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am-i-the-asshole-official · 2 days

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AITA for telling my friend that our mutual friend doesn't care for us as much as we care about her?

'Harriet' (20F), 'Daisy' (19F) and I (20F) have been friends since we were kids. 6 years ago Harriet was forced to leave the country - we planned on all meeting again once we were adults and could afford it.

Daisy has wanted to visit Harriet for over a year now, but I've been reluctant because Harriet never shows the same interest. She never seems very excited when the topic is brought up, and I also find it questionable that we should have to visit her rather than the other way around, considering there are two of us here and one of her over there.

Daisy admits that Harriet doesn't reply to her texts that much, and I barely talk to Harriet at all nowadays. It does make me sad but I don't want to spend my money going to see someone who doesn't really want to see me. Daisy has been abandoned and let down by her friends time and time again, and basically never gives up on people. She has a lot of insecurities about people secretly hating her, which is why I could never bring myself to tell her how I really felt. After all, I don't think that Harriet hates us, I just think she's moved on with her life.

About a week ago I found out that about a year after Harriet was forced to leave, she returned to the country without telling anyone - I guess this was to visit family. I found out from a mutual friend who lives in the same country as Harriet. I was shocked and angry that she hadn't said anything - I would have been prepared to travel to whatever part of the country she was staying in just to see her. I was especially shocked because she was still very close to Daisy and I at this point, so I didn't understand why she would lie. She would constantly talk about how badly she wanted to see us, but was in the same country as us and didn't say anything!

Yesterday Daisy brought up the topic of visiting Harriet again, and with the information that I now have, I found myself unable to keep my thoughts to myself. I told Daisy that Harriet has moved on and that we shouldn't waste our money on her, and that if she cared that much she would make more of an effort to talk to us, or even visit us herself. I also told her about my recent discovery.

Daisy was really sad and started crying over the phone, saying that she didn't understand why no one wanted to stay friends with her. I felt awful and did my best to comfort her, explaining to her that I didn't think Harriet had any bad feelings towards her and that she had just grown distant over time. This didn't really seem to help though and she hung up and hasn't been online since.

To be honest I'm still confused about a lot of things, like why Harriet lied about not being able to visit before, but I still think that what I said was fair. I don't want Daisy to waste her affection on someone who doesn't feel the same way. I will admit that I hold a lot of resentment towards Harriet due to messed up things she has done to me in the past - however, I don't think I've been blinded by my anger towards her, I think the conclusion I came to was fair and unbiased. Still, I feel guilty, since what I said seems to have badly affected Daisy, and maybe I'm biased against Harriet without knowing? So, AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole

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bluereference · 3 days

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okay so like, eyeless jack x reader but he spoils them???

like I feel like he would sell the organs he doesn’t eat for money and then use that to buy the reader things😭 idk girl this is my first ask (or whatever your pronouns are NO OFFENSE😍)

also I just wanted to say I’ve been reading your work for a while and you’re a really good writer, the effort you put into it shows and it’s something to be proud of👍

Tysm like you don't know how much it means to hear that last part ALSO since it's pride month I'll prolly post my pronouns and shit soon

Also I don't know why I was laughing at the idea of sugar daddy E.J

Warnings: mentions of organs/blood/gore/killing/Cannibalism, swearing?, mentions of illegal shit, slight nsfw

----------------------------------------------------------

→ Okay so first, selling organs makes a shit ton of money

→ also the amount he kills he definitely doesn't need that much of the persons body

→ which means he has a ton of money to spend on you

→ like a lot

→ like I'm talking fucking Zade Meadows ass money (I've just recently started reading haunting Adeline)

→ but yeah he is buying you anything

→ You saw some really expensive piece of clothing online? He's got you

→ you want to go shop until you legit cannot walk without falling? Go ahead he could buy you that entire fucking mall if he wanted to

→ will most definitely buy you some comfy but EXTREMELY expensive lingerie

→ this is just a random headcannon I'd like to throw in, he doesn't eat eyes and he also doesn't eat any reproductive organs

→ sadly women's eggs don't sell for very much neither does a man's dick

→ I did my research for this specific post

→ anyways I feel if you two are having sex or doing foreplay he might end up mumbling about each part of your body and how much it's worth

→ but it's okay he'd never sell you you're too precious

→ anyways yeah he spoils you wayyy too much lmaooo

#creepypasta #creepypasta x reader #eyeless jack #eyeless jack x reader

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goldkirk · 5 months

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question: have any of you personally seen a dietician (not looking for experiences with nutritionists, only dieticians), and did you find it helpful or useful, and if you did see a dietician and you ALSO have seen a GI doctor, how did the experience compare for you in terms of helpfulness + how much you felt listened to and helped?

