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Well the other issue is that many of 90s nerds turned out to be just as fascistic and bullying and horribly un-empathic themselves -just look at Musk as an exam

Well the other issue is that many of 90s nerds turned out to be just as fascistic and bullying and horribly un-empathic themselves -just look at Musk as an example. I mean not having social skills, not identifying with women or not treating them as fellow human beings, not having empathy for non-tech users etc, being obsessed with technology, sometimes at the expense of their humanity. I'm not excusing myself btw here either.. but as I get older I see our own community can be as toxic as any other, what I mean is I'm not laying the blame on outsiders but our own-selves. Power and Money corrupts anyone. Sure I loved pcs, and programming, got bullied as a youth and I wasn't into sports but that doesn't make me any more or less likely to want to 'Make the world a better place' with tech. Honestly 'Silicon Valley' the tv show, took out much of the wind and visionary magic that the real Silicon Valley was viewed as over 10 years ago. And subsequent actions of the real valley have not proven it false but a resounding and biting commentary on the culture These days we have Tech Bro culture, immense tech layoffs, offshoring of work, Doomscrolling and tech which splinters humanity instead of binding it, consigns people to contract menial work at the whim of an algorithm and uses AI to generate art and music while human artists get locked out proper reward for their efforts .. I can definitely see how many in the younger generations are looking at Big Tech as being just as evil as Big Oil

baggy_trough 2y ago
Elon Musk is an example of a fascist? That is outrageous nonsense.
- petre 2y ago
  Just wait and see what he'll do to the federal workers, before he gets to screw up Mars for good. Maybe replace them with AI, since that's the current hype train. Think of full self driving but for government. https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-harassing-federal-workers-x https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-haras...
  - baggy_trough 2y ago
    Firing federal workers and going to Mars is what fascism is?
    - HideousKojima 2y ago
      In 1944, before the actual universally agreed upon to be fascist powers were defeated in WW2, George Orwell wrote about how the word had been applied to just about every group imaginable and had already lost any real meaning it might have had: https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e... "It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else." "Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come." "But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."
- threeseed 2y ago
  On a spectrum he is definitely in that direction. There are many examples but a few: a) Publicly shamed a civil servant with full knowledge it would drive the violent elements of his supporters to attack her. I've never seen this before in US politics where an innocent party was targeted this way and clearly it was done to drive fear within the government. b) Has constantly promoted false stories about immigrants, black people, trans people, women etc. The narrative being that the US is a zero sum game where in order for non-white males to succeed white-males must lose. c) I run Twitter business accounts which are post-only and every single one shifted hard towards showing ultra-right wing political content in the For You feed. There is no doubt that the platform was used as a propaganda tool during the last election.
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    >a) Publicly shamed a civil servant with full knowledge it would drive the violent elements of his supporters to attack her. I've never seen this before in US politics where an innocent party was targeted this way and clearly it was done to drive fear within the government. Hmm, you must have missed when the Department of Justice sent protestors to Florida to pressure a local district attorney into pressing charges against a very clearly innocent man. And if you disagree with the very clearly innocent part then you definitely didn't watch the trial and missed the eyewitness reports and the medical reports. https://theweek.com/articles/462236/did-justice-department-incite-2012-trayvon-martin-protests https://theweek.com/articles/462236/did-justice-department-i...
    - threeseed 2y ago
      That article never says that DOJ sent protestors. Just that they provided support to those protests which is part of their remit i.e. to reduce conflict by encouraging dialog, mediation as opposed to protesting etc: https://www.justice.gov/crs https://www.justice.gov/crs
Gormo 2y ago
[flagged]
- grudg3 2y ago
  I encourage you to listen to the 4 part series Elon Musk Unmasked [1] from Tech won't save us. His motivations are definitely not for the betterment of the average person. [1] - https://techwontsave.us/episode/189_elon_musk_unmasked_origins_of_an_oligarch_part_1 https://techwontsave.us/episode/189_elon_musk_unmasked_origi...
  - Gormo 2y ago
    I'll listen to that, thanks. But I'm not sure I can relate to the criticism you're levying here, because I don't expect that anyone's motivations would ever be "for the betterment of the average person", nor trust anyone who pretended to be so motivated. Society improves when people create positive externalities for others as they pursue their own benefit -- those who deliberately apply their own subjective notion of "benefit" onto strangers they don't know and to whom they aren't accountable will often do much more harm than good.
    - Narciss 2y ago
      I take offense to the idea that you wouldn't trust anyone who said they were motivated by "the betterment of the average person." (Not really take offense, more like armchair take offense, but you know what I mean.) My free time is dedicated to projects that I believe have the potential to improve the world for the greatest number of people. I wrote a few books motivated by this, and then when I became a software engineer I build a few projects motivated by the same. Examples include messaiah.ai, consciousness.social, multizoa.com, and dex.thesacred.xyz (though that one may not be functional anymore) Not saying that they did the job - but that won't stop me from trying. Why I do it is a whole other discussion, but if I'm motivated by this, then there must be others, since I can't be THAT unique. One of the reasons why I became a software engineer was to be able to bring to life projects that I believe have the potential to lead to "betterment for the average person," so...joke's on you :p
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Yes, yes, we all know it - Elon Musk eats babies and Tesla batteries set Rome on fire. Seriously, all this Musk talk stopped being funny years ago, when people started believing and regurgitating all that bullshit with a straight face. "Tech Bro culture" is another Yeti - everyone is an expert on it, no one actually saw it. It's just a strawman from early culture wars that gives people another way to hate each other. It's perfect for cementing groups and gaining power in them, and for increasing advertisement exposure. It's really, really bad for one's sanity. Techno utopia failed for a simple reason: people keep imagining what is possible with technology, but what actually materializes in the real world is what's possible under current economy. "Bicycles for the mind", tricorders, Mars colonies - they don't make money, so they don't happen. Instead, we get eshittification, and innovative blends of finance and medical insurance, and ad-funded social media. For all his issues, Musk actually performed two miracles - revitalizing the space sector by making the business case for launches add up (a first piece of serious progress in space exploration since the Space Shuttle program), and dragging the market kicking and screaming into accepting BEVs as a serious, mass-market product. In both cases, the miracle part wasn't tech - it was making the economics work (including fighting the already established efficiencies). > I can definitely see how many in the younger generations are looking at Big Tech as being just as evil as Big Oil Because it is, and I wish more people understood it exactly for what it is. Key insight - it has nothing to do with tech, everything to do with business. The technology itself isn't a problem - the problem is that we allow (and encourage) entrepreneurs to engage in the same immoral business practices, the same abusive business models, that previously defined Big Oil, and later on several other Big industries.
- quickslowdown 2y ago
  My catchphrase for a while has been "business ruins everything it touches." And before someone swoops in to try and convince me otherwise, save your breath. I'm not interested in hearing the positives of business, I will ignore outright anything pointing to "you wouldn't have THIS without business!"-type replies, and I don't want to reduce this thought further. From my perspective, business ruins everything it touches, whether right away or slowly over time through enshittification.
CPLX 2y ago
The downvoting on this is shameful. This is exactly what has happened. The 90s nerds were fucking malevolent. They’re the ones that built the dystopia we are currently experiencing. I know, I was one of them and I had a first row seat for a lot of this stuff.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  The comment was edited after the down votes started pouring in.

