Hands in every basket and nothing to show for it… Well, I found commiseration, and maybe even confirmation, putting a name to a thing that I too apparently have experienced, though to a lesser degree than some.
I recently discovered a website called the 512KB club in my pursuit to make my own website. Not really sure what I’d want it to be, but a part of the small web, and I am glad to see I am not the only one that wants to make a little page with things like my thoughts and rambles, interests, just a repository of things I wanna have stored some where. So that’s good. Not myspace or facebook, because those come with other dipshits and their need to express their unwanted and likely stupid opinion, but if I make my own, it’s mine. I’m not at the whims of some dumb as billionaire or CEO, not making them money by having 10,000 ads all the time, not catering to or feeding the algorithm, not putting my thoughts and ideas out there for some other assclown to get rich off of while some other ignorant ass gets their rocks off at disparaging my thoughts so they can feel better about their own stupid existence.
Anyway, so that’s cool. And I came across a site called Cocoweb.fr - Programming with AI has a gambling problem and have a little bloggy blog, because. And so I fell into the first link and their is this video from a week ago from The Prime Time What is wrong with us?!. It’s wild that I have been finding myself on this guy’s stuff lately, last few months, not so much by the youtube algorithm, but more organically from lemmy, or reddit, and now this person’s independent website.
And lo! For he speaketh words which describe a feeling, a situation, an experience, that I have also experienced. Recently in fact, though to a lesser degree, thank Gilgamesh, but have thought about nonetheless. There is was at the 9 minute mark: Basically, he’s describing what I have been experiencing: In the before times it both took time, and one couldn’t just try to do everything you ever thought of, but now, the “ai” makes that so much quicker and easier. But also, you often just make shit, spent more time than you should have, and have little to actually show for. It might be impressive to the real dumdums, but to someone like him, or me, it’s just wasted time.
He basically makes the same argument as above. And the idea of this excessive “productivity” and yet, really, nothing to actually show for it. So it is really productive? I would argue, being productive means you produced something. Otherwise is a toil. Maybe it is toil for something you’re actually interested in. And learning what you’re good at and what you aren’t, and don’t like, and how to be better at it are all good things. But how many folks are really that introspective? Maybe more than I thought, but also, how much of this bullshit productivity mind set is imposed on us to ‘be productive’ or ‘increase productivity’ and yet, what do we actually produce? Smaller aquifers? Larger electricity bills? Smaller bank accounts? Who really gains here? I think it is like a drug in a way. Suddenly the appearance of the ability to solve all these problems, manifest these ideas that hae been knocking around forever, and suddenly, here comes this fucking djinn who has all the answers, so we we think. It’ll solve all these pesky problems we’ve run up against before in the past, those hurdles and barriers that held us back. Suddenly, I am productive! Look at that I did! Except, we didn’t really do anything, aside from talk to the ai a bunch, and it said things that made us think we were smart, while not actually getting anywhere. My stupid a.d.d. brain loves this, it’s like accomplishing, thinking about all the cool things, discussing it, while not actually having to do it, or at least start doing it. Ah, anyway. At least I’m not the only one, and far, far from the worst. It definitely does describe my last few months of flailing from idea to idea, trying new things and getting nowhere. Not committing to anything, because my idea is there but taking all the time to learn all the languages (C#, Go, HTML, BASH) take more time than my attention span will often allow for. And then I get bogged down, or I fall down this rabbit hole and that gopher hole, I might make a little progress here and there, but ultimately I realize that I’ve spent a lot of time basically not going anywhere, and realizing that the mountain is a lot bigger up close than it seemed before. Then I get distracted by the next shiny thing and go down another rabbit hole to not accomplish that task either, before we start the cycle all over again.
This is also coming after I went hard in the paint into Magic and really did spend a lot of time and effort building decks, really grilling the AI and EDHrec, spending a lot of time and mental energy on perfecting them just to run up against a wall or it just not performing. Then, couple that with playing with randos and weirdos and folks I don’t know, sometimes folks I’d really rather never play against again, and we have a recipe for burn out. So then, the stupid ai that was so helpful before, can help pivot to other things. And it’s little sycophantic ways, which it seems to be oblivious to, even when you point it out, doesn’t stop making you think you’re so smart. Even if it is just the thinking of the things and ‘wow, I unlocked this arcane knowledge’, and we get to be like Garry CEO Y Combinator guy, high on his own farts, thinking he is so brilliant because he put a collection of prompts in .md files on the internets so other people can use his prompts. Wow. Or like the the other company leader man how matter of factly, and probably thinking is wage wizardly sage, saying “my idea of progress is moving things forward.” Wow, you idea of the word aligns with it’s definition. Profound, astute, brilliant. Genius. I hope he works for apple or something similar. Fer fecks sek.
This concept, this experience, of having all the fingies in the all the baskets, trying to do all the things, all the ideas, constant ideas, wanting to solve them all, and these stupid “ai” chatbots “helping” us, doing more and more things, yet, not really having much to show for it. This Garry whatever from Y Combinator, who we learned recently had this wow epiphany moment of brilliance that he created something so ground breaking, something so profound that it will change the world… a github repo of, what you ask!? Markdown files. Text files with prompts. Wow. Yeah, but he’s gotta stop drinking all together so he can be fresh to crank out 10,000 lines of code a day. Whatever the fuck that even means. I mean, 10,000 lines in COBOL != 10,000 in JAVA != 10,000 lines in Perl != 10,000 lines in C. It’s a meaningless metric, but a constant need to be productive. Need to get that productivity up at all times. Can’t drink, I got things to do and I don’t wanna be hazy. Shit, I’ve thought that over even just the fact that the Katie will angy at me. Reekris.
And I’ve been having this struggle. The stupid AI makes diving into something quickly so “easy” despite the fact that I really need to understand x, y, z, a, b, c, and j before actually starting, and that a problem in itself. The ai agents can make it quick and easy to dive into and start doing it, which is cool. But at the same time, dangerous, because there are so many more things to actually know and it’s speed running you through the process without, often, telling you all the nuanced bits of knowledge you might should know for the future or special cases.
But, interestingly, I like that a number of the pages I see on this 512KB club are simple. They’re just a few pages or rambles and interests. Or a CV. I like that. And it’s not like a myspace page from 2004. I like that I am not alone in the idea of a small web page, with some of my rambles or interests out there without the need for someone else to have to drive engagement by starting some stupid shit so some other dickhead can sell ads. I think the page should kind of be like a home. It’s mine and it’s not for every dickhead to comment on. I mean sure, they can, just like driving or walking past a house. You might see something they display you don’t agree with, but it’s not within your right, nor within acceptable decorum or behaviour, to just barge in and just start spewing your opinion at them for x, y, and z. Social media fucked that concept right on up. They made that antagonistic behaviour a profitable model. It might as well be that stupid jubilee bullshit, every interaction has to become a cage match. I mean, that’s obviously an exaggeration, clearly, not every where is or has to be that way. Lemmy isn’t. But at the same time, I think the barrier to entry with the Fediverse is, to some extent, a self sorting system. Generally the lower the barrier to entry, the more likely you will get shit heads. But! That’s not always the case. I guess it also depends on moderation. 4Chan and all it’s anonymous derivatives are cesspools of hatred and filth by design. I suppose they’re more like a clan rally, except you don’t have to be a member, you just are anonymous from the beginning to end.
Regardless.