[discreteevent]

There's a bubble where VC backed companies are not producing anything that people are really using or paying for. So to justify their valuation they instead try to show just how productive they are. Surely if they are this busy and productive they must be worth something? (This could also explain the hype around AI which is all about "productivity/how" and nothing about "what")

This article compares these kinds of companies ("nihilists") with game developers who are producing things that people pay for and use. The game developers don't pay much attention to productivity tools because they are too busy producing things.

https://components.news/the-gamer-and-the-nihilist/

> the perennially unprofitable venture-backed startup, for which faux productivity is connected to the generally immaterial nature of its high valuations, versus the game studio that lives and dies by the profitability of its products.

> In a sector of the economy where "it's not about how much you earn, but about how much you're worth," the labors of the companies whose workflows are built on the kinds of productivity apps that today comprise nearly 40 percent of Product Hunt's output are not actually directed at the creation of a thing, but at the appearance of the creation of a thing.

[jeremyjh]

Game developers put tons of effort into tooling, just not especially into text editors.

[jaccola]

Not sure it’s a bubble so much as a story as old as time… signal hacking. Always has happened and always will

[haritha-j]

I wonder where the people who spend hours and hours making the perfect gaming setup isntead of gaming, or the audiophiles who spend their lives in an eternal quest to get the perfect equipemnt instead of listening to music, end up in this analogy.