Scott Steps on the Third Rail
It’s really tough out there right now.
Everyone I know is stressed.
They’re either stressed because they’re looking for a job, and the mechanisms to find jobs have all been completely fucked. Or they’re stressed because they have a job but it feels like a machete is hanging over their head, ready to drop at any second. Or they’re stressed because they’re doing the work of three people, and their boss thinks AI is going to make it so that isn’t insanely stressful as they context switch their brain into oblivion. Or they’re doing gig work to try and make ends meet, and instead just keep getting squeezed harder every day. Or it’s some combination of all of them.
And I don’t really know what to say to any of them about their situations beyond “this really sucks”.
Great post Scott! See you in a few weeks when you feel like writing again!
This is the thing. It really does just suck. And there’s not a lot we can do about it.
When I write these things and do complain-y posts I always try to think like I’m writing a Jon Oliver show, where at the end you have to say “what can we do about it” otherwise the emotional hit doesn’t land, you just feel sad.
And it’s why I’m struggling right now with writing anything, because it’s like… what can I suggest that would fix some of these massive levels of inequality that we’re seeing wreak havoc on normal people’s lives?
So I’m going to take a smaller approach. We obviously can’t individually change the systemic issues facing our world (unless we vote to make changes! I know collective action problems are shitty and hard… but we could just… elect good people who want to make things better? Instead of pedophiles, rapists, grifters, and charlatans. But I know I know pipe dreams and I already said we’re not gonna change the world so let’s stop talking about how we’re going to change the world. Do you like how I made that all of our problems instead of my problem? I mean I’m the one writing this thing, I could just not talk about how we could save the world, or I could just delete all of this and pretend it didn’t happen. But nope, I’m going to keep it here and chastise us all instead lol).
You might not be able to change the world by yourself (AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK: UNLESS YOU FUCKING VOTE TO MAKE THE CHANGE REAL) but you can change what you do and how you react.
So let’s talk about some things I’ve been doing/trying and see what ya’ll think.
I’m a tech early adopter. I love gadgets. I love toys. I love to tinker. I love to solve problems. I just fucking love technology.
But, like most of us, that technology love just turned into “spending all of my time on my phone.”
I justify it with things like “I gotta use it for work!” or “I’m not REALLY using it, it’s just playing a podcast!” or “I just need an escape and this is a fun escape!”
And those justifications are true… but they’re also not the reason I’m on my phone or the reason that being on my phone went from being something novel and fun to being something… kinda boring?
But not the kind of boring we had when we were kids, where you’re literally like staring at the TV guide channel watching things swing through and going “I don’t want to watch any of this” so instead you’re now watching the TV guide channel for an hour. Because you’d feel every excruciating second of watching that TV guide channel. It was mind numbing. I’d go watch reruns of sportscenter I literally JUST watched, just to have something on to distract me.
Now the boredom comes in the form of things that just distract you.
So… In my attempt to find peace for myself I deleted my TikTok, my Facebook, my Insta, and basically all social media other than LinkedIn (not because I like hanging out on LinkedIn but because it feels like if you’re working in corporate America and especially in tech in corporate America a Linkedin is like a college degree – you might not need it to actually do the job, but recruiters and bosses are gonna look right past you if you don’t have either – which, I should just clarify my stance on… which is that it’s fucking bullshit and it shouldn’t matter but again, welcome to hell lol) and Bluesky (the unofficial social media app of sports which is my main reason I want to be there though I still do argue with the will stencil centrist crew that loves to come by and shit on progressives, who admittedly are tedious and vapid on Bluesky lol).
And I truly thought I was going to desperately miss all those other platforms. I’d already deleted twitter, but I had literally been on Facebook since 2005 when it first rolled out to USC. It was one of my longest lasting relationships.
You know what I felt though? Relief.
It felt quieter. I had time to do other things. I still would peruse Bluesky, but honestly, once you get through the two or three sports stories that matter that day, it’s so tedious I wanted to stop looking lol. It’s a handy feature!
That quiet though… it felt like a lot. Which is weird to say, I get it. But it was a lot because I suddenly had all this time that I needed to fill during my day. If I’m not endlessly scrolling, what am I even doing with my life, you know?
So, I started coming up with replacements for my daily scrolling time.
The first one was easy - play more video games lol. I picked up a playstation portal, and I had my Nintendo switch, so I could take either one anywhere I was going and that could fill the void when I’m just in between things and have nothing to look at.
