[robinhood]

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?

[MDTHLN]

Ed 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

[nostrademons]

It'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.

[palmotea]

> 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]

The 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]

> 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.

[adamors]

They 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]

Money 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]

I 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]

It 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.

[consumer451]

> 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.

[Der_Einzige]

All 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"?

[dualvariable]

> All the stuff all these people post on X is just regurgitation of 4chan circa 2016.

You can trace a lot of what is wrong with 2026 back to the right-wing countercultural movement on 4chan, probably along with meme culture in general.

[cloverich]

it is weird how when i first heard of meme it was in the dawkins sense. then people showed me memes and i thought wtf this is just dumb jokes, what a weird transformation of the term (my understanding of it). Then i watched it become an actual vehicle for political ideology, "just jokes" when too far but real ideas the rest of the time.

The left rots from them and the right becomes more extreme and everyone is losing all the time. Meme-banning sites like HN and stackoverflow look brilliant in hindsight, to me, with them knowing what they were doing all along; and now there are so few havens from them.

I know this is also a trope, but id always hoped the human race would be consumed by something more sophisticated. But it seems like memes was all is took.

[dualvariable]

Yeah, I'm on a gaming Discord where the 30+ year-old game modders who run it had to ban memes. If you don't, you'll end up with 15-year-old kids spamming memes into channels because that's just how they "talk" online.

And the "meme police" who will complain about misusing meme formats seem really regressive and anti-creative to me. Some satirist should skewer all the young adults who think that meme formats need to be defended.

[I also read The Selfish Gene back in the 90s, long before memes were just jokes]

[red-iron-pine]

it'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...

[Ancapistani]

Why 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]

This 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]

Voting statistics by sex show that it is a problem.

[slowin]

How so? First of all there aren't many leftists you can actually vote for. Second, nothing is stopping men or women from voting for leftists, and indeed both do in the rare instances they're on a ballot.

[randusername]

I 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

[red-iron-pine]

the "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.

[IAmGraydon]

"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.

[AussieWog93]

I 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]

But 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]

A 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.

[CodingJeebus]

Accumulation 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.

[vrganj]

This 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

[fakedang]

Honestly 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).

[afavour]

Maybe an NYC bias here but in my experience finance folks are more closely tied to "well to do" social circles. Summering in the Hamptons, that kind of thing. And that crowd has always had a streak of philanthropy, even if it's as much a status thing as a genuine belief in helping others.

Silicon Valley is very far from all that. More broadly I think it's a reflection of the isolation (physical, cultural, etc) of SV.

[notabotiswear]

Some sorta god complex resulting from dealing with machines that has the sole purpose of answering one’s commands, perhaps?

[red-iron-pine]

> effective altruism, philosophizing, podcasting route

all I see is "scam, BS, slop"

[boelboel]

I think it might be because the tech bros got into a one-off event where a lot of people did and could've made money (as long as they were somewhat intelligent). Now the writing is on the wall that growth in the future will stall, as the sector takes up a larger portion of the economy,and positions of power will stabilise. Some of them probably believe turning elitist and racist could ensure them a better position for a while.

Maybe I'm trying to rationalise their behaviour too much but it feels like techbros have gotten a scarcity mindset.

[buellerbueller]

This 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]

I 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]

Or... 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]

By finance bros, I meant people who continue to work in finance in some capacity. True, there is often some migration from finance to tech, which is usually composed of characters like the ones you talk of.

[amelius]

Well, they did /something/ right ...

[kennywinker]

Would you say the same about someone who accumulated billions thru the illegal drug trade?

[FLeXMurphy]

Who is going to say what is and isn't acceptable? You?

[sheauwn]

Each person says what is and isn't acceptable, it can't really be any other way.

[robinhood]

I'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.

[kraquepype]

Yes. That would the point of democracy, if ours wasn't in shambles.

[Rygian]

The Overton window.

You don't get to shift it without raising questions about your motives.

[__MatrixMan__]

I get to say what I'll tolerate, and what I'll interfere with. We all do.

[pixelatedindex]

I 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.

[nozzlegear]

Yes. If the billionaires can do it, why not me?

[dgellow]

Yes?