It’s not a pipeline. 2018 and 2025 guys either had 2014 guy killed or they ruined his life and forced him into suicide.
never forget Aaron Swartz
yes, different levels of maturity of the technology attract different profiles.
Gutenberg wanted to spread the word, Murdoch is in the hate business
Removed by mod
And we’ll never know, selfishly speaking, the possible extent of his further contributions to society. Died at 26 after an incredible life already.
Besides his life, what else did they steal from us?
RIP Aaron
(Reposting my comment from last year)
Besides his life, what else did they steal from us?
Our lives. Working until you die is a common occurance, and especially now that Elon and Trump buttfucked Social Security, that will only be worse.
I hear child
slaverylabor is coming back, too in many red states.
Oh I am still at the 2014 phase.
We… used to have a term for people that advanced further: sell-outs.
Though I do very much prefer the recently popularized Cyberpunk lingo:
Fucking Corpo Scum.
deleted by creator
It’s funny ever since Cyberpunk I can no longer pronunciate that word as it should be, instead it will always come out as corpo rats.
deleted by creator
The #corpolitical
“I want to change the world with this tech”
…
“3 billion you say? The company is yours!”
deleted by creator
7 figures??? That’s not selling out, that’s just trying to get anything for a sinking ship if you sell for a million. Thats barely covering salary+expenses for 2-5 engineers depending on level and location.
deleted by creator
Yes, you’re talking about a personal “payout” thats probably only 2-3 years of a salary? That’s not much of a “payout” that’s just a nicer severance package. If you built a company that wasn’t about to go under, it’s not worth handing it to some asshole for practically nothing
deleted by creator
Software engineers at FAANG companies easily make that amount. And that’s the caliber of engineer that is typically making this type of exit.
You’re commenting as if your circumstances are the same as a tech bro founder’s, which seems to be incorrect.
deleted by creator
annuities my dude
1M is 2-3 yr salary??? Hook a brother up with these $300-500k/yr job leads d00d
Nah, precisely because we would cash out and settle for peaceful lives long before we’d become billionaires or even millionaires. It takes a certain type of person to begin earning millions and conclude “that’s not nearly enough, I need this times a thousand”. None of them are “good” people.
You don’t usually just “begin earning millions”, some businesses snowball to billion-dollar size quite quickly. Instagram had only a few dozen employees before being sold to Facebook for billions.
It happens, especially in tech, but I’d say it’s still the exception to the norm.
I’m taking the money and giving a fat chunk of it to programs and things that my government refuses to do anything about. I don’t give a fuck about shallow things like “selling out.”
How many here are working for these tech bros or putting money on their companies?
deleted by creator
The company I work for isn’t amazing and our most recent CEO is human garbage. I’ve got medical stuff I had to pay for and need the funds to get out of country. Doing my best to be a net drain though by working as slowly and poorly as I can without being fired and I don’t buy into tech stock (or most any stock for that matter). Idk if what I’m doing is as ethical as it could be but I’m doing my best to not support unhinged tech bros despite being in tech
Honestly selling the company is understandable. Getting out is normal.
It’s the ones that turn into sociopaths that bother me.
deleted by creator
How can you tell it’s AI generated? This is a real question because I legitimately have trouble recognizing AI that doesn’t have egregious issues like mangled fingers, and unfortunately I think recognizing AI content is going to be a survival skill in the next decade.
The fun thing is, old AI slop helps new AI slop look more believable. The main tells is line work and fonts. Chat GPT has a very distinct art style, with a lot of soft lines and generic fonts. It’s also extremely consistent. You could look up a dedicated sub for Chat GPT memes to get a feel for it. Then you’ll start to loathe it.
deleted by creator
I need it. I’ll pay for it even!!
People like 2025 guy have never held thoughts like the other 2, they were always self serving cunts. They just kept a facade till they depended on others, but once they joined the rich fucks club, they dropped the facade.
Bad meme. Implies “information wants to be free” leads to “have you considered monetizing empathy?”
I disagree. It’s not “one leads to the other,” it’s that people change. Far too often people start out, not just in tech, bucking the system in some way. Anti-authority, pro-privacy, anti-centralized control, etc.
But when the server costs start mounting for a service that gets popular and money needs to come in, people change. Now you need to monetize via ads or whatever, now you get attacked, you circle the wagons, get investors, and it’s all downhill from there.
Digg and Reddit are big examples, Google could arguably be a similar case, it happens in music too where a band “sells out”, like Metallica for example. An originally anti-authority metal band starts lawsuits and banning fans to protect profits.
Sure there are plenty of situations where services remain open and free (for now), like wikipedia, linux distros, etc. but we aren’t always that lucky.
You may have missed the word “pipeline.” I’m not denying people change, but this meme is suggesting that good intentions are the first step toward bad intentions.
Sure there are plenty of situations where services remain open and free (for now), like wikipedia, linux distros, etc. but we aren’t always that lucky.
It’s got absolutely fuck all to do with “luck.” It has everything to do with adoption.
Most people won’t adopt things that aren’t sufficiently pretty. They’re more than happy being data whores for social media pimps because it’s so fun.