baggy_trough 2y ago

Elon Musk is an example of a fascist? That is outrageous nonsense.

petre 2y ago
Just wait and see what he'll do to the federal workers, before he gets to screw up Mars for good. Maybe replace them with AI, since that's the current hype train. Think of full self driving but for government. https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-harassing-federal-workers-x https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-haras...
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  Firing federal workers and going to Mars is what fascism is?
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    In 1944, before the actual universally agreed upon to be fascist powers were defeated in WW2, George Orwell wrote about how the word had been applied to just about every group imaginable and had already lost any real meaning it might have had: https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e... "It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else." "Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come." "But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."
threeseed 2y ago
On a spectrum he is definitely in that direction. There are many examples but a few: a) Publicly shamed a civil servant with full knowledge it would drive the violent elements of his supporters to attack her. I've never seen this before in US politics where an innocent party was targeted this way and clearly it was done to drive fear within the government. b) Has constantly promoted false stories about immigrants, black people, trans people, women etc. The narrative being that the US is a zero sum game where in order for non-white males to succeed white-males must lose. c) I run Twitter business accounts which are post-only and every single one shifted hard towards showing ultra-right wing political content in the For You feed. There is no doubt that the platform was used as a propaganda tool during the last election.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  >a) Publicly shamed a civil servant with full knowledge it would drive the violent elements of his supporters to attack her. I've never seen this before in US politics where an innocent party was targeted this way and clearly it was done to drive fear within the government. Hmm, you must have missed when the Department of Justice sent protestors to Florida to pressure a local district attorney into pressing charges against a very clearly innocent man. And if you disagree with the very clearly innocent part then you definitely didn't watch the trial and missed the eyewitness reports and the medical reports. https://theweek.com/articles/462236/did-justice-department-incite-2012-trayvon-martin-protests https://theweek.com/articles/462236/did-justice-department-i...
  - threeseed 2y ago
    That article never says that DOJ sent protestors. Just that they provided support to those protests which is part of their remit i.e. to reduce conflict by encouraging dialog, mediation as opposed to protesting etc: https://www.justice.gov/crs https://www.justice.gov/crs

