Selfish Users Quotes

It's way too easy to see the real face of a person. They're amiable and full of pretense when they want something from you, but the minute you don't give in, back away or put yourself first (like they do) is the minute they show you who they really are.

For those who misused others for their business gains: you can never pluck the real essence of a beautiful heart and a beautiful mind. You may all have the clinging sound of "business impressions to suppress" but you cannot grab the essence of an honest spirit who only wants to be free from insincere, ungrateful users of other people's time and generosity." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from If I Could Tell You

Not all generous hearts are gullible enough to be screwed by cold, calculating, business propaganda. A person who has an eye for what is right and the truth will immediately spot the cunning ways of a selfish "user and hungry grabber" who took initiative to grab the originality from other people they tried to profile, fake befriended and extracted favours." ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from If I Could Tell You

On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

I don't have social media" "Oh right." He rolls his eyes. "Too good for all that." She shakes her head. "Not at all. On the contrary, I'm too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It's designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody's loneliness and promises us a community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that - weaponizing a person's isolation - it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody's like 'words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people,' blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody's influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they're lovable. And then, once you're nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people's triumphs, that's when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don't get m e started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that's just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don't need it. Any of it." Blandine cracks her neck. "I'm corrupt enough.

Being married to someone on the spectrum is challenging. Some people might go so far as to say it’s impossible. A quick internet search on ‘Asperger’s marriage’ will turn up plenty of horror stories. As my husband would tell you, being married to someone with undiagnosed ASD is even more difficult. Without the explanation of Asperger’s and an understanding of the social communication impairments that accompany it, it’s natural for the nonautistic partner to assume that the autistic partner is being intentionally rude, selfish, cold, controlling, and a host of other negative things. Before my diagnosis, there was a frequent pattern in my marriage: I would unknowingly do something hurtful, then be surprised when Sang was upset by it. This inevitably triggered a downward spiral, Sang assuming I was being intentionally hurtful—because how could a grown adult not realize that it was hurtful—and me feeling bewildered about what exactly I’d done to cause so much upset. Often these discussions stalemated in a conversational dead end. I would sink into a shutdown or meltdown, where my only verbal response was, “I don’t know,” and Sang would resort to a frustrated refrain of “I don’t understand you.” Even typing those two phrases is hard because they bring back memories of some of the most difficult times in our marriage.

Liberal politics is based on the idea that the voters know best, and there is no need for Big Brother to tell us what is good for us. Liberal economics is based on the idea that the customer is always right. Liberal art declares that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Students in liberal schools and universities are taught to think for themselves. Commercials urge us to ‘Just do it.’ Action films, stage dramas, soap operas, novels and catchy pop songs indoctrinate us constantly: ‘Be true to yourself’, ‘Listen to yourself’, ‘Follow your heart’. Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated this view most classically: ‘What I feel to be good – is good. What I feel to be bad – is bad.’ People who have been raised from infancy on a diet of such slogans are prone to believe that happiness is a subjective feeling and that each individual best knows whether she is happy or miserable. Yet this view is unique to liberalism. Most religions and ideologies throughout history stated that there are objective yardsticks for goodness and beauty, and for how things ought to be. They were suspicious of the feelings and preferences of the ordinary person. At the entrance of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, pilgrims were greeted by the inscription: ‘Know thyself!’ The implication was that the average person is ignorant of his true self, and is therefore likely to be ignorant of true happiness. Freud would probably concur.fn1 And so would Christian theologians. St Paul and St Augustine knew perfectly well that if you asked people about it, most of them would prefer to have sex than pray to God. Does that prove that having sex is the key to happiness? Not according to Paul and Augustine. It proves only that humankind is sinful by nature, and that people are easily seduced by Satan. From a Christian viewpoint, the vast majority of people are in more or less the same situation as heroin addicts. Imagine that a psychologist embarks on a study of happiness among drug users. He polls them and finds that they declare, every single one of them, that they are only happy when they shoot up. Would the psychologist publish a paper declaring that heroin is the key to happiness? The idea that feelings are not to be trusted is not restricted to Christianity. At least when it comes to the value of feelings, even Darwin and Dawkins might find common ground with St Paul and St Augustine. According to the selfish gene theory, natural selection makes people, like other organisms, choose what is good for the reproduction of their genes, even if it is bad for them as individuals. Most males spend their lives toiling, worrying, competing and fighting, instead of enjoying peaceful bliss, because their DNA manipulates them for its own selfish aims. Like Satan, DNA uses fleeting pleasures to tempt people and place them in its power.

