They are desperate to be cool, it’s so cringe.
The thing they all share is that they are deeply unloved. Trump, musk, bezos, zuck, none of them have healthy loving families. They have noons they can genuinely connect with. And they all think by having more money and being more popular will fulfill that human need. But it never does, so they just keep going not realizing the path they chose doesn’t end anywhere near what they desire. Money will never buy love and peace.
And they all think by having more money and being more popular will fulfill that human need.
If that was all it was, then I’d feel sorry for them. No, they’re trying to fulfill that need by being Great Men of History with Mighty Plans, but their Mighty Plans are all terrible, because they’re horrible people.
Yeah, I think it’s a mistake to imagine that these are good people who just need a little love. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who aren’t getting enough love for proper human flourishing and it’s not like that turned them all into fascists. The kind of evil exhibited by these people must be attributed to a fundamental enjoyment of the suffering of others.
Well statistically about 30% of people worldwide don’t mind fascism so that’s hundreds of millions of people too. I’m not sure I’d be willing to say a lack of loving relationships is the primary cause of that but I doubt solving that problem would hurt.
Where are you getting that statistic from?
There are different studies which show a shockingly high percent of the population are fools but the most compelling is the one by Cambridge Analytica which found a population cluster in Facebook’s massive amount of user data. They called this the average cluster.
The Republicans targeted this group in the 2016 election. Around 30 percent of the b population fall into this group.
I don’t recall if this is where I originally heard it but it gives you a place to start: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes-authoritarianism-and-how-do-they-want-to-change-their-government/
I wouldn’t challenge this view for Musk, Bezos, Trump. But Zuck gives me more of a “reformed (now married) incel that comes from an otherwise normal family environment vibe”. His marriage seems at least typical, likely loving etc.
His product happens to be the most harmful for democracy and I consider him equal for worst of the bunch as a result, but I think it’s explained by corporate/personal greed and being out of touch with reality.
He wants to be Augustus Caesar. That’s not “normal loving relationship” behavior.
“The average American, I think has, I think it’s fewer than three friends. Three people that they consider friends.”
This is Zuckerberg, claiming it’s normal not just to have only 3 friends, but fewer than 3. This is telling on yourself even more than “Women’s orgasms aren’t real because no woman I’ve ever been with has had an orgasm.”
If he counts his wife in that list of “fewer than 3 friends”, how many friends does he actually have? I get that being ultra rich means that often you can’t be sure who’s actually your friend, and who’s just there for the money. But, still, he should at least be able to count a handful of friends. I’ve known my 2 best friends since before I was 5 years old. Surely if Zuck had a normal childhood, he should have people who were his friends long before he got rich, who he can be sure aren’t just there for his money. If he doesn’t, it strongly suggests he was either a pretty awful kid, or he led a really weird life growing up and was isolated from anybody who could have become a friend.
No amount of money and power will ever scratch their itch
not realizing the path they chose doesn’t end anywhere near what they desire
It’ll end where they deserve though. Alone, despised and empty. No amount of money or stupid blue checkmarks will ever change that.
It might end with them realizing the truth, but it’ll be as they’re surrounded by the ashes of our civilizations and bodies.
Money will never buy love and peace.
True enough.
But, in the broken psyches of the ones you’ve mentioned, it buys perfectly serviceable alternatives which they can convince themselves actually does make them happy.
They are so broken that broken solutions actually work for them…
🤷♂️ 🤡 🖕
Looks like autocorrect did ya dirty.
No one >> noons
Don’t try and downplay the affect of connecting with noons on the human psyche. They are an evil scourge and should be eradicated. This is exactly the kind of thing a noon would post.
What’s wrong with Zuck’s family?
Because it’s so much better when they’re charismatic assholes?
I think it’s much sadder (more sad? saddest) that people fall for such absurd douche bags. If they would at least be sexy and seem smart you could understand how people could be fooled but this is just too hard to watch.
