When people say "passion", they don't mean churning out derivative charts of the same "correct" ranges of muzak with no inner emotion or no inner story. That's not passion, and I'm pretty sure your friends who do this would agree that this is not theirs either. Instead, they'd probably point to more personal work to show you what they are actually passionate about.
What makes art beautiful isn't plucking the strings or pressing piano keys. It is the expression of ideas, a communicative art.
The artists who do this are not evil, and must make a living. I would not call them or define them as "fake". There is absolutely fake work and fake output, though.
I fondly remember a flash game that involved small particles with their own unique behavior. Each particle could collide, react, transform, or destroy other particle material. I can't remember the name of the website or game, but emergent gameplay is always such a joy to toy around with.
And for anyone still considering SRE: when interviewing, ask how incentives/bonuses/promotions work for software engineers and how does that compare to SREs. A lot of promotable activities for SWE (shipping new things constantly) have negative value for an SRE role, since continually changing infrastructure ensures on-call never develops mastery of those systems.
This comment rings true for most hard situations in life. Community, loved ones, friends, whatever. Have other people in a better situation pull you up.
What makes art beautiful isn't plucking the strings or pressing piano keys. It is the expression of ideas, a communicative art.
The artists who do this are not evil, and must make a living. I would not call them or define them as "fake". There is absolutely fake work and fake output, though.