Submitted 4 weeks ago by SleafordMod@feddit.uk to technology@lemmy.world
https://fortune.com/2025/03/21/bluesky-mark-zuckerberg-caesar-tshirts-sales/
I thought this was slightly funny.
Mark Zuckerberg is known these days for wearing t-shirts with Latin phrases on them, especially ones where he compares himself to Julius Caesar.
Bluesky made a shirt in the same style, but theirs says “a world without Caesars” in Latin.
Zuckerberg wears t-shirts comparing himself to Julius Caesar? Why is that every time I think I’m up-to-date on the latest weirdness there’s more of it?
If you think thats weird you haven’t even scratched the surface on Zuck. He actually idolizes Emperor Augustus Caesar so much that he copied the guys haircut for most of his career. Behind the Bastards does a good job of highlighting it. If you want a quick readable version, here’s the first non paywalled article I could find. businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-fascinated-by…
So… Zuck stans the guy who ended the Republic and turned it into a monarchy that pretended to still be a republic?
Well, that’s not concerning at all.
Thanks for the correction, it’s Augustus Cesar. Still, what an odd connection. Good article btw.
All of this is literally unbelievable for me. I don’t even have words to express how unexpectedly odd reading comments in this thread has been.
I didn’t realize Ed Zitron had another podcast
At Meta’s annual Connect event in Menlo Park, Calif., Zuckerberg wore a custom T-shirt with the Latin phrase “aut Zuck aut nihil,” or “all Zuck or all nothing,” as he revealed the first working prototype of Meta’s augmented-reality glasses.
The phrase was a play on “aut Caesar aut nihil,” which means “either a Caesar or nothing,” or more simply “all or nothing.”
Zuckerberg has long been interested in the Roman Empire. He spent his honeymoon in Rome and two of his children, August and Aurelia, are named after emperors Augustus and Marcus Aurelius.
Incidentally, fascists tend to have a hard-on for ancient Rome, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Zuck puts out this weird “pick me” or “me too” energy lately, trying to fashion himself as one compatible with Trump’s world. His interest in Rome may precede Trump’s ascension to power, but his coming out is not a coincidence in my view. And yes, a fascination with Rome started as so many other things as an “innocent” meme and became a fascist dog-whistle.
I’m not racist. I’m just really into 1940’s German artillery. For the engineering, you know. /s
Roman empire, like the nordic pagan BS is also a (extreme) right-wing fetish.
So glad to see our new PM celebrating his election win like this:
To be fair, Roman history is really cool.
Sorry but which country is this? Can you elaborate on that photo?
Lol his face… It’s like he knows this is a bad idea and he has no idea how he ended up there.
That or he’s just an idiot and his face always looks like that.
Which country? Looks like a swede in italy 😋
I wonder why all these high profile people are so fascinated with a dictator that oversaw the transformation of a republic into an empire. Just like fascists were/are. Must be just a coincidence! Just like that Musk salute from the heart.
To be fair, that was more Augustus.
He’s not doing those roman salutes in public yet, though.
But it’s kinda funny that the oligarchs are so obsessed with Rome, famous for baking a fallen empire, while enabling the fall of the US.
And Nazis. Maybe, just maybe it has something to do with unchecked power?
Such a shame that Coppola’s movie was bad. He was onto something there.
The reason behind his weird android haircut is that he thought it looked Caesar-esque.
He is comparing himself to Caesar? Maybe someone should stab him to help him out.
Zuckerberg wears t-shirts comparing himself to Julius Caesar?
Yet March 15 has come and gone yet again without Zuck having a bad day.
This is my kind of monetization.
Feels