#i'm trying to figure out which doctor appointments I want to bother making and spending money about for potentially no return on investment #and right now i'm trying to figure out if I'd get way more practical help from a dietician or if I need to suck it up and find a #not-elderly not-male not-dismissive GI doctor first and THEN see a dietician #although I cannot afford a bunch of tests #so like???#trying to figure out if a dietician would be more helpful overall with me not HAVING any GI diagnoses or eating disorders #and just really struggling with food in both sensory ways and unpredictable digestion ways that don't correlate with food allergies #god i sometimes wish i had food allergies so i could have some predictability #but yeah. i'm leaning towards dietician but figured i should crowdsource experiences #since I know a lot of you have health issues you've also been trying to manage for years and probably have good advice #if it helps i'm also in a major city now and have a decent-but-not-great health insurance plan so I'm good on those two fronts #to do #health #I know a dietician can't diagnose anything but I'd love help figuring out how to get maximum nutrition even when i can barely eat anything #or when my body decides to start getting sick from or (tw emetophobia) puking up fiber or fatty foods #which thankfully isn't often #now that I do cannabis daily in microdosing I have so much less pain and bloating and nausea #but when it hits it HITS #and the last time I tried going without cannabis for a couple days and then eating a fiber muffin I was sick six times in one morning #and didn't get my normal eating ability back until dinnertime #luckily that's not normal for me #but my issues bounce up and down so much #and I lose weight so fast whenever my appetite goes from 'barely ever there' to 'negatively nonexistent'#and I had like. two months last year where I think i reached my body's natural healthy set weight #and i needed so much food but it felt so good energy wise and temperature wise #and i'd like to STAY THERE FFS #and I feel like a dietician would be helpful for making meal options for good #*good and hard and nuclear alert level eating difficulty times #anyway. crowdsourcing. yay!

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moregraceful · 14 days

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btw. i know i sound as a general rule like my entire life collapsing and trust, it more or less is, but today i received an email to schedule a second interview for a job that i am neutral on but would excel at and also do not as of right now have a lot of other options, but i realized ALSO would -- and this is critical -- allow me to advance my san jose barracuda agenda to c-level executives in the south bay.

the second job interview is honestly the wackiest part of all bc the first interview ended when the interviewer asked if i had stable internet for a home work environment, and right after i confirmed yes, my internet went down. despite it all, we stay silly i guess

#[picture of sabourin fighting onyebuchi in a ppt] the men your wives could be with if they weren't with you 👍 welcome to san jose #it is a b2b2c company that is. A LITTLE SILLY TO BE HONEST. but also completely in line with what i want to do with nonprofits #just for tech instead of like. refugees. and the semi-consensus in the gc is that if i can't get a job in a nonprofit doing #what i want then i at least then have this job on my resume in the future. like i did this for tech let me do it for people who need it.#which is a much better visual than a huge gap on my resume while i spiral all summer bc my therapist made me read adult children #of emotionally immature parents and then i learned what dissociative amnesia is. BORING let me spend other people's money #i was talking over the second interview with jasbah and she was like this job sounds evil but also a lot of fun #i was like I KNOW #IT'S LIKE A FUN PUZZLE IF I DON'T THINK ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF WHAT I AM DOING #BUT THAT'S HOW WE STAY SILLY IN THIS ECONOMY I GUESS!!!!!#fresno oilers.txt

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magnoliamyrrh · 7 months

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its been insane witnessing the full force of propaganda and american imperialism with my own two eyes as an adult these past few years. obviously ive known abt it plenty and seen it before, but witnessing it at this age with this much force is... dystopian and crazy

