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As a YC alum who worked with Gary Tan directly, this is… odd. Anyone who knows Gary knows he’s a (relatively) gentle human being. I can’t imagine him hurting a
by cj 3y ago
As a YC alum who worked with Gary Tan directly, this is… odd.
Anyone who knows Gary knows he’s a (relatively) gentle human being. I can’t imagine him hurting a fly.
His tweets seem totally out of character compared to the Gary Tan I personally knew. Maybe he has changed?
I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
- deadbabe 3y agoThere’s a lot of “gentle human beings” who have turned out to be horrific monsters in the end.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y agoTrue in general, although tweeting a shitty thing once does not make a person a horrific monster, nor is the current moment "the end".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- minimaxir 3y agoIt's more the state of modern social media. Post Elon acquisition, many influential tech figures have discovered that being a provocateur on Twitter/X is more consistently successful at building an audience than genuine insight.
- nojs 3y agoPost Elon acquisition? I mean Twitter has always been this.
- EasyMark 3y agoIn a way, but now you can make sure your bot's racist post makes it to the top for $8 a month
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoTrue; before that you simply had to be “notable”, whatever that meant.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoSpending $10 one time with one of many companies that sold likes, follows, retweets, etc. for peanuts.
- sehansen 3y agoNo, before Elon the blue tick was just a blue tick next to your name. Now posts by blue ticks are also sorted before other posts in the interface.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoBefore Elon, posts on Twitter were sorted and hidden at the whim of engagement-maximizing algorithm. After Elon, the same is the case, maybe with the same tweak to the algorithm. I thought the idea that timeline sorting order on social media sites is deterministic or scrutable to the viewer is long dead by now - it's not been the case for at least a good decade now!
- rsynnott 3y agoWhile that's true, the thing where ~all bluetick replies are promoted above ~all normal replies is a post-Musk 'innovation'. Stupid idea; there's 25 years of experience showing that pay-for-attention is corrosive to social sites (dating/hookup sites have been trying to make it work basically forever, and have generally ended up having to ration it).
- mlrtime 3y agoThe point remains that Pre and Post Musk Twitter are NO different when it comes to inflammatory tweets. The players and ordering has changed only.
- juped 3y agoMany influential commenters have discovered that sniping at Elon Musk is more consistently successful at garnering upvotes than genuine insight
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoAnd many have also noticed that few if any care what they have to say outside of that.
- ekms 3y ago> implying that wasn't the case always on twitter?
- epcoa 3y ago> Post Elon acquisition Eh? Trump was never there post Elon acquisition. I don’t think that timing makes sense. The tone of Twitter has been like this for years if not the beginning.
- raffraffraff 3y agoThis was the case pre Elon too. It's human nature. People are social creatures and they love to join some fight as long as they have their own comrades with them. My wife spent years on Twitter embroiled in a very long running and bitter political / rights issue. She was always thoughtful, insightful etc. She'd spend 10 minutes rewording a single tweet to make sure it got the real point across in a way that wasn't inflammatory, and that had a good chance of being persuasive. With 5k followers, I think her most popular tweets might get a few hundred likes. The one time she got drunk and angry, she got thousands of supportive reactions, and her followers increased by a large % overnight. And that scared her. She saw the way "the crowd" was pushing her. Rewarding her for the smell of blood in the water. Audience capture is real. Chronically online people with polarised followers will play to their crowd. Inch by inch, day by day, as social creatures, we automatically and subliminally seek approval from our social group. I've seen this type of dynamic push people into the extremes. My wife got out. First she asked me to block twitter on all of her devices. A month of cold turkey later, she quit for good ,and she's far happier for it.
- asddubs 3y agothoughtful posts are boring, especially if you already agree with them. but people love a good spectacle
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoAt the same time, a thoughtful post today can change the entire life direction of a ten years younger you and end up providing far more value to the world overall. I know that was the case for me. I spent hundreds of hours of reading blog posts by intelligent, optimistic, philosophically transgressive at times but not actually rude or crass folks, all trying to grapple with how to live best in this world. I think this reshaped me to be a much better person in a whole bunch of ways. Very happy for it.
- mlrtime 3y ago100% Agree, humans love drama. Especially when they aren't in it. Natural responses to this would be "I don't like drama" and I would say the same, unfortunately this isn't the case for most of humans.
- tarsinge 3y agoBut which audience? It seems like with social media nowadays only the absolute numbers count. Influencers are very happy to have an army of dumb followers. I guess it’s easier to well influence them.
- asveikau 3y agoI haven't met him, but as someone who reads and engages in online discussion about SF quality of life issues, this is NOT shocking at all, there are a LOT of people openly wishing violence on politicians, homeless people, and people accused of petty crime. Vile and disgusting? Yes. Shocking? Absolutely not. Sorry that your buddy lacks empathy.
