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  • Rich billionaire assholes are ruining every industry. It's not just the tech sector.

  • This is just a meme, but it does touch on something important. There's a journalist by the name of Douglas Rushkoff. He put out a book last year titled, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaire Elite, and he was invited by a group of 5 anonymous tech oligarchs out to the desert to talk about surviving what they call "The Event", or when the consequences of their actions finally catch up to them.

    He also says at the core of their desire to escape it is rooted in something he calls "The Mindset", which is belief that with enough money and technology, wealthy men can live as gods, and transcend the calamities and tribulations that befall us mere mortals.

    "The Mindset" is rooted in empirical science, that human beings are nothing more than the sum total of their chemical components, and that's it, and only the "truly superior" (Billionaire Tech Broligarchs) understand that.

  • Am I stupid? Idk what the hell this is trying to say

    • It's not something that's unique to tech, but I read it as a joke about enshittification due to greed.

      Lots of start-up companies start out all idealistic and positive, then don't stay true to that mission as the founders age and want more (or sell out to a bigger company).

      • I honestly think delusion is a core component of startup culture. There's this energy of overly sincere rich kids who think they can make the world a better place by perpetuating a system of exploitation

        It's kinda tragic really

      • Also as an aside, if stock points cripples your integrity then you never had any to begin with

    • The feeling of power that being in the technology sector brings changes a man.

  • This is why I always tell employers up front to never put me in, nor consider me for, management tracks. “I like to work in the trenches.” I have no desire to be among these corporate people.

    • You're smarter than I am. I took the promotions, and ended up miserable.

      I learned the hard way that higher leveld don't mean more decision-making power. It means more of your time is spent in endless meetings trying to convince people to agree to the obviously right decision. It's a never ending exercise in frustrating stupidity.

      • I was lucky enough to witness managers deal with this ahead of time. Plus, I just know myself and I know that I shouldn’t be managing other people. I have ADHD and my executive dysfunction makes me a terrible decision maker. I learned my limits and stuck to them.

  • This kinda follows the same pipeline that everyone else went down on Facebook and Twitter. At one point, the internet was all about Anonymous and Zeitgeist and revolution.

    Then one Arab Spring and a couple of years later, we all went from Anonymous and Zeitgeist to thinking that billionaires and businessmen are the answers to all of our problems.

    • I don't know that it was ever as much like that--I think the earlier adopters of those technologies were more like that, and as the general public gained interest and increased usage, the trend swung the other way. Remember in 2005 when owning a mac device basically initiated you into a cult? Apple stores were set up like sanctuaries where people came to worship.

      • That's a good point. The big shift probably also coincides with more of the masses getting online. Back in 2005 I was a Symbian user and we used to laugh at the Apple people paying crazy premium prices for 'smart' phones that couldn't even multitask.

145 comments