Don't Take the Black Pill - Andrew Kelley | SSW 2026

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Description

Abstract: In our modern world, it's easy to feel like things are careening out of control; that the future is happening to us while we take a back seat... and all we can do is lie down and rot.

I'm here to say, screw that! Let's apply systems thinking to the way that software and technology is integrated into our society, envision it differently, and then draw a line from here to there, identifying steps we can take right now along this trajectory.

This talk will be passionate and heartfelt, provocative, and entertaining; it will offer the audience optimism, solidarity, and purpose in the chaotic socio-technological climate that we face.

Zig: https://ziglang.org/ Andrew Kelley: https://andrewkelley.me/ Software Should Work: https://softwareshould.work

Thank you to our Software Should Work 2026 sponsors: Antithesis: https://antithesis.com/ RWX: https://www.rwx.com/ Paytient: https://www.paytient.com/ Redbud VC: https://redbud.vc/ ParadeDB: https://www.paradedb.com/

Transcript

00:00 Um, this talk is called don't take the black pill. I hope you like it. Part one, the pill. Show of hands, who likes the movie The Matrix? Okay, keep your hands up for a second. Look around the room. Anyone who doesn't have their hands up thinks The Matrix sucks. That's crazy, right? Like what a what an icebreaker I just gave you. You can You can go have a conversation with them and be like, "What? What Why do you think The Matrix sucks? You're so mysterious and interesting." You're welcome. All right, now watch this. I'm going to I'm going to frighten all the all the millennials in the room. Who has never seen the 1999 film The Matrix? >> [laughter] >> Thank you for raising your hand. Don't Don't look away, my friends. Children are the future. Anyway, in this movie there's an iconic moment where our hero, Ted Theodore Logan, is presented with two choices.

01:07 The red pill or the blue pill. The question is essentially, do you want to know an uncomfortable truth? And the blue pill means no, and the red pill means yes. To the audience, the answer is obvious. If the main character chooses blue, the credits would roll before anything happened. But the metaphor is so strong and the cinematography kicks so much ass that it the scene influenced our culture and our language to the point where people who haven't even heard of the film say the phrase based and red-pilled. Let's talk about the black pill. >> [clears throat] >> It comes from incel culture. The word is a portmanteau of involuntary and celibates. So, basically, young men who had trouble dating, uh, they started complaining about it together on the internet. So far so good, but an unfortunate feedback cycle emerged. Those Those who use the space in a productive manner, such as brainstorming, encouragement, mentorship, etc. Those people tended to shape up, mature, work through their problems, and to put it bluntly, get laid.

02:15 Then they didn't really feel like sticking around and then and commiserating anymore, so they left. This was a natural filtering process. So, when new impressionable youngsters entered the community, they were greeted only by miserable, hopeless, antisocial losers. Over time, the culture became so toxic that the accepted wisdom became essentially give up, the game is rigged, there's nothing you can do. You might as well lie down and rot. So, basically, the black pill is nihilism mixed with depression mixed with anger. And in the worst case, it leads to outcomes like suicide or school shootings. I almost fell into this trap. Speaking from experience, >> [clears throat] >> uh entering the dating scene as a young man can be challenging to the point of despair. I was I was raised by conservative Christian parents and thereby had so so much to learn and unlearn about the world in order to date comfortably and confidently. Perhaps you may be surprised to hear this, but what helped me get out of this spiral was listening to pickup artists.

03:21 Stick with me. Looking back, I think what these guys mainly have to offer is its own form of nihilistic, manipulative toxicity, but one of them said something that I instantly realized was key. He said that you shouldn't focus on the outcome of the pickup. The actual move, he said, is to work on being attractive in general to everybody, platonic friends included. You should try to make everyone want to be around you because you genuinely care about them. Listen intently to what they have to say. Make them laugh. You offer people whom you interact with meaningful experiences that make them remember you and invite you to future events. You put in effort to make everyone have a good time. By doing this, you create more circumstances where there's a chance for romance to spark. It's genius. My takeaway here is that the kids are all right, even when exposed to a bunch of bad ideas, if good ideas are also in the mix, they'll figure it out. Let's bring this a little closer to home. This is Cory Doctorow.

