#the streaming service is a bad idea
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i've certainly seen a lot of Takes surrounding the watcher streaming service debacle, but it's pretty wild to me how "this fully fledged production company doesn't need 30 employees." is a fairly common sentiment i've observed. like first of all, 30 is on the smaller side for the number of employees a production company needs, and second of all, are you suggesting that the kinder decision for watcher to make would be to lay off most of their workers in order to keep costs down?? like can we get real for a moment???
#watcher#don't get me wrong#the streaming service is a bad idea#but i feel like the backlash is a little overblown#and a lot of you clearly don't know how filming productions operate#i don't either to be fair#but like i know enough that 30 is not an unreasonable number of employees for a production company to have
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I'm still seeing a lot of angry takes in the tags about how excessive Watcher's current costs are and how all fans really want, apparently, is "just shane and ryan sitting in a basement" back again. While I do think Watcher is probably spending over budget and that's a real issue, a lot of the takes I'm seeing show a fundamental misunderstanding of how video production works and where costs actually lie. So a few quick things that I just keep seeing that are bothering me:
It was never just Shane and Ryan in a basement. BFU did a great job selling that conceit and making sure you never saw anyone beyond them and maybe TJ, but they absolutely had other crew members with them on ghost hunts and they didn't do all the work on BFU themselves. This Q&A from Season 2 lists 36 people on staff for Buzzfeed Unsolved. It's fair to make arguments that Watcher may or may not need 25 people, but those arguments should not be coming from a place of "before it was just Shane and Ryan and nobody else."
If you don't know how many people are needed to make a professional video from a TV/film standpoint, you will not have a reasonable grasp of why Watcher wants to keep 25 people on staff. Sure, some YouTubers get by with a ring light and a contracted editor. The Watcher team have stated repeatedly that they do not want to work as just YouTubers and see themselves more as a production studio—so why do people keep referencing the YouTube model to understand their business? This is like asking the local shake shop why it doesn't function like the kids' lemonade stand down the block. The item category is similar but they're not trying for the same products or process.
The "gold dusted food" is not the big budget sink you think it is. On most TV shows I've worked on it's normal to partner with businesses that are shown onscreen and work out a deal where the price of the product (in this case the gold food) is reduced or eliminated in exchange for the free publicity. Watcher very likely made a deal with every restaurant it worked with to make the Korea trip affordable for the company. The real budget spends are on things you're probably not seeing but that still matter: camera and lighting equipment is expensive, insurance for that equipment is expensive, business overhead and paying your staff are expensive. So again—it's fine to critique Watcher for the streaming plan and the perceived budgetary issues, but go into this knowing the costs might not be coming from the things you see onscreen.
My source is that I work in TV and film and actually have a clue on how the industry functions. Again, 36 people worked on Unsolved (and those were the people mention in Season 2—who knows how big the team blew up past that in later seasons). Entertainment work is real work, and demands decent equipment, competent staff, and the same types of business and budget problems you'd find in any other business (overhead, staffing, etc.). Feel free to critique Watcher's business model, but first try to understand where that model is coming from and what goals it's attempting to serve.
#watcher#watcher entertainment#rant! sorry! couldn't see another take from someone who clearly thinks video work is just fun and games because “it's entertainment right”#funny how people expect normal business costs and problems for any other career but if it's involved with production they think everything#just magically happens and is made entirely by the onscreen talent. nutso#anyway i think watcher is probably trying its best; maybe got too overexcited; but cares about quality of life for its employees and#wants no one working to the bone. which is admirable! the streaming service was a bad idea but they're not the literal devil like some thin#they're 3 self described idiots doing this for the first time. they backpedaled. i don't see this as the death of the company & i'm gonna#keep supporting them :)
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guys they aren’t putting the old videos behind a paywall
#watcher#(yes streaming service bad idea but they aren’t evil)#tommy speaks#shane madej#ryan bergara#steven lim#youtube#we are watcher#puppet history#ghost files#mystery files
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watcher announcement is insane. I don't have anything insightful or important to say but like. whoaoahh that's crazy.
