Unfortunately, you can’t just politely ignore people with an eleven-to-thirteen-digit line of credit. That much of a hand in the consumption habits of the richest country on earth commands attention whether you like what they’re saying or not.

The real question is whether you’re going to be a WaPo-style hack stenographer who shows up at these events and whispers “These people are fairy wizards who can do real God-magic and transform the universe into a Science Fantasy wonderland!” Or you come at it from the Ed Zitron / Molly White / Riley Quinn / Any Sane Person at the Financial Times perspective, tearing into the actual balance sheets and analyzing the runways of these bloated economy leeches, and guestimating what future impact their continued operation will have on the rest of the domestic and global economies.

Tech Execs have to be taken seriously but not literally. When Zuck says he wants a trillion dollar spending line on datacenters, you have to read that with the same gravitas as a weather forecaster predicting a Cat-5 hurricane making landfall.