- honeybadger1 3y agoA tweet is a thought with cheap delivery, therefore offers no insight at all. It's just like an anecdote from executive leadership to get something over the line to meet a goal. That person has absolutely forgot they said it the next day.
- EasyMark 3y agoYou can string tweets together or if you're a blue check you can just write a treatise, so you aren't really limited to 140/280 chars any longer.
- stevenAthompson 3y agoTwitter is bad. Failing to grok that is also bad. What is your point?
- tysam_and 3y agoThis message confused me on a few dimensions, so I translated it a bit: "State subjective perspective as objective fact. Cast shame upon the OP for not pre-aligning with said belief. Put the responsibility on the OP to prove that they are not deserving of shame." I grew up in an environment where this kind communication was sort of the default, hence why I was curious and wanted to drill down a bit and give it some thought. Of course, many people agree that Twitter is more unhealthy than healthy. But that's not entirely the point here, I think.
- dylanhassinger 3y agoI followed Garry since the old days of Posterous. Seems like 5 years ago he took a turn and got obsessed with edge lordy SF politics. Finally I had to unfollow. Too much money has corrupted all the original startup role models
- shiroiuma 3y agoIt's not just SF; America in general is a miserable place to socialize because nearly everyone has gotten obsessed with toxic politics there.
- arcticbull 3y agoThe reaction feels like pearl-clutching to be honest. This is the kind of shitpost most people would be able to get away with, but Tan is now too important -- and will have to curate his communications more. Especially if he's going to take such a strong position against incumbent politicians cautious of their own images. It also feels like a smart political play by his targets to discredit him. They were probably waiting for him to slip up and say something like this. Anyways, his position is a sympathetic one - the city is not well managed. I say this as someone who frequently disagrees with Tan.
- tempsy 3y agoThreatening to kill someone isn’t a “shitpost”. The fact it’s a Tupac lyric is not like common knowledge. I doubt a random poll of Twitter users would show most people would know the reference immediately.
- arcticbull 3y agoSure, and that was the misstep here. He clearly wasn't threatening to kill anyone, it was misinterpreted, he thought people would get a reference that they clearly did not. He's apologized, it's time to move on. There's better things to spend our outrage budget on IMO than someone who cares a little too much about city politics and has probably learned not to overestimate his audience's knowledge of Tupac.
- tempsy 3y agoI’m not sure who is supposed to “move on”. It’s an election year. People will use the tweet as they see fit. Voters will ultimately decide whether it matters or not concerning candidates who have received money from Tan. But I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear about it.
- anigbrowl 3y agoThey were probably waiting for him to slip up and say something like this. This is a touch paranoid. it was misinterpreted, he thought people would get a reference that they clearly did not As a general matter, people should spend more time saying what they mean instead of engaging in meta-discourse of quoting cool references to each other for vibes. It's an unhealthy way to communicate; online discourse is totally irony-poisoned and (imho) this is partly why there's such a breakdown of social trust. And really, don't you think throwing out lines like 'die slow motherfuckers' in public for cool points is a little...juvenile?
- tempsy 3y agoI’m not sure how anyone can say this when he’s notorious for blocking thousands and thousands of people on Twitter/X for the smallest perceived critique, including people who have never interacted with him at all because they engaged with some tweet he didn’t like The only kind of person who’d ever go that far is someone with a very fragile ego
- jncfhnb 3y agoWhy? What’s wrong with blocking strangers you deem annoying?
- tempsy 3y agoHe expects everyone else to take heat from him but can’t handle the tiniest bit of criticism direct at him It’s a bit rich
- HKH2 3y agoSo block him?
- jncfhnb 3y agoDoes he really expect people to take heat from him?
- unsupp0rted 3y agoIf anything, people who rant on social media expect to be ignored or blocked. They wouldn’t rant like that in real life on a bus with a captive audience.
- darkwizard42 3y agoI’ll never get this. He doesn’t owe those people anything. Just because you start talking doesn’t give everyone the right to listen, just because someone is talking doesn’t require you to listen… If anything this is healthy.
- mrcwinn 3y agoAlcohol.
- fortran77 3y agoA man who said he wants “7 elected officials to die slow” you call “gentle”. I’d hate to hear who you consider aggressive.
- jdietrich 3y agoI'm not sure what Tan's specific beef is, I could never endorse violent rhetoric in politics, but the level of avoidable human misery caused by the dysfunction of politics in San Francisco is sickening. If you can walk through the Tenderloin without becoming utterly enraged at the people responsible, there's a piece of your soul missing.
