u/DroidLavender

I have been working on a high-fantasy setting for about four months now, and everything was clicking perfectly until last night. I was refining the magic system, which centers around "Cognitive Weaving"- essentially, a highly trained mage can seamlessly transfer memories, skills, and muscle memory directly from one human mind to another.

In my head, this was a cool, efficient way for ancient masters to pass down dying martial arts or complex alchemical formulas to their chosen apprentices. I thought it was a neat alternative to the classic "years of training in a secluded monastery" trope.

Then I actually sat down and followed that logic to its natural conclusion, and I realized I have completely broken the fabric of human society in this world.

If a master can just copy-paste forty years of advanced architectural engineering or military strategy into a fifteen-year-old’s brain in a single afternoon, the entire concept of traditional education is completely dead. There are no schools, no universities, no apprenticeships. But it gets so much worse when you look at the social implications. Children of wealthy nobility would essentially be born as fully realized polymaths. A rich twelve-year-old could have the tactical mind of a seasoned general and the legal expertise of a supreme judge just because their parents could afford to buy the memories of dying scholars.

This completely destroys the concept of youth and parenting. How do you raise a child who technically possesses more life experience, trauma, and professional expertise than you do? Generation gaps wouldn't just be about different music tastes; they would be terrifying. A teenager could have the internalized PTSD of three different wars they never actually fought in, purely because their family needed them to inherit the family's military legacy.

The entire concept of working hard to achieve a skill is gone. Society would instantly stratify into an unbreakable caste system where the poor are permanently stuck doing manual labor because they can't afford the "knowledge imprints" required for high-paying roles, while the elites just pass down their consolidated mental empires through generations.

I wanted a cool magic system, but I ended up creating a dystopian, cyber-punk-esque nightmare wrapped in a fantasy aesthetic where human identity is completely commodified. Has anyone else accidentally destroyed a basic human institution like childhood or education while trying to make a magic system "efficient"? How did you fix it without completely scrapping the magic?

I am still scratching my head over this because it is easily the most surreal thing that has happened to me in ten years of working in tech. I recently applied for a senior backend engineer position at a mid-sized SaaS platform. The initial screening with the HR manager went perfectly fine, just the usual talk about my experience with microservices, heavy databases, and architecture. I was told the next step would be a brief assessment.

I expected a short coding problem or a system design questionnaire . Instead, an hour after the call, I received an automated email with a link to a third-party video hiring platform. The instructions explicitly stated that to proceed to the technical round, I needed to upload a three-minute vertical video. They wanted me to introduce myself, but the kicker was the second prompt. I had to record myself explaining why their specific platform "inspires me daily to push the boundaries of digital collaboration." They even suggested using filters or trending audio to make it stand out.

I am a backend engineer. My entire job revolves around database optimization, server stability, and making sure the API does not catch fire under heavy load. I do not have a public social media presence, and I certainly do not make content . The idea of standing in front of my phone camera, smiling like an influencer, and reciting corporate buzzwords about a product I only heard of two weeks ago felt completely degrading. It is a complete mismatch of skills. If they want someone who can look cute on camera and pitch their brand, they need a marketing intern, not a guy who spends his day staring at terminal logs.

I ended up sending a polite but very direct email to the recruiter. I told her that my portfolio and GitHub repository should provide enough evidence of my technical qualifications, and that I would not be participating in a video recording because it has zero relevance to system engineering. The response I got was a generic template about how this video portion is a mandatory part of their "cultural alignment matrix" and that they cannot move candidates forward without it.

It is just wild to me that companies are actively filtering out solid technical talent because people refuse to perform like trained seals for the HR department. I am honestly glad I dodged that bullet because if their hiring process is this much of a clown show, I can only imagine how broken their actual codebase is . Has anyone else run into this weird push for video submissions for purely non-facing, highly technical roles? It feels like the tech job market has officially lost its mind.