Gormo 2y ago

[flagged]

grudg3 2y ago
I encourage you to listen to the 4 part series Elon Musk Unmasked [1] from Tech won't save us. His motivations are definitely not for the betterment of the average person. [1] - https://techwontsave.us/episode/189_elon_musk_unmasked_origins_of_an_oligarch_part_1 https://techwontsave.us/episode/189_elon_musk_unmasked_origi...
- Gormo 2y ago
  I'll listen to that, thanks. But I'm not sure I can relate to the criticism you're levying here, because I don't expect that anyone's motivations would ever be "for the betterment of the average person", nor trust anyone who pretended to be so motivated. Society improves when people create positive externalities for others as they pursue their own benefit -- those who deliberately apply their own subjective notion of "benefit" onto strangers they don't know and to whom they aren't accountable will often do much more harm than good.
  - Narciss 2y ago
    I take offense to the idea that you wouldn't trust anyone who said they were motivated by "the betterment of the average person." (Not really take offense, more like armchair take offense, but you know what I mean.) My free time is dedicated to projects that I believe have the potential to improve the world for the greatest number of people. I wrote a few books motivated by this, and then when I became a software engineer I build a few projects motivated by the same. Examples include messaiah.ai, consciousness.social, multizoa.com, and dex.thesacred.xyz (though that one may not be functional anymore) Not saying that they did the job - but that won't stop me from trying. Why I do it is a whole other discussion, but if I'm motivated by this, then there must be others, since I can't be THAT unique. One of the reasons why I became a software engineer was to be able to bring to life projects that I believe have the potential to lead to "betterment for the average person," so...joke's on you :p

TeMPOraL 2y ago

Yes, yes, we all know it - Elon Musk eats babies and Tesla batteries set Rome on fire. Seriously, all this Musk talk stopped being funny years ago, when people started believing and regurgitating all that bullshit with a straight face. "Tech Bro culture" is another Yeti - everyone is an expert on it, no one actually saw it. It's just a strawman from early culture wars that gives people another way to hate each other. It's perfect for cementing groups and gaining power in them, and for increasing advertisement exposure. It's really, really bad for one's sanity. Techno utopia failed for a simple reason: people keep imagining what is possible with technology, but what actually materializes in the real world is what's possible under current economy. "Bicycles for the mind", tricorders, Mars colonies - they don't make money, so they don't happen. Instead, we get eshittification, and innovative blends of finance and medical insurance, and ad-funded social media. For all his issues, Musk actually performed two miracles - revitalizing the space sector by making the business case for launches add up (a first piece of serious progress in space exploration since the Space Shuttle program), and dragging the market kicking and screaming into accepting BEVs as a serious, mass-market product. In both cases, the miracle part wasn't tech - it was making the economics work (including fighting the already established efficiencies). > I can definitely see how many in the younger generations are looking at Big Tech as being just as evil as Big Oil Because it is, and I wish more people understood it exactly for what it is. Key insight - it has nothing to do with tech, everything to do with business. The technology itself isn't a problem - the problem is that we allow (and encourage) entrepreneurs to engage in the same immoral business practices, the same abusive business models, that previously defined Big Oil, and later on several other Big industries.

quickslowdown 2y ago
My catchphrase for a while has been "business ruins everything it touches." And before someone swoops in to try and convince me otherwise, save your breath. I'm not interested in hearing the positives of business, I will ignore outright anything pointing to "you wouldn't have THIS without business!"-type replies, and I don't want to reduce this thought further. From my perspective, business ruins everything it touches, whether right away or slowly over time through enshittification.

CPLX 2y ago

The downvoting on this is shameful. This is exactly what has happened. The 90s nerds were fucking malevolent. They’re the ones that built the dystopia we are currently experiencing. I know, I was one of them and I had a first row seat for a lot of this stuff.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
The comment was edited after the down votes started pouring in.