I get the impression, whenever there are these "studies" about men's suffering, it's purely from the self-interested angle of getting men to do what the system wants them to do.
It's only a problem if they aren't getting what they want. Similarly with the whole "toxic masculinity" thing, you ask them what "non-toxic masculinity" looks like and it's just a bunch of self-serving bullshit.
I'm not saying women aren't pathologized similarly. But it seems like, we live in a world where scarcity is king and everyone is out for themselves. You can think otherwise at your own expense. People tend to idealize unconditional love (maybe because they miss childhood, I'm not sure).
The same unforgiving scarcity and brutality that animals experience in nature, we also experience, and it's the underlying truth of life. It's just that people don't seem to want to accept this. Maybe there are rare instances where you meet someone who shows grace, but reality tends to sink to the lowest common denominator. I'm not saying that life sucks in general, it's just that it sucks wherever scarcity is present. (Life is actually pretty great, it just seems like seeking fulfillment in the wrong places leads to disappointment)
Usually it's a management problem (like favoritism or something), so going to management is just going to put a target on your back.
Usually they've made a couple enemies. Just gang up with their enemies. If it's a group effort, there's only so much management can do at that point (depending on how much leverage they have). It's all dependent on the specific political situation.
This whole image of them being "well-liked" and socially invincible is just a play. Usually this type of person has made a shit ton of enemies. It may or may not be worthwhile depending on how shitty of a situation you're in, how bad the company's stack ranking and layoff quota is, how attached they are to you, etc
The Gervais Principle [0] argued that the nature of companies has "optimized" for serial bull shitters (Sociopaths, in its terms) to rise to the top of management.
The argument is that essentially that's become an entire "social class" of people, the people in especially upper management and the people of wealth/privilege.
For whatever reason our society has seemed to have evolved to a point that honesty does not "valuable" or a trait held by "wealthy people".
It's hard not to feel like this is a theme of the movie in question, too.
They aren't holding the whip unless you give them the whip. Biologically you are the one with leverage. Probably economically too. You're the one doing this to yourself. Either stop doing it to yourself, or stop complaining about it
Corporations could just do the same thing. Henry Ford historically had doubled people's salary to get them to have families. This was contingent on a bunch of paternalistic rules and inspections (like participants weren't allowed to drink for example).
From an organizational perspective, really cunning managers understand this: if your reports have kids, they probably aren't going to job hop for more money or better work. It gives significant leverage over employees.
So I don't see why the public sector would need to do this, either the public or private sector could do it. If you lump the US government in with the corporations as two agents which punch down, life in the US could actually be seen as more oppressive than other places. It really depends. The US could accomplish a relatively totalitarian end result with the same form of government just by creating a couple strong economic incentives for corporations. Generally the US govt in its current form prefers delegation to the private sector
> I also have a lot of international friends and family that would happily find me an international bride who would never divorce me, and would be happy to marry somebody with a US passport. In fact this is a somewhat common offer, though of course they never say it in those words. You can decide for yourself whether that is abuse, but at least I wouldn't feel comfortable with it.
I'm pretty sure in this specific case, they get an instant green card if abuse happens. So the incentives point in the opposite direction (pro-divorce)
That’s fair, but on the other hand they’re in a new country where they may not speak the language, and know almost nobody. To say nothing of religious/cultural views of divorce
The shared tools that people actually need like git or ms word already exist (because they're things we actually need). Maybe claude code / codex / opencode is the rare exception of a new thing which will survive long term (the coding agent idea in general, maybe not these three products in particular).
This kind of internal tooling always creates a window for empire building. The few things I've done that actually mattered at the jobs I've been at have mostly been in excel, and I'm a swe to boot. People don't want another internal tool, they want signal that helps them make business decisions.
Decent tooling is nice, but really over the top tooling can indicate organizational problems like misallocation of resources
Apparently they used facebook to incite backlash against the Indian government to bully them into allowing their Internet.org initiative to continue there (essentially a stripped down, anti-net-neutrality version of the internet which only allows people to use facebook and a couple other sites).
This was mentioned in Careless People. It seems like they wanted to use facebook as an electoral tool pretty early on because it gives them leverage over politicians. They might not have been deliberately involved in CA, but this is probably exactly what they wanted
I don't remember this but I do know about their Free Basics nonsense where people had letters supplied on their behalf by Facebook to India's telecom authority
That and a lot else Facebook does is a primary sin, end of story. This isn't conservative vs liberal. It's one very cynical man's view of humanity. I have very little respect for Mark Zuckerberg, and much contempt for him
It's only a problem if they aren't getting what they want. Similarly with the whole "toxic masculinity" thing, you ask them what "non-toxic masculinity" looks like and it's just a bunch of self-serving bullshit.
I'm not saying women aren't pathologized similarly. But it seems like, we live in a world where scarcity is king and everyone is out for themselves. You can think otherwise at your own expense. People tend to idealize unconditional love (maybe because they miss childhood, I'm not sure).
The same unforgiving scarcity and brutality that animals experience in nature, we also experience, and it's the underlying truth of life. It's just that people don't seem to want to accept this. Maybe there are rare instances where you meet someone who shows grace, but reality tends to sink to the lowest common denominator. I'm not saying that life sucks in general, it's just that it sucks wherever scarcity is present. (Life is actually pretty great, it just seems like seeking fulfillment in the wrong places leads to disappointment)
reply