Hey y’all,
I hope this post is on-topic for the sub and isn’t too effortful. To the mods: please remove this if it ain’t OK.
This post and this post along with many others in this sub stuck with me after I read them, they’ve touched a nerve.
I used to be the typical SSC reader. 20s, white, male, straight, middle class, college educated etc. I lived and breathed computers, thought about everything as a technical problem that I could oversimplify into a pop-sci solution (preferably with an app).
Stumbling across the SSC was a real breath of fresh air, it felt exciting that people were taking these big problems and breaking them down into a tasty brain snack for me. I thought I’d found my people. I read and I shared. I felt comforted that when Scott was tackling these subjects he knew what he was talking about because he clearly a smart guy, with a lot of medical knowledge.
But over time, doubts began to creep in. People seemed weirdly obsessed with a few strange topics like race or IQ. But a big one for me personally was history. I really like history, always have. Amazing stories, revolutions, wars, politics etc. Studying even a bit made me realize how complicated all these events, peoples and places are. Enough to know that I didn’t know very much. So I made a habit of checking the facts every time someone on reddit/social media brought up history. And they are wrong. A lot. Staggering amounts of bullshit get passed around with a straight face to serve some pathetic point that’s half-forgotten tomorrow.
So I started to do this with not just history, but all the stuff I read, including SSC, and that lead me here. Around the same time, I started learning that politics, philosophy and so on aren’t just people sitting around daydreaming but they are thinking about big, tough problems that impact people’s lives. I learnt that technical problems aren’t just technical, but they involve a load of ethical and moral implications too, and they aren’t easily solved by empowering programmers or tweaking a spreadsheet. I learnt that even the strongest SSC theories barely hold water, and the worst are offensive, ignorant or just plain awful.
This was all happening as my faith in big tech was basically falling apart. When I was young, technology was always improving, exciting, making people’s lives better day by day. Everything got faster, better, smaller, and we could communicate easily and share knowledge with one another. But where I once looked at companies like Apple, Facebook and Google with respect, now I basically hate them. Facebook is a rapacious ad-hungry machine that constantly attempts to trick you to give them more data, Google has traded “Don’t be evil” for “Be evil, but low-key and don’t get caught”, and Apple is obsessed with profit over user experience, dodges taxes, overcharges and constantly under-delivers on quality.
And that’s before all the really sinister stuff. Like buying facebook likes and twitter followers. Scamming desperate people out of money for medical help or investment advice. Preying on people to sell IAPs and lootboxes. It’s intertwined with the industry. It’s nourished and grown as “engagement” by tech companies. No one in this chain gives a shit about the user.
I now work for a technical company in a technical role, and I hate it. I hate our client list, which is full of shitty consumer goods and oil companies, I hate the people I work for, who pump out code that breaks all the time that I get blamed for/have to deal with, I hate what I do all day, which is repetitive IT work that only gets worse, I hate who I work with, who are the most irritating and/or useless people.
I have mental health issues, mostly because of all this crap. I tried medication and it sucked. I have a therapist, who is great, but I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress.
All through my life, I had no idea this was all leading to a capitalist nightmare dystopia. And the worst part is, nobody gives a fuck. Snowden revealed we’re all being spied on, that intelligence agencies are sucking up the most intimate parts of our lives, just to abuse it. NSA techs used global surveillance technology to spy on their exes. And what happens? Nothing. I try to talk, in plain English and politely, about the downsides of using computers to try and fix a non-technical problem, or problems with software like accessibility or UX, or how to manage computer issues like security or maintainability, to people and they don’t give a fuck.
From what I see this sub is fairly left leaning, and from my perspective, I fucking hate capitalism. I think it’s at the core of what’s ruined this industry. It’s gone from a bunch of well-meaning college hippies who wanted people to be freerer with these kooky “computer” things, to a bunch of suits who use that tech + that message to profit off and scam everyone in sight.
Whenever I bring up objections to pretty much anything (capitalism, computers, data, consumer culture), even extremely mild ones, people don’t want to know. The culmination of that was when I was talking to someone about people who go to work for Google, save everything they get and retire in ten years. I said this was awesome, and the person responded “Yeah, but what would you do all day?”. I gave up after that.
And here I come, finally, to the point: I hate everyone around me. I have the classic SSC thing of thinking most people around me are “too stupid to count as human”. Even being around these people is difficult. I can’t help but see this whole system just renders peoples lives pointless and meaningless. I can’t be around them because it just reminds me: You consume, you pretend and then you die. Nobody creates anything any more.
