An attempt to organize the varieties of tripe that are commonly present within social media.
- "I met Jensen Huang."
Perhaps this might be interesting if the post was about an actual conversation with him and shared the details of it.
It never is though. I've seen many posts about meeting this guy, and it's all pretty much "I met this famous guy." So fucking what. I get this might be an entertaining thing to share with your friends or family, but it's absolutely meaningless and unimportant to the rest of the world.
This wouldn't be tripe if there was something of note to share about the experience. It's tripe because it's posted more as a status thing and a way to manipulate whatever algorithms there are by mentioning a famous person. Eg: It's attention whoring at its finest: "Pay attention to me because I met this person."
- "Waiters should be paid a higher tip"
This is a slight variant from the typical X should get Y, as it is pro tipping culture, and is, imo, driven by people who want to make money fast doing easy work in a short amount of time. The idea that handing people plates of food should earn a person a percentage of the value of the plate of food is just crazy.
- "Mothers if paid fairly should make $180k/yr to take care of a child"
Yes. This is a real statement I've seen. It is based on the claim of 90 hrs per week, and I assume calculated from the cost of professional childcare.
There are a wide variety of problems with this claim:
- Typically the way this is phrased is only referring to mothers. This is a problem as both parents raise a child. It's sexist.
- There is an assumption that the parent is doing a good job. ( many don't )
- They seem to intentionally ignore the time a child is off at school and still claim it as time "worked".
- They don't acknowledge that there is a difference between watching a child and actively doing something to take care of the child.
- It compares uneducated untrained labor to positions that require many years of training followed by many years in a career in order to attain such a salary.
- It's insulting to people who have worked their whole life to reach the point of being able to make such a salary.
I think that being a parent is important, that raising children well is crucial to humanity, and that parents deserve to be respected and supported. They do not, though, deserve to be paid $180k / yr for what they do though. They are not bringing a company money in excess of that, and the child they are raising may be a complete failure and a net negative to humanity.
Choosing to have and raise children is something people choose to do because they want to do so. If you want to make money, have a career and work hard in industry. If you want to make money taking care of children, you can have a daycare, or be a teacher.
This whole tripism is based on the fallacy that "my time is worth $X". That is a horrible concept and is only bad for humanity.
Finally, if parents deserve to be paid $180k / yr even if they idly sit by and watch their child grow up to become a bum, how much should actual teachers be paid?
- "Social skills can't be taught, everything else can be"
Often this is paired with "we don't hire assholes", mention of the book "the no asshole rule", or similar. The claim is that anyone can be taught on the job everything they need to know except how to be a nice person.
This is absurd for a Software Engineering position, as ability to perform such work is not something all people are able to do, and something that many people attempting to get jobs doing it are poor at. This is why there are extensive interview processes to ascertain technical skill.
This type of nonsense is just virtue signaling, and is a total lie. Even supposing they could teach all the necessary technical skills, it wouldn't be worth it. When you hire an engineer you want them to "hit the ground running" as much as possible. You hire people who have familiarity with the tech you are using also, in order to reduce training time.
This nonsense is even more ridiculous for higher end roles that require years of experience and knowledge.
My personal counter to this total bullshit is "Friendly idiots are a dime a dozen."
- "Assholes" don't deserve jobs
It is common to test social skills when hiring. There is a certain level of failure in such testing where it is typical to reject a candidate. One way to refer to this practice is by the phrase "We don't hire assholes" or "No assholes allowed". At first glance this seems reasonable, because you think to yourself "who wants to work with an asshole?"
The trouble is that this measurement of "who is and is not an asshole" is highly subjective and is very easily turned into a cheap and easy way to reject any candidate you disagree with. This is especially common in companies with a "strong code of behavior", which equates in reality to behaving like a cult.
Many of us have met many "assholes" who we disliked in the workplace, and who seemed to be enabled by the system. Because of this, the idea of "banning or rejecting the assholes" is appealing to common sense.
The deeper problem with "measuring assholishness" is that it is claimed to be a permanent and clearly visible attribute of an individual.
This couldn't be further from the truth. There are people who behave like an asshole chronically. These are not the only people being rejected by the "no asshole evaluation".
Behaving badly is not an attribute. It is an action. It is not a part of who a person is. There is no person who we can reasonably say "This person is an asshole inherently and always." Humans are able to learn and modify their behavior. Further, even if it was true that a person could permanently "be an asshole", it is not true that such a person couldn't choose to behave in a proper and acceptable fashion within the workplace.
Essentially, those who push the "no asshole" concept are pushing thought crime and judgement by stereotype. They are often pushing some personal cult ideology as well. The anti-asshole is not a polite, accepting, and loving person. The anti-asshole is an asshole also, just a different variant. That variant is very judgemental and refuses to accept people who don't abide by their cult ideology.
Poster surfed the internet or flipped through some techy books, and found something that looks good. They copy and paste it to as a post, and get accolades for the wonderful stuff they came up with. They didn't, though, come up with it. It's plagiarism. Don't do this. If it was a short quote, and they source the quote, under US law it could be fair-use of copyrighted material. They never do that though. They always pretend as if they came up with the information themselves.