#i rly think its accurate to say were living through a second post nine eleven #.........#whats been terrifying too is seeing how.... the things done have only done so much #protests All Over the world including the imperial core So Many cracked down on so hard or seemingly without doing fuck all at #a systemic level. like i couldn't tell u if me or anyone else spending hours calling representatives and writing emails did a single thint #if all the protests in america did anything systemically. the government is doing the same exact shit its been doing despite it #all the un resolutions and calls and anything seem to also have been useless. no matter how many countries voted for a ceasefire in #whichever meeting?? just bc america and israel voted against and bc the un is clearly the lapdog on a leash of the american empire #... i know bolivia and colombia (?) cut diplomatic ties with israel and yamen threathened to declare war and several countries have #threathened several things... and yet.#god sake america has send fucking navy and soldiers to help in the genocide its fucking vile 🤢#and israel (+ us) have fucking bombed and killed civilians in other Fucking Countries Than Palestine and this shit is still going on #.... . i guess were seeing some of the effects of boycotting which is good for sure but that dont stop the actual thing #its just so fucked. our generation has caught a lot of wild shit but i dont know if ive ever seen such great international outcry globally #from populations as i have seen for palestine #AND YET. and yet it continues. and yet it goes on #its fucking horrifying #..... i was thinking too like. in a theoretical scenario lets say everyone in america could get on board with refusing to pay taxes. like #just fuck it. no more funding of this.#but the american government has so much money and power that it wouldnt rly stop them for at least a good while. also. i doubt they wouldn't #commit atrocities on a population that would refuse that hard. and what then? revolution in the streets? in the country made up of 51 #countries? where sure the civilians have guns but the government has shit we cant even dream of?#.#all of this is so deeply dystopian and pained #and im not saying this in some sort of nothing matters so dont do anything way dont speak abt it dont call dont protest dont boycott etc #even when there is 0 hope we have to try #............ but its deeply horrifying

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seventh-district · 24 hours

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#Seven’s Public Diary #vent post #vent #cw vent post #cw vent #cw health #cw medical #cw medication #cw death #death mention #after nearly 2 weeks of unexplained pain and Symptoms and working myself up into the worst panic attack of my life #i finally caved and went to urgent care :)#it’s not lost on me that the same thing happened a little over a year ago. not bc of the same symptoms but it’s the same fear of dying #smthn smthn if i had a nickel smthn smthn weird that it happened twice. i rlly hope this doesn’t become a pattern #i can picture it now. every spring i walk in and they’re like ‘ugh it’s the neurotic hypochondriac with 4 anxiety disorders again 🙄#wonder what they think they’re dying of this time!’#sigh. anyways i’m fine. probably.#the consensus was ‘no you’re Probably not gonna have a stroke and die. you’re just Very stressed and in a lot of pain.’#got diagnosed with Stressed Guy Syndrome so now i take ✨painkillers✨ and ✨muscle relaxers✨ 🙃#they wanted me to take a steroid shot too but that felt like overkill. it’s also a big step for me to be willing to take anything at all #not bc i’m scared of getting a shot in the neck i’m just. scared of medication in general. the side effects. the potential for dependency.#it’s only for a week but i’m still uncomfy with it. but it Is nice to be in less pain. tho i have my doubts that it’ll help long term #time will tell. but i still can’t shake the fear of the tiny chance that it Could be more serious. but it’s not big enough for them to test #for it so. just gotta live with the fear. which in turn is making it hard to relax. which is what i’m supposed to be doing. so.#anyways. i Hope the meds work and i don’t end up back there next week spending More money and seeking more treatment #sighhhh i just can’t catch a break these days. it’s Always Something #at least the electricity and internet are back on after the tornado last week. and at least i’m not in much pain for now. silver linings.#sorry to everyone i’ve unintentionally ghosted but it’s been hard to think through the pain and now the meds are making me eepy #hopefully i’ll recover and recharge my social battery sooner than later. bc i do feel v bad abt it #and it’s So nice to sleep without much pain so i’m. taking advantage of that this week. Seven Try To Relax Challenge 2024

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dullahandyke · 1 year

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coming to the realisation that i can buy whatever i want to look however i want. insane