- archagon 3y ago“Those responsible” is a rather nebulous group in this case.
- ajross 3y ago> I could never endorse violent rhetoric in politics In literally the next sentence: > the level of avoidable human misery caused by the dysfunction of politics [...] sickening [...] utterly enraged [...] there's a piece of your soul missing So you'll deploy extreme emotional hyperbole, but not "violent rhetoric"? Seems like those are two rather nearby points on the same spectrum, no? Tan just slipped a bit off the edge. If you're going to deny someone's soul, it's not that big a leap to wish them dead.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Seems like those are two rather nearby points on the same spectrum, no? I don't think so, no. Those two things are miles apart.
- ajross 3y agoOnly according to external rules about what you're supposed to say. The emotional content of the rhetoric seems pretty identical. No one thinks Garry Tan was actually wishing death on anyone, he was expressing anger and doing that by invalidating the target's existence. "You should die" and "you have a piece of your soul missing" are coming from the same place, they both mean "you're worthless". It's just that Tan forgot the rules in the heat of the moment. And so would the grandparent poster after a few drinks, I suspect. To wit: cool the fuck down, everyone. Shitposting on the internet is a slippery slope to an accidental death threat.
- AlexandrB 3y agoI think the failing here is using Twitter at all - or at least without an intermediary like an editor. Twitter is almost purpose made for stripping context. Tweets are, traditionally, short and pithy and so are easy to misinterpret or misrepresent. If you're even a semi public figure, Tweeting a lot is a huge liability.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThat's the conundrum of being a modern tech CEO - you're supposed to forever pretend you're the high school buddy with everyone, even if the "startup" you're running is a billion dollar+ multinational corporation, and you yourself are wealthier than anyone except the world leaders and other corporate... er startup CEOs.
- apapapa 3y ago> I can’t imagine him hurting a fly. A lot of people say they never thought their neighbor could hurt someone, after the fact.
- bane 3y agoWith some people, there's a big difference between their outside voice and their inner monologue.
- figassis 3y agoMost personalities are carefully curated/maintained. People can sometimes slip when overly stressed.
- hackideiomat 3y ago[flagged]
- Gud 3y agoOr perhaps the way he is being portrayed is a total character assassination.
- joshuaissac 3y ago> he seems like a flag waving trump supporter An earlier report from the same news site describes the candidates that he is supporting as 'moderate': https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/y-combinator-ceo-garry-tans-online-rant-spurs-threat-to-supe-police-reports/ https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/y-combinator-ceo-garry-tans...
- lawgimenez 3y agoNot sure but I remembered he said fuck Mayweather before: https://x.com/garrytan/status/594730377702297601?s=20 https://x.com/garrytan/status/594730377702297601?s=20
- paganel 3y agoThat's just par for the course when it comes to sports commenting. I'm a little surprised though that a tech person of Asian ethnicity would be interested in boxing, good for him for going against all the ingrained stereotypes.
- lawgimenez 3y agoI'm just saying since parent comment says he's a gentle human being but he's been always a foul mouth on Twitter.
- iSnow 3y agoAlcohol disinhibits and makes people show sides they usually suppress. He probably has pent-up anger and let it all out in that tweet. I guess he's neither fully the person you know nor the person from that tweet, but both are part of the "real him"
- me_me_me 3y ago>Alcohol disinhibits and makes people show sides they usually suppress I always judged people based on how they act when drunk. Always stick with people who are happy drunk never angry/violent drunk
- JohnFen 3y agoMe too! I can't say I really know who someone is unless I've seen them drunk, experience heaven, or experience hell. All of those things tend to reveal truths about ourselves that we normally don't expose.
- throwaway645780 3y agoI am not an alum but I did have a short chat with him about 6 years ago: "gentle" is definitively not how I would describe him, at least from that interaction. Everybody has a bad day though so I did gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm really not surprised by this tweet "scandal" at all and the way he's dealing with it.
- wildpeaks 3y agoIn vino veritas, as the saying goes.
- junon 3y agoIt was a song lyric. Dumb, cringe tweet for sure. But not violent. People are so inclined to look for reasons to be mad. They all must be perfectly well-adjusted, down to earth, basically flawless people themselves. Clearly.
- booleandilemma 3y agoI guess we saw the inner Gary Tan.
- xyst 3y agoIt was supposedly a drunken rant. Usually when you are intoxicated that really shows who you are. Maybe he kept up the facade really well. OR like you said, maybe he is on some behavioral or cognitive decline. Another Lee Holloway situation [1] [1] https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/ https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline...
- dilawar 3y agoPeople gets intoxicated by their ideas when they find then having a large appeal. Social media accelerates it.