- Software Engineers aren't Engineers
There is no point to this idea or any discussion surrounding it.
- You aren't a Senior Software Engineer unless you X
Usually X in this case is something relatively reasonable for at least some amount of Senior Software Engineers to be able to do or be doing. The issue with this is the wording. It is obviously stupid garbage to say "All Senior Software Engineers X", and that is essentially what is being stated. People are very diverse, and the term "Senior Software Engineer" is so very vague that this stuff is obviously and completely false.
When you point out this statement is idiotic, the pundits supporting it go "You don't think Senior Software Engineers should be able to do X?" or "You don't think Senior Software Engineers should do X?" I never said anything such thing. The problem is the blanket sweeping statement. If you mean "It is a good idea to do X as a Senior Software Engineer" then say that. Don't say this sweeping nonsense that comes off as extremely arrogant. It is basically some random shitheads saying "I am the master of knowledge about being a Senior Software Engineer." No. You ain't.
This is tripe appended to the bottom of a post that has nothing to do with the post. It is usually an advertisement for something the poster is involved in, such as a newsletter they offer, or some service they want you to sign up for. While it can be reasonable to make a post about those things by itself, when dumped into an unrelated post it is just spam.
This one is specific to LinkedIn, in that a LinkedIn profile is itself a resume. Posting a resume to LinkedIn therefore is redundant, and worse oversharing. It appears to be someone attempting to be fully transparent in their search for a job but it is actually just more spam.
Examples:
- "We just hired X as Y"
- "I just got promoted to king super duper meaningless title"
- "It's X's workiversary"
Posting of a single link, either already URL shortened, or shortened by the social network it is posted to, such that you have no idea what it is and have no motivation to click on it.
"This post is a party for everyone who reads it to connect to each other"
A single anecdote is not much evidence of anything. Unless it is a reasonably scientific study of a wide number of people ruling out other effects most of this is nonsense and won't improve your ability to "get rich".
Examples:
- X got fired! X got re-hired!
- X died
- Apple hosted a press conference today, and released [unimpressive junk], and you should check it out!
- Rich person X is flying every day! 😠
This stuff is certainly news, but having all of your connections each post the same bit of popular news makes it pointless. If you are going to post something that is the same old shit, at least talk about it from your own viewpoint and contribute something to the conversation.
This is useless information disguised as a helpful sharing of some useful learning. Often it is an oversimplification of actual truth and looks like someone copied and pasted the first few paragraphs of an introduction to some topic.
Examples:
- "This is how to pass a FAANG interview"
- "You don't need college/university. Just take this online course."
Anything promoting extreme hard work as the key to having riches, success, fame, etc in life. The reality is that hard work doesn't guarantee any of this, and that it is better to have a balanaced and sustainable lifestyle than attempting to overwork yourself to success.
Posting a quote, that, while potentially interesting, might as well be a random quote pulled from a random book of quotes and posted for no reason whatsoever. Quotes are interesting sure, but spamming people you know with them is just annoying and pointless. If you are going to post a quote, say something yourself about it, and something more than "hey look I like this quote."
These are things that are shared that exaggerate a concern, encourage fear, or promote a misunderstanding of things that are actually well understood. This exaggeration may be intentional or unintentional. The author knowing that what they are posting is FUD is not necessary for it to be such.
- Accessing websites is unsafe
The post or argument explains that using the internet in a standard fashion is risky and will likely result in your being "hacked". Often there is some technical argument and the post is disguised as a PSA to make you aware that some specific way of accessing the internet is unsafe.
Examples:
- "Using public wifi is unsafe"
- "Following shortened URLs is dangerous"
- "Visiting shady websites is unsafe"
-
LLMs are taking our jobs
-
BitLocker has been broken!
Someone extracted a saved password from a TPM module plugged into a motherboard. This was inevitable, and is not newsworthy at all. Now everyone is going around saying BitLocker is broken. This has nothing to do with BitLocker imo, and everything to do with the absurd notion that "You can't extract data from a TPM" which was never true to begin with.
Mind you I would never trust BitLocker, but this bit of nonsense news is not why.
- "LLMs are stealing our content"
This one is interesting because LLMs do in fact ignore Copyright notices and ingest content in a way that many reasonable people view these systems as whitewashing Copyright theft. The common claim is that what is being done is illegal, when this is rarely if ever true.
The reason for these posts clearly seems to be that there is a gap in current law. It remains to be seen whether what is currently done will become illegal or not.
- "X is a Pedo"
Pedophilia is generally defined as a sexual attraction / interest in prepubescent children. This is rarely the way this term is applied. The majority of the people being accused of being a pedo are actually hebephiles, which is being attracted to young children that have already reached puberty. Because hebephilia is viewed as nearly just as bad, this distinction is discarded and the inaccurate term continues to be applied.
Additionally, the term is often applied as meaning "you abuse children". It does not generally mean that. Pedophilia is the attraction / interest, not the action of abuse. This misapplication is justified with phrases such as "but they are likely to abuse children", or "but they will abuse children if given the chance". Such lines of logic are equivalent to thought crime, the idea that thinking or wanting something is equivalent to actually engaging in an action.