I used to live in downtown Oakland, notoriously not the safest city. I was stumbling home from a night of drinking around 3am one morning, and this guy on a bike rolled up on me out of nowhere and he just goes “hey man, you scared of black people?” He was an older black man that appeared to be disheveled and possibly living on the street, and I legit just laughed and was like, no, I grew up in a city, and I live here, so no, not at all haha. And he just goes, “Alright. You have a good night.” and he rode off.

Like 5 years later, I’m waiting for my bus one morning to go to work, and the exact same thing happens. Rolls up on a bike and asks me if I’m scared of black people. Again, I say no, kind of being like dude leave me alone not this again, and he replies “I know you’re not. I remember you. Have a great morning.” He shook my hand and rolled off, never saw him again. Just such an odd experience haha.

I made a Mastodon account during that blitz in '22. Yes, content wasn’t there yet, but honestly, it was the interface for me. It’s UI didn’t feel simplistic enough to me as someone just getting started with it.

Lemmy may have faced a similar fate for me if it weren’t for the smooth interface of Sync to be honest. I know many on here are leaps and bounds beyond my tech proficiency, but so many folks are still in the stone ages writing their passwords on post-it notes etc so to think that they’d adopt something like Mastodon over Twitter or Lemmy over Reddit seems like the bigger counterparts will always win just on sign-up flow and instant gratification.

Many good points on here. I’d also suggest watching “Get Me Roger Stone”. In it, Stone basically details his secrets to getting the ‘silent majority’ to pay attention. He says that fear is a bigger motivator than love. He says that the uneducated can’t tell the difference between entertainment and politics. There’s so many lines in that documentary that will make your ears perk up and be like, damnt, this was exactly how they did it.

Or she’s still my friend and mentor, one of those two, I’m not sure.

You wouldn’t believe how harmful it really was. She’s still in the hospital to this day with her own 24/7 support staff and therapist, a decade later, over the amount of harm this caused. It’s insane.

I had a wireless plug with remote that you could plug any electric device into and toggle the power on and off. One day, I took it into work and plugged my boss’ monitor into it. Every so often, I’d turn her monitor off for just a second or two and then turn it back on. Maybe once or twice a day to start, but then I’d do it a little more.

This went on for weeks to when she finally reached out to IT to get a new monitor. Well, I was ready for that and had the IT guys already in on it. They told her they were out of working monitors and that the ones the company wanted them to use were backlogged. By now, most of the floor was aware of what was happening. She’d slap the monitor, curse, it was hard to keep a straight face.

After a couple weeks of this, I had my friends in the mail room make up a dummy package from one of her clients and deliver it to her desk. Inside was just the remote. She opened it all confused, pressed the button and her monitor went off and we all lost it. She was so red in the face but took it really well and couldn’t believe she never thought to look under her desk lol.

Google “Hong Kong, Tijuana”, best Chinese this side of the border.

My guess is it’s probably not extremists per se, but rather corporations that are scared of offending anyone and being the focus of the internet’s bad or uproar of the day. I will say though, at my last company, the younger generation was pushing all this stuff super hard. While I agree with plenty of the general purpose stuff, I’m like, can’t we just do our jobs and not sit in meetings all day about what our job is supposed to be?

Note to self: sell laptop on Facebook marketplace in September 2025

This gave me PTSD to my time working in tech in San Francisco. To me, some of the larger problems with the tech world that don’t get highlighted so often is how much people are completely making up what they do. I had zero experience in my industry, none. I sweet talked my way into my role and had a friend at the company put in a good word for me. A couple kudos later and I find myself managing, then running my own department. So many of the employees in many of the more ambiguous non-learned-skillset required jobs like sales, customer service, HR just found there ways into a niche and learn along the way. Unlike say a software engineer who went to school to learn how to code, I did not go to school to learn how to get screamed at on the phone and troubleshoot their tech issues. Brittany here probably didn’t go to school to learn how to close deals. The people that designed her programs probably didn’t set her up for success enough, and clearly, the mismanaging of new hires vs the bottom line was their fault, not hers. That said, to any young folks getting into the game, I’d say be wary of doing what she did here by recording this interaction and posting it. I know the gratification probably feels right and just in the moment, but she could have made her life a lot worse than a lost job with potential lawsuits. As mentioned above, a job is just a job and unfortunately we are all just a number to the company. You can and will get another job. Always cover your ass though.

I forget which Samsung galaxy model it was, maybe S6, but it had a universal IR blaster built into the phone which was super convenient for controlling all of my devices. I did however often abuse the shit out of it by flipping the channels on bar tvs or turning off the stereo receiver and nobody was ever suspecting it was me on my phone. I guess that’s probably why they removed it lol, but it was fun while it lasted.