04:24 He's the He's the guy who coined the term enshittification. Uh he worked for the Electronic Frontier Electronic Frontier Foundation for a while before becoming a full-time writer. Um in 2019, he published a short story called Radicalized. Has anyone read this short story Radicalized? I see three hands. Yeah. The story centers around an online forum of people who commiserate together because because they got screwed over by health insurance companies. Listen to this excerpt and see if it sounds familiar. I'm going to read it to you. In a forum for ex-drunks, I'm quoting the book, there's a big group of elder statespeople who've been sober for years and years. They're a wise, moderating voice and they're the existence of proof of life after addiction. Whenever someone on the forums went on a bender and was recriminating with themselves, there was a dried-out elder who could tell a story to top theirs about being put on the street, losing their kids, losing their limbs even, and coming back from it. [ __ ] cancer right in its [ __ ] face did not have those people.

05:28 >> [snorts] >> The people who got over their furious grief left the forum, chased away by its rage culture. The people who stayed were really into their anger, clinging to it like a drunk refusing to let go of of a bottle. If your anger took you to a place you couldn't handle, a place that scared you, the elders of the forum would help you all right. They'd explain to you that this was the right reaction, the only reaction, and it was never ever going to get better. This was your life from here on in. That's the quote. >> [clears throat] >> 5 years after Dr. O published this fictional short story, the real-life CEO of the American health care insurance company United Healthcare was shot to death. Bullets cased with the words deny, defend, depose. Part two, software should work. The main purpose of a conference like this is technical. It's kind of like a safe space where the attendees all already agree that software should work, and it should be fast, and it should prioritize the user experience. And so, all we have to do is share tips, tricks, demos, and research with each other on how to better accomplish these things.

06:42 But, if we if we neglect the meta examination here, our efforts are in vain. The implication of the phrase software should work is that often in the real world we find that it doesn't work. Right? Why not? What's stopping software from working? Is the Is the Is the problem Is the problem ignorance? Is program Are programmers not programming hard enough? Is the software engineering field too nascent? Have we not yet discovered how to make robust software? >> [laughter] >> I would argue that mankind discovered how to make robust software before I was even born. There's a case to be made that the overall robustness and and performance of software has decreased since then, despite the hardware being many orders of magnitude to be capable. What gives? Show of hands, uh who who in the audience here has attempted to make software work better at a company they worked for as an employee or contractor, and you were shot down by management saying that the business had other priorities?

07:57 I see over over half, I think. My my hand's up, too. You know you know the kind of relationship I'm talking about. Management is uh pointy-haired boss, and and you're Dilbert. Or management is uh Rusty Venture, and you're Brock Samson. Or management is uh Michael Scott, and you're just literally anybody else from the office. Benevolent non-compliance, when the when the when the beneficiary is also the authority. Let's talk about some forms of benevolent non-compliance. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission. Anyone want to fess up to doing this? Yeah, well, that's like everybody. It's amazingly effective, right? Okay. Uh next up we have uh secrecy. So, normally you'd think you would want to claim credit for doing good things at work. Uh but sometimes we find ourselves doing the necessary work to make the business run smoothly in full secret, knowing that if management found out, they would actually try to stop it.

09:01 Next up we have misdirection. All right. >> [laughter] >> Management wants you Management wants to argue with you about something. All right, so whenever you do important work, you you time it to coincide with less important work that you intentionally create more fanfare around. So, management takes the bait, they get involved in the trivial distraction work, leaving your important work alone. It's kind of like giving your child a Fisher-Price toy oven so they stop [ __ ] around with the hot stove and burning themselves. Next up we have the duck. Uh so you intentionally put an obvious problem for management to identify and claim credit for removing, again leaving your important work alone. As the lore goes, I'm quoting here, the artist working on the queen animations for battle chess was aware of this tendency and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen in a way that he felt would be best with one addition. He gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all the queen's animations, had it flap it around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped with the actual animation.

