Tag: Comedy

Personality

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Employer: Well, everything seems to be in order. You certainly look like a 10x engineer to us. We just need to do some due diligence and comb through your social media feeds for any signs of personality.

Candidate: Uh, signs of personality?

Employer: Yes, you know, just making sure you don’t have too much of one. We have a carefully curated company culture—mostly work-obsessed but with just enough ironic detachment to seem relatable. Wouldn’t want any dangerous individuality slipping through.

Candidate: So, what exactly are you looking for?

Employer: Oh, nothing major! Just ensuring you haven’t expressed strong opinions on, well… anything. Politics, media, lunch preferences—really anything that could spark a Slack debate and damage productivity.

Candidate: So, if I post about liking pineapple on pizza…?

Employer: Risky. Divisive. Our backend team almost collapsed over that debate last year.

Candidate: Right. What about memes?

Employer: Ah, memes are a gray area. We love memes, if they demonstrate enthusiasm for coding, hustle culture, or the existential despair of late-stage capitalism in a way that doesn’t question our role in it.

Candidate: So, no jokes about tech layoffs?

Employer: Oh god, no.

Candidate: What if I just delete all my social media?

Employer: That’s actually a red flag. It suggests you have something to hide. We prefer a light, algorithm-friendly presence—LinkedIn posts about leadership, tweets about frameworks nobody uses, maybe an Instagram story of a standing desk setup.

Candidate: So you want me to seem engaged, but not too engaged. Present, but not too present.

Employer: Exactly! We’re looking for someone who can balance the illusion of individuality with the predictability of a well-optimized persona.

Candidate: …And you say I’m the 10x engineer?

Employer: We believe in hiring the best. Now, before we proceed, do you have any past tweets with… opinions?

Candidate: Opinions? No, no, of course not! Not a single opinion. Never had one. Wouldn’t even recognize one if it walked up and introduced itself.

Employer: Excellent. We value neutrality.

Candidate: Oh, I’m as neutral as a Swede in a snowstorm! No opinions, no strong feelings, and certainly no thoughts of my own. Just pure, unfiltered, corporate-compatible enthusiasm!

Employer: Splendid! Just a few final checks—ah, wait a moment, what’s this? scrolls phone You once liked a tweet that said, “JavaScript is a nightmare” back in 2017.

Candidate: Oh, that? That was an accident. Slipped thumb. Muscle spasm. Could’ve happened to anyone.

Employer: Hm. And what about this Reddit post? Reads aloud ‘Anyone else feel like Agile just means doing twice the work in half the time while smiling?’

Candidate: I was hacked.

Employer: Oh?

Candidate: Yes! Hacked. Russian bots, probably. Or maybe North Korean cyber ninjas. Happens all the time, you know.

Employer: Hm. Very suspicious. And what’s this? Glares at phone An Instagram photo of… a book? A paper book?

Candidate: Gasp!

Employer: Reads title ‘The Mythical Man-Month.’ My word.

Candidate: It was a prop! Just decor! I never read it, I swear!

Employer: And yet… here we are. A documented history of independent thought. Unchecked critical analysis. Possibly even… free will.

Candidate: No! I’m just like everyone else! I post about productivity hacks, pretend to enjoy networking events, and use ‘🚀’ in LinkedIn posts without irony! Look! Frantically pulls out phone I even have a Medium blog called “Why Failure is Just Success in Disguise!”

Employer: Hm. That is promising. But I’m afraid the damage is done. We can’t risk hiring someone who might think for themselves.

Candidate: So what now?

Employer: We have two options. You can sign an affidavit swearing that any past opinions were the result of a youthful indiscretion—perhaps a phase where you mistakenly believed in things.

Candidate: And the second option?

Employer: Exile. You will be cast out into the wilderness of the unemployable, doomed to wander among freelancers, indie developers, and… shudders… start-up founders.

Candidate: No… not that! Anything but… hushed whisper self-employment!

Employer: Leaning in Choose wisely.