Zoom’s simplicity is a strength when it comes to the company’s ability to grow its network. When the product concept and value is simple to describe, it makes them easier to spread from user to user, much like the “meme” coined by noted biologist Richard Dawkins in one of my favorite books, The Selfish Gene. You can copy and paste a Zoom link—it’s just that easy.

Dead Rite by Stewart Stafford While he lives, hope still clings, The hereafter remains a mystery, If life is but struggle and toil, Then death is hushed serenity. Things he treasured when alive, Trinkets to divide up as booty, The body still lying in repose, Nothing but a fading memory. Lay him down in a mossy grave, Heads bowed in a muttered eulogy, Then back away with platitudes, To the nearest exit from the cemetery. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

According to many experts the majority of the people won't be needed anymore for the coming society. Almost everything will be done by artificial intelligence, including self-driving cars and trucks, which already exist anyway. Some even mentioned that AI is making universities obsolete by how fast it can produce information. However, In my view, the AI has limitations that the many can't see, because on a brain to brain comparison, the AI always wins, yet the AI can only compute with programmable data. In other words, the AI can think like a human but can't imagine or create a future. The AI is always codependent on the imagination of its user. So the limitations of the AI are in fact determined by humans. It is not bad that we have AI but that people have no idea of how to use it apart from replacing their mental faculties and being lazy. This is actually why education has always been a scam. The AI will simply remove that from the way. But knowledge will still require analysis and input of information, so the AI doesn't really replace the necessary individuals of the academic world, but merely the many useless ones that keep copying and plagiarizing old ideas to justify and validate a worth they don't truly possess. Being afraid and paranoid about these transitions doesn't make sense because evolution can't be stopped, only delayed. The problem at the moment has more to do with those who want to keep themselves in power by force and profiting from the transitions. The level of consciousness of humanity is too low for what is happening, which is why people are easily deceived. Consequently, there will be more anger, fear, and frustration, because for the mind that is fixed on itself, change is perceived as chaos. The suffering is then caused by emotional attachments, stubbornness and the paranoid fixation on using outdated systems and not knowing how to adapt properly. In essence, AI is a problem for the selfish mind - rooted in cognitive rationalizations -, but an opportunity of great value for the self-reflective mind - capable of a metacognitive analysis. And the reason why nobody seems to understand this is precisely because, until now, everyone separated the mind from the spirit, while not knowing how a spiritual ascension actually goes through the mind. And this realization, obviously, will turn all religions obsolete too. Some have already come to this conclusion, and they are the ones who are ready.

I don’t have social media.” “Oh, right.” He rolls his eyes. “Too good for all that.” She shakes her head. “Not at all. On the contrary, I’m too weak for it. I mean, everyone is, but I am especially susceptible to its false rewards, you know? It’s designed to addict you, to prey on your insecurities and use them to make you stay. It exploits everybody’s loneliness and promises us community, approval, friendship. Honestly, in that sense, social media is a lot like the Church of Scientology. Or QAnon. Or Charles Manson. And then on top of that—weaponizing a person’s isolation—it convinces every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview. All while commodifying her, harvesting her data, and selling it to nefarious corporations so that they can peddle more shit that promises to make her prettier, smarter, more productive, more successful, more beloved. And throughout all this, you have to act stupefied by your own good luck. Everybody’s like, Words cannot express how fortunate I feel to have met this amazing group of people, blah blah blah. It makes me sick. Everybody influencing, everybody under the influence, everybody staring at their own godforsaken profile, searching for proof that they’re lovable. And then, once you’re nice and distracted by the hard work of tallying up your failures and comparing them to other people’s triumphs, that’s when the algorithmic predators of late capitalism can pounce, enticing you to partake in consumeristic, financially irresponsible forms of so-called self-care, which is really just advanced selfishness. Facials! Pedicures! Smoothie packs delivered to your door! And like, this is just the surface stuff. The stuff that oxidizes you, personally. But a thousand little obliterations add up, you know? The macro damage that results is even scarier. The hacking, the politically nefarious robots, opinion echo chambers, fearmongering, erosion of truth, etcetera, etcetera. And don’t get me started on the destruction of public discourse. I mean, that’s just my view. Obviously to each her own. But personally, I don’t need it. Any of it.” Blandine cracks her neck. “I’m corrupt enough.

