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ZeeMastermind t1_j4s1c9q wrote

Reply to comment by WhenRobLoweRobsLowes in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

You know, working in cybersecurity, I almost prefer when books go completely off-the-wall unrealistic with how things work. If we're doing things a la Neuromancer or Snow Crash where you can walk around the internet and things work a bit like magic, then it doesn't bother me.

But if we're talking Digital Fortress, where NASA's supercomputer just isn't capable of cracking a password which turns out to be one digit long, then the attempts at seeming realistic just seem annoying.

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WhenRobLoweRobsLowes t1_j4sclwl wrote

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Sitting in a newsroom for ten years taught me one thing: nothing fun happens to reporters. You don't investigate cold cases or get anonymous tips that break things wide-open. You just slog through the day and report on other people's misery.

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ZeeMastermind t1_j4swla7 wrote

Well, it'd probably be pretty depressing to read a story about a workday slog where the employees slowly become more overworked because whatever hedge fund bought up their newspaper is now laying people off in the name of "efficiency." Not much escapism there.

Similarly, I bet you'd be equally bored by someone reviewing dozens of emails each day to determine which are "spam," which are "phishing," if any user clicked on them, and so on.

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