Candidate: Sweating …Fine. I’ll sign the affidavit.

Employer: Smart choice. Now, let’s discuss your salary. We were thinking somewhere between ‘passion’ and ‘exposure’.

Candidate: Passion and exposure? But those aren’t real currencies!

Employer: Not with that attitude, they’re not! Here at InnoSyncHyperByte AI—

Candidate: You just made that up!

Employer: —we believe in a post-monetary ecosystem where compensation is measured in the warm glow of innovation, the sheer thrill of synergy, and—if you really excel—maybe a company-branded hoodie.

Candidate: A hoodie?

Employer: Oh-ho-ho! Not just any hoodie. This is an exclusive, team-building, high-performance, moisture-wicking hoodie. With a zipper.

Candidate: Incredible. Does it at least come with a salary?

Employer: Oh, you poor, sweet, naïve thing. Salaries are for legacy industries, like coal mining or universities. We’re about disrupting the concept of payment itself!

Candidate: Oh no.

Employer: Oh yes! You see, instead of a so-called “salary,” you’ll be compensated with—

(Dramatic pause. The lights flicker. A drumroll sounds from nowhere.)

Employer: EQUITY!

(Angelic choir sings. Fireworks erupt. A small brass band parades through the office, throwing confetti made of shredded NDAs.)

Candidate: Equity? Equity in what?

Employer: We’re not legally allowed to say. But let’s just say it’s Web3 adjacent.

Candidate: …Is this a crypto thing?

Employer: No no no, not crypto! Blockchain-enabled financial abstraction!

Candidate: That’s just a longer way of saying “crypto.”

Employer: Shhhh! You can’t say the C-word out loud, the investors might hear you!

(A door creaks open. A shadowy figure in a Patagonia vest peeks in, sniffing the air for regulatory scrutiny before silently retreating.)

Candidate: Okay, let’s cut to the chase. What exactly is this job?

Employer: Ah, excellent question! Your role will be a Full-Stack DevOps AI-Cloud Evangelist Architect Engineer Scrum Sensei.

Candidate: That’s not a job title! That’s just words!

Employer: Exactly! We believe in titles without limits, roles without borders! One day you might be debugging an app, the next day you’ll be head of Quantum Synergy Alignment.

Candidate: Is that… a real department?

Employer: It is now! BOOM! You just innovated a new role. You’re already thinking like a 10x engineer!

Candidate: But I haven’t done anything!

Employer: Exactly!

(Silence. The candidate’s brain visibly short-circuits as they try to process this.)

Candidate: Okay. One last question. If I take this job, will I ever get to leave the office?

Employer: Technically yes! Thanks to our flexible hybrid work policy, you’ll be able to work from anywhere in the world.

Candidate: Oh, that’s great!

Employer: As long as it’s within five feet of your laptop, 24/7, and you’re on Slack at all times, and you answer emails instantly, and—

Candidate: I’m leaving.

Employer: Waaait! Before you go, can you sign this waiver agreeing that this entire interview was a legally non-binding thought experiment and that you do not, in fact, exist?

Candidate: SCREAMS AND RUNS AWAY

Employer: sigh Another one lost to the so-called “real world.”

(Presses intercom button.)

Employer: Send in the next candidate. And this time, make sure they’re hungry.

 Dog Eats Übermensch 

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I was on my usual caffeine circuit, shuttling between the Starbucks and The Cow’s End, because one coffee is never enough and also because I enjoy the illusion of productivity that comes with walking briskly while holding a cup. It was a normal Venice morning—skaters wiping out, tech bros on rental e-bikes, a guy playing Karaoke on the pier with real conviction but no apparent tuning abilities.

And then, here they came.

The runners.

A whole squad of them, bare-chested, bronzed (or at least spray-tanned), and absolutely committed to whatever half-baked philosophy had convinced them that sprinting down Washington Boulevard at full speed was a form of divine communion.

