6 ms·
Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pu
by robinhood 2mo ago
Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pushes the limits of what was previously deemed unacceptable. I'm rich, so my opinion must be more important, right?
- adamors 2mo agoThey were always capable of these thoughts, money just gave them access to actions as well. Money didn’t turn them extreme IMO, maybe more fearful about losing it.
- fakedang 2mo agoMoney would've allowed them to act any time. But no, this is because of the shifting tide, enabled by an openly elitist government that doesn't give a shit about the layman. Remember how a few years back, all these billionaires and corporations were all talking about DEI and taking the knee and George Floyd, and (insincerely) shoving it all down everyone's throats? It just became socially more acceptable for them to show their true colors.
- dandellion 2mo agoI don't see why these colors would be any more truer than the ones before. I bet they would change again just as quick if winds went back to blowing the other way. The only color they care about is the green of money. And if you asked them why they supported it they'd get all forgetful and not remember ever supporting any of that.
- fakedang 2mo agoIt will be very difficult for them to backtrack on their crap now without losing face, since many of them have gone off the far end. Elon was once a darling of the left, with sizeable donations to Obama and Clinton, and even Biden. It seems for Elon, the point he went right happened as follows: > On August 5, 2021, Biden signed an Executive Order targeting that half of cars sold in 2030 should be electric.[254] General Motors CEO Mary Barra was in attendance.[254] Musk commented, "seems odd that Tesla wasn't invited."[255] Barra said in 2024 Musk never forgave not being invited.[256][257] In 2025, former vice president Kamala Harris said that she believed that not inviting Musk was a "big mistake."[258][259] In September 2021, Musk criticized Biden as "not the friendliest administration."[258] In December 2021, Musk publicly expressed opposition to the Build Back Better Act. He literally switched sides for something so trivial, but went deeper and deeper till he went full retard.
- amelius 2mo agoWell, they did /something/ right ...
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- kennywinker 2mo agoWould you say the same about someone who accumulated billions thru the illegal drug trade?
- fakedang 2mo agoHonestly just my experience, but I've found it ironic that finance bros in my circle have gone the other way i.e. the effective altruism, philosophizing, podcasting route. While tech bros are now turning openly elitist, and in some cases, racist. And before anyone claims it's selection bias from within my left-leaning circle, I was well involved within the Tory circus until recently (a couple of years back).
- buellerbueller 2mo agoThis supports my belief that when being a finance bro was the only way to Croesus-level wealth, sociopaths tended to go into finance, so they could transcend societal norms with their wealth. Then, tech came along, making finance bro-level wealth seem quaint. Where did all the sociopaths go...well, you saw for yourself.
- fakedang 2mo agoI agree, this could strongly be the case. Especially since now the most elite in finance are either working in quant roles and /or megafund private equity, both of which are extremely selective compared to tech. Megafund PE was always and still remains a bastion of conservatism, but quant shops still select for more objective skillsets meritocratically.
- cmrdporcupine 2mo agoOr... hear me out. "Tech bro" is finance bro. Most of the "tech" CEO people we're admiring? as movers and shakers... very few of them actually come from an engineering background. They're mostly just people attracted to the tech industry as a focus of dynamic high profit capitalism. The technology is only the background buzz. Many of these businesses (Shopify especially!) -- in particular SaaS businesses -- actually have very weak "tech" innovation, it's really just the deployment of pre-existing engineering solutions (solved by other people usually) at scale in order to run a commercial business that just happens to use a lot of computers.
- fakedang 2mo ago
- vrganj 2mo agoThis has been a studied phenomenon for a bit now: Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1118373109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1118373109
- CodingJeebus 2mo agoAccumulation of wealth and power becomes an addiction unto itself if left unchecked. At some point, we all have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we have enough and start to place importance in other parts of our lives. But many of the wealthiest people I have known were also the least happy, driven by an insatiable urge to be great, and despite achieving vast success, were never able to feel or accept that they had already achieved it. It was never enough.
- FLeXMurphy 2mo agoWho is going to say what is and isn't acceptable? You?
- pixelatedindex 2mo agoI certainly get to say what is and isn’t acceptable for me. I also don’t get to say what is and isn’t acceptable for others. Don’t understand why your tone is so accusatory.
- sheauwn 2mo agoEach person says what is and isn't acceptable, it can't really be any other way.
- nozzlegear 2mo agoYes. If the billionaires can do it, why not me?
- robinhood 2mo agoI'm far too stupid for that and I'm also privileged so what do I know. Many are more qualified to do so. I just think that his statement is not acceptable and is clearly dangerous for the society as a whole.
- __MatrixMan__ 2mo agoI get to say what I'll tolerate, and what I'll interfere with. We all do.
- dgellow 2mo agoYes?
- kraquepype 2mo agoYes. That would the point of democracy, if ours wasn't in shambles.
- Rygian 2mo agoThe Overton window. You don't get to shift it without raising questions about your motives.
