The Office
6 HN mentions · mentioned in 6 months, 2018–2026
2:33 · 8M views · Feb 8, 2016
A short clip from The Office US in which Kevin decides talking normally wastes time and starts abbreviating all his words and sentences, confusing his coworkers. It is a sitcom scene from Season 8, Episode 2.
Used as a punchline whenever HN threads touch on terse communication, token-saving prompts or verbose writing.
6 comments from Hacker News
Maybe, but at least it's more or less clear what I mean right away :P A million words conveying one unit of meaning are still more efficient than ten words conveying no meaning. I just thought about that when I saw a youtube comment saying "stolen" in response to a funny joke. I wondered, do they mean they intend to "steal it" because it's a good joke, or did they mean the person who posted the joke stole it from somewhere? Nobody will ever know, at least I for one won't sign in just to ask. I notice that since mobile devices, a lot of "communication" on the web these days is kinda like the "small talk" from Kevin from The Office US. this video If I hadn't asked what you meant, I and anyone else who read your comment would have had their own interpretation of it. I see a lot of comments like that on HN, where you would have to ask "what do you mean?" because it's totally unclear. A variation is stating something that is factually true but doesn't really refute anything, but the commenter clearly seems to mean something by stating that triviality, but don't say what it is. It's like dog whistles, but not for others to hear, but only the posters themselves know what they mean. Count me out.
On the topic of cost per token, is it accurate to represent a token as, ideally, a composable atomic unit of information. But because we’re (often) using English as the encoding format, it can only be as efficient as English can encode the data. Does this mean that other languages might offer better information density per token? And does this mean that we could invent a language that’s more efficient for these purposes, and something humans (perhaps only those who want a job as a prompt engineer) could be taught? Kevin speak good? this video
Is ROI in this case a measure of comprehension? What about the enjoyment and playfulness of metaphor and expressive language - do these have a negative ROI if they aren't sufficiently terse? How far do you take efficiency as a measure of communication quality? Did Kevin have it right when he asks "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"[0] [0] this video
Bad grammar is usually lack of care or education or knowledge. 100% lower case is 100% a choice. Thanks jack dorsey, for letting us know you're that sort of person. At least he refers to himself that way too, although he should sign off with: jack off. Someone needs to have this conversation with him: this video
Reminds me of the episode from the Office: "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick" [0] [0] this video