They are desperate to be cool, it’s so cringe.
This is why they are businessmen and not politicians or influencers
I know it feels good to dunk on others and do so with generalities but just the last line, get revenge on the nerds.
Sounds edgy but it’s a slogan that is poor communication. It’s focused on US based tech billionaires and paints them as representatives of nerds. Look at voting data. Tech employees are leftist. People that go to school are more frequently leftist. Rhetoric like this is unintentionally anti-intellectual which promotes conservatism. And in my personal life, there sure seems to be an ocean of nerdy women in the US including in tech like bioengineering and UX and marketing design that is intertwined with today’s techno-facism. I don’t get why these pundits can’t ever stay focused on class warfare and end up resorting to social/racial/gender otherings. Why use language that is so so broad and is a term that most applies to people in your base
Also I’m at a loss at how finance/real estate/insurance/material and manufacturing billionaires have somehow managed to be overshadowed in public perceptions of evil even though they’ve consistently been at it for millenniums and are a cohort of multigenerational families of wealth built on slavery and genocide. They make up venture capital funds that give them ownership across all these companies. Tech CEOs end up owning an ever shrinking portion of a company they did or didn’t found until ownership is mostly a smattering of many large finance companies and family offices. Weirdly fetishistic of proper rich despots rather than these new tech billionaires who still have to go to JP Morgan Chase to facilitate their transactions
Also in the comments co-opting conservative rhetoric like herbivores and I guess carnivores?. That’s weird. Who actually talks like that seriously in real life? My whole life on the left we’ve been so terrible at creating insults but also terms of endearments. It’s weird how bad we are at not only labeling ourselves but also continuing to build terms into positives. Anything eventually becomes an insult towards leftist and conservative terminology is used awkwardly
For the side that places so much emphasis on the power of language, labeling, othering, etc … we’re terrible at it. The side of people with art/literature/communication/whatever degrees. Practically any college level degree is the realm of mostly leftist but in practice people well studied in communication can’t effectively and accurately communicate to people
Yup. The whole article and “we should bring back bullying” rhetoric (even used ironically) just reeks of someone who doesn’t like “uncool” people and finally found a morally valid excuse to hate on some of them.
Really, not much different from misogynists pointing at random female tiktok influencers and concluding “See? This is why women are dumb and we need sexism”.
It doesn’t matter if they’re nerds or not. What matters is where society is swaying to.
Ya but in discussion of the article, I don’t think it’s about the direction of society. It’s an article about people the author doesn’t like. How they classify them. And an empty call to action at the end to get revenge on nerds of which the author probably would be considered one. It’s a bad article
Purpose of the article, why does it exist and why does it have so many upvotes? Does the article help or harm the direction of society? Is it just an eloquent version of an Instagram comment dunking on people? What communication should be signal boosted that would be effective in driving action towards swaying society in a better direction
I think many people wouldn’t like to live under a “Nerd Reich”, so it’s only natural that there is a mainstream article against that. I’m assuming people who don’t understand anything about the technology that keeps their attention most of the time are concerned about the possibility. Society losing grip over itself, that is, language (social skills) not being the primary characteristic of the successful anymore. That is a blow conventional people won’t take easily.
This is something I observed regarding Trump in his first term, here this guy is allegedly super rich and now leader of the free world, and he still thinks he’s a total loser, hence his own inability to tolerate criticism, and obsession on harming enemies and bullying people.
He has to fuck other people’s wives and make John Kennedy Jr. eat McDonalds because even being President isn’t enough assertion of dominance to make him feel on top.
I have a tender self esteem, myself, and have deep-running neural pathways that will drive me nearly to self harm when I mess something up (e.g. drop my coffee, or burn dinner, or thoroughly lose my wallet). I have these structures of rational self-assessment so that when I calm down I can see I’m actually alright and have some sweet talents, and friends find me useful, and when not even that, at least lovable.
Trump with all his money and power doesn’t have that, and people like me can see Trump feels like a total loser propped up by hollow victories, even as POTUS, which is a fucking scary place to be. This is why cabinet meetings are a round-robin ritual of telling Trump how huge he is.
As for the tech bros, they succeeded in their careers which is exactly what we are taught manly men are supposed to do and still feel hollow (which is common when you fixate only on your career). They didn’t have that (possibly essential) experience where they collapse into despair as a young person and realize they need personal integrity or spirituality to climb out. (For me it was a moment of rational self-assessment and finding I was not wanting after all; that my depression and self hatred were based on delusions.)
As for Musk, his bio on Behind the Bastards suggests it’s really difficult for someone not to emerge from his upbringing without turning into a Disney / Marvel supervillain.
Thiel has his own backstory and obsession, and is perpetually feeling Death (his own mortality) chuffing hyperborean chills on the back of his neck.
So yes, these guys are desperate to cling to power, _because wealth and political transactional power are the only power they’ve ever known, hence J. D. Vance’s obsession on forcing women into natality which is likely to turn into Lebensborn style breeding programs (which inspired Atwood to write A Handmaid’s Tale. ) They are terrified of equality because then they’ll just be eccentric, antisocial dorks.