Leading the charge was a guy who looked like he had recently discovered The Iliad and was making it everyone’s problem. He had that crazed, unearned confidence of a man who quotes Marcus Aurelius on dates. Behind him, the rest of the pack—muscles tight, jaws clenched, locked in a synchronized display of vital energy.

They were too fast. Too focused. Too convinced they were in Sparta and not Venice Beach, California.

Which is why they did not see the dog walker.

This poor guy was just out here trying to make a living, walking a herd of dogs—five, maybe six—of various shapes, sizes, and temperaments. The kind of group that, when standing still, looks like a United Nations summit of canines.

The collision was inevitable.

The dogs felt it first. You could see it in their faces—pure, unfiltered confusion. Like, What is this? What is happening? Why is there a human stampede?

Then, the barks started.

Not aggressive, just necessary. A protest. A loud, disorganized chorus of What the hell, man?!

And that’s when it happened. The moment that shattered the Bronze Age fantasy like a cheap ceramic amphora.

The runners panicked.

It wasn’t immediate. At first, they tried to push through, as if they could just outwill a pack of startled, barking dogs. But then, the barking intensified. Leashes tangled. A very small but very angry dachshund made a noise like a car alarm going off inside a tin can.

And suddenly—chaos.

The formation broke. Their warrior discipline collapsed.

One guy flinched so hard he nearly did a barrel roll. Another, who had been carrying a water bottle like it was a ceremonial goblet, launched it into the air. The guy in the lead, Mr. I Am Achilles Reborn, let out a noise that was decidedly unheroic and sidestepped into a trash can.

They did not stop running. Oh no. They just kept going—now scattered, weaving, stumbling, their noble chariot race turned into a frantic, disjointed sprint for safety.

Meanwhile, the dogs? They won.

Not because they chased, but because they stood their ground. The little dachshund looked triumphant. A golden retriever sat down mid-chaos, utterly unbothered, while the dog walker just sighed, like this was not the first time Venice Beach had thrown him this particular flavor of nonsense.

And me? I just stood there, sipping my second coffee, watching the dust settle.

Venice never disappoints

The Internal Clock

The internal clock—the rhythm of attention and expectation honed by our optimized cognitive processes—demands precision. A narrative must hit its emotional or intellectual beat at just the right moment to captivate the human mind. Television series, by their very nature, are purpose-built to meet these demands. Unlike books, which are often sprawling, open-ended, and subject to the variable pacing of individual readers, television is a medium engineered for synchronization. It shapes time into predictable units, each one calibrated to deliver satisfaction within the narrow window our internal clock anticipates.

This is the triumph of television over many genre books: its ability to structure narrative beats in ways that match the optimized attention span of modern audiences. The episodic nature of television mirrors the rhythms of daily life—pauses, climaxes, and resolutions, all packaged into neat, consumable chunks. It is not merely a matter of convenience but a reflection of the medium’s essence. Television cannot afford to meander; its survival depends on capturing attention immediately and holding it steadily until the prescribed endpoint.

By contrast, the works of P.G. Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, and other literary humorists thrive in a space that television cannot easily inhabit: the mind’s theater. Their brilliance lies in the way their prose invites the reader’s imagination to supply comedic timing, emphasis, and nuance. Wodehouse’s intricate wordplay, Adams’s layered absurdities—these are joys that unfold uniquely in the act of reading, where the pace is dictated by the reader’s own internal rhythm. Television, constrained by its linear delivery, often flattens these subtleties into caricature or oversimplification, losing the intellectual interplay between writer and reader that defines great literary humor.

This flattening extends to adaptations of serious literature as well. Complex novels, rich with intellectual depth or intricate internal monologues, struggle to find their footing on screen. The visual medium often over-explains or reduces these elements to surface-level spectacle. Consider Foundation: Asimov’s sprawling meditation on history and inevitability is reimagined as a character-driven drama, emphasizing relationships and action over philosophical inquiry. While this makes the story accessible to a broader audience, it also narrows its scope, sacrificing the expansive intellectual engagement of the original.

