This Gif Is Outrageous

Silicon Valley Thinks You're Stupid and It Will Pay a Lot to Make It True

a16z will start its own media company with a lens of 'rational optimism about technology' and any dissenters will be dismissed as Luddites who want us all to be pig farmers.

“Our lens is rational optimism about technology and the future,” a16z partner Margit Wennmachers said in the blog announcing the news. “We believe that it’s better to be alive after the industrial revolution than in an agrarian society. I say this with conviction as I grew up on a pig farm! Living through a pandemic has not been fun at all, but try doing it without technology.”

This sentiment encapsulates the false choice that Valley oligarchs have tried to convince the world is true for decades: kneel before the monopolistic power of technology companies (and the venture capitalists who fund them), or slide back into pre-industrial barbarism, struggling to secure the calories you need to survive, hiding from a ranging pandemic without even Zoom meetings to keep you employed or Netflix to keep you entertained.

There was a time, about a decade ago, when this pitch seemed like it could work. The tech beat was still emerging from its highly specialized, marginal, and often enthusiast origins. Companies like Facebook and Uber were covered with overwhelming enthusiasm because they had a positive, hopeful message, and they made technology an inseparable part of everyday life as opposed to a curiosity only nerds interact with. Business reporters covering obscure funding rounds and wonks who not so long were covering web browser updates and laser printers were suddenly rubbing elbows with the executives and technologists who altered the course of history.

It took more time than it should, but eventually the bloom fell off the rose. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t just a Harvard dropout who became a billionaire by connecting the world, he’s an incredibly powerful and irresponsible tycoon who enabled genocide. Uber didn’t just make getting a taxi more convenient, it’s also the ruling class’s tool for gutting what little labor rights Americans had left. Technology is a powerful tool, and you know how dangerous it is in the hands of billionaires because legions of journalists across the world have reported about these dangers for years.

This scrutiny, entirely appropriate for extremely powerful people in public, has generated predictable backlash. An entire sect of Silicon Valley believes that the journalists who came after the tech boosters of the early 2000s know nothing about technology, hate technology, hate companies, hate Silicon Valley, and care only about clicks and Silicon Valley blood. Silicon Valley elite gather on private chat apps to discuss how journalists have too much power. Elon Musk beefs with any critic openly on Twitter, creating his own reality.

i'm a cruel mother who doesn't allow her weary child a moment of peaceful slumber

OH MY GOD THE LIL SQUEAK. and the head hide at the end holy shit!!!!!!

listen, if our cats do not let us sleep through the night there is no reason we should not disturb one of their 15 naps a day!

There’s a reason a sewing kit includes scissors, a wood shop has a saw, and a kitchen is full of knives. In order to build something, to create something on purpose, you have to be prepared to cut away what’s extra. A bolt of cloth does not a blanket make, a piece of wood a shelf, nor a loaf of bread a sandwich. When you snip off frayed bits of string, cut the wood into shape, or slice the end off a loaf of bread you are creating, with the act of removal, something closer to what you desire. 

Now let’s say you’re not sewing a blanket, you’re not building a shelf, not making a sandwich. Let’s say you’re crafting a life in which you are happy. You will end up removing things. You’ll leave partners, stop talking to family members, let go of friends. You’ll move apartments, lose jobs, change wardrobes. And you will feel their absence. You’ll look at the scraps of cloth, the odd angles of wood, the stale end of the loaf. But that cloth couldn’t keep you warm and that tiny corner of wood can’t store books. You wouldn’t be full from that little bit of bread or happy with that person. In the art of creating there is the act of removal and it is essential. 

Unmute !

[ID: A total of eight tweets from Taliesin Jaffe @.executivegoth which together read: “2020 is almost over and I feel I have something to get off my chest: I didn't get better. I didn't get healthier in mind or body. I didn't create, I didn't grow, and I didn't accomplish. It's fair to say I'm less together than I was this time last year by almost every metric. But I DID survive. and you know what? I'm happy to come to terms with that. Survival is absolutely enough. I'm learning to be more than good with that and I feel like you should be too. Seriously, well fucking done. I've many friends who've made huge strides. Solitude has given them time to accomplish goals of self improvement, creative output, or career advancement. Sometimes all three. THANK THE GODS. We're going to be relying on healthy people in the months ahead. Some friends have dealt with so much. Loss of health, loss of family. Some have slipped back into bad habits, or lost employment. And these experiences just WRECK you. I worry for friends in film, games, STEM, public service. Hell, friends who lost jobs at Disneyland. it's awful. Almost universally, these amazing people beat themselves up for lamenting their own pain when so many others are doing so much worse. It so hard for us to remember that neither success nor failure are a contest. Most people can't even agree on how to measure these concepts. As for next year; I've always hated the metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel. Most change I've experienced in my life didn't happen in a day, and when it did it was usually less life altering then the change that took months. The road ahead is long. We're gonna need marathon runners, not sprinters. Accept help when offered. Offer help when (and only when) you have the bandwidth. We need you healthy. I've seen in my own life how much greater a force for good I can be when I have my shit kinda together. The real change I've observed in my life is less like a tunnel and more like a car heater. You turn it on and wait patiently to slowly feel your fingers. With that said, Happy New Year everyone, just two more months of winter. Let's get this '88 Corolla engine of a year idling.” /end ID]

GOD I just want to be CREATIVE but all my energy is being used to survive