#like i dont have any business knowledge i have no idea#but a new streaming service seems like a bad idea#like maybe pushing the patreon and cutting back a little on lower performing shows would be more effective but?#i mean if its between content they Want to Make and content to please advertisers like. i get that thats a hard decision.#but i think financially it's gonna end up backfiring because no one in their audience is gonna buy another subscription#and like. fan loyalty wise i think it's not smart because a lot of people dont want high quality production value#they want down home casual youtubers.#i guess its emblematic of all of capitalism though right-#no one can just be satisfied with stability and success#they have to go for growth.#but if you've already reached all the people you're gonna reach and you keep angling for more eventually you're gonna-#surpass what the people that like you want to / are able to keep up with#anyway. that's crazy.#watcher#watcher entertainment
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Was not expecting the downfall of watcher today
#watcher entertainment#youtube#i like y’all’s content what are you thinking starting your own streaming service#it’s good but it’s still YouTube content (even if it’s high quality)#constructive criticism#fundamentally bad idea#yall putting puppet shows and lets plays behind a paywall??? bffr#watcher
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rubbernecking drama rather than participating bc i dont even really watch it anymore but ppl saying "eat the rich" about the watcher guys is so funny. none of you know what that phrase means or who the rich are
#ignore me#the pivot to streaming service over yt channel is generally a Bad Idea but some of yall are being dumb or creepily parasocial about it#this is not a break up you have not been betrayed by your best friend. a media company just made a shitty business decision.#you can be mad but be mad in perspective. jesus h.#they aren't your friends they just make their paychecks by pretending they are lmfao
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Man I get wanting ownership of your content and separation from the trash fire that is YouTube and needing a way to fund that but personally I feel like marketing yourself as a streaming service and hiding everything behind a paywall when everything else is increasingly becoming a monthly payment of 5.99 is maybe like... Not good
#like theres better ways to do that which will ultimately honour your audience much more#and actually everything doesnt need to be a celebration sometimes you can go yeah sorry we have to have more funding theres no other way#heres ways you can help us out#or even making it so that the main series are free with ad revenue and you can individually purchase the rest of the content#as series#that would work! and be more affordable!#i just fucking hate streaming services#and like be serious guys if people are having to prioritise between something like netflix hulu and watcher#do you seriously think they'll choose the one with the least amount of variety for their money#like personally i dont pay for any i priate that shit but i dont actually want to do that to them#because theyre not a random faceless company#but i dont watch their stuff enough to pay for it and i know a lot of other people dont either#boo bad decision#good initial idea i understand that i understand wanting to be free of the evil that is youtube#but fucking boo#al is talking
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“good lord what is happening in there” meme but about the trending watcher tag
#The takes are SO comically bad#Like I agree a streaming service is a stupid idea for their model specifically but everyone’s attempts at hot takes are SO rancid#I dont wanna put anyone specific on blast but like. None of yall know fuck all about business or economics#Some real all or nothing kickstarter energy in that tag#Some real dashcon budgeting energy#Bonus points for literally everyone who thinks being able to afford a $6 a month streaming service makes you part of the 1%#Or saying “eat the rich” abt normal ass YouTube men making a dumb business decision like my god#I can’t even be like “well they’re teenagers” no these fuckers have 20+ ages in their bios#Btw I cannot stress how much I Do Not Care about watcher I have not watched their content in ages#and before I stopped all I watched was puppet history#I have no skin in this at all
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taylor swift's marketing team doesnt have a single creative bone between them.
#they literally just have her copy whatever another diva is doing#lily allen does a bad music video with black dancers about saying f u?#taylor releases shake it off#beyonce streams her concerts with national streaming services#taylor does it for her next tour#hell they even took kelly clarkson's idea to rerecord all the old songs#like yea she tweeted her but like. they literally just do whatever they see#someone else do
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sonic prime so cool ............
