The name-calling in public discourse wears on me. Ad-hominems, bad faith arguments. I’ve gotten to where I avoid the news altogether because of this seemingly accelerating trend.

I can handle some name-calling, but not the bad faith arguments. They can be whiny man-children all they want so long as they act like rational adults when it matters. But they can't even muster that anymore. It's all self-indulgent performance all the time. And just enough people are willing eat it up that it keeps reinforcing the behavior.

We are being shitty parents to our billionaire class. Billionaires need boundaries if we want them to grow up and turn into respectable adults.

hear no evil...

I think the grass roots of the tech world has some portion of the blame here. The introduction of hoodies, flip-flops, open drama and bickering, and kicker into the office environment is not unrelated. And it’s not just CEOs, we’ve now got a senator who looks like the guy I bought pot from as a kid. I never thought I’d make this argument, but maybe at least appearing respectable increases the odds that you’ll actually be a little respectable.

what people wear seems way more superficial than what people say and do

> I never thought I’d make this argument, but maybe at least appearing respectable increases the odds that you’ll actually be a little respectable.

It's hard for most people to distinguish "sociopath" from "charismatic", and the jeans and hoodie dress code is as much about charisma as the suits and ties ever were.

What you're seeing is the same as it ever was — all that's changed is that when the deer dyed their fur hot pink, the predators copied it.

Eh, respectable looking people were responsible for the Holocaust, slavery, segregation, and plenty more.

They were at least united and somewhat effective in commiting these atrocities.

Plenty more indeed, like , hmm I dunno, Western Civilization?

Not the tech world generally. Silicon valley culture specifically, but SV is hardly the entire tech world.

It's the mirror of society, you have as many people who find him dumb and childish as you have people seeing him as a role model. Same with Tate and other influencers, the hard truth is that a lot of people are perfectly fine with these behaviours, and through internet's anonymity they thrive in ways they couldn't back in the days.

It's a very minor thing in the face of the idiotic insanity going around, but I just saw and was annoyed by Altman's twitter bio: "AI is cool i guess".

Is this like some kind of ironic detachment? It almost makes you long for corporate pablum about building a world for us all.

That would require the death of social media.

Fingers crossed!

It already has died 5 years ago - what we are witnessing now is just the decaying of the corpse

That's one of the things involved that should die, yes.

I welcome this with open arms.

Make it so.

This is the way.

One can only wish

I think it’s because the country has had its education so far degraded that messaging needs to stay at that level…

Didn't Epstein's pedophile island prove once and for all that billionaires are not "better" in any way, shape, or form than mere mortals? They are where they are because of luck and not because of any inherent qualities.