Comment by ragazzina
2 days ago
>The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
The author could stop eating at McDonald's and send a message to the company with his behaviour. But he does not care.
>The guy on the hiking trail is playing his shitty EDM on his bluetooth speaker, ruining nature for everyone else. He does not care.
The author could ask the guy to turn off the music and make the hiking trail more pleasurable for everyone. But he does not care.
Et cetera. He cares for views on his blog so he writes on his blog.
The last time I asked someone to turn down the music they dropped their bag to their feet and headed straight to punch me out.
Maybe the wisdom is to just not care, and know you'll die soon, who cares.
Every generation is a shitshow after the next.
This is why concealed carry is so important.
> The author could ask the guy to turn off the music
People who tend to blast their music on a loudspeaker are not exactly the kind of people who are going to accept the message.
Doesn't this work for every point then?
> Programmers should speak up against managers who want to upsell fries, but they don't care.
Managers who tend to upsell fries are not exactly the kind of people who are going to accept the message.
Broadly speaking yes.
The goals of managers (and business in general) are profit maximization, and of course upselling exists exactly for that. And if a manager decided that we need to add another upselling screen then it's more or less futile to disagree from the position of a subordinate employee. The decision has been thought of and made.
One time I asked a guy on the bus to turn his music down. (He was wearing headphones but also blasting music out of a bluetooth speaker.) He got extremely upset and threatened to beat me up. Everyone else on the bus got away from us. Nobody seemed willing to help me if he attacked. Fortunately the bus came to a stop about 20 seconds later and he got off.
I have since moved out of the SF bay area and I drive everywhere. My life is much more pleasant.
I get where you are coming from and also got the impression that this guy is just bitching about people not doing things the way he wants them to.
But, I catch myself doing this sometimes, though the motive for my gripe may be a bit different. The music on the trail one is a good example, since I like to hike. Generally speaking, most people are respectful out on the trails because we are all there for a similar reason; to connect with nature and relax our mind/spirit while we get our dose of motion medicine. It's an immersive experience, but that immersion and the comradery that comes with it is broken by people who disrupt the serenity of the experience by not considering how their actions effect other people around them.
If I apply that to the examples, that "nobody cares about the impact of their actions on the lives of others" it clicks. Yes, it's heavily cynical, but it is hard not to be, most days, which is why I hike (among other hobbies) to get out of my own head and shed that default cynicism for a bit.
Maybe the author feels that way, but didn't articulate it well enough? Or maybe it's just a hard thing to convey since it always appears as just bitching about the way things are. I guess I empathize, but would have approached it differently.
Y'all seem to willfully miss the point.
A lot of people are just not very conscientious.