ctrlaltcritique-blog

[ctrlaltcritique-blog]

tfw some tech guys got drunk and raided our 79 member intern group chat. and since they don't know any other way to have fun, they resort to memes, joking about suicide, and calling each other misogynistic slurs on the groupme. what makes this worse is that they're not even saying this stuff in private, they're saying it in a huge group chat with other folks to whom suicide isn't a joke, or non-men who may have been called these words in a serious harassing context.

and people ask me why i don't care about talking to most techie guys, it's cause so many of them don't have any substance or any awareness of the world to even consider maybe not being dense and shitty as a joke. and you think they're nice and different when you meet them but it turns out a lot of them just censor themselves in public for their own professional self interest but don't actually care, because once they get comfortable in groups with other men they resort back to toxic masculinity and unaware messing around. pathetic. no matter where u look tech is filled with brogrammers who take up space and make others feel uncomfortable as they're just trying to 'have fun'. world's your oyster, or maybe one of the other words you'd 'jokingly' call each other.

i don't care if you're drunk, if you don't have the self control to watch what you say around others (not to mention around your man friends), you don't deserve to be paid 100k a year or whatever.

[ctrlaltcritique-blog]

feeling complacency and laziness in tech

recently i’ve realized that as much as tech pretends to be ‘awesome’ and ‘fun’ and ‘passionate’, this summer and the last summer when working in tech, i’ve been the most uninspired and stagnant i’ve ever been. ive noticed this because during the summers it’s been really really hard to get myself to write, despite having the time to, and i just am not in the same state of mind as im used to.

and im not really sure what it is. normally, or at least at duke, i manage to hold relationships with people who inspire me and who have good conversations that exhaust me but make me grow. in general, i feel like i am growing and learning (despite being tired and stressed out). this makes me feel more inspired as a person, but also leads to more struggles. but both of these make me write more and make me more passionate and creative of a person.

but then when im in tech, everything is just so consistently stagnant. the people i talk to at work are cool/fun to talk to, but they dont inspire me or make me grow or learn anything. people seem very boring and everyone seems to think the same. and the environment in general is not one that pushes me or stresses me out, and so when i get home i just feel lazy and my brain feels stagnant and un-stimulated. it’s also, i think, that the work im doing doesnt feel impactful at all -- it’s interesting in terms of the technology, but realistically it doesnt change anything fundamentally about an existing, large scale piece of technology. and even if it did, do i even care about that technology? not really

i think in tech im used to just doing things for the sake of doing them -- i enjoy programming cause it’s fun but it doesn’t seem meaningful and doesn’t really push me at all. so i get very shallow and lazy, and i stick to things that make me feel comfortable, but not necessarily fulfilled, so programming, then video games, then watching a random show, etc. i feel like im losing my grip on my passions and im kinda just giving into being tired and uninspired all the time.

all in all, i just feel like this environment, despite being ‘fun’ (or at least comfortable) to work in, makes me think less about who i am and what i want to do, and think more (or not think at all) about distractions and comfort. and it makes me think -- is tech really the ‘concentration of creativity and inspiration’ it claims to be, when employees are only creative and motivated in a ‘programming’, ‘technical’, ‘fun’ sense and not about deeper things in life too? 

im not really sure what im trying to say, though! just kinda putting it out there

[ctrlaltcritique-blog]

So I’m listening to Mark Zuckerberg talk about Facebook’s mission and new features in Chicago right now and while I appreciate how passionate he is about improving the world, I’m kinda critical about a few things. I posted this on Facebook too but here it is. These quotes are paraphrased btw and honestly these are pretty much applicable to tech in general:

1. Why Zuckerberg and techies have a 'colorblind' view of the world, claiming the way we solve social problems is by 'making people more connected', and saying he's "met regular citizens as well as state leaders" around the world, and learned that "people are inherently good".. As if we're going to kumbaya and somehow the structures of racism, income inequality, misogyny, etc are just gonna magically go away. As if people in power won't violently hold onto it when it comes into question. Intolerance and inequality aren't "odd anomalies", they're structures that govern how the world works.

2. Related to #1, Facebook lets groups that revolve around hate and regression organize just as much as they let groups that revolve around love and progress. And by and large, Facebook won't ban someone for being racist (unless you say a slur) or making people feel unsafe, but they'll ban you when you post about someone doing it publicly. The vague liberalism of tech makes it so hate is left alone to grow and organize, under the guise of free speech. (hint: free speech doesn't mean corporations letting hate groups organize, it means the government specifically can't kill you for saying something)

3. Why Zuckerberg says "we should care just as much about someone in India or Nigeria as we do here in Chicago" but doesn't realize that America has exploited and continues to exploit the majority of the world, whether directly through imperialism and drone strikes, or indirectly through labor exploitation and centralizing international labor to be owned by Americans. Tech companies aren't just quiet about this, but many also participate in it. (think about it: why wouldn't Zuckerberg talk about or acknowledge this stuff openly?)

Tech is just so blindly centrist liberal that it annoys me. Structures and hierarchies exist, and by claiming it's "our responsibility as ordinary people" to make the world a better place by being more open and connected, he's absolving himself of responsibility as a person with immense power and influence to change the structures that govern us "ordinary people". And at the very least, when talking to 'the masses', he should be acknowledging the existence of unjust leaders and structures and the necessity of fighting those. Love is great but the world won't be fixed just by people joining Facebook groups and talking to people lol.

Hopefully we can see through the clearly self-interested, corporate, and profit-oriented bias of most tech companies. I think it's important to critique and discuss these things if they're going to hoard billions of dollars under the claim of improving the world.

[ctrlaltcritique-blog]

on new Amazon bookstores and the acquisition of WholeFoods

Last week, we learned that Amazon bought WholeFoods, a giant food retailer known for its arrays of upscale, organic food. We also have seen physical Amazon bookstores like these: 

[caption: pictures inside an Amazon bookstore in Washington]

While the layout is close to what we’re used to in terms of bookstores, the stores are Amazon data and rankings come to life. There seems to be no mystery anymore -- we’ll know precisely how popular or unpopular a book is, and what a random user has said about the book. You can pay for things on the Amazon app or get virtual copies on Kindle instead. The ultimate irony of this all is that over the past decade the tech giant’s online book shopping business has run most physical bookstores to the ground, from the once commonplace Barnes & Noble to the local small, socially conscious bookshop. After rendering other businesses non-viable, they now step up to monopolize bookselling, online and offline. It’s clear that Amazon’s interest lies not in “improving” our experiences, but rather monopolizing them. 

This buying up of distribution channels continues in other domains. Over the years, Amazon has worked on their Pantry 

These structures are proof that Amazon doesn’t plan to be an online supplement to our everyday lives--rather, they are actively redrawing and buying up distribution channels that make Amazon a part of our daily routine. This plan involves