Venture capitalists and other things that I hate

I went to a hackathon at UVA this past spring break (I'm from Virginia, and my boyfriend goes there). The app we ended up making was just something for shits and giggles. Completely unserious while still being useful to students. It was a wild west themed map-integrated campus event app, complete with a wagon that simulates the journey of taking a path from one event to another on the map and multiple variations of horse running+neighing sounds. It was beautiful.

One of our judges was a venture capitalist who was your stereotypical finance guy. All he asked were questions along the line of "how will you monetize this?" and "what is your business model?".

Excuuuuse me???? I was FUMING. I physically left the room before my disgust could manifest in my expression.

So we can't just have fun, not-for-profit projects anymore? The fact that the value and judging of our project was solely based on the amount of money it would generate astounded me. This guy probably didn't even know enough about tech to ask about the development process and tech stack, which is what really mattered. Hackathons are a time for exploring the use of new tools. People like this guy are the reason we can't have nice things.

A growing list of things that I hate

• Out of touch product managers/nontechnical people (only the insufferable ones)
• Hot take, but the banana lounge. I lived almost solely off of those bananas in my freshman year, so I am sick of them now. That, combined with the smell of sweaty bananas and unwashed CS majors. This might just be a lukewarm take actually, a lot of people avoid the banana lounge for its smell.
• Chronic bedrotters. Seriously, get out of bed and do something with your life. I understand staying in bed for days, because you're addicted to an anime or manwha, but for months? After the 1-month mark of straight bedrotting, I will have secretly lost all respect for you (but I'd never show it).
• Performative [insert literally anything]: people who larp as someone they're not. People who throw around big terminology without actually understanding it, just to seem smart.
• I hate that I complain too much sometimes. I solve this by just shutting up. Feel free to tell me to do so as well.
• I also hate when I say something negative that is objectively true, and get told to stop complaining. If you have a problem with me calling your car old, that says more about your insecurity that how I personally feel about what the topic is (I probably do not care at all).
• Crunchy (unripe) pears
• Hard bread (with some exceptions)
• How I seem to shed hair at the rate of a dog ;-;
• People that come across as entitled (one of my biggest fears is seeming this way myself)
• That fact the use of em-dashes is an indicator of AI generated text. I swear I've just always loved em-dashes 😭
• WHEN PEOPLE STEAL MY IDEAS AND RUN WITH THEM WITHOUT TELLING ME, or seeing my ideas grow in a direction that I have no control over. I definitely prefer to work on projects solo for this reason. While it can be great to work with a team that is aligned with you, not having sole ownership means that there can be some aspects of it that you cannot be proud of anymore :( My creativity is one of my biggest assets, and I hate when I feel like I've been taken advantage of; that said, I do need to get better at standing up for myself instead of running away from these situations.

Time spent: 30 min