After the '4' incident my calibration for guessing if something like this is a joke is completely broken.

Start? We've been embracing the Great Filter like a long lost friend.

No answer to them being paid off by the same people because there cannot be one.

Give it a generation or three, but yes.

Companies that "haven't gone evil" yet are like dynasties that aren't ruled by a mad king, yet.

To be fair to them the default with "user friendly" phone UI makes it difficult to have any idea where things are. You often really have to go out of your way to open a file manager.

pre colour film announcer voice

The worker of the [year] 2000 will work just 20 hours per week

Oops, we forgot to account for employers existing.

People die if they are killed.

Well met, the-answer-is-thought-terminating-cliche-what-was-the-question.

I hope you're having a lovely day.

It's not naive, it's their excuse to switch their brains off.

If uncomfortable thoughts only come from faraway malicious others trying to undermine your "democracy", you can dismiss them guilt-free.

Now you can simply drop a piece of paper in a box and call it good. Nothing scary needs to be done or considered to arrest the decade long freefall into overt fascism that you wait no stop you're thinking again.

and that finally – and this goes for the capitalists too –

an inhuman power rules over everything.

Every company feels like they need to get faster.

Well yeah, they're capitalist institutions. If they're not growing exponentially, they're failing.

That's not a snarky mockery of the attitude of leadership, that's the logic of capital.

Give it a few generations for the selection pressure of the market / the temptations of new leadership to take over.