You can do that with and without fake discussions.
One of the main reasons that killed my desire to move to the US was the amount of fake questions during - on a paper - friendly discussions, when the point of those questions was just, and only just, visibility. An average American non corporate discussion is worse than a non-American corporate one. And that seems to be pretty global to me.
My brother and my sister-in-law watched “Somebody feeds Phil”, and we watched together the Sydney episode and after that some others, because I’d just announced that I’d move to Australia soon. That Sydney episode had quite normal discussions for us, Europeans. Of course, people had agenda, but they still reacted to what response they got. Even if things were cut, most times people seemed to react to something else from before. Then the next episode was from Las Vegas. And it had full with questions where nobody responded to the answers, nobody cared what the response was. And they kept those in the episode. There was a point when Phil asked the people in a line one-by-one what they work. And they basically just listed it, Phil had zero responses to any answers. Zero reactions from anybody. The point wasn’t to engage with the answers or the people. There was another case, when a girl talked about her shop. There wasn’t a single sentence which was organically connected to another. Phil and the girl had different agenda and they had to perform based on those, no matter what. And I was enough now there to say that that happens way more frequently than elsewhere. The next one was from Manila. And there were organic discussions again. I’ve never seen that clearly this phenomenon which bugs me. Of course, the usual scripting which happens with these shows, even helped to make this more announced. Probably, the people talking in that episode were way less interesting, but still as a visual to what annoys me is quite good.
Of course, I had good conversations also over there, and I had bad ones elsewhere in this sense. Heck, I did similar things before, but maybe this is the exact reason why I’m so sensitive to this, because it annoyed me greatly when I did it. But on average, it was the worse over the pond. Especially on the extremities. But even in day-to-day discussions. It was annoying that I have to peal down an additional layer with anybody to get real answers, which is not needed basically anywhere else.
It's not "fake" - it's cultural differences where what is intended to come across as polite by Americans[1] can be seen as insincere by people from elsewhere. On the flip side, Americans often view foreign behavior that's intended to be neutral as unfriendly, uncaring or cold.
1. e.g. lots of smiling, use of superlatives like "great"/"amazing" to describe mediocre items/effort/results
Execs are ‘super excited’ about everything. There is no dynamic range at all. They appear to have no opinions and no judgement because their opinion is always that everything is awesome. When the audience knows that stuff is either normal-level ok or actually fucked up, this message is insulting to receive.
Worse, it trains people downstream that shiny happy is the only valid comms. Hard to escalate a concern when you don’t know how to start the message with how super excited you are about it.
If everything is at a “10” in linguistic intensity (“Incredible”, “Legendary”, “GOAT”) then nothing is exceptional.
It’s the linguistic equivalent of a Dorito chip.
I’m American and this marketing/corporate speak drives me up the wall. I have a harder time respecting the judgement of people who thoughtlessly speak this way.
Ah yes British, the famously direct people who say things like "Maybe I haven’t explained this very well", "I’ll bear it in mind", or "How interesting!" which anyone unfamiliar with the culture would interpret to be the opposite of what was actually meant.
"I may be wrong", but perhaps 'Americans rarely sound authentic' to you simply because you're just more familiar with your own culture's idiosyncrasies?
Anyway, I love the Brits; no flame intended. I come in peace! :-)
As a Brit, at Apple, I once got dinged on a performance review because I apparently wasn't a team player - I was apparently always putting down people's projects in the group meetings.
"But, I've never done that. I'm pretty much always positive about things people present. I even said some of them weren't bad"
Yeah, high praise comes in subtle flavours if you're a Brit.
I think this “awesome”, “amazing”, “super exciting” phase came much later than the moon walking era. Remember it’s been over 50 years since humans walked on the moon. Much has changed.
See these old videos, where people talk in a straightforward way:
Speaking as a Brit, our national trait is generally too understate things. So even saying what you mean, directly, comes off as a bit immodest and hyping it up in sales pitches sounds shady.
Americans generally say what they mean a bit more, so I think their mid point is just different.
Speaking as a Brit, I couldn’t disagree more. I have no trouble understanding a wide variety of Europeans in a corporate environment, but sometimes struggle to even understand the basics of what Americans are trying to communicate, let alone the nuances of their position.
It’s like ‘American corporate’ is a totally different language that I don’t speak. The words sound the same, but that’s about it.
This is true for a lot of Americans too. God help me if I have to sit and listen to my CEO talk about anything and have to explain it to someone afterwards. It's just Buzzword Buzzword Agentic Buzzword Great Buzzword Exciting Buzzword Future Buzzword Growth Buzzword Great Great Great Exciting Exciting Exciting Buzzword.
As other comment suggested, the way I see it Americans are addicted to hyperbolas. Instead of "Thank you" it's "Thank you so much". So when you genuinely want to thank someone because that person went above and beyond (saved your life, avoided you a substantial hassle, etc.) then it's difficult to convey that.
I have friends who work at both large and small companies, as well as startups, and more often than not this is the case. Surprisingly, those who work at a YC startup face the PIP quite regularly for not enough token usage.
> Is there still grammar police on the Internet, calling out people for making grammatical mistakes in their writing?
This is one of the last places on the internet that actually has grammar police, as commenters here have a desire to be technically correct in all aspects.
I spoke to a few HNers who I know flagged this post. They mentioned that they flagged it because it goes against the HN guidelines - a holy grail of sorts - and that the post does not invite "curious discussion". When prompted, they mentioned they would much rather read about pro-Musk technological exploits than anything against the US.
Unfortunately, flagging is heavily abused here on HN. Criticism of adtech and attempts to defend privacy laws will bring out flagging in droves; almost as if some HN'ers salaries are dependent on opposing such laws!
Some sort of meta-moderation system to prevent abuse of flagging would be welcome.
Unfortunately HN is likely astroturfed just as much as any other forum, despite the otherwise seemingly substantiveness of HN compared to sites like Reddit. And unfortunately there's no way to cancel out bad faith flagging and downvoting the same way you can reply to bad faith commenting. It's more invisible and easier to abuse (once the karma thresholds have been reached, which isn't hard).
there are tons of posts on HN that don't invite "curious discussion"
this is one that would actually invite curious discussion if some people weren't clutching onto their "God Bless America (We're #1!)" pearls quite so tightly
More and more I'm finding that the most interesting conversation about America isn't coming from Americans anymore.
There was a time where I was quite interested in listening to people from America talk about their fascinating and crazy sounding country, but as time goes on I find that to be much more repetitive and not insightful.
Now I'm more interested in what people from other countries have to say about America, and I find it fascinating how Americans online find this unsettling and sometimes get snippy about it really weird ways.
Sometimes I wonder what political threads on HN would be like if Americans weren't allowed to participate in them. For the people in the crowd who take things more literally in know this isn't possible, it's just an interesting thought experiment.
Would that result in more 'creative' conversation?
Maybe for a while until new patterns/tropes/memes were built up by the users that could comment on them. Maybe the issue with the political discussions that too often the people talking about them are too close to them, too immersed in them?
My understanding is that the case was flimsy enough that no "hardcore" lawyers wanted to represent him. It's not just a matter of money; their record (and, therefore, future earnings) are on the line.
His case was handled as well as any lawyer could have. He signed the deal and then tried to change his mind. That's not how contracts work, and the legal system and status quo have strong interests in keeping it that way.
As someone who owns a Solar Roof, this news is disappointing. Many of my friends have said it's the best roof they've ever seen, and I even sometimes get compliments from people who drive past.
I don't see a problem? As a hacker and HN poster, I believe the free market will determine the value of a game. If it's not economically feasible anymore to make games for under $5, the market will adjust.
the entre into the culture via his wife isn't anything to shake a stick at, but don't anthropomorphize the Zuck -- he's there because there are 1 billion people who already live in a surveillance state.
cheap programmers, long 996 hours, and access to the biggest market in the world.
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