#cherryz txt#me shaking netflix WHERES the rest of it!!!!!!!!! (in due time. hopefully.)#i hate u streaming services and ur power to kill the things i love....................#sonic#sonic prime spoilers#<- in the following tags. be wary .#sonic and shadows interactions have been so delightful . i wish sega let shadow have friends and like Feelings#sonics writing overall has been very good . very people-focused trying to save everyone he can but just#very ahead of himself and how that lack of forethought causes so many of the conflicts for him#very inline for yknow . fastest hedgehog around.#REALLY enjoy seeing him look like a sad wet puppy when shit goes to fuck . boy just wants to go home!!!!!!!!!#i do wonder if something insane will happen if all the shatterversions of characters congregate#like . we didnt See thorn interact directly with rusty or black rose. just that the latter 2 saw her and were like Woah...................#also . i love u nine . baby son . he wanted to show sonic his lil grim home so bad and then sonic wasnt into his idea and im SADDD#HE HAD LIL PALM TREES!!!!!!!!! WAHH.............#the way nine talks about what might happen to him after the prism is in 1 piece in ghost hill makes me wonder also#the shatterspaces are implied to essentially be the product of original green hill being torn to bits .#so one would assume thats true for the characters in them yea? so does nine think he might get 'absorbed' into og tails?#theres always been a vibe to me that all the shatterversions of the cast are essentially like . distinct aspects of their whole characters#in some way anyhow . like a pirate for knuckles makes sense as a kind of manifestation of his focus on like#defending the master emerald . in a world Without the master emerald hes essentially crazy for any replacement he can get?#so its interesting to think that nine could in a similar vein be like tails' resentment of being Just a wingman#and the frustration of being picked on as a babby . and how that might tie into a feeling of like#'i would be nothing without sonic' bcus sonic was the one to stand up for him back then right?#INTERESTING. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! idk if any of tihs holds any water im just brain vomitting at this point but WAHHH#obviously all the shatterversions are and wish to be seen as their own individual people but like. NARRATIVELY speaking#u know?????? u understand. ive decided this for u the person reading this You Understand.
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Living life yay huzzah yay
#a#I have beef with my school. am I happy here? absolutely. do I think we are beyond lame for not having an actual guy? 100%#letters don’t count!!!!!!!! having a capital letter for your school doesn’t count!!!!!!!!!!#like it’s not even a complete absence of a team no just like a silly little physical guy than runs across the field#and can be all cute on stuff on shirts and be stuffed animals it’s the marketing potential they’re missing out on#though I guess I’d rather have no physical dude than one which sucks complete ass I’m talking about pen state fuck that guy#I need to watch the gnomes again wait oh my fucking god I was thinking like damn I did the gnomeo juliet ace attorney moment#but my brain is knee deep in hellsing so idk how to connect them but bruh every piece of media has some form of rivals#I’m not emotionally invested in andercard but the idea of Catholic and Protestant gnomes is really funny#and they’re already British!! lovely!!! at some point in college I need to use gnomes for a grade I can’t let that be a high school only bit#did you know that gnomeo and Juliet is technically owned by Disney? add that to your marvel cinematic universe#oh gnomeo and Juliet poster we’re really in it now#did you know that the version of hello hello that’s in the movie featuring lady Gaga is not on streaming services? they take lady Gaga out#it’s really unfortunate the echos and duet aspect make the song it’s not just one or the other it’s Two Gnomes!!#have two exam grades back that I have not looked at out of fear#either they’ll be bad and I’ll watch hellsing to make myself feel better Or they’ll be good and I’ll watch hellsing as a reward#unrelated but it looks like a gutter on the other side of my dorm got busted and I’m trying to figure out if it’s always been like that#maybe it has and I’m not a gutter glorifier like I thought I was…. rip observational skills#I have a group project I have to work on and it’s evil I do not enjoy the class and it’s not very lgbt slay girlboss of me#but god dammit I am not filling out a fucking gender unicorn for your class that’s between me and my tumblr drafts from 2019#it gets a credit out of the way and I never have to take it again I am so strong#man what does it say about society that I’m more excited about Econ than wgs (it says nothing the Econ professor is just goofy and fun)#(also he does more than read off of slides and show those like buzzfeed social experiments)#but none of that is important since next week is when things get fucked and I’ll end up with more free time! yay strikes!!#update: made it back from project zone those fuckers held me hostage using social norms#it’s okay though I’m sooo strong and brave#talkingcore
