The Permanent Upper Crow
permanent-upper-crow.jasonwu.ink
permanent-upper-crow.jasonwu.ink
What does the device do? He doesn't know.
The author's actual take is way less cynical. It seems he wanted to point out that a world where you try to save yourself at all costs while the majority suffers is not a good world.
See: https://www.jasonwu.ink/signals/2026-05-27-permanent-upper-c...
It's simply: saving yourself (by getting rich or whatever) before AI puts us all out of a job is not good, because the majority of the world will suffer and that's not good for anyone.
"Jumping so late onto the bandwagon by buying shares like that is for losers! Winners are people bold enough to be entrepreneurs who make the stuff and sell the shares. (Like I'm going to do, because I'm smarter than that crow.)"
I must warn that it isn't the most charitable random-ass-theory of a stranger's worldview... but it would resolve the apparent inconsistency.
> A world where a majority of the population is suffering is not a world good for anyone. Even from a selfish perspective, does you making it into the elite class mean the people you care about will too? Who wants to eat caviar alone on the moon?
I agree, though I would have stopped at the first sentence.
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[1] https://www.jasonwu.ink/signals/2026-05-27-permanent-upper-c...
I made this on a whim yesterday. It's inspired by many of my experiences talking to folks in the AI space. While it paints a grim picture, I still have hope that we'll find a way out of this mess in the future.
I also want to give some recognition for the visual inspirations here. The characters are inspired by one of my favorite indie games: Death's Door. I played this in Seoul a few years ago and ended up not sleeping the entire night just to play it. It's very affordable (even for undercrows), and will probably inspire many more of my future works. Not getting paid to say this - I simply think birds are cool.
Remember - if you keep grinding, you might just be able to don that top hat...
Cheers loves!
Here's a link to the verse in many translations: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Timothy%206:10
I think your game would fit quite well in that collection of "political" indie games. Which, in my opinion, is high praise.
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It's interesting watching each new generation relate to the rat race, but this current framing seems toxic. The economy is not a zero sum game. I worry about the amount people coming into the work force now thinking that unless they acquire generational wealth by 30 then they've wasted their life. That's a recipe for unhappiness.
Save money. Skip the top hat.
That's kinda the lesson of the game, how pointless it is, right?
The Left Behind version of the Rapture.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
For example:
- Do you really need a new car, when a lightly used one will do just fine and will be more economical?
- Do you really need to upgrade to a new phone every year when your current one is still working fine?
- Do you really need to buy premium clothes from the mall when the ones from Target are much cheaper?
https://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerscommunities/sheddata...
I'm not sure if credit is the ideal solution, nor if additional credit would be beneficial.
- I have bought a new car exactly once in my life, and likely never will again. This is the same as pretty much every other person I know personally. The last vehicle I bought had over 300k miles on it.
- Does anyone buy a new phone every year? I've never met them.
- Do you really need the fancy clothes from Target when the ones from Walmart or Goodwill are much cheaper?
Yes, I absolutely know folks who buy new phones every year, and who lease new cars and upgrade every 3 years. Most of whom really can't really afford to do these things but do it anyway and end up in increasing debt.
And sure, buy clothes from Walmart if you have a Walmart location near you. I just picked the nearest big-box store to me, for some reason Walmart doesn't have much of a presence out where I am.
(The takeaway I got from the game is "don't try to buy the hat, it's a trap". I'm curious what your takeaway was?)
> I'm absolutely not saying this alone is sufficient - particularly if you're unemployed or your job truly doesn't pay a living wage.
and I agree with that completely. I can definitely get behind not buying the hat (or buying a cheaper hat) but at some point it's not a hat, it's a vehicle that you need to get to work or a home repair or medical bill or something and your options become a) buy the cheap thing (and buy it again in six months when it breaks and is now more expensive) or b) walk away and suffer the consequences. I've done both, and neither really feels like winning.
Look around where your posting and remember that Apple has an upgrade program as well as most US cell carriers that will push you to upgrade your phone. Let a lone the thousands of Apple product release threads where people brag about buying the latest and greatest device.
> Do you really need the fancy clothes from Target when the ones from Walmart or Goodwill are much cheaper?
Now I’m confused, are Target brands considered fancy?
- Do you really need to keep your children in school or contribute to their higher education, when you can just let them roam free on the streets or better yet, work down at the factory and earn their keep?
- Do you really need children at all, when an AI digital pet might satisfy that need much more economically?
- Do you really need expensive dental crown implants or dentures, when you can whittle yourself some chompers out of beechwood and call it a shuccshesh?
- Do you really need to own a home in a neighbourhood that is safe and close enough to your place of employment, when you can rent in a rough area of town and spend hours commuting on public transport?
Looking after your health or taking proper care of your kids is really not in the same category as spending less on veblen goods.
(I'm noticing that people are getting very different messages from this game.)
In that game, if you played "well" you ended up destroying the world. The only winning move was, indeed, not to play.
At the end a strategic defense computer is asked to play Tic Tac Toe against itself and suddenly "learns" about no-win scenarios. Then it does the same with nuclear launch scenarios, and finds that they're all no-win. It decides that nuclear war "is a strange game", and "the only winning move is not to play".
I very intentionally meant that it also applies to Oiligarchy [1], an actual game (not a movie) where the winning move was not to play :)
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though I would argue the current state is more reflective of reality...
cheers
(Worked at a couple of startups, didn't get rich, but had good experiences, paid for family needs, and put aside investments for the future.)
"What if I told you you can buy that $10 hat today using borrowed money that you don't have, pay $1/year interest for the rest of your life until you pay it back, but you have to earn $2/year more in order to have $1/year more to pay, but to earn $2/year more, your company has to earn $3/year more"
"Oh and you also need to buy insurance for that $10 hat because it's not yours, and you have to pay us for the insurance we're going to buy in addition to the insurance you're going to buy to insure us from you, so that'll be another $1, or you have to make $2 more to have $1, or your company needs to make $3 more, so now your company needs to make $6/year more"
"Oh and we're also going to devalue the $ so you actually need to make $10/year more because a $ won't be worth that much in a couple years"
Super cool concept
I mean do the math... Who buys anything from the robot overlords if we're all jobless? How do states exist without tax revenue? Why would anyone pay money to get a factory full of robots to make something if nobody's going to I buy it? Somebody please answer that last one
A lot of electronic contracts are done like that and... nope, not clicking it... Mmmmm.... nope.
[1]": https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/opinion/ai-labor-work-for...
(Gift article)
In fact, the repo says:
This is my social commentary on the "Permanent Upper Class" philosophical virus that has spread through San Francisco tech communities like the plague in the last year or so. You can read the original blog post [here].
While the game tells a grim story, my goal with this is to show how ridiculous this way of thinking is. I'm actually more optimistic that humans will find a way to prevent this future but if we don't then I suppose none of us will don top hats for eternity.