They are desperate to be cool, it’s so cringe.
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.
This is something I observed regarding Trump in his first term, here this guy is allegedly super rich and now leader of the free world, and he still thinks he’s a total loser, hence his own inability to tolerate criticism, and obsession on harming enemies and bullying people.
He has to fuck other people’s wives and make John Kennedy Jr. eat McDonalds because even being President isn’t enough assertion of dominance to make him feel on top.
I have a tender self esteem, myself, and have deep-running neural pathways that will drive me nearly to self harm when I mess something up (e.g. drop my coffee, or burn dinner, or thoroughly lose my wallet). I have these structures of rational self-assessment so that when I calm down I can see I’m actually alright and have some sweet talents, and friends find me useful, and when not even that, at least lovable.
Trump with all his money and power doesn’t have that, and people like me can see Trump feels like a total loser propped up by hollow victories, even as POTUS, which is a fucking scary place to be. This is why cabinet meetings are a round-robin ritual of telling Trump how huge he is.
As for the tech bros, they succeeded in their careers which is exactly what we are taught manly men are supposed to do and still feel hollow (which is common when you fixate only on your career). They didn’t have that (possibly essential) experience where they collapse into despair as a young person and realize they need personal integrity or spirituality to climb out. (For me it was a moment of rational self-assessment and finding I was not wanting after all; that my depression and self hatred were based on delusions.)
As for Musk, his bio on Behind the Bastards suggests it’s really difficult for someone not to emerge from his upbringing without turning into a Disney / Marvel supervillain.
Thiel has his own backstory and obsession, and is perpetually feeling Death (his own mortality) chuffing hyperborean chills on the back of his neck.
So yes, these guys are desperate to cling to power, _because wealth and political transactional power are the only power they’ve ever known, hence J. D. Vance’s obsession on forcing women into natality which is likely to turn into Lebensborn style breeding programs (which inspired Atwood to write A Handmaid’s Tale. ) They are terrified of equality because then they’ll just be eccentric, antisocial dorks.
(I am an eccentric, antisocial dork, with few things to offer other than listening skills, peer psychology, computer nerding and moral philosophy, and in a world where we’re not all overwhelmed with bad news, that is more than enough to find friends, family and crew. But it takes some personal introspection and willingness to practice soft power to learn this.)
If they were able to step away from power, or we took it from them and forced them into peer group support, they’d eventually discover that they don’t need to be captains of industry (or James Bond supervillains) to be accepted and loved (and consequently, fed and homed by the community).
And when they’ve given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it’s not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger’s wallI agree completely and I’d like to add, when we call Trump a narcissist we should remember that what you described there is what narcissism is. It’s self hate manifesting as self aggrandizement.
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… It’s time for us to start getting revenge on the nerds.
And there’s the rub. I was there, and we still have the nerd-to-nazi pipeline pumping vast numbers of boys into the alt-right. And to this day, no-one wants to deal with them.
Curiously, Japan is entirely dissatisfied with herbivore men who just want to be left alone in their life with their waifu, but that doesn’t produce the next batch of cheap labor and soldiers for industrialists to exploit.
Yes, I’m bitter, and righteously so. Treat our kids better; acknowledge they have sexuality. Teach consent and human intercourse in public school. (We’re not going to do these things. We hold great contempt for our fifteen-year olds, whether men or women, and just can’t help ourselves.)
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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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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.
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
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.
The saying money can’t unlame you still true.
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.
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.
“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.
He wants to be Augustus Caesar. That’s not “normal loving relationship” behavior.
I read some books by Alice Miller that discussed some childhoods of authoritarian rulers and they were all of unloved. They had not one adult stick up for them, be their advocate or helper, during their childhood years.
Many of us as children have been unwanted or unloved by our caregivers. Most of us had at least one adult: an uncle, grandmother, teacher etc, who truly tried to help at least once.
What the monsters in history had in common is an absence of evidence of even that happening for them. And their revenge as adults was terrible.
Man, I should have became an authoritarian ruler.
Instead I became isolated and I haven’t had a visitor in over a decade.
Fuck it. Vote for theangryseal!
For real though, maybe if I hadn’t ever used drugs haha. I had a lot of “friends” when I was living in that world. Might have stopped me. :p
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?
She’s got a point I bet they were all bullied in school.
We all were, they’re not special
Someone attempted bully me once and I beat then half to death with a primary school chair, ironically their parents came round to my place complaining to my parents despite them being the class bully.
I wasn’t the bully I’m quite shy but I just wasn’t having it, they tried to bully me and got wrecked for the attempt and quite a few others then followed that pattern.
Trump needs to confess who is behind this I think Putin but anyone else needs serious prison time.
Heh. They tried to bully me, and when I resisted, I was the one who was asked to leave the school. Gotta protect those bullies because they are part of the catholic school system…
Speak for yourself I just asked chatgpt about me and it started listing thing I did online in my teen years. Which to be honest is worrying but still kind of nice it knows me and things I felt where long forgotten.
I will be happy if Zuck is Luigi’d before my death. Also Musk and Bozo.
I hope you aren’t from the US because that’s surely gonna put you on a NSA list
I have listened to MAGA pray for liberals deaths. I’m just saying it would be funny if they got luigi’d before my own death. I’m not calling for someone to do it. Unlike MAGA.
NSA take note, we can Luigi you too. Sit back and let the oppressors perish and it will stop with them.
I wouldn’t worry about the list. We are all on it by now anyway.
I’m not from the US and didn’t plan to visit anytime soon anymore so I don’t mind, just reminding others.
Fuck the NSA
Trump is scaling back the NSA and CIA isn’t he?
Imagine if, when Facebook rolled out, people were just like “no thanks, I’m good” and it never took off.
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?
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.
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.
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
when a guy that blocked her, she looked around as she thought people were listening to her.
This movie hasn’t aged well, for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
It was cringe when it released - it’s dated cringe now…
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.
He’s such a fucking dork.
I read the first chapter of Careless People last night and I never thought these people were such large dorks, but here we are.
If they were posh people with “breeding” that wouldn’t make being the direct or indirect victim of their destruction any better, unless you’re an upper middle class Briton who has bern btought up with 19th century notions of “born to rule elites” such as most columnists for The Guardian.
I get it that people here derive a little enjoyment out of taking the piss of the character flaws of these wankers, but were they are coming from is not were this columnist is coming from.