I don’t know why I’m writing this other than I’m bored and procrastinating, instead of doing work. This will probably get downvoted or whatever, but I don’t really care any more.
So to anyone who’s made it through all this: How am I supposed to stop hating these people? How do I opt out of this bullshit system?
TL;DR Used to be a SSC reader with an ego, now I’m a SneerClub reader with depression. What do?
i went through a similar shift about 15 years ago, so even tho all of the details are different i know what you are going through. you feel powerless because everything in society is terrible and you can’t personally fix anything, and that is on top of whatever personal-scale bullshit you have going on in your life otherwise. here are a few things that helped me get through my version of the crisis:
these changes took me several years to make fully, but even the first little changes made a big difference in my life
Stop reading any of this shit, unsubscribe, if that doesn’t help, install leechblock or any other browser plugin that allows you to block sites. Focus on literally anything else. SSC wasn’t healthy for you, and SC is also not healthy for you. Also, go talk to a therapist / doc about that depression.
Well, you can’t opt out of this bullshit system really. If you figure that one out, let me know.
When you say “hating these people,” you mean the people you view as with “subpar intelligence” (or something), yeah? Maybe this is a bit of simplistic answer to co-opt your thinking, but: those people are also subject to the same system, often with even less choice than you. You’re not upset at other people, you’re upset at what “the system” does to other people. You gotta take “we’re all fucked” to “we’re all fucked together.” Who do you think is worth subjecting to being fucked by the current system? I hope it’s no one.
I consider myself lucky for growing up before this rationalist movement really took off. I remember the libertarian/rationalist/social darwinist high school phase. I can still remember the point where a teacher made me realize how much of a dick me and my friend were for those beliefs. If I had run to (more) people on the internet backing me up with that belief, I don’t know what would have happened. (Then again, how much we’re fucked is clearer now.) I don’t remember what was said, I just remember that moment.
It’s a really tempting thought pattern that makes the world a lot easier. I have been really tempted lately, especially with a brain injury that left my analytical brain good but social brain bad (this is oversimplifying but you get the point). I socialize much less, meaning hanging out with friends, but I still work on behalf of other people. I can draw a clear distinction between “my attitudes towards socializing with other people” (I’d rather skip it) and “how society should treat other people.”
There’s a few kind of trite sayings that I actually find helpful: “you can’t pour from an empty cup” and “you can’t change the world, but you can change the world for one person.” These are not easy thoughts to believe. Like, if I try to think about the whole US even, I think “my job is fucking pointless and a waste of time.” But if I remember a specific client, it’s not. I have no fucking clue how to fix this in IT.
I’ve found myself best when I believe those things. I don’t right now and they’re really hard to believe sometimes. It’s not a magical spell, but it’s a place to start. The important thing to start is 1:1 human connections.
Basically, what /u/JustAnotherQueer already said except I’m prolly way more high
edit: “SSC wasn’t healthy for you, and SC is also not healthy for you” was right. If I can’t sort of laugh at and mock the post, I just close the window and wait for the next sneerclub thread that doesn’t make me feel terrible feelings and I can just make fun of the linked content.
It’s funny how so many of us have similar stories. I didn’t ever delve into LessWrong or any of those, but I have had similar experiences
The two bolded parts are so fucking spot on for me, it’s wild.
I very much think that a good, enthusiastic education in History, particularly one that focuses on media and propaganda, is pretty much the best antidote to a lot of this stuff. I also happened to not grow up in north america, which helped tons in developing perspective.
I used to go on r/samharris to argue and present some link-packed diatribes against people like Steven Pinker or whomever, and I became more and more aggressive and flippant until they banned me, which was fun.
I don’t think the joy of arguing is something that needs to be suppressed though, and I disagree that going cold turkey or avoiding any related communities like SneerClub is bad (no expert, though). I just found more productive places to argue, where my values are more aligned, and disagreements are actually conducive to refining of opinions on e.g. politics or goals, and lead to projects and activism, rather than pure grounding attrition and frustration.
There’s a lot of good advice in the comments already.
One thing that helps me: keep perspective. SSC is not the world, it’s just an annoying internet niche. San Francisco is not the world. Google is not the world. Even the entire internet media ecosystem is but a small part of the world.
Your interest in history can be useful in helping you keep perspective. Another one: go to “church.” Church does not have to be church, it can be synagogue, mosque, a homeless shelter, meals on wheels, whatever. Something to get you out of your head and focused on seeing and helping other people around you. It will help make the internet arguments seem… appropriately irrelevant.
lol nerd.
but seriously, same, except that they didn’t get to me first. bog-standard libertarianism got to me first, which is worse.