But, there’s limitations - I had to find games to play, I had to make sure I had an internet connection for a lot of those games too. And it wasn’t always easy to jump in and out. So sustained periods of empty time I had a solution, but I didn’t have one for those short bursts.
Until I started playing solitaire, cribbage, and all the NYT games on my phone. Now I had a short burst of playing I could do, none of it consequential or meaningful beyond some records and shit that matter to literally no one but me.
And that still wasn’t enough to fill my time so I started doing crosswords, and buying crossword puzzle books, and then that ALSO wasn’t enough so I started reading actual novels (who knew you could still do that).
But the point isn’t what specifically I did but more that there was SO MUCH time that I had that I didn’t realize I had given up before.
So what, who cares.
What does this have to do with the awful state of things and everyone’s anxiety fucking spiking through the atmosphere?
Probably not much.
Trading your scrolling time for other activities won’t make you feel less anxious. It won’t help you pay the bills or feed your kids, or have less work to do.
What it has done though, is help me solidify my values. And in a world where we don’t have control of our fate, we seek to find the things we can control. And your values are one of the few things that you can hold onto regardless of whatever happens to you because of evil oligarchs.
I value spending part of my day outside. I value learning. I value treating people well. I value spending time doing things for others. I value art and entertainment. I value my family.
Even just writing this all I can think is “you don’t need to give up your social media to do any of this shit, come on Scott what’re we even doing here.”
And I think that is correct. You can do all of this without giving up on social media. You can do it all within the confines of whatever circumstance you’re living through, because we all have agency and we all have the ability to shape our own system of values. And you don’t need someone to make time for you to do it. It’s just who we are as people.
But it sure makes it easier when you have the time with yourself to think through it.
And this is where AI comes in.
Because AI is a tricky bastard. It leads you to believe that it will create that time and space for yourself and it’ll do it EVEN BETTER than ditching social media would! It’s gonna make it so easy to do everything you’ll have so much time for YOU.
But that’s not what it does and we all know it.
Yes, it’s really great at making inferences, and it can design things well enough, and it can write code surprisingly well.
But it can also suck you down rabbit holes, either giving you misinformation, not understanding your prompt, or flat out making a decision to do something other than what you were looking for. And then you can spend hours or even days just trying to get it to stop doing whatever dumb shit it’s doing and just do what you’re asking.
But the problem isn’t all that. It’s not that it is or isn’t a time suck. It’s not even about is it or is it not profitable or going to make me individually money.
It’s that as a tool, it allows you to stop thinking about your values.
“I don’t need it to be moralistic, I need it to be correct!” you think as it’s giving you bullshit calculations for how many people you’re going to have to fire because you didn’t hit your revenue number.
“I don’t need you to tell me how you got the answer I just need the answer!” as it’s telling you about how to convince a company that they really DO need to make a 5 million dollar investment to update an old data center.
“We’ll figure it out when we win the work” you say as you look at the AI generated staffing plan calling for roles you don’t have on your roster.
When things become too easy, people stop thinking and start reacting.
When we’d get tasked with a crazy problem at FIS, and my team would complain about how hard the work was, I would always respond with “be thankful it’s hard, it’s why you’re able to stay employed, otherwise they’d find someone to do it cheaper”.
AI is making the eponymous “they’d” in that statement all of us.
We’re all now trying to just do things with the least amount of cost and effort.
But the effort is the good shit. That struggle, that “what should I do with my time right now” becomes more about finding your values, that “but how DO I solve this problem of having too many people and not enough work” problem more moralistic and human, that “I know there’s a solution I just haven’t found it yet” that much more rewarding when you finally crack it.
That AI giving you the answer, the one trained off of all documented human history, the one that knows everything… it’s trite. It’s dumb. It’s the least common denominator. It’s the easy way out. And you feel it when it’s done. You don’t feel energized like you could jump over a building, you want to take a nap.
And I’m not saying “AI isn’t the answer” or “AI is bad” but what I’m saying is, we can’t keep extracting our thought process to a machine like this and expect to be happy or fulfilled.
And when the world is so devoid of good, when so many people are struggling, when so much is going wrong already – I want to feel energized and good whenever I can. So I pick up a book. I solve a crossword. I play a video game. I do something that makes me feel.
I don’t know if that’ll help anyone but me, but it DOES help me. I do feel more like myself as a result of ditching all this dumb tech in any way I can. I still want my gadgets, and I want to play, but it’s not worth it. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.