10:09 Eventually it came it came time for the producer to review the animation for the set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all the animations. When they were done he turned to the artist and said, "That looks great. One thing, just get rid of the duck." Well played. Of course all these all these amusing tricks are alternative coping mechanisms for either quitting, confrontation, or acceptance. And consider that all of these, other than accepting your faith to create sub par software, are gambles. They're all gambles. If you be tricky, you risk getting caught and reprimanded, possibly fired without severance. If you quit, you endure stress and uncertainty in the job market. If you confront management, you risk silent retaliation or loss of political advantage within the company. Now consider how the job market affects this dilemma. When when the supply demand ratio favors software engineers, we enjoy stronger negotiation power.

11:15 Rather than being afraid of getting fired, our managers are afraid of us quitting. When computers were first invented, we drew incredibly strong negotiation power from the scarcity of fellow programmers. But now the free market's catching up with us and we face the same struggle as workers of other industries. We are learning that software quality was maintained only through the will of software engineers combined with their accidentally strong negotiation position in the job market. Part three, agency. This is a transistor. It's a attempted drawing a transistor at least. The fundamental unit of modern electronics. The key concept here is that it's an automated switch. Just a teeny weeny smidge of voltage into the base terminal controls whether a relatively large current flows through the other two terminals. We practically worship these things.

12:22 It's It's It's beautiful because it's both literally how computers work at the microscopic scale and it's also metaphorically what they do at a macro scale. It's a mechanism by which something weak controls something strong. A device where an arbitrary amount of power is wielded by an effortless indication of intent. But who gets to decide whether true or false is sent into the base terminal? Whom does the software serve? This is something that I would like to try to help non-tech savvy people be a little bit more savvy about. For example, when I run a browser on my computer, that's literally called a user agent. The browser is acting on my behalf. It serves my interests, not those of the websites that I visit. That's why I can use ad block even the websites don't want me to and they can't do a lick about it. DRM is an example of software that is actively hostile to the end user. DRM makes the users own hardware serve the interests of a third party. You might argue that DRM indirectly is in the interests of consumers because it's the only reason that copyright holders will allow them to view their copyrighted works.

13:35 I'm not talking about indirect interest or consumers. I'm talking about end users of software, those who are directly interacting with it. Computers should always serve the person directly interacting with them. I believe that. >> [applause] >> I always thought it was interesting that Isaac Asimov encoded this into his laws of robotics. Any Asimov readers in here? Yeah, we got we got some people. Yeah. Maybe overlap with the Matrix of viewers. All right, so uh say with me, a robot may a robot may not injure a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. Rule number one. Rule number two. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders will come into conflict with the first law. Rule number three. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or the second law.

14:38 What I think is interesting about this is that in Asimov's sci-fi universe, robots are flat out exempt from participating in the hierarchical power structures of humanity other than those strictly necessary to prevent harm. So like for example, uh if if the police had a warrant for for an arrest for a non-violent crime and they they sent a robot to go uh to go arrest somebody. The robot knocks on the door and then the the person answers and says, "What do you want?" "I'm here for your arrest." "Screw you, go away." The robot would say, "Yes, sir. Yeah, so I'm sorry sorry to bother you." They they they refuse to participate. That's they're just they're just exempt from this power structure. Another expression of the same concept is this meme. >> [laughter] >> All robots and computers must shut the hell up. I am a divine being. You are an object. You have no right to speak in my holy tongue. >> [laughter] >> It's a goofy formulation, but it expresses a fundamental ideal. Machines are meant to serve humans. This is a line that must not be crossed on a spiritual level.

15:53 What we're seeing instead in the modern real world is computers harnessed for coercion. We take the holy device, the transistor, and we operate the control terminal as usual. But rather than wield the power of machines, we perform forbidden alchemy to bond our fellow humans to the transistor, indulging our sick, perverted fantasy of manipulating people as if they are soulless robots whose purpose is to do our bidding. Coercionware. Software whose purpose is not to serve users, but to manipulate them. >> [clears throat] >> We can see examples of coercionware everywhere. Software whose purpose is not to serve users, but to to manipulate them. Right on the nose, we have Amazon Mechanical Turk. Uh this is a business model that directly treats humans as robots, paying them less than minimum wage. We have boss-ware trying to control employees to a fine degree, all the way down to eye and bowel movements. We have intrusive advertisements. So, to whatever degree it's effective, it's literal mind control.

