Last edited Mon Aug 4, 2025, 04:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Current Affairs had a piece on this person.

It’s such a predictably bogus charade that I don’t know who buys it.

First you pretend that “helping society” or whatever the fuck isn’t something difficult and worthwhile as just about any boots on the ground environmental/anormal rights activist knows. Instead it is going and working for Facebook, McKinsey etc. I mean who buys that shit ever?

That narrative should be mocked. The pretense that it was ever sincere is kayfabe.

The use of terms like “performative” or kayfabe have increased in recent years because of: 1) all the moronic influencers trying to be their authentic selves-which is sad and lame and 2) this sort of horrible charade by pseudo elites. I never get what is elite about these people.

The only elite person I have ever seen associated with Facebook is Yan LeCun and he is the reason I overcame my aversion to that company enough to install WhatsApp (which is in fairness a useful app).

But back to this woman, you are fired by those creeps and then there is an equally fraudulent “crisis of conscience” and you bilk the whole thing a second time around with a sleazy little tell-all that those gullible morons or the equally fraudulent pseudo-elites at the NYT and The Atlantic gush over saying “omg that is a very serious expose”.

Actual whistleblowers are more like Timnit Gebru of DAIR or worse they are like the Fannie Mae whistleblower who went to jail, poor Daniel Hale (who should have known better than to trust a greasy rag like The Intercept). They have hard lives.

The glorious state of China knows how to deal with “troublemakers”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr46npx1e73o

(On a tangent, I find the left enthusiasm for China truly baffling. Nathan Robinson who is generally one of the very few people I respect is not even immune to it. I get it up to the hypocritical criticism of the “China will do it so let’s do it first” plutocrats.
I part ways where an American-centric view by people like Robinson falls prey to this constant human bias where criticism of one group leads to a less clear sighted take on the one it attacks. There is a reactionary element to left/liberalism I don’t get.

I suppose the platonic ideal of hating everyone is hard for all but the most seasoned, hardened, cynical, bitter curmudgeons and actual innately green. Being green is a learned behavior for humans unfortunately, but where it is who you are, living in this society involves constantly pretending to buy into this rapacious plunder of the planet and exploitation of animals by this one annoying species. And long explanations of how you aren’t the Unabomber nor advocating for a return to mud huts nor antinatalism, but that this economic and sociopolitical model (falling birth rates not overpopulation/overconsumption are the issue! Need more growth! Cancer good! (right); Aging societies loom, not angry unemployed young men! Need more growth! Migration will fix it!(“left” if Koch-parroting, meninist shills like Ben Wray/or the Cato plant Betsy Hartmann are considered left) is pegged at an extreme and broken.)

I don’t think one should be cynical of all people, but certainly of people like this woman. Even Carlin might find it hard to see the universe in this woman’s dead eyes:

https://thehumanist.com/magazine/september-october-2015/features/strange-bedfellows-misanthropy-humanism-the-many-faces-of-george-carlin

think about the book? Do you have an insider’s take on fb?

I’m always looking for good criticism.

But I definitely increasingly see a lot of the net/social media as a cynical tool of the amoral, mercenary, global military industrial complex.

Nothing original there..but if it’s not precisely an insider’s take, I still have some experience with how social engineering and emotion manipulation are built into these technologies. Probably a little more than the average person.

But it’s not specific to Facebook so much as our overall technology landscape.

It’s frustratingly hard to pinpoint beyond the rather vague outline I just gave you.

techs messing around with art. I was struck how second hand/old hat ideas were applauded as long as there were a few blinking lights.

Someone remarked: it’s because they can talk good.

So ‘sales’ was the point. Not creativity or beauty or…