- MDTHLN 2mo agoEd Zitron had a great quote that's relevant to this. > [they] have filled their skulls with a sense of moral and intellectual superiority - that because they have succeeded at work, they understand society better than others, and can only perceive the world through that lens of privilege
- randusername 2mo agoI think too many billionaires convince themselves it was fate and scramble their brains under the weight of figuring out what the greater purpose is for their extraordinary wealth and influence. The asymptotic equivalent of $20 "burning a hole in your pocket" Here's to hoping for more batmans and less lex luthors
- AussieWog93 2mo agoI think everyone has weird ideas like this, but these rich, well-connected guys don't have to worry about their lives being ruined when they actually share them out loud. I can't imagine many aerospace manufacturers turning down a contract with SpaceX because Elon said something politically incorrect. James Damore, on the other hand... This isn't hate towards these rich guys (I think everyone should be able to say shit like this), just pointing out that we as a society hold them to different standards than we do regular people.
- AnimalMuppet 2mo agoBut when everyone says stuff like this, they get punched out in a bar, and only the people in the bar hear it at all. When this guy says it, it's news that the whole country hears.
- archagon 2mo agoA sample of some, uh, politically incorrect stuff Musk said recently: * "Anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor" * "She is a traitor to the West, plain and simple" (in reference to his recent interviewer) * "Deal with traitors before invaders. They are committing high treason." * "First the traitors, then the invaders" (screenshot from Citizen Vigilante pointing gun at camera) We’re at the point where Musk (and others) are regurgitating literal Klansman rhetoric, in addition to the usual anti-democratic stuff. This is extremely far from normal.
- palmotea 2mo ago> Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pushes the limits of what was previously deemed unacceptable. They have the money and power, but tech people in particualr lack the social graces and awareness that previous generations of rich people needed to operate. They think very highly of themselves, but all that "intelligence" doesn't prevent them from acting stupidly.
- dd8601fn 2mo agoThe old timey ones were morons in every kind of human way, too. We know what dumb shit they thought and said. They just didn’t all have instantaneous global reach while sitting on the crapper, like Henry Ford with a Twitter account. Even the Hearst type ones usually had time and human machinery between the formation of idiotic notions and it reaching other people.
- palmotea 2mo ago> The old timey ones were morons in every kind of human way, too. We know what dumb shit they thought and said. I'm not saying they were great. I'm just saying they probably spent more of their formative years interacting with real people than messing around with machines, so the tech lords are probably even worse.
- Der_Einzige 2mo agoAll the stuff all these people post on X is just regurgitation of 4chan circa 2016. The lingo is literally all just /fit/ memes from 10 years ago rebranded. -maxxing, "mogging", "NGMI", I'm literally going nuts waiting for Gavin to start asking trump "DYEL"?
- red-iron-pine 2mo agoit's not by accident, they're targeting specific demographics for a reason angry young men will vote to abolish democracy -- and have, in Europe circa 1930s -- if you can convince them it'll benefit them. step 1 is to start speaking to them in ways they connect with. put another way, with the boomers dying rapidly, the largest source of MAGA is young men...
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- Ancapistani 2mo agoWhy is the left doing the opposite? There is no place for a young man who views masculinity through a traditional lens on the left.
- slowin 2mo agoThis is itself a 4chan meme. They also view neo-liberals as "the left", while most leftists definitely do not. Worrying about "woke", "no place for a young man", trans anything... none of these are actual problems, just 4chan/ultra-right boogeymen.
- Ancapistani 2mo agoVoting statistics by sex show that it is a problem.
- slowin 2mo ago
- red-iron-pine 2mo agothe "engineer's disease" writ large. I am good at solving X and Y, and have deep knowledge in those areas, therefore I'm good at solving problems everywhere. it's like how people says scientists should run the world but have never seen how utterly tribal and often brutal researchers can be.
- nostrademons 2mo agoIt's because you don't see any of the ones that didn't turn to extreme. They're just extremely forgettable, by design. When was the last time you saw Craig Silverstein or Steve Wozniak or Urs Hoelzle or David Cheriton or Jan Koum or Jawed Karim in the news? You don't, because they don't seek fame. At most you might see them on the donor list of local museums or cultural attractions (which they are, abundantly). Even Marissa Mayer, who was very much seeking the spotlight until she got the Yahoo CEO job, has basically fucked off to the sunset and now just runs some extravagant haunted houses in Palo Alto and helps fund the Junior Museum. There's plenty of tech wealth that's very quiet, basically keeps to itself, and limits itself to some quiet local philanthropy. But by definition, you don't hear about quiet wealth.
- IAmGraydon 2mo ago"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -Lord Acton (1887) It's simple. I think a large percentage of the population (maybe even most) are truly, innately bad. By "bad" I mean that they would always choose to benefit themselves over the wellbeing of others. Social constructs and the need for social acceptance keeps most of those tendencies at bay, but when a person gets enough money and power, they're able to express/project all of that badness and with little consequence to boot. There are endless examples of this throughout history. Right now, tech is giving a small percentage of the population outsized power and influence. We shouldn't be surprised with the result. Humanity is what it is.
- consumer451 2mo ago> Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. This is just because the latest people to have gotten crazy-rich came from tech. IMHO, the same can be said of all people who became emperors in a minute. (which is a whole new thing) We are all just humans, and none of us are evolved for this. This could happen to anyone of us... could it not? I think many of us have seen the changes that occur when this happens. Again, we are just not evolved for this. How could we be? The number of people that this happens to is a tiny fraction of the species, and so those who experience this, get really weird.