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Kevin's Small Talk - The Office US

The OfficeCited 6× on HN, 2018–2026
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comedy · general · evergreen · 2018–2026 on HN

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

@itpcc2026-04 · in “Talk like caveman”

But will it lose some context, like Kevin’s small talk? ( ▶ this video ) Like "Sea world" or "see the world".

@BLKNSLVR2026-02 · in “Layoffs at Block”

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

@Waterluvian2025-08 · in “Tokens are getting more expensive”

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

@petethepig2023-04 · in “Show HN: Compress GPT-4 Prompts”

Reminds me of the episode from the Office: "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick" [0] [0] ▶ this video

@benjaminjosephw2022-09 · in “Work is work, in which returns diminish (2020)”

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