The Rise of the Bullshittery
Growing frustration with “bullshittery” in modern work and online life centers on how systems increasingly reward people who look productive rather than those who create real value. Commenters point to LinkedIn virtue-signaling, bullshit corporate roles, and AI-generated slop amplified by engagement-optimized recommendation algorithms as symptoms of an attention economy detached from actual customers or outcomes. Some argue this dynamic has always existed but is now supercharged by large institutions and machine learning, pushing people toward smaller, trust-based communities and more deliberate curation of what they read and believe.
Social media, trust, and small communities
- Several comments advocate “de-globalizing” social media into smaller, trust‑ranked spaces (e.g., Discord-style groups, friends‑of‑friends invites).
- People note this mimics how offline friendships form, but acknowledge it’s hard to “start from zero,” like moving to a new city.
- Some are actively seeking curated communities because mainstream platforms feel overrun with “bullshittery.”
Bullshit, LLMs, and AI-generated content
- Multiple commenters connect the article’s definition of “bullshit” (indifference to truth) to LLMs, arguing that by design they don’t care about truth, only plausible output.
- Others counter that the real problem is users misinterpreting statistically plausible answers as truth.
- There is concern that AI enables bullshit at scale (decks, reports, job posts, content “slop”), further polluting professional and public discourse.
LinkedIn, propaganda, and performative work
- LinkedIn is described as a concentrated example of bullshittery: infomercial-like self‑promotion, propaganda-like posts, and fake or low‑quality job ads.
- Some argue LinkedIn is largely optional “sideshow”; others say job sites effectively require it, turning it into social credit or conformance signaling.
- Tension appears between needing visibility for career survival and disgust at the performative nature of it.
Bullshit jobs, large orgs, and growth pressure
- Many report firsthand experience of large departments delivering no real value, sometimes maintained for politics or quasi-UBI‑like reasons.
- Discussion invokes “bullshit jobs” as a pervasive feature of wealthy economies and big corporations, not an anomaly.
- Large firms are likened to “golden goose” farms: once a core business is wildly profitable, long-shot bets and bureaucratic fiefdoms proliferate, often crushing small innovations.
- Constant growth is criticized as cancer-like; more cautious views ask how to balance growth with R&D and capital return.
Attention economy and recommender systems
- Commenters blame recommendation algorithms optimized for clicks and time‑spent for amplifying engagement‑bait and bullshit.
- Some hope the flood of AI‑generated slop will eventually force users to curate more carefully, though others think platforms will tolerate a high slop equilibrium.
Continuity vs novelty of bullshittery
- Several insist none of this is new; similar games existed long before the internet (office politics, networking clubs, academic cliques).
- Others feel scale, tooling (AI), and platform dynamics have made the problem more pervasive and harder to resist.
Miscellaneous
- The site’s JavaScript trick that alters the tab title/icon is seen by some as clever, by others as hostile enough to block the domain.
- There is side discussion on IDN/punycode domains and on the perceived decline in discussion quality on various platforms, including HN.