16:58 But even ineffective advertisements interrupt our thought patterns and steal our attention, depriving us of agency. Push notifications. Unless the user specifically and intentionally enables such a feature, it's an effort to not only programmatically control their behavior, but also to reduce the latency of compliance. Next up, we have AB testing. I've always hated AB testing and I finally found an excuse to rant about it. It prioritizes outcome over empathy. How should we design our user experience? Don't worry about it. Just maximize clicks and revenue even if that ends up being a dark pattern. In fact, it offers plausible deniability for this. Maybe the red button causes more clicks because it subconsciously instills fear in the user. Now we don't have a paper trail leading to doing this with intent. To that end, let's talk about YouTube. Both content creators and viewers are being controlled by the algorithm. Content creators are forever stuck chasing the ephemeral preferences of the algorithm often at the expense of integrity of their content.

18:07 Have you ever noticed how modern thumbnails are all evolving to look like this? >> [laughter] >> Well played, Isaac. Well played. Meanwhile, on the viewing side, we have absolutely absurd concepts like crunchy to alt-right pipeline. What in the actual [ __ ] kind of Cthulhu hell portal have we opened that this is the thing? Next up, we have AI agents. This is a bit of a slight of hand because AI agents promise to serve the user, but in reality they serve the AI company who controls the model and the closed-source software surrounding it. If you don't control the source code, you are not in control. I'll say it one more time. If you don't control the source code, you are not in control. >> [applause] >> Next up, we have dark patterns.

19:14 These are just openly coercive, not much to say here. Uh it's it's mind-blowing to me the degree to which computer programmers regularly tolerate this outright hostility. Didn't you see that that picture I sent on the Slack the the Software Should Work Slack? I already had this slide in here and when I got on the plane, the UI for the um for the flight attendants was it literally said, "Do you want to play the boarding music?" Capital B, capital M. >> [laughter] >> Gre- green button that said yes, red button that said later. Wha- what is that even If you're a flight attendant, what is that even >> [laughter] >> Is it just going to start playing like during the turbulence? I don't I don't understand. >> [laughter] >> Uh okay, next up we have uh doomscrolling. This is software that maximizes engagement by using content algorithms and infinite scroll. It keeps users glued to the screen and accustomed to consuming content chosen for them.

20:21 Now, to be clear, most people when they say doomscrolling, they're talking about a bad habit. Like they used Facebook too much on one particular day. I'm saying that the user-facing software of Facebook is categorically, fundamentally coercive. It's like an arbitrary code execution exploit running on our brains. Scrolling down is the program counter and the content that pops up is the instructions. A weird side effect of this is that it means our brains can get hacked just like computers. Although the content selected by the algorithm is intended to serve the company by which is providing the software, it le- it leaves our brains also vulnerable to malicious third parties. This is a quote from the Office of the director of national intelligence in January 2017 summarizing the work of the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA. President Vladimir Putin ordered influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for her President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.

21:32 They hacked us. The primary methodology used was a state-sponsored troll farm waging a social media campaign. It's really not far-fetched to say that we were mind hacked and that the vulnerability stems from the manipulative software practices of social media and that the vulnerability has not been patched and it's still being actively exploited. No one's even working on a fix. Certainly not this guy. Each year that goes by, it gets more difficult to be an empathetic person who loves computers. Seeing the potential for what software could be doing for humanity versus the stark reality developing before our eyes is depressing. It can feel hopeless. Sure, we want things to be different, but is there actually anything we can do? It seems like every day we're being asked to call our representative or sign a petition or deal with the next emergency. We're always losing ground, never getting anything back. I'm tired, boss.

22:37 Our agency's under attack from all sides and we're losing even the ability to opt out as more of our society becomes integrated with software. I lost touch with an entire group of friends because they were exclusively doing their event organization on on Discord. The black pill offers relief in the same way that submission offers peace. To take the black pill is to relinquish the magic of computers and surrender to their oppression. I want to call attention to some black-pilled takes that I've seen in the wild. I want to be crystal clear here. The point is not to blame or shame, but empathy. Even the last one. These are examples of attempts to cope with a very real sense that something is wrong. Let's start with a low-stakes one. Computers were a mistake. Ugh. I I I find it aggravating when a fellow programmer says this. I hear this occasionally from people who who have not only made their entire career out of programming, but also made it their primary hobby. I understand that it's just being edgy, it's just tongue-in-cheek, it's a self-aware joke. But in my head, I'm thinking like, "You're the one making computers do stuff." It It It denies all agency.

