tech satire

A KRAZAM satirical sketch about hustle culture and productivity obsession in tech.

A short KRAZAM comedy sketch satirizing corporate tech life, where a worker reckons with having delivered value at the cost of his soul, complete with Slack chimes.

A satirical Onion Talks episode in which a startup founder explains making money by selling his users' data to oppressive governments. It parodies tech conference talks and monetization of communities.

A compilation of the best Gavin Belson moments from Silicon Valley seasons 1 to 5, showing the show's self-absorbed tech CEO.

An Onion News Network satirical segment about a new Sony gadget that is infuriatingly bad, delivered as a profane tech-trends report.

A 2012 Onion News Network satire in which HP announces a push into cloud computing and insists it knows what the cloud is.

A short montage from HBO's Silicon Valley of the TechCrunch Disrupt scene, in which founders repeat the phrase 'making the world a better place'.

A CBC satire sketch in which a self-proclaimed thought leader gives a talk full of empty gestures and nothing-saying inspiration. It parodies TED-style conference talks.

A one-minute clip from HBO's Silicon Valley in which Gavin Belson describes the supposed persecution of billionaires in modern America by comparing it to the Holocaust. It is a satirical scene about tech-executive self-pity.

The first episode of Nathan Barley, Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's British sitcom satirizing hip media and startup scenesters in mid-2000s Shoreditch. Cynical writer Dan Ashcroft finds himself idolized by the moronic Nathan Barley.

A short satirical sketch in which a Q&A about web servers turns into a profane rant about threads, blocking and non-blocking I/O. It lampoons the hype around Node.js and async programming.

An Adult Swim fake infomercial in which Alan Resnick pitches a four-step program for creating a digital avatar to live forever. It is absurdist satire of tech immortality and digital popularity.

An SNL sketch in which Nick Burns, the condescending IT guy, trains a new tech support hire to mock users over simple computer problems.

A satirical CBC Radio This Is That sketch profiling a Vancouver artisanal firewood company that sells bundles of kindling for $1000.

Neil Postman's 1997 lecture at College of DuPage, based on his book, argues that Americans treat technology as a national religion and depend on it to solve larger human problems. It includes audience questions.

Adam Tornhill's GOTO Copenhagen 2019 talk on how to prioritize technical debt in large codebases. It argues for combining code complexity with change frequency (hotspots) from version control data, rather than trying to quantify debt in the abstract.

A Last Week Tonight segment on tech monopolies, their hidden harms and possible remedies such as antitrust reform. John Oliver covers lobbying and legislation along the way.

aGameScout explains rolling, the third major NES Tetris playstyle, in which players tap the back of the controller to move pieces faster than hypertapping. It covers how the technique works and where it comes from.

An Onion Talks satire in which a young media professional pitches compost-powered cars, offering the idea itself and leaving all implementation to others.

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

A spoof industrial promo for the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, a deadpan stream of technobabble about an imaginary machine. It is a classic engineering in-joke.

A satirical Onion News Network piece announcing the 'MacBook Wheel', a laptop with no keyboard where users type by spinning and clicking a wheel. It parodies Apple product launches and minimalist design.

The Brass Eye special 'Paedogeddon!' by Chris Morris, a black-comedy satire of British media moral panic that duped celebrities and politicians into endorsing nonsense. It is the final episode of the series.

A three-minute scene from season 2, episode 4 of Silicon Valley in which Jared is excited after the company hires a woman engineer. It satirizes tokenism in tech hiring.

A That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch in which Stone Age workers are given an orientation about the arrival of bronze. It satirizes change management and resistance to new technology.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

A short clip from HBO's Silicon Valley in which Gavin Belson fires the Nucleus team.

A Primitive Technology episode in which the creator builds a bow-drill-driven bark fan to blow air into a fire, using only natural materials. It shows the progression from fanning a fire by hand to a rotary forge blower.

In this American Masters clip, Jacques Pepin shows two different techniques for making a perfect omelet, a dish he is famous for teaching America.

A conference presentation by Bert Hubert on how companies lose their technological edge and become outsourcing hubs. It argues the same dynamic applies to whole countries and continents, and ends with suggestions for reversing it.

A recording of Richard Feynman's talk on the possibilities of manipulating matter at very small scales, widely seen as an early vision of nanotechnology. This is a later version of his 1959 "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" lecture.

On The Ben & Marc Show, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz compare Trump and Biden policies on tech, crypto, AI and startup taxes, framed around their 'Little Tech Agenda'. They also discuss the Trump assassination attempt.

A four-minute Onion Talks parody in which a social media consultant pitches never putting any effort into social marketing. It lampoons TED-style talks and marketing consultants.

A short Yes Minister clip in which the civil servant explains why Britain joined the European Union, delivered as satire of British foreign policy.

A short comedy skit by Ryan Long satirizing how woke activists and racists end up agreeing on many things.

A cappella parody song by The Richter Scales, set to Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire', lampooning the Web 2.0 startup bubble. It won a Webby for viral video in 2007.

A satirical 'Honest Government Ad' from The Juice Media that mocks Australian carbon capture and storage policy. It lays out the fossil fuel industry's influence and the weak results of the technology in a comedic format.

A long video essay arguing against the claim that Blazing Saddles could not be made today. It looks at the film as satire of the sanitized Western genre and what it did to that genre.

Tom Scott's three-minute satirical short about a corporate-run, DRM-and-ads-laden afterlife after mind uploading. It imagines copyright law and lawyers applied to human memory and consciousness.

Tom Lehrer's gallows-humor song about nuclear annihilation, in which everyone goes together when the bomb drops.