#but my cd bags havent come yet n i cant buy another thing until they come in the post bcos i prommied myself #n after that i need to get new over-ear headphones #also update the reward points system for making me do things is Not Working so i might ditch it #but also i. dont have a job. so i gotta ration my money. n if i wing it i feel like ill fuck it up #but also like. sigh ok so the plan was that for every task i do i get a euro of spending money. to motivate me to do tasks so i can buy thi #but ive racked up a debt already. oops! so theoretically i need to work that off before i can start saving for someghing new to buy #the thing is tho that my headphones broke n i have earbuds but i NEEEED to have on-ear headphones or ill explode #n im thinking of biting the bullet and buying some proper nice ones #but thats spencey itd take so long to save up for those #n i could theoretically add that to my debt n buy them now but that would render the debt functionally meaningless #bcos if i gotta do 100+ tasks to work off the debt to START saving for shit like a binder #then we're gonna have a problem #this could be mitigated by me getting less expensive headphones n stuff but like w a warranty so that when they inevitably break #i dont gotta vimes boots it and instead i can just get the same headphones again #but thats a lot of electrical waste :(#sigh i COULD ask my mom to get me the nicey headphones as a pre-emptive leaving cert thing #but id say shed rather get me something AFTER the leaving which is like. 20 days. n can i survive that long without overear headphones?#tbh probably. but also my perception is skewed bcos im currently in If I Have Headphones On I Will DIE mode #so shrug ill have to think it thru some other time #aughghghghgh!!!!!1 what if i killed and bit #<- still hasnt started studying for the leaving. at this point i dont think its gonna happen

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six-of-ravens · 8 months

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finally made that list of things I want to do on my week-and-a-half off! It's mainly boring stuff: errands to run and super-early Christmas shopping and all that, or family stuff. My brain is complaining bc it's like "waaaah I just wanna spend a week on the couch playing video games!!" but I know from experience if I do that I'll feel like I wasted the week 😂 Also most of this stuff will only take a couple hours all told, I just decided to do it on my week off bc otherwise it'll be so hard to motivate myself to get out.

Last year when I took the week off I did a whole bunch of cooking and stocked up the freezer for a few weeks, which was a great idea, but since my holidays are right after Thanksgiving this year and the weather is still relatively warm, idk if I'll feel like cooking much. Still gonna try and stock the freezer up a bit tho!

(also yes I did get roped into doing work teambuilding on my week off. everyone got super hype for this VR room thing but then half the office was sick this week and there are people on vacation the next 3 weeks, so I caved and said I'd just meet them at the place. I have very little Get Out And Do Fun Things activities books anyways so I should just go and Have Fun. Not like I'd be paying for it...)

#was considering getting an airbnb and going into the mountains for a couple days but a) didn't want to spend the money and b)#as soon as my parents found out I'd booked the week off dad was like WELL IF MOM HAS ANY APPOINTMENTS THAT WEEK YOU WILL TAKE HER TO THEM!!#like....okay i *would* but could you at least ask nicely and let me know the time first??#anyway she has no appointments so it doesn't matter. i just hate being volun-told to do things lmao #im still worried about Time but i just need to make a real schedule. also a lot if the errands can be done literally tomorrow #i have to go out and get groceries for thanksgiving bc the store opens late Sun/Mon on long weekends so i can putter around a bit #also one whole day is written off bc dad is like 'i know your car appt is at X time but it might take ALL DAY for them to do it!!'#which i don't think will be the case lol

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blujayonthewing · 1 year

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good evening I am once again looking up 18th century men's shirt tutorials online

#PERHAPS FOR REAL THIS TIME. I WILL MAKE A COOL PIRATE SHIRT TO WEAR.#ROTISSERIE SHITHEAD HERE I COME #the thing is I KNOW I would wear it because I have a 'pirate shirt' I bought off amazon I've built some outfits around #but I lowkey hate that shirt agdjfjsk the neck and collar situation is... bizarre.... and imo unflattering #where a normal functional shirt collar would look you know... normal #also the fabric is THINNN so if I wanna wear something open over it I also need something else under it and ugh #the trouble as always is just motivation... but the alternative is buying things and I'm scared of spending money #if I could get my feet under me to start sewing that'd be really great for a lot of reasons #not the least of which being I could have CLOTHES. that FIT. and that I LIKE #starting with THRIFT STORE BEDSHEET PIRATE SHIRTS to wear with COOL VESTS and look like a GAY LITTLE PRINCE or perhaps ECCENTRIC WIZARD #or at the very least sarah from labyrinth #about me

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iloveyoumorethansoup · 2 years

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I don’t know what I need to be happy but I do know I absolutely need to move into my own space and I need to spend a lot of time creating spaces for myself both outside in a home and online

