allows you to leave your country for more than 6 months.

I personally found the correspondence in the comments between Adrian and Eric (the author) more interesting than the article itself.

It kinda highlights the contradiction between what people say, and what people do. Fuck 'em? Sounds bold! But "driving a minivan with two baby seats in the back" well, that sounds...like me in five years.

Stated alternately, there's an awful lot of people online with regularly updated blogs, twitter accounts and other social profiles who seem particularly compelled to tell me how amazing their lives are.

This came off offensive to me. Kids and a house may not be your ideal life, but many people have that life and don't consider it "lame ass". Some people are actually happy and not constantly regretting roads they didn't take in life. I'm wondering if you're the one who is insecure and depressed.

It's a good thing we exist in the top percentile of the world's population that affords us even the luxury to consider this sort of thing.

I think the advice I would give is, before settling into a course in life, go out and meet as many people you can. Try to just observe and see outcomes. That way you have an idea of what lives are like along certain paths (in general).

Myself, I really only had the example of my parents and some relatives. I don't regret this, because I really like my path in life. It is not easy, but it is driving.

However, if I could give myself advice, it would be to mingle more with more people from more diverse lifestyles, just to see outcomes, attitudes and daily lives.

> What if you volunteered some time in a developing country and met someone who’d never spent a moment thinking about Chandler and Monica?

Most organizations that send volunteers to developing countries are either evangelical or are looking for educated people with skills, both of which require the kind of conformism that this piece rallies against.

BTW, in all seriousness, who are Chandler and Monica?

I want to shout it from the rooftops: Dear Internet, stop telling me to make stuff! Stop telling me to do things!

This whole "cog in the machine" notion is a myth. The world is fascinating, people are fascinating. Always has been, always will be.

I would counter this entire article with one of my favorite quotes, from the movie Adaptation:

"Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life!"

I hate to be the downer, but this "fuck 'em" attitude doesn't work for most people. Sure, society is mean-spirited, limiting, imbecilic, and cutthroat. The ratrace literally serves no purpose (it's a sterilized, time-consuming social-climbing circus that has almost nothing to do with work, and is not necessary to get done the work society actually needs, more often getting in the way of actual work) but one cannot just take 5 years out of it and get back into the game with the same status. Ageism is huge in the business world (you lose opportunities as you get older and less "shiny") and even one year is a massive, often intolerable loss.

The "fuck 'em" attitude would be great if it were sustainable, but it's not. You can't keep living like a teenager when you're in your 40s. Want to have kids? Then, you need to own your house (it's good for their self-esteem and has measurable effects on their social and academic success to own the house they live in) and get them into good schools and make sure they have the opportunities (intellectual, athletic, creative, occupational) that will socialize them well and provide them with the connections to have a decent shot of actually achieving something instead of just being some entitled guy's pawn. Otherwise, you're just generating middle-grade meat for society to munch on. So kids are super-expensive, but you can't really have them at age 60, and you better have laid your groundwork (career-wise) for many years before you make that decision.

It makes me sick to read this bad advice that tells people they can just do what they want and that society will accept them for being unique, wonderful snowflakes. Or "do what you love and the money will follow". It's total bullshit. People generally suck and are mean-spirited and vindictive, and this idea that society will catch and nurture those who indulge themselves in a gap or two is ridiculous. You know what happens (if you're not rich and well-connected) to your career if you travel for 2 years after school? People resent the fuck out of you (because they didn't have or take that opportunity) and ding you for that alone. Six months of leisure travel when young is, for this reason, somewhat more of a liability than that amount of regular unemployment (which, post-2008, makes you look more unlucky than incompetent).

What you actually need to do is figure out what matters, what to care about, and how much. For example, you should care about your job well enough to do it well and get promotions. You should not care about it so much that you get into conflicts that damage your career. You should care about your success in the company (and in your career) but not about big-picture company-wide issues over which you have no influence. (Pay attention to these, because they may be relevant to your career, but don't get emotionally involved or take stupid risks, even when those risks benefit the company, because you won't give a shit about "good for the company" if you get fired.) You can't take a "fuck 'em" attitude or get a chip on your shoulder, but blind obedience to managerial authority is going to lead to mediocrity and misery and, in the long run, anomie. Somewhere between "yes, sir" douchebaggery and "fuck 'em" is the right attitude-- the "middle path".

Boiled down it's just saying "Don't be a sheep" (Perfect Circle's "Counting Bodies Like Sheep" music video popped in my head).

I've read a lot of the posts on that site and it always amazes me how people's knee jerk reaction is "you don't know me - don't tell me how to live".

Geezuz Jump-roping Christ - panties have never been bunched up so quickly by so many by so few words.

Hey, someone has to work at <insert your favorite low-wage-but-I-saw-the-world-and-write-poetry employer 'cause I don't want to offend anyone>.

Seriously now. The path characterized in the article as "the plan" is not for everyone. And that's fine. I wish I were an America's Cup competitor. I am not. I am a pretty good recreational sailor. And that's OK. I chose to follow a path that led me to engineering and serial entrepreneurship. We don't all have to follow the same path.

So long as the focus is positive there's value in every path.

A better title for the post might have been "...and that's OK".

Summary:

Fuck everything.

Or not.

I don't know man, do whatever.

Every tiger mom should read this.

A thoughtless sentiment. I can't imagine anyone reading (or writing) a post like this and being inspired for longer than 10 minutes. There are many such sentiments on the web and in books, of course.

Imagine, if you will, this sentiment applied to the art of computer programming. "Fuck 'em" you say one day. "I don't need to listen to the hoary old bastards of CS - I can do things my way." This lasts exactly as long as it takes you to run into the exact same issues as the "hoary old bastards of CS" - and what do you know, you find yourself unable to even begin coming up with novel solutions.

This is not to say that it isn't useful to revisit the origins of the art - it is. And it's not to say that some people do precisely this, to some extent, and come back with something useful. Rich Hickey and Clojure are one example, and Bret Victor and his (sadly proprietary) prototypes another. There are more, of course, and they tend to be the stars of the industry.

There are not that many successful rebels. Many more attempt to buck the trend, and simply fail to produce anything that even works, and if they do, then it's usually just not that useful to people. A failed rebel, you come back to the traditional ways, tail between your legs, and build software like anyone else, contenting yourself with flourishes and, perhaps, being an early adopter (because if you can't design something novel and useful, you might as well be an early advocate for something novel and useful.)

The tradeoffs, risks, and odds are basically the same for life. You can indeed say "Fuck 'em" but chances are you'll end up a failed rebel. There is a non-zero chance you'll succeed wildly, and find a life that is novel and successful. But you'll be the exception, not the rule.