Yeah like, they have negative charisma, so it’s extra baffling. I cannot imagine a world in which I’d support Donald Trump, but definitely not in this one where he routinely shits his own diaper. If he was only disgusting mentally but was a good speaker or handsome or whatever, it would make at least a little more sense
I think they relate better to douchey, stupid people which allows them to more easily imagine themselves being rich one day.
I think it’s dangerous to imagine people follow these folks, or let them run rampant over society, because they aspire to be like them. That makes it so much harder to really understand why people support them, or even just refuse to tell them “no”, and makes it impossible to do anything about it.
People believe that life is a meritocracy. Even when they themselves can look around at the people near them and see that those in positions of power don’t deserve it, they still view society as a whole as “fair”. Yes, they personally have may have gotten screwed over, but, in general, the people who float to the top got there because they were smarter and more capable. Therefore, we should sit back and just let them cook.
They need some kind of trigger to see the billionaires not as people who have earned their place, but who have stolen it.
Negative charisma means they can’t be the anti-christ! So we’re golden! Tada!
So like, if instead of musk and zuckerburg, it were a 1990s George Clooney? The smug bastard…
I’ll hate him just as much… but damn does he look good doing it.
People will kiss anyone’s ass for enough money.
A charismatic tyrant at least provides SOME excuse. People aren’t necessarily monsters, they are just gullible.
When you have someone as decrepit and incompetent as trump who ALSO has a visible diaper bulge at his hips and who can’t speak a coherent sentence? There is no argument other than people truly choosing hate above all else.
I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.
This. This is what I feel like
I felt like this in January when this was first published and I still feel like it today. I’m not really sure what it will take for things to change but I get the feeling that powerful and wealthy people do not want things to change.
What’s worse is that half the population actually voted for these losers. After the losers published a document describing exactly what they are going to do. We are surrounded by idiots.
Imagine if, when Facebook rolled out, people were just like “no thanks, I’m good” and it never took off.
That’s exactly what happens when a Facebook competitor (possibly an ethical one) rolls out these days. Which is part of the problem. Zuck poisoned the idea.
Friendica exists, and it’s part of the Fediverse. It’s not going anywhere.
Dead things can’t, in fact, go anywhere.
I wanted to. I liked Myspace. It has character. Some of it was cringe. But you could at least customize it. Facebook seemed so bland. But I had an ex GF that insisted on it and I didn’t think it was worth breaking up over. I shouldn’t have been such a pushover.
I stayed on Myspace long past when the majority jumped ship. It eventually lost what made it special when the boy band guy bought it to twist it into something more music focused. But I still preferred it to the sterile, uniformity of Facebook.
You would break up over switching online platforms?
I’m assuming the GF would break up with OP over it. Which is itself a big red flag.
Edit: fwiw, it does seem like there is quite a bit of drama and bullshit over choice of phone (Android vs Apple)
I used to hate the Android vs Apple drama vis à vis romantic partner choice, but then I realized that it’s in itself a great filter of people I don’t want in my life
It sounds ridiculous now with everything that’s happened in social media in the meantime, but I can see that being a thing in 2006 when the vibe of social media was very different to what it’s become now. Back then it was just a tidy little PHP site for you to chat and share photos with friends and family on. Literally nothing appeared in your feed that wasn’t a post from a Friend. It was basically a Whatsapp group with a photo gallery feature.
Since Facebook didn’t have the baggage it has now, it’s much easier to read refusing to join your girlfriend’s circle of friends and family back then as a wider rejection of her as a person, same as if you refused to join her family Whatsapp/Telegram/whatever group chat.
I’m not taking her side here, but I wanted to give a bit of perspective for people looking at it through the lens of 2025.
Nothing like that. It was more like she was insistent and I didn’t feel like it was a hill to die on at the time.
when a guy that blocked her, she looked around as she thought people were listening to her.
Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos-- you can tell they are insecure. They became rich and powerful and now want to stomp on people.
It’s like the meme of the nerd.
Who did Zuck stomp on?
The world? Dudes done more harm than any of the other two.