#I’m really good at the online one #but I’d like to also be in video format #it’s like. i want to be very very true to myself. no acting allowed. no deciding which version of myself to present #but I also want to be the idealized version of myself #the version of myself that is happy and excited to wake up #someone who greatly enjoys the little things in life and has time for themself #and I know that’s an option. i know it is #and it looks so possible from here in this hole that I know I can’t leave until I move out again knowing how much better it gets #but also. all my problems don’t magically disappear by moving out and I know that too #most of them do tho #last year I didn’t have much time for myself. i spent a lot of time online which I don’t regret in the slightest #i just need to figure out how to balance school time to myself and friends and online #and probably work #update looked at my bank account yeah balancing work too how did I manage to spend 600$ in a month????#no more going out like twice a week or having the mindset of oh I only spent 60$ today I’m doing good!#I’m all like ooh yeah I have a good job I can totally buy that! and I can. but oh god I gotta limit the treat myself attitude #if I just don’t spent money I could have my money goal saved by the end of summer I think #nvm I severely over estimated my time here #anyways. I’m really bad with time management but dear god do I need to get better at it for a shot at peace in my life #soup talks

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kunikidas-lost-glasses · 1 year

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Doing something which is supposed to make you feel happy or which you thought would make you happy and feel all giddy but instead you slowly start to feel nothing and start to become utterly overwhelmed until you're left with the pain which comes with the thought "but this was supposed to make me happy. I was looking so forward to it."

#why does this happen most of the time when I try to buy a lot of things which I really wanted since quite a while #Like. The longer I juggle things in and out of my shopping chart because of how expensive everything is the less I start to feel #Until I start thinking that I can eaisly live without it anyways #Also by now I nearly always stop myself from buying things because of the bitter feeling which comes with spending a lot of money #I was able to buy a lot of things once in a while previously without any bigger issues #I am still a minor. I could buy things instead of just saving my money until I am an adult and have to spend a lot of money anyways #my rant #rant #ramblings

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applejarjar · 2 years

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By the way I got the job!!!

#They're gonna make me an offer soon!#I think I have to pay for housing though which is kinda bozo and the pay isn't amazing but still excited #Plus I'll be a part of a group instead of on my own for a good while so I'm way less stressed about it #Apparently upward mobility is better when ppl go through this program so that's also a plus #I think I'll have a lot of options after training too so I'm less worried about getting stuck in something I'll be shit at #Just need to get this driving thing sorted #Lots of problems to solve and questions to answer in the coming months before I have to move #Can't spend ANY money #Already tryna figure out who I could cut a deal on a car with lol #That's gonna be the most expensive thing to start with...#Hopefully rent won't kick my ass they said they'd send housing options soon #Ah! So happy!

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vamptastic · 2 years

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time to make some online purchases and not be nervous about it at all not even a little bit

#im very financially responsible except with giving others money #like every time i see a homeless person i give them at least $10 and my parents r always mad about it #and every time i go out w my friends i pay for everything #which isn't bad per se but like #i need to save about $10k for medical transition and i would like to have #a safety net of more savings in case things go south with my parents before i can graduate college n get my own income #also now that i have my own money i need to learn to spend it when i need to buy smth #i have a budget of saving 90% spending 10% for my summer job #but 10% is like $300!! thats $300 that could go towards top surgery...#idk. i just wish these savings were for like.. a fun trip or a car or just a rainy day #instead i need to save every cent i make for the next four years just to have what cis people r born with #sucks. -_-.#the aversion to spending money is mostly just cos #we're middle upper class ish now but both my parents grew up real poor #like no ac in the florida summer get a job at 14 if u want food on the table poor. everything but homeless p much #tho my dad was homeless in college for a bit #so. they're very frugal even tho we make a lot of money #just gotta get the cheapest of everything no frivolous spending go to 6 grocery stores for the best deals n haggle with me over jeans #not necessarily a bad thing tho id argue why make that much money if u don't ever wanna spend it #cos its not going towards a mansion or new cars n shit we have like. a normal house n very old car #it's all just retirement savingd #savings.#which is all well n good but like #dont u wanna live a bit happier before age 65 too? i mean r u gonna wait your whole life to use that money on ur happiness?#idk. anyway.#my money is going towards Not Killing Myself From Dysphoria rn. so.#but i wish i could stop begrudging myself for buying stuff even when its well within my budget #literally beating myself up for buying a fucking belt rn

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phantomrose96 · 3 months

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If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

#chrissy speaks #long post #-gestures broadly-

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