(I am an eccentric, antisocial dork, with few things to offer other than listening skills, peer psychology, computer nerding and moral philosophy, and in a world where we’re not all overwhelmed with bad news, that is more than enough to find friends, family and crew. But it takes some personal introspection and willingness to practice soft power to learn this.)
If they were able to step away from power, or we took it from them and forced them into peer group support, they’d eventually discover that they don’t need to be captains of industry (or James Bond supervillains) to be accepted and loved (and consequently, fed and homed by the community).
And when they’ve given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it’s not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger’s wallThe thing they all share is that they are deeply unloved. Trump, musk, bezos, zuck, none of them have healthy loving families. They have noons they can genuinely connect with. And they all think by having more money and being more popular will fulfill that human need. But it never does, so they just keep going not realizing the path they chose doesn’t end anywhere near what they desire. Money will never buy love and peace.
And they all think by having more money and being more popular will fulfill that human need.
If that was all it was, then I’d feel sorry for them. No, they’re trying to fulfill that need by being Great Men of History with Mighty Plans, but their Mighty Plans are all terrible, because they’re horrible people.
That’s a tired stereotype. Powerful people are unloved because they don’t need to be loved. They are psychopaths, they have all the love they need, they are bored with the world and have nothing more to want.
People around you are unloved because they have problems.
Also money can buy you a cottage surrounded by nice trees near a river, healthy food, more house animals than you could want, a fast PC, jasmine and lilac bushes outside your window.
I think it can go a long way.
My irritation from this stereotype is because it kinda says the opposite of what it says. It feels like sublimated envy, expressed by saying that you don’t envy them. Why talk about their money at all then.
I wouldn’t envy anyone’s money if that’s all the difference between us, unfortunately money buys power and power is used to impose one’s will upon me, and that I very much care about.
But your typical young Trotskyists in the Interwebs write whole articles consisting of Marxist vibes (a strong thing, especially in spring, but not enough) and envy to those having more. LOL, someone having more money is not our problem. Our problem is someone attacking us with it.
While this is a fresh perspective of the trope, there is very significant evidence that becoming rich is a predictor of early death and depression, presumably due to how hard it becomes to connect to people. Normal people need money to eat and live, and handle it like the privilege it is. It is synonymous with survival for most people. It’s no wonder at all to me why the oligarchs has been naturally selected to be psychopaths. All other people die. A select few give it away and devote themselves to reintegrate back to humanity but those are very few and far between.
I wouldn’t challenge this view for Musk, Bezos, Trump. But Zuck gives me more of a “reformed (now married) incel that comes from an otherwise normal family environment vibe”. His marriage seems at least typical, likely loving etc.
His product happens to be the most harmful for democracy and I consider him equal for worst of the bunch as a result, but I think it’s explained by corporate/personal greed and being out of touch with reality.
Looks like autocorrect did ya dirty.
No one >> noons
Don’t try and downplay the affect of connecting with noons on the human psyche. They are an evil scourge and should be eradicated. This is exactly the kind of thing a noon would post.
I read some books by Alice Miller that discussed some childhoods of authoritarian rulers and they were all of unloved. They had not one adult stick up for them, be their advocate or helper, during their childhood years.
Many of us as children have been unwanted or unloved by our caregivers. Most of us had at least one adult: an uncle, grandmother, teacher etc, who truly tried to help at least once.
What the monsters in history had in common is an absence of evidence of even that happening for them. And their revenge as adults was terrible.
Man, I should have became an authoritarian ruler.
Instead I became isolated and I haven’t had a visitor in over a decade.
Fuck it. Vote for theangryseal!
For real though, maybe if I hadn’t ever used drugs haha. I had a lot of “friends” when I was living in that world. Might have stopped me. :p
I just started reading this book about Facebook and I am amazed how little they cared about how much power they had, and how oblivious they were of it.
These are companies that rule the world, but don’t know what they want with it, other than for it to generate profit
This book is great! Everything you thought about Facebook (meta) is true, and worse. Highly recommended
If I had as much power as them I’d at least make dogs that can speak esperanto.
bojo
Bowjow
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this but everything seems to be going down the tubes quite fast.
Yeah like having to accept all cookies to read the article.
This movie hasn’t aged well, for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
The electric violin scene was cool, tho.
I will be happy if Zuck is Luigi’d before my death. Also Musk and Bozo.
Because it’s so much better when they’re charismatic assholes?
I think it’s much sadder (more sad? saddest) that people fall for such absurd douche bags. If they would at least be sexy and seem smart you could understand how people could be fooled but this is just too hard to watch.
Yeah like, they have negative charisma, so it’s extra baffling. I cannot imagine a world in which I’d support Donald Trump, but definitely not in this one where he routinely shits his own diaper. If he was only disgusting mentally but was a good speaker or handsome or whatever, it would make at least a little more sense
