I guess? But imagine if enough people took a couple minutes to post about how organization XYZ sucks, and (because the stock markets are irrational vibes based) that caused their stocks to drop a few points. That’s the only thing they care about. I’m willing to put in a few minutes if it might emotionally harm an asshole.

I was going to write “this depends on the ATS used” but I thought that was a safe assumption. Seems not so!

Tried to submit one and it didn’t seem to go through.

My hypothetical is a lot of recruiters are kind of bad at their job, but there’s so many desperate candidates that they don’t need to do much to get passable results.

A hiring manager told me when she fills a position, it automatically sends the email to the other candidates. It’s not a human touch.

I think it’s undeniable there are a lot of very stupid people, and many of them are loud gamers.

One of the problems is humans are social creatures. Facts don’t change minds. In-group pressure changes minds. (And sometimes horrific trauma, but only sometimes*). The typical person, confronted with an idea that contradicts a non-trivial belief, will evaluate primarily if the person presenting the belief is in-group. The same kind of message delivered by different people has very different outcomes.

With the Internet, idiots and assholes can find their own social groups to reinforce their shitty beliefs.

If we want to fix this, we’d have to do the long, expensive, and thankless work of getting them to see us as in-group, and getting them to then adopt better ideas. Incidentally, that’s how the right wing has been operating.

Laughing at them for being fucking morons is satisfying, but it’s like picking at a scab. It’s not going to heal.

Prices are up. Wages are not. Video games are luxury.

We’re being fucked by the stupid rich.

Imagine a context where the reader is looking at the news for the first time that day. They think they missed news in the morning, perhaps the US starting aggressions, and now China has dropped another bomb.

I’m sure you can imagine such a scenario

One of the only things that changed minds (and behavior) is peer pressure. But as you said, it has to be peer pressure. Pressure from your in-group.

One of the big changes in our society is idiots and assholes can run off to Fox or 4chan or whatever slimy gutter appeals to them, and find their fellow idiots. Fellow idiots and people manipulating them for their own reasons.

It sucks that reasonable people need to spend all this effort to babysit large children, but if we don’t then they go shit themselves and vote for trump.

Because I thought China had literally bombed the US for a very tense moment before I finished reading the headline. Especially because of how the words wrapped. I didn’t need that stress.

Can we please not write headlines like that when we’re on the verge of ww3 and literal bombs might be dropped on the US in the coming months?

Cool. Fuck Microsoft

There are probably a lot of representatives I wouldn’t recognize, even if I know their name and deal.

Keep track of your spending. Find simple and cheap things you like. There’s hours of entertainment at the free public library. There’s free meetups all over.

I had a friend that ordered food delivery for every meal. That’s like $25k/year on food, in $35 chunks. Don’t do that. Don’t aspire to that.

Use thrift stores, buy nothing groups, freecycle, yard sales etc. I got most of the furniture for my first apartment for $230 (inflation adjusted) when I first moved out. Couch, table, chairs, dresser. The couch didn’t survive the next move, but everything else is solid.

You can probably salvage an old computer by putting Linux on it rather than shelling out for a new one. I saved my friend a lot of money reviving their ancient laptop like that.

Some people have this idea that spending money frivolously or conspicuously is cool. They’re assholes and fools.

Keep in touch with friends. Most of my jobs I got because I knew someone. The job process is broken, run by idiots and slop machines.

If living with your parents isn’t driving you crazy, don’t worry about it. Save the money.

No. Don’t think I was even invited to any.

I’m not close to anyone from high school. I haven’t talked to anyone from that era in years. I wasn’t my best self back then, and I don’t really want to relive it.

Other answers are good.

I expect there’s a lot of racism, too. A lot of people don’t want those people to have nice things, even if it means personally suffering.

If you build a nice train system, you might have to see those people on your day to day. In a car, you’re isolated and feel safe.

But mostly I expect it’s because of the massive highway system that was built without corresponding passenger rail.

I was outside the city a couple weeks ago and saw a lot of maga stuff. Maybe I should get like stickers or business cards for this site to leave places like that.

100%. I think a lot about one of my friends when trying to think about that kind of user. Smart lady. Advanced degree. Has her life together. Would absolutely not want to try to install an OS. Wouldn’t even know how to start.

But I’m confident if I handed her a Linux laptop, she’d use it just the same as a Mac or Windows machine.

Right. Inertia is the metaphor I used to express that idea.

I don’t think that’s actually very many people. Not for their personal computers. Most people don’t run much more than a web browser, if they don’t play games.

It’s not the PC games keeping people so much. Proton solved a lot of that problem. It’s inertia.

Most people don’t care about things. They just don’t. Their brains just don’t have the juice.