Nah.
I mean, if they became rich, maybe. Certainly contrast Stanford-era Brin with modern Google, sure.
But um… Nah.
Beware the AI slop Pipeline
Its ai generated sir but it kinda checks out.
Ironically brought to you by the same tech bros it’s dissing.
deleted by creator
If you are subverting the means or process of exploitation against itself, well, that’s pretty subversive, anarchist, punk.
If you’re doing that in the digital realm?
Pretty fucking cyberpunk.
These idiot tech bros whoooshed over understanding the cyberpunk genre as a warning of what not to do, and instead adopted its aesthetic and are just now building that world, as its villains.
Well fine then.
Time to reclaim our culture.
Using gen AI isn’t punk. Fuck that bullshit all the way.
Creating your own fucking art is punk. GenAI is slop, powered by theft.
Sure, yes, making your own art would be better in one sense, one way of looking at this, but I guess you don’t appreciate the whole ‘turning it against itself’ aspect of this.
Turning a system against itself is the literal definition of subversion, in the context of complex systems, anyway.
Sure, its not as subversive as intentionally poisoning AIGen stuff to stupify itself over time, but I do think this counts.
Its not like you have to get the AI to draw the image every single time anyone sees it, we can still copy and paste images, host them where many can see them, etc.
To me, there is a sense of ‘art’ in the subversion itself.
If the theft machine already exists, and you don’t have the ability to destroy it, contain or restrain it more directly… using it to generate propoganda against itself, its creators?
I think that’s a clever use of it.
Like, would you say that that one piece of … kinetic/performance art, where its just a machine that you must go up to and hand crank, and it spits out penny by penny at the rate of minimum wage…
Would you say that isn’t art because it forces the art ‘experiencer’ to perform exhausting wage labor, which is simply 100% bad, all the time, no exceptions?
Turning it against itself my ass. This is promoting it. Legitimizing it. Normalizing its presence everywhere. Doing exactly what they want.
They’re on a niche forum sharing convoluted AI slop, harming that which they claim to stand for. These aren’t freedom fighters subverting the system, they’re clowns.
If you are subverting the means or process of exploitation against itself, well, that’s pretty subversive, anarchist, punk.
Wouldnt the same thing be able to be said about writing “Elon Musk is bad” on twitter?
I mean, when Elon bought Twitter, I, having never used Twitter before, created an account just to scream at him, and I managed to get banned in a few hours.
But to attempt to answer your question: Arguably, technically, yes, but it really only matters if it significantly fucks with Elon, or inspires other to meaningfully resist him, or aide those he oppresses.
One person doing that?
Flash in the pan.
Coordinated , consistent swarm, of people or bots, doing this untill the entire site goes down?
Even better: hack in their and reroute it to fucking DDoS itself?
Maybe a bit more meaningful.
I find the use of AIGen to essentially advocate against itself to be fairly clever.
Its not like you have to burn down a bushel of wheat’s cropland every time you copy and paste an already generated image.
Money … it’s always about the money and power
I’m sure there are tech bros out there that we will never hear about or see or know about … those are the ones who just want to do tech stuff and not care about anything else
The ones we do hear about who become billionaires were only ever in it for the money and power
“Tech Bro” as a term though does pretty much imply insufferable nouveaux-riche douchbags devoid of any genuine emotion, who are happy to squash human dignity on an industrial scale for profit, and think themselves cool for doing it.
If someone is into tech for the true sake of technology then by definition they aren’t a “tech bro” - they are a programmer, a hacker, a hardware tinkerer, an open-source evangelist, or any number of cool things that don’t involve being an huge dickhead :)
It’s really just about power, but money is one of the best ways to obtain it.
2030: By the implementation of AI, the orphan crushing machine can now process 35% more biomass per hour, providing a sustainable power source to our server parks
Hey, you figured out a way to get MAGA types to support abortion - just find a way for tech bros to monetize aborted fetuses for shiny tech thing. Starte= referring to them as “extruded excess biomass” or something.
No, that is wrong. You have to wait for them to be born, as all life is sacred. After that, they can die of measles or rot on the street, it doesn’t matter anymore
The suit infestation of tech
Yup, I very much doubt more than a handful of c-level people at the big tech companies went through these phases. The change is a result of money people who dont give a damn about technology getting a tighter and tighter grip over tech companies and pushing out the people who do care.
They’re called MBAs and they’re a cancer on society.
The first one is a hacktivist, the second one is an OSS dev, and the third is a tech bro. So not really a pipeline since there are still hacktivists, OSS devs, ans tech enthusiasts (also most tech bros started in finance)
That feels like saying evolution isn’t real as there are apes, great apes and humans at the same time.
Ai slop
I have a very very real problem with this oversimplification of very distinct tech viewpoints.
Like, what, you dont think information should be freely available? You LIKE the model where information is locked down with hefty fees? Because that’s what the actual “tech bros” want.
This is at best ignorant and at worst just hateful.
Also the timeline should ne more like 1990 : Information wants to be free
Bill Gates: No
Etc.