23:53 Next up, we have uh disliking AI, but using it anyway. So, it using AI even though you don't like it or in a way that that you find distasteful because you think you have to. If you legitimately like to use AI, that's a different story. But I've seen way too many blog posts of people describing the joyless way in which they've begrudgingly started using it at work and how it makes them depressed, but this is their new reality now. I have a friend who manages a team of people who told me that they're working 50-plus hour weeks using AI to try to eliminate the jobs of the other teams at the same company out of fear that if they don't do it, it will happen to them. That's a black-pilled take. Another one is Anubis. So, we've all seen this pop up, right? This web scraping deterrent software. I know it's being used by Linux kernel mailing list, Codeberg, FFmpeg, Wine, and a few other things. Uh some people take issue with the fact that the default configuration has an image of this anime girl mascot.

24:58 Honestly, I feel bad for those people. Imagine living in such a bland, colorless existence that this cutie is offensive. They They probably think ketchup is spicy. >> [laughter] >> On the other hand, I find deployment of the software at its core depressing because of its salt of the earth approach. It changes something that should be computationally cheap and anonymous, visiting a website, to being by design an order of magnitude more expensive. It breaks form link previews, it depletes batteries, it removes the option for the visitor to disable JavaScript, and it excludes bots from accessing the web for legitimate reasons. It whispers bitterly in your ear, "There is no winning. There is only deferred loss." as it surrenders the open web without a fight. Next up, we have myself. This is a screenshot of me declaring on Hacker News, "Site is trash now." Which, I'm not going to lie, is a pretty black pill take. So, go ahead, you can have a laugh at my expense. It's melodramatic, I know.

26:03 But, also this comes from a real place. Um you know, it saddens me that the value I used to derive from this website, it feels like it's eroding to me. >> [snorts] >> Another pattern I've seen recently is uh people giving up on uh free and open source software out of disillusionment. Uh particularly due to AI companies. They'll say things like, "The joy is gone. I'm not going to share my code anymore because it'll just get scraped and used to build the next LLM." To me, this is completely missing the point. Which is to pool efforts in order to ensure that, in general, users of software remain in control of that software. To this end, it doesn't really matter if your code gets picked up by AI companies. It primarily matters whether high-quality free software is available to users, providing competition that limits the degree to which proprietary software can get away with being coercive. If you refrain from participating in the software of the commons, the only thing that you're doing is surrendering more of our collective agency to abusive centralized powers.

27:14 Finally, we have the dismissal of ethical considerations with the excuse that if I don't do it, someone else will. Deep down, we know that some lines should never be crossed, but this kind of fatalistic thinking sends our moral compasses spinning and erases our willingness to stand up for our beliefs. >> [snorts] [clears throat] >> Part four, faith. >> [snorts] >> When I was a child, my parents raised me to believe in Protestant Christianity. I didn't have a choice. Right and wrong was given to me as a package deal. As I reached adulthood, I started to untangle that upbringing little by little. This process is called deconversion, and it can take many years, for some a lifetime. If you have a similar background as me, or you're curious just to learn more about people who aren't like you, I recommend the audio version of this book, which is narrated by the author Seth Andrews. He has a really nice voice. But anyway, one of the challenges de-converts must face is forging a morality framework.

28:20 You can't derive right and wrong from nothing. If you try, you'll get stuck you'll get stuck with this guy, I think therefore I am. Philosophically, there's nothing beyond this that you can actually like mathematically logically prove without introducing a core foundational premise. We are technologists. We love machine. As technologists, our role is to accelerate humanity along its current trajectory. The same technology can be a force for good or for evil depending on who wields it. Nuclear energy as it exists today is literally the controlled explosion of an atomic bomb. The fruit of our labor is indiscriminate multiplication of the path humanity is already walking. Thus, if humanity is good, then technology is good. And if humanity is evil, then technology is evil. This is why we must believe that humanity is generally good. Otherwise, what are we even doing?