Knowing What Your Job Is We are trained to believe our “job” is the set of tasks we accomplish for an employer in return for money. That’s how I saw it until a CEO shared with me his approach to business. He viewed his career as a non-stop search for a better job and because of that changed jobs and companies often. Apparently it worked because he was the head of a company when I met him. Usual Frame: Your job is what your boss tells you it is. Reframe: Your job is to get a better job. Don’t confuse your job with the work your employer wants you to do. The boss might want you to process all the pending orders by quitting time, but your job is to get a better job. Everything else you do should service that reframe. If it doesn’t help you leave the job you are in and upgrade, it might not be worth doing. But don’t worry that this line of thinking feels sociopathic—doing a good job on your assigned duties is one way to look good for promotions.  The reframe reminds us to be in continuous job-search mode, including on the first day of work at a new job. If that sounds unethical, consider that your employer would drop you in a second if the business required it. In a free market, you can do almost anything that is normal and legal. Changing jobs—for any reason you want—is normal. Your employer’s job is to take care of the shareholders. It’s your job to take care of you. That doesn’t always mean acting selfishly. If being generous with your time and energy seems as if it will have the better long-term payoff, do that. Your employer might want to frame employees as “a family,” which is common, but that’s to divert you from the fact that they can fire you at will. They don’t want you to know you have the same power to fire them. Part of the job of leadership is convincing you that what is good for the leader is good for you. Sometimes that is the case but keep your priorities clear. You are number one. When I recommend being selfish in the job market, I expect you to know that approach works best when dealing with a big corporation. A small business might require a more generous approach. When your workplace reframe is that your job is to get a better job, that helps you make decisions that work in your favor. For example, if you’re offered a choice of two different projects at work, pick the one that teaches you a valuable skill, lets you show off what you can do, or lets you network with people who can help you later. Don’t make the mistake of picking the project that has the most value to the company if doing so has the least value to you. Sometimes your best career move is to do exactly what your boss asks, especially if it’s critical to the company. You’ll know those situations when you see them. Don’t lose sight of your mission: Get a better job. Boredom

That’s what is meant by the tragedy of the commons. A bunch of individuals, acting independently and out of self-interest, may deplete a shared resource even though it hurts everyone in the long run. It applies to corporations that externalize costs such as pollution, but it’s what happens when net users illegally download music and movies, expecting others to pick up the tab. It is in each person’s short-term self-interest to steal the music. Only the sucker pays. But when everyone thinks that way, there’s no one left to pay for the musician, and the music stops altogether. The individualistic act of stealing the music or depleting the resource is a form of compression, robbing from the future to enjoy something in the present at no cost. As long as we live as individuals, the distant future doesn’t really matter so much. The philosophy of the long now would suggest that the only way to see past this immediate, consumer-era self-satisfaction is to look further in the future. Have kids. Once we see that our long-term self-interest is no longer served, we may all, individually, change our behaviors. Even if we are thinking selfishly, prioritizing “me in the long run” isn’t quite so bad as “me right now.

AncestryDNA is a different beast, an outgrowth of Ancestry.com's vast genealogical resources. Historically, in contrast to 23andMe's customers, many of whom were interested in medical data, AncestryDNA users signed up specifically for the purpose of researching their family lines. The site blends its genealogical resources with test results. When users are a predicted cousin match, AncestryDNA compares their trees to see if it can automatically pinpoint their common ancestors. Unlike 23andMe, AncestryDNA doesn't let users see precisely where their chromosomes overlap with predicted relatives. No actual genetic data is available to subscribers who match. But its "Thrulineis" feature looks at data even in locked trees or trees that aren't linked to users' DNA tests. While I'm selfishly glad to have that information, I worry for those of the site's 18 million users who don't realize how much of their family connections the site reveals.

At the highest level of network effects, a platform encourages its users to go beyond self-interest and start taking ownership of the community. With both curation and collaboration, a platform encourages users to create additional value for each other by getting them to act selfishly. Curating or working collaboratively improves the platform for me.

At the highest level of network effects, a platform encourages its users to go beyond self-interest and start taking ownership of the community. With both curation and collaboration, a platform encourages users to create additional value for each other by getting them to act selfishly. Curating or working collaboratively improves the platform for me. Self-interest is a powerful motivator, but here a platform’s users become active participants in governing and maintaining the network rather than doing so merely as a by-product of pursuing their own interests. Wikipedia’s lifeblood is its community of editors, who enable the platform to operate as a nonprofit while providing more than 36 million articles in 291 languages

Your whole life has been spent in the service of others. Thus the idea of actually doing things for yourself will be very difficult to adapt to. One of the main obstacles you will encounter is that of feeling selfish. Since your life has so far been spent doing things for others the idea of doing things for yourself will seem strange and alien. You will feel self-conscious making a decision for the sole reason of bringing yourself happiness and pleasure. However, this is a vital hurdle to overcome, one that will prove a turning point on your road to a normal and healthy life.