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i would be the most annoying tumblr live streamer if the site actually just use a different service/backend that isnt sketchy/heavily mobile based
#Dev Talks#imagining an in house service that is akin to kick/twitch w/ its frontend and you can embed tumblr streams into posts like the twitch ones#(though those never work for me. they just show an error)#or even like. using/creating a livestream as a post that would be automatically pinned at the top of the person's page#maybe a lil carousel of ppl who are live in the explore tab + another below the post bar but its only for mutuals/followers who are live#anyways what im trying to say is#staff sabotaged the execution by taking up an entire tab in mobile and asked for location just from using the service#that has a questionable tos#the idea is not bad in theory too!!! ):#imagine the fun drama if this site had livestream service like pictaro and had a UI akin to twitch or youtube#(the one where it had text on stream and not aside)
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you’re a radio4pple fan. opinion discarded
#you people love throwing us under the bus and feel superior to us when you’re literally not any better#both luci1ith and ch4ggie are canon and will never. ever be seeing other people in the show’s canon#‘’oh but they’re divorced and we don’t know enough about them’’ LUCIFER IS STILL WEARING HIS WEDDING RING THAT SHOULD SAY ENOUGH#‘’oh but alastor said’’ he said that to fuck with lucifer. ‘’but charlie’’ she doesn’t see him as a father figure either#‘’char1stor is still weird’’ and that’s a valid stance to have on this subject and I’m not saying you’re wrong for thinking that#however. no one’s breaking up any queer couples because shipping is supposed to be a fun way of exploring character dynamics and ideas#it’s ALL fanon and AU shit where canon isn’t being affected or disregarded. stop implying that it is#we’re having fun. just like you guys. and yet somehow we are the bad guys here for doing the EXACT SAME THING AS YOU GUYS#your pairing is a widespread phenomenon that gets acknowledgment from team members and the streaming service alike#and that’s awesome. good for you guys. however. that means jackshit when your community is so damn hypocritical and ignorant#if you can ship radio4pple in a romantic/sexual way then we can do the same with char1astor. or any alastor ship for that matter#goodnight#I am so fuckin tired of keeping quiet about this
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THEY MURDERED YOU!??
THEY KILLED ME IN COLD BLOOD
#i was literally logging on to post about how my streaming service of choice was down so i have to actually focus on my classwork instead of#watching a movie#and then it was like oops your account was terminated!#LIKE WHAT WHY#no idea what to do with myself. might have to touch grass <- guy who is probably going to go back to the mcr discord#tail between my legs. sorry for being bad at having conversations do you guys still want to talk to me
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okay i fear i enjoyed writing about older!sevika too much so here’s more i guess!
sevika x fem reader
cw: fluff and a tiny bit of smut, age gap, modern setting, sexting, sevika is old bless her heart
older!sevika is so bad at technology it’s insane. she’s gen x, okay! she didn’t grow up with it like you did! it takes her forever to figure out apple carplay in her truck. once she does she plays the playlist you made her every time she drives.
she has no profile picture on spotify and her username is ‘Sevika123456’. you’re her only follower.
older!sevika gets so awkward when you take pictures of her. she’ll turn her head away or cover her face whenever you get your phone out.
“baby, no pictures please. i don’t wanna be on your snapchats or whatever.”
“it’s just for my camera roll, sev, relax. smile for me, handsome. so cute!”
older!sevika has a framed picture of you two in her office at work. (thank you to my friend who said modern sev would be a psychologist bc im obsessed)
one of her clients asks about ‘the girl in the picture’ after a session. she goes twenty minutes overtime gushing about you to her client who literally doesn’t care at all.
older!sevika still has cable and refuses to get rid of it. CNN is the default channel of her tv. she doesn’t understand paying for a million streaming services even though she pays for like…so many channels that she doesn’t even watch.
“look, sweetie. i recorded all the episodes of your favorite show for you. can netflix do that?”
“yes, sevika. netflix absolutely does that.”
older!sevika doesn’t understand any of your niche internet references. if you’re hopelessly chronically online like me, you are constantly quoting the most random shit.
she tried on a suit for some event for you once. you looked at her and said “who is the diva?” and poor sevi was so confused :( she has no idea what all that means.
older!sevika has a piece of masking tape over her laptop camera because she’s convinced that the government is watching her.
when she gets an add for something online that she was talking about the day before, she’ll immediately tell you that the government heard her.
older!sevika freaks out when you start sexting her randomly. she’s hella confused at first but sorta gets it after a while.
