Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
That seems suspiciously soon, but my impression is based on nothing but vibes — a sense that companies are still buying in.
I think there was a report saying that the most recent quarter still showed a massive infusion of VC cash into the space, but I’m not sure how much of that comes from the fact that a new money sink hasn’t yet started trending in the valley. It wouldn’t surprise me if the griftier founders were looking to cash out before the bubble properly bursts in order to avoid burning bridges with the investors they’ll need to get the next thing rolling.
yeah, i think this is a last gasp or a second-last gasp.
Ed Zitron says it’ll burn by end of the year, but he doesn’t list sources either so idk
We were asking around AI industry peons in March and they all guessed around three quarters too. I woulda put it at maybe two years myself, but I was surprised at so many people all arriving at around three quarters. OTOH, I would say that just in the past few months things are really obviously heading for a trauma.
I’m severely backlogged on catching up to things but my (total and complete) guess would be something like: all the recent headlines about funding and commitments are almost certainly imprecise in localisation and duration - everyone that “got money” didn’t necessarily get “money” but instead commitments to funding, and “everyone” is a much smaller set of entities that don’t encompass a really wide gallery of entities
So for all the previously-extant promptfondlers/ model dilettantes/etc out there, the writing may indeed have been (and may still be) on the wall ito runway (“startup operating capital remaining available and viable to avoid death”)
Based on the kind of headlines seen (and presuming the above supposition for the sake of argument), and the kind of utterly milquetoast garbage all the interceding months have produced, I don’t think it’s likely that much of the promised money will make it through to this layer/lot either. But that’s entirely a guess at this stage (and I can think of some fairly hefty counter-argument examples that may contribute to countering, not least because of how many people/orgs wouldn’t want to be losing face to fucking this up)
Put me down for “doesn’t think it will end.” Did crypto end?
crypto’s VC investment fell off a cliff after the crash, and that investment is what we were talking about there
hence their pivot to AI
Oh, OK. I think all the VC-adjacent people still really believe in crypto, if it helps. They probably also don’t believe in it, depending on the room. I think it will come back.
they’ve stopped putting fresh money in, but they believe fervently in the massive bags they’re holding
Perhaps that’s part of why so many SV types are backing Trump. Grifting off Trump may be their fallback after the AI bubble collapses.