Just today, I responded to a LinkedIn post with an expletive, not at the person who posted the AI news but at the subject person of the news. Right after that, I stopped myself before I could fire off another expletive at another AI post.
I don’t really arse with political news nowadays, but it looks like that may not be quite enough because generative AI news pisses me off anyway. All the outrageous bullshit claims by “tech leaders” are kinda wearing on me.
But you know what? Now I think some or even most of them are doing it on purpose. I think the trolling is done for two major reasons:
Outrageous bullshit makes premium headline fodder. You can be sure that the more outrageous the claim, the more it’s gonna get printed because the better the clickbait it would make. Heck, this is like poly-ticks where extremists suck up all the airtime.
They’re done to soften up the damned target. Who? ALL OF US, but mostly the VCs. You see, if someone says something so clucking outrageous that it feels like a slap in the face and then follows that up with something not quite as obviously idiotic, then it may end up sounding PERFECTLY REASONABLE in comparison! It’s anchoring. Heck, I bet that’s what Alman was doing with his 7 TRILLION DOLLAR song and dance a while back. Ooooh he got me and got me good with that chit. I got so bent outta shape back then that I started this Substack because mere LinkedIn posts weren’t enough to contain my outrage.
So from now on I’m just going to treat everything those bobble-heads say as trolling, if only for my sanity. I’m not letting ‘em jerk me around with their hooks anymore.