‘i’m touching myself thinking about u sev :/ i miss ur body so much’
‘Wow! 🔥🤤 I will be home soon.’
‘were the emojis really necessary’
in conclusion older!sevika has my fuckin heart🤍 i’m so in love with her it’s insane
#sevika x you#sevika smut#sevika arcane#sevika#sevika x reader#sevika x reader smut#arcane#arcane smut#arcane x reader
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Looking at the world from a manager's perspective, you can productively model the pool of workers as being divided into a few basic groups, which are defined and characterized by their driving motivations.
Insert all the usual disclaimers for this sort of thing - this is the roughest type of rough typology. I pulled these categories out of my raw intuition, and possibly a few more would crop up with some additional thought. In reality, the boundaries of these categories are incredibly fuzzy, and almost every individual is actually going to be motivated by a complicated mix of all the relevant motivations; we're talking REALLY SIMPLE HEURISTICS here. Etc.
There have been other well-known worker typologies that share a lot in common with my thoughts here; this is mostly not novel, it's mostly meant to refine a few ideas for particular purposes.
Hustlers are motivated by concrete personal advantage. Most commonly, and most straightforwardly, they want money - as much of it as they can get. They may also be interested in fame, idiosyncratic perks, etc. They do whatever they have to do in order to get what they want.
No surprise: you see huge preponderances of these guys in fields that provide outsize concrete rewards, e.g. finance, the upper echelons of management, etc. But not every natural-born Hustler is in a position to enter a glitzy high-paying field, and in fact you find Hustlers all throughout society and all throughout the economy, finding or making hustles wherever they go.
Having Hustlers working for you is mostly pretty great. They get shit done. They can be induced to work incredibly hard - probably harder than anyone else, under most circumstances - and they'll shank their own mothers if the price is right. If you need anything really important from them, anything at all, it's just a matter of bribing them enough.
...they will also, of course, cheerfully shank you if the price is right. Hustlers aren't the only wellsprings of institutional politics and infighting, but they're the most dangerous ones; they're always potential rivals to everyone around them. Also, you need to keep the tangible rewards flowing in a steady stream in order to get anything out of them, or else they'll put most of their effort into jumping ship (one way or another).
Craftsmen are motivated by the desire to do good work in their chosen fields, for its own sake and for the sake of their treasured self-image as people who do good work.
As you'd expect, for the most part, they're excellent workers and should be prized. But they're not perfect workers. Common weaknesses and downsides include:
They tend to have their own ideas about How Things Should Get Done; they're often resistant to externally-imposed product/service requirements or process changes (and bad at implementing those things) (no matter how important or well-conceived they are), and they're very resistant to "just get it out the door, right now done is better than good."
Being driven chiefly by internal motivation is great, but sometimes it's useful to be able to push things along with external motivators, and Craftsmen are pretty resistant to those. They don't like working more or harder than they're naturally inclined to work, they mostly sneer at carrots, and sticks make them sad and unproductive.
It's important to note that, while noteworthy skill within a field correlates with having a Craftsman temperament and motivation suite - for obvious reasons - those things are not identical at all. Plenty of Craftsmen are bad at their jobs, or just average, and plenty of the best workers are most motivated by things other than the Excellence of the Work Itself.
Fanatics are a relatively rare and specialized group, whom you find mostly within a few specific sorts of culturally-valorized fields. They're motivated by a desire to be part of something Important and Good in a Broader Sense: to Save the World, or some smaller-bore version of that.
They make amazing front-line soldiers, in the sorts of institutions that have "front-line soldiers." They work super hard, and you don't even need to bribe them, you just need to keep them hopped up on inspiration.
