I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this…this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.”
And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?”
The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”
Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.
- Woody Allen, Annie Hall, 1977
The technology culture in the Bay Area is saturated. The justification for working on a startup requires little explanation because the person you are talking to is probably working on one as well. In New York, it parallels the density of the financial industry. Many of the professionals living in the city work on Wall Street. And if they don’t, they probably want to, even if they won’t admit it. In Los Angeles, I’d assume it’s similar with the entertainment industry.
Cultures cause a tunnel vision, and the result, if you stand back, can be laughably absurd. For example, the nuances of the technology culture in the Bay Area drag along the pettiness of social media counting. If you’ve been to a technology conference, I guarantee you’ve overheard a conversation as ridiculous as this:
Geek #1 in a “If you were coding Ruby, you’d be home by now” shirt:
“Dude, my follower count dropped from 147 to 143 yesterday after I sent out that NSFW link without warning.”
Geek #2 in a “I’m huge on Twitter” shirt:
“Ah, that stinks. At least you’re still not trying to break 100. I’ll just follow a few hundred people until they follow me back, then drop them all!”
I’d interject, in reference to what Howard wrote, that you have to be willing to be unfollowed or unread if you want to be followed or read at all. It’s similar to investing; you need to be willing to lose money to make money. Any progression has its waves in and out, up and down, happy and sad.
But seriously, now taking another step back. The conversation I referenced, which happens more often than you might think, is about losing Twitter followers. These are people you probably don’t really know. What does it mean?
The irony is that I’m taking the time to write about it and fight about it. It’s as ridiculous as the guy with a brother that’s a chicken: maybe I’m the crazy one. For jobs or hobbies, including mine, the bullshit just might be part of the opportunity cost. My criticism is stale, but to me, it feels warranted.
Conversations like the one I described aren’t about the love of technology, fascination with social media, or about the group-think the two cause together; they are about being in love with the tragedy of it all.
And, if you can’t laugh at it, everyone else will for you. Or, at least I will.