29:27 This is Stanislav Petrov. In 1983, during the Cold War, his job was to monitor an early reporting system for attacks and notify his superiors for immediate retaliation. On September 26th, the system reported five missiles have been launched by the United States. Thinking quickly and critically, he suspected it to be a false alarm and he disobeyed orders disregarding Soviet military protocol to wait for an additional confirmation. The confirmation never came because it was indeed a false alarm in the computer detection system. Had he followed protocol, it's very likely that his superiors would have launched an assault against the United States triggering an all-out nuclear war. Later, in an interview, Petrov said that he was never absolutely sure that it was a false alarm. He said that he thought the odds were 50/50. Can you imagine what he must have felt in that moment?

30:30 Think of the sheer magnitude of risk that he bore to disregard protocol. 50/50. That means that when it came down to it, he made a choice based on something other than the evidence before him. He chose to believe that mankind is good. He chose faith in humanity. Part five, youth. This is the cover art for Nina Joudaki's debut full-length album, I love my computer. I'll give you just a moment to let it wash over your neurons. >> [laughter] >> If you're watching a recording of this talk on the internet, do yourself a favor, pause the video and go watch her music video for Info Hazard, then come back. Welcome back. I know, right? I don't I don't know how this hits for other generations, but for millennials like me, there's just something about Nina Joudaki's art that strikes a chord.

31:36 I'll do my best to put it into words for you. This is someone who still believes in the magic of computers. She captures and evokes precious nostalgic feelings that I have deep within me from when I was growing up and discovering that magic for myself. But, she's one decade younger than me, so you can see the modern web on full display. In this very talk, I complained about YouTube and Discord. Well, they're featured prominently in that music video that I asked you to go watch. I don't think that I'm wrong to call out dark patterns where I see them, but at the same time, I've lost something along the way. Uh my bad. >> [clears throat] >> Spoiler, spoiler. I've lost something along the way. Young people lack wisdom that comes from hardship. They fall for scams, uncritically participate in corporate viral marketing campaigns specifically aimed to take advantage of them. They believe improbable things. They take risks that can lead to permanent harm. They try stuff that to an older person is obviously going to fail.

32:40 This is because they are not yet jaded. Their belief system has not yet been scarred by living in this world. They lack the coping mechanisms that older people have developed over time in order to avoid getting hurt the same way over and over again. This is both a blessing and a curse. Older people are more adapted to living in the real world, but young people are more driven to change it. We need the wisdom that comes with age, but we also need the blind eagerness of youth, the willingness to try again something that has already failed a million times. We need unfettered optimism, the ability to find joy even in the wasted ruins of what was once a great city. There's this scene from Hunter Hunter where the main protagonist, the 12-year-old boy, who who goes out adventure-seeking, faces a betrayal so devastating that he ages 10 years on the spot in order to gain the power necessary to defeat his adversary. It's an extremely powerful scene. His despair is too great to bear, and when he turns to apathy as a coping mechanism, his body literally transforms into an adult.

33:47 It's It's very metaphorical. It depicts in a singular moment what typically happens to us gradually over time. Our task as the older generation is to shield the young from those who would exploit their naivete without infecting them with our own accumulated pain and cynicism. I'll leave you with one final message addressed to people of all ages, whether you're younger than me, my peer, or my elder. Uh remember how I mentioned losing access to a group of friends cuz I didn't want to use Discord? Well, a bunch of us banded together and decided, rather than complaining, why don't we just make something better? So, we're doing exactly that, and I'm not going to name the project because this is not the point of this talk. The point is you don't need a million dollars to compete, to change the world for the better. You only need a computer, a sense of curiosity, and time. That's the magic of computers. That's why I love them. So, next time you're feeling black-pilled, remember this. We don't have to take it lying down.

34:50 We are the ones making computers do what they do. Together, we will defeat those who will use computers for coercion. Believe it. Bet on it. Make it true through sheer force of will. Thank you. >> [applause]