The big problem with them is that they're mostly motivated by a feeling - the feeling of Being Righteous - and it's not easy to control where they get that feeling, in any kind of precise way. They're just as resistant to external motivators as Craftsmen are, or even more so, but they're also not being guided by an ideal of effective quality. (No, not even if their chosen cause is theoretically all about an ideal of effective quality, hem hem.) They will happily waste vast amounts of time and money doing useless things, or even counterproductive things, so long as they're engaged in tasks that hit the right psychological buttons for them. There's also a constant risk that a Fanatic will decide that his employer is unrighteous, or that one of his coworkers is unrighteous, and start an internal conflict; the risk scales in a more-than-linear fashion with the number of Fanatics you keep around.
The biggest group, unsurprisingly, is the Normies. In most fields, it is much the biggest group. Normies are motivated by the desire to be members in good standing of their communities, to have positive relationships with the people around them, and to live up to basic norms and expectations.
Managerial skills, in the traditional sense, are incredibly important with Normies. If you want them to do good work for you - and you should want that, as a manager, you've almost certainly got a whole bunch of them - not only do you have to keep them pointed in the right direction, you have to make sure that they're supporting each other. With Hustlers, you just have to throw money at them (and avoid their power plays); with Craftsmen, you just have to let them do their thing, and occasionally badger them into giving you what you need; with Fanatics, you just have to be inspirational; but with Normies, you have to lead, and construct a productive community. You have to set reasonable, achievable norms and expectations that will get you what you need.
This wouldn't be complete if I didn't talk about the Defectors. The Defectors are motivated by not working. They don't want to be there, they resent having to do their jobs, and their primary goal is to shirk as much as possible. They will, by default, put much more effort into shirking than into their assigned tasks.
Obviously, managers don't want to have to deal with them, for good reason. But they're out there, in large numbers - not always in the places and fields where you'd expect to find them - and learning to manage them is sometimes more viable than trying to get rid of them. ("Moving Heaven and Earth to find them jobs that will change their attitude" is often a good plan, although of course it's not always possible and not always worth it.)
Crucially, Defectors are not Normies. If you start with the assumption that the average baseline worker is lazy and sour, you will make some incredibly stupid decisions. There are some fields where, for structural reasons, you can expect that a very large number of your workers will be Defectors; this is a huge and complicated challenge, well beyond the scope of this post, and good luck to you if you have to handle it, but it's not the default.
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Once you have those categories in your head, and can play with them, a number of obvious-seeming ideas present themselves. Just a couple, for now:
Most high-level executives are Hustlers, or have strong Hustler tendencies, for obvious reasons. Most of the people around them are Hustlers, or have strong Hustler tendencies. This means that they tend to overweight the Hustler outlook, by a lot, when they try to model what their workers are like. More specifically, I'd wager that a lot of them intuitively divide the world into "good workers" ( = Hustlers) and "bad workers" ( = Defectors). This will lead to a heavy overreliance on tangible rewards, a systematic shortchanging of community-building, etc. Which is in fact just what we see.
In particular - crucially - Hustlers and Defectors are the only worker types who ever become more productive under heavy stress. Hustlers actually benefit from it, because it raises the stakes of the game that they're already playing. (If you succeed, you'll be king of the world! If you fail, you'll be shark food! Go go go!) Defectors suffer terribly from stress, of course, but they can sometimes be spooked into doing their jobs as opposed to doing nothing, and sometimes that's the best/easiest way to get something out of them. But stress is terrible for everyone else. Craftsmen lose their focus. Fanatics lose their hope. It's worst of all for Normies, because they take all their cues from the vibes around them; they're productive when they learn to associate work with comfort and happiness, and when you fill their working world with frantic desperation, you just put them in a permanent cringe state.
stop trying to pit your Normies against each other in competitions for status and rewards dear God what are you stupid
To some extent, you can control your institution by controlling what types of workers you have. But only to some extent. There are only so many Hustlers and Craftsmen to go around, and if you want them, you will have to (a) be able to identify them reliably on little information [HINT: you are probably very bad at this], and (b) provide them with what they want [tangible rewards / comfortable security and interesting work]. "We are going to employ only the good special people" is feasible if you're an outfit of four workers; at a dozen, it's already become a stretch; at a few hundred, uh, pfffffffft. If you want to operate at scale, you need to be able to make Normies do good work, there is no substitute for it.
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