Neil Postman reminds us that every medium imposes its own biases on communication. Television excels at immediate, emotionally resonant storytelling, but it does so at the cost of the interiority and complexity that books provide. To assume that one is inherently superior to the other is to misunderstand the nature of media. Each serves different human needs, shaped by the inherent strengths and weaknesses of their form. But in our increasingly image-driven culture, the dominance of television risks leaving us with stories that satisfy the clock but neglect the soul.

The triumph of television, and now streaming platforms, lies not just in their mastery of narrative beats but in their ability to condition audiences to expect stories to conform to these rhythms. Over time, this synchronization between medium and audience has created a feedback loop. Television trains us to crave stories that cater to our optimized internal clocks, and in turn, we reward those that deliver, perpetuating the dominance of immediacy, spectacle, and emotional highs.

This shift has profound implications for how we engage with narrative and, more broadly, with complexity. Television’s reliance on pacing and resolution means that ambiguity, subtlety, and slow-building introspection often fall by the wayside. In literature, readers are free to pause, reflect, and revisit earlier passages, allowing for deeper intellectual engagement. Television and film, bound by the relentless forward march of time, rarely afford such luxuries. The medium prioritizes clarity and immediacy, which can impoverish stories that rely on nuance or demand active interpretation.

This isn’t merely a matter of storytelling; it reflects a broader cultural transformation. As we shift from a print-based culture, with its emphasis on critical thinking and individual interpretation, to a screen-based culture, we risk privileging passive consumption over active engagement. Television and streaming excel at delivering pre-digested narratives that require little effort to understand, reinforcing a cultural preference for convenience over challenge. In this way, the medium not only reflects our optimized attention spans but also shapes them, narrowing our tolerance for complexity and our patience for delayed gratification.

What does this mean for literature? As more stories are adapted for the screen, we may see a growing divide between narratives designed for visual media and those that remain firmly rooted in text. The works of Wodehouse, Adams, and other literary giants may increasingly become artifacts of a bygone era—relics of a time when humor and complexity thrived in the interplay between writer and reader. And yet, their persistence reminds us of something vital: that there are still corners of human experience that television, for all its strengths, cannot fully capture.

If Postman were here to comment on this shift, he might argue that we are losing more than we realize. The optimization of our internal clocks for television storytelling is not merely a technological innovation; it is a reprogramming of our cognitive habits. As we tune our lives to the rhythms of visual media, we risk neglecting the slower, more contemplative beats that once defined how we understood the world—and ourselves.

Best Friends

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adjusts mic stand

Y’all ever notice how America’s like that one friend who can get into a huge fight, but then be cool the next day? Like, we got this weird superpower of turning enemies into homies.

paces thoughtfully

Look at Germany and Japan. We had the biggest fight in history with these folks. But then a few years later we’re like “Hey… you wanna go to the mall? Maybe get some McDonald’s? Build some cars together?”

imitates diplomatic voice
“Dear Germany, we know things got a little heated back there… but we love your beer and those cars you make. We cool?”

And Japan? We went from Pearl Harbor to “Y’all got any more of them PlayStation 5s?” That’s some next-level forgiveness right there. Now we’re best friends, trading Pokémon cards and anime recommendations.

takes a sip of water

But some folks, we just stay mad at. We hold that grudge like it’s our job. Like we’re getting paid overtime for being salty. Got me wondering – is it because they never apologized? Or because they never invited us to go shopping?

leans on mic stand

I mean, if you think about it, we’re like that high school kid who can squash beef with anybody… as long as they let us sit at their lunch table afterward. Share some snacks, maybe collaborate on a group project…

shrugs

But I guess some people just ain’t trying to share their snacks. And that’s how you stay on America’s “We Don’t Sit Together” list for like… seventy years.

straightens up

It’s wild though – we really out here like “Oh, you got Nintendo? All is forgiven! But you won’t let us open a Starbucks? That’s it, we’re gonna have beef until the end of time!”

