If a key part of your job is getting information right and ferreting out falsehoods and untrustworthy sources, and the tool that’s supposed to help you do that keeps throwing you obvious errors, than yeah, you’re probably not going to *trust* it and may end up deciding it’s not all that useful.

These guys love to talk about "mind viruses." The most pernicious one I know is contrarianism. Try having some innate beliefs or values or politics rather than just saying the opposite of whatever the people you decided you don't like are saying!

My very last thought on this: in no year of my life other than than in the midst of a financial crisis would I have had a strong opinion about how the economy is doing. Asked to take a survey like this, my first thought is either "I don't know" or "Bad, because of the crisis that's happening now."

Yeah, and different things to different people of course, especially generationally. For boomers, probably the social media! For a lot of underemployed young people, folks in the gig economy, maybe less so.

Heavy context for inflation to hit in!

I'll stop now, but that's my main thesis. That around that time is when a lot of people -- different people who are drawn to different cities -- started to feel like not only their top preferred city but also every city they might want to live in was becoming unaffordable.

I do think that's the period when the sense that the housing market is spiralling out of control hit a lot of tertiary markets. Boise, Missoula, Minneapolis, Eugene, various cities in Colorado probably (could even be the whole state practically, like Washington).

(I myself am doing better financially than ever, having had a real job that pays a normal amount for the first time in my life since 2019, and was able to finally finish paying off my student loans last week, which might never have happened without the pandemic.)

Oh yeah, not accusing you of any of that, not even a little. Trying to understand it myself. I think most of the people I listen to about such things agree with you and find it all a little puzzling. Just very much my lens on all of it.

The vibes get rancid. Or are like very prepared to be rancid. How much bad news does it take when you've already been worrying about whether you can continue to live where you want to live for years?

And then partially because of the pandemic but predating I think, that situation basically went national, right? There are a few places that are pretty insulated from it, but for me realizing the way I was feeling in Brooklyn and then Seattle is the same way people in Boise were feeling...