> For legal reasons, I’m not saying the people who write this stuff are literally Lucifer in human skin. It’s just that, if I wanted to maximize human misery, I would 100% try to convince people to spend more time doing things they hate
When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fellow demons that nowadays it's all about optimizing micro-evils for the biggest net amount of evil. Sure, things like corrupting a church leader sounds more impressive, but if you cause the phone network to be down for an entire morning in London that ruins so many more people's day ever so slightly, leading to more sinful thoughts in total and pushing them to take it out on others, who then take that out on others, and so on.
(my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly)
When Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens thirty years ago they already hit upon this idea when Crowley, a demon and one of the main characters, tries to explain to his fellow demons that nowadays it's all about optimizing micro-evils for the biggest net amount of evil. Sure, things like corrupting a church leader sounds more impressive, but if you cause the phone network to be down for an entire morning in London that ruins so many more people's day ever so slightly, leading to more sinful thoughts in total and pushing them to take it out on others, who then take that out on others, and so on.
(my money is on that joke being written by Pratchett, it fits his kind of satire so perfectly)