[deleted]
Joint a community that understands how bullshit the current system is might help, check your local area for anarchist groups as they tend to be less restrictive with who can join.
This is very relatable. Honestly, the main reason I think I didn’t ever become a real part of the rationalist community despite reading a lot of their material was that I had one friend I knew I could discuss their ideas with. He had (less now) a preoccupation on winning every argument (yes, it was tiring) and I could anticipate what he would latch onto and pick apart. So, if I ever found an interesting SSC post I wanted to share with him, I would always have to prefix it with a statements anticipating what he would say, “yes, this part is insensitive to/oversimplifies this, but…”. We would often end up mocking the piece/community together and I didn’t want to be a member of a community that’s a joke.
I don’t know about you, but my misanthropy stems from my self-loathing. I’ve heard it described as: I need validation from others because I place no value in myself. I can’t admit that, but I found out if I act smart and aloof people give me respect, and that can be enough to live on for a while. Trouble is, when I realised how meagre and unsustainable this is, I couldn’t keep doing it. Then, the anhedonia turned to real depression and I had to seek help.
I share all your concerns about what the tech industry is like at the moment and I felt the exact same way about most of my career options in it. I don’t want to help Google target ads more effectively. But, that doesn’t mean that creativity is dead or that the world can’t be changed. Look at Wikipedia, Linux, Sci-Hub…
If you’re “20s, white, male, straight, middle class, college educated” in tech you have more power than most. Are you going to write a piece of code that single-handedly fixes everything? Probably not. But, can you do something useful to a huge number of worthy causes? Definitely. And, you only need to find one, because the virtue of being only one person is that the maximum you can do is that one small thing. That’s enough.
what makes you think anyone ever did? ;)
i’ve had a lot of luck with ACT therapy to deal with my (clinically diagnosed) existentialism. there’s a great book, the happiness trap, which you might find helpful. basically, accept that the universe sucks, and then commit to doing things you find meaningful anyway, because fuck you, universe.
you could also try some other, less clinical version of religion. YMMV tho. whatever you do, try and find some locals you mesh better with, it’ll do you wonders.
Does hating everyone come up in therapy? Do you ever experience that hate towards yourself or your therapist while you’re in there?
[deleted]
[deleted]
Like, nobody is trying to build the version of EA/LW that isn’t pwned by techbros and actually cares about doing things. (any of you can message me if this sounds interesting to you).
Look at the sneerclub comments that are like, “just do direct action and get a liberal arts degree”. Sounds like giving up on having an impact to me.
People are pwned by the social systems they’re in, like in your early retirement example. They mostly can’t break out of this. IMO the implication of this is that you’re going to be on your own a lot if you want to change the world where others failed (unless you find similar people).
[deleted]
I’m 40, discovered LW a little under a decade ago (through TV Tropes, of all things), and … there’s stuff in the Sequences that I think is valuable (granting the Sherlock criticism). I think Bayesianism, broadly understood, is a good way of looking at the world. Scott’s explanation of consequentialism and of the flaws of libertarianism still sound good, even if he scrubbed the latter from the internet.
The community and the culture are still shit, but LW itself gives me the tools to recognize that doesn’t entirely reflect on the ostensible underlying ideas
You have to question disappointment. Like anger, it is there to deflect more vulnerable emotion. Let yourself go deeper into the disappointment and feel the pain underneath it. If you stop any one of your major self-distraction patterns, and then try to look at your thoughts, stuff will come up. It’s not fun. What you’re talking about is massive disappointment in how the world is.
I had to accept disappointment had a deeper meaning that was worth looking at. I can’t tell you what I found there. You have to go and see what is there for yourself.
Similarly, if you hate people, you may have incurable intimacy issues due to temperament, but you can always work on yourself, and there is no way that hating people isn’t an extension of being harsh on yourself. It’s just not possible. I’m not going to make some blanket statement like “it’s a choice to see rotting capitalism all around you,” but what you have a choice about is complaining/deflecting versus being present to the anxiety and staying raw and open, trying to care enough about your experience to stay present and try to find even a small thing to cultivate.
Life has two layers. There is a bullshit layer where people make small talk and are basically avoiding anxiety and eating food and watching TV. Then there is the hopes and dreams stuff underneath where people are raw and tormented and afraid of how powerless they are. And there’s actually a lot of beauty in looking at that more closely and learning how to abide those feelings without falling apart. Whenever we scapegoat society, we do it by turning our creative energies into something cheaper. It’s fast food.