shakes head slowly

Man, y’all wanna hear about the biggest missed connection in history? This is like a Craigslist post gone wrong on a global scale.

imitates reading from phone
“Missed Connection, 1991: You – collapsing empire with rocket scientists. Me – capitalist nation with McDonald’s. Could’ve been something special…”

paces with purpose

We had this moment, right? Soviet Union falls, and we got all these Russian rocket scientists just sitting there. Literal rocket scientists! These dudes could’ve had us building condos on Mars by now. But what did we do?

switches to Wall Street broker voice
“Nah, forget space travel… check out these DERIVATIVES, baby! Why explore the cosmos when you can explore financial instruments nobody understands?”

normal voice
We really looked at the people who put the first man in space and was like, “That’s cool and all… but have you heard about credit default swaps?”

pretends to be investment banker
“Sure, you can get to Mars, but can you bundle subprime mortgages? That’s where the real money is!”

takes drink of water

We could’ve had the greatest space collaboration since… well, ever! Instead, we got Excel spreadsheets full of synthetic CDOs. Real smart move there, America. Real smart.

leans forward

You know what’s wild? While we were busy inventing ways to make money from making money from making money, the Russians were probably sitting there like, “Damn, we got all these space blueprints just collecting dust. Maybe we should’ve shown them our cool moon rover instead of our cool bankruptcy.”

imitates confused Russian scientist
“We have plans for Mars colony, but they only want to talk about mortgage-backed securities. Maybe they think Mars is bad investment?”

straightens up

Now look at us. Elon Musk gotta build his own rockets because we were too busy in the ’90s figuring out how to turn paper into more paper. We could’ve been having breakfast on the moon, but instead we got breakfast with PowerPoint presentations about leverage.

shakes head

The Russians probably looking at us now like, “You chose… derivatives?” That’s like picking a calculator over a teleporter. Come on, man!

walks around stage shaking head

Y’all remember the Space Race? That shit was REAL. Both sides throwing everything they had at it. Now we got billionaires doing it for fun, like it’s some kind of rich people hobby.

imitates billionaire
“I’m bored with my electric cars and social media… guess I’ll build a rocket!”

normal voice
Meanwhile, there’s probably some old Russian scientist watching this on TV like, “We had these plans in 1975, but y’all wanted to play stock market.”

takes deliberate pause

And that’s the thing about America, man. We’re like that kid with ADHD in a candy store. We see something shiny, and BOOM – we forget what we were doing. Space exploration? Nah, dawg – you seen these financial instruments? You can make money… out of MORE MONEY!

pretends to be excited Wall Street guy
“Forget rockets, Ivan! Look at this – we can take a bunch of bad loans, mix them together like a financial smoothie, and sell it as a premium drink! It’s genius!”

back to normal voice
We really chose banking bros over astronauts. That’s like picking the Monopoly man over Captain Kirk. Who does that?!

sits on stool

You know what’s crazy though? All this time we were worried about the Cold War, when we should’ve been worried about Cold Hard Cash. The real weapons of mass destruction weren’t in no bunker – they was in briefcases on Wall Street!

leans forward

And now… NOW… we got all these private space companies trying to reinvent the wheel. Spending billions to figure out shit the Russians already knew back when disco was still alive. That’s like finding your granddaddy’s secret BBQ recipe and being like, “Nah, I’ma start from scratch.”

stands up, gets animated

We could’ve had a United Nations of Space! Instead, we got the United Banks of Earth. Congratulations, America – we played ourselves!

imitates mission control
“Houston, we have a problem… turns out money can’t buy you space experience. Maybe we should’ve kept those Russian scientists’ phone numbers…”

takes final sip of water

But you know what’s the real kicker? While we were busy building financial instruments so complicated you need a PhD in Mathematics just to spell them… China over there taking notes, building rockets, and probably laughing their asses off.

They looking at us like, “Y’all really fumbled that one, huh? Anyway, we’ll send you a postcard from Mars!”