He’s been implicated in the recent genocide in Myanmar. Facebook cultivated the spread of the racist lies, allowed it to proliferate, spread in the region and then shorted companies operating there. If you know there’s going to be ethnic cleansing in the region, causing outrage and destabilisation, business takes a hit and the options pay off massively. All it takes was the deaths of thousands, but hey Mark has the capital to burn on his AR pet project that nobody wants.
Zuckerburg and Facebook enable lies to spread because that’s how he makes money.
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You’re right. Meet me at The Old Ship Saloon in SF ive got a business propsition for ya
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this but everything seems to be going down the tubes quite fast.
Yeah like having to accept all cookies to read the article.
Block third-party scripts, no cookie popup.
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I wouldn’t worry about the list. We are all on it by now anyway.
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NSA take note, we can Luigi you too. Sit back and let the oppressors perish and it will stop with them.
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Fuck the NSA
Trump is scaling back the NSA and CIA isn’t he?
I know it feels good to dunk on others and do so with generalities but just the last line, get revenge on the nerds.
Sounds edgy but it’s a slogan that is poor communication. It’s focused on US based tech billionaires and paints them as representatives of nerds. Look at voting data. Tech employees are leftist. People that go to school are more frequently leftist. Rhetoric like this is unintentionally anti-intellectual which promotes conservatism. And in my personal life, there sure seems to be an ocean of nerdy women in the US including in tech like bioengineering and UX and marketing design that is intertwined with today’s techno-facism. I don’t get why these pundits can’t ever stay focused on class warfare and end up resorting to social/racial/gender otherings. Why use language that is so so broad and is a term that most applies to people in your base
Also I’m at a loss at how finance/real estate/insurance/material and manufacturing billionaires have somehow managed to be overshadowed in public perceptions of evil even though they’ve consistently been at it for millenniums and are a cohort of multigenerational families of wealth built on slavery and genocide. They make up venture capital funds that give them ownership across all these companies. Tech CEOs end up owning an ever shrinking portion of a company they did or didn’t found until ownership is mostly a smattering of many large finance companies and family offices. Weirdly fetishistic of proper rich despots rather than these new tech billionaires who still have to go to JP Morgan Chase to facilitate their transactions
Also in the comments co-opting conservative rhetoric like herbivores and I guess carnivores?. That’s weird. Who actually talks like that seriously in real life? My whole life on the left we’ve been so terrible at creating insults but also terms of endearments. It’s weird how bad we are at not only labeling ourselves but also continuing to build terms into positives. Anything eventually becomes an insult towards leftist and conservative terminology is used awkwardly
For the side that places so much emphasis on the power of language, labeling, othering, etc … we’re terrible at it. The side of people with art/literature/communication/whatever degrees. Practically any college level degree is the realm of mostly leftist but in practice people well studied in communication can’t effectively and accurately communicate to people
Yup. The whole article and “we should bring back bullying” rhetoric (even used ironically) just reeks of someone who doesn’t like “uncool” people and finally found a morally valid excuse to hate on some of them.
Really, not much different from misogynists pointing at random female tiktok influencers and concluding “See? This is why women are dumb and we need sexism”.
It doesn’t matter if they’re nerds or not. What matters is where society is swaying to.
Ya but in discussion of the article, I don’t think it’s about the direction of society. It’s an article about people the author doesn’t like. How they classify them. And an empty call to action at the end to get revenge on nerds of which the author probably would be considered one. It’s a bad article
Purpose of the article, why does it exist and why does it have so many upvotes? Does the article help or harm the direction of society? Is it just an eloquent version of an Instagram comment dunking on people? What communication should be signal boosted that would be effective in driving action towards swaying society in a better direction
I think many people wouldn’t like to live under a “Nerd Reich”, so it’s only natural that there is a mainstream article against that. I’m assuming people who don’t understand anything about the technology that keeps their attention most of the time are concerned about the possibility. Society losing grip over itself, that is, language (social skills) not being the primary characteristic of the successful anymore. That is a blow conventional people won’t take easily.
No one seems to have read Machiavelli’s stuff these days. It explains so much. Also, just history in general will tell you all about today’s happenings.
The Prince was a warning of what could happen. The Drumpf is the result of ignoring the warnings.
It is indeed pathetic how Musk, Zuckerberg and even Trump don’t actually have any friends.
zuckerberg is prefer android friends.
Why wouldn’t you? Only losers seek power, and only losers could and would fuck up this badly.
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In general, nerds have a history of being treated badly, bullied even, by the people you are talking about.
They arent around people because people harm them more than help them.
I remember the game Bully extended this take. The main character has no beef with the nerds, and helps them, but they still extend their victim complex to him and antagonize him.
Basically, it’s a problem with using the generalized word “people” in statements like that.
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Yeah i’m really disappointed in how many people are taking the most facile reading of this.
This isn’t about nerds. It’s about capitalist arseholes.
In the 1980s, being a nerd meant being a target for bullies, and we didn’t fare too well. The nerd hierarchy (in which the tech nerds looked down on Trekkies and Furries) was rather brutal, and informs why the furry / otherkin moral panic is mixed in with the trans moral panic.
Eventually, every company needed an MIS and nerds showed they were useful after all. This is not the good ending.
A parallel problem came from young people having libidos that no-one was allowed to acknowledge. We were all incels before the term, and they tried to teach me math when my brain was telling me I needed to rut. Even today, society disregards horny teens, creating a wide pathway to the Alt-Right (Immortan Joe’s Warboys) who respect only Alpha Males. Our Christian-centric sex-negative culture fuels the young-men-to-Nazi pipeline.
I don’t have a solution for it. The common response to horny-teens-gone-white-supremacists is to say yeah, fuck those guys in total contempt, so they’re going to continue to be an available and eager force of militants and voters for any charismatic strongman. They may go Herbivore (like Japanese men) once Generative AI porn gets good.
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Leaded petrol exposure
I’m not even joking.
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Oh god no, this has fuck all to do with being a nerd, the author’s overreliance on a film reference not withstanding.
Social netwok had the right of it
for those who missed the reference
Its not like they made the country antiintellectual, ppl hate when someone knows more than them and refuse to change their views, they just assume they are in the right and double down
Living your life to impress other men by hating women is one of the most embarrassing things I can imagine. Looking up to any of these men for how to live your life is even sadder.
I’ve worked hard to keep these kinds of men out of my personal life, to keep them away from me, out of my goddamn sight. Now they are in my face daily, not only influencing the world for the worse but making me nauseous at how uncool and pathetic they are, on top of their other sins. It’s too much, I can’t take it, there needs to be a change.
It’s time for us to start getting revenge on the nerds.
Sounds to me like they crave attention more than anything, poor insecure past-neglected angsty man-agers they are. Depopulating their various platforms and reducing their viewership would be nice. Sucks that anyone at all would feel inclined to lend them their ears and eyes when there are far better alternatives out there.
Man when I think of living it up with wealth and power I think of Sal Maroni in The Dark Knight.
These guys don’t need a criminal underworld to have a cigar, dress in a tailored designer suit, get a drink and a couple of girls to pretend to like you while you drown your thoughts in excessively loud music and exotic dancers on stage.
I think these elite are afraid of what they are: flawed humans. They can’t get everything they demand, and they’d rather destroy humanity than admit they were wrong or made a mistake, or felt bad about something. So they have to pump the fascists up and make damn sure the people have someone other that just you to get angry about.
Little Dick Energy. That’s what I think every single time I see any of these folks in the news. But apparently there are enough weird little aspirants out there that they do alright?
Fuck 90% of this species. 👍
We really gotta stop shaming people with little dicks like this. They’ve done nothing to deserve to be compared to these clowns.
Well we know elons is really small, every kids been IVF
Not just small. Mutilated because of lengthening surgery gone wrong, allegedly.
The saying money can’t unlame you still true.
