[michaelochurch]

Wow, you really have an axe to grind with those two, don't you?

How is Clinkle "something people want"? Snapchat, sure. I'll give it that.

These unlikeable Joffreys are bad for the world and bad for our image as technologists. Thanks to them, people think of technology as a playground for reckless rich kids, not a slow and laborious and thoughtful process. That's going to lead to backlash like we haven't seen. (Vomiting on a bus isn't "backlash". We haven't see it yet.) I'd like to prevent that by having an honest dialogue with the public at large about what technology really is and what it should be doing. In order to get there, we have to toss away some distractions (and the midlife crisis sadsacks who fund unqualified frat boys to live vicariously through young sociopaths).

Obviously, these guys are envy flashpoints: they're young, not that bright, unlikeable, and insanely well-connected. (And Spiegel is rich. Duplan, maybe not.) I'm well aware of that. I don't pick them because of personal envy, but I am cognizant of this fact about them, because (a) it makes them useful when proving a point because of the visceral resentment they draw, and (b) because they're such a risk to our image as technologists. These are the ones we'll have to control and mute now before we lose the trust of the public. It was people like Spiegel and Duplan getting funded in the '90s that created the perception of us (all of us, even though those types were a minority) as being arrogant and immature, and that made the 2002-04 startup winter so brutal.

[eli_gottlieb]

Disclaimer: I know jack shit about these men.

I don't think the douchebags are the problem. The insane, Gilded Age-level, verging-on-Medieval-level inequalities of income and wealth are the problem.

[api]

That's kinda like saying the problem is clouds, not rain. :)

[eli_gottlieb]

Which means I'm succeeding in complaining about the cause rather than the effect, yes ;-).

[michaelochurch]

The douchebags <-> inequality connection goes both ways.

Extreme inequality produces douchebags because it enhances the importance of authority and favors promotion of those who'll uphold arbitrary authority (in order to enjoy a powerless but privileged status, hence the connection between the douchebag and what is sometimes called "white privilege") over those with actual talent.

That said, those douchebags are promoted for a reason, which is their usefulness as stewards of an unfair, failing society who'll keep the secrets of the shit running it. This keeps them in power and enhances social inequality.