I don't want to use the word "grift", but it really seems like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to new ideas for products a lot of the time. Go and read this month's HN "Who is hiring" thread for an example. It's all either fintech crypto crap that never seems to come to fruition for anything normal people want to use, weird microloans, and products for extremely small niches like using AI to help with gift-giving and so forth.
It's honestly hard to imagine wanting to work 12 hour days to advance some of these interests. We're seeing some of the greatest minds of our generation lost to these kinds of ephemeral, short-lived projects that flame up, consume VC, and mostly burn out uselessly, having created a bunch of IP that is shelved never to be seen again. What's the point?
Maybe we really all ought to just get drafted. At least I'd be able to explain to my kids what I do for a living.
Is it better or worse than when the greatest minds of our generation were lost to increasing user engagement by any means necessary?
This is a great way of describing it. I recently read an interview with Herbie Hancock where he basically blamed “YouTube rabbit holes” for his not producing a new album in 15 years.
I'd say it keeps getting worse, and it's not like we've stopped focusing on engagement numbers
Forced conscription sucks, at least a difference between real war and something mandatory like 2 years of reserves equivalent (I'm not talking about US)
Of course, it's abhorrent. The only imaginable upside would be a grand shift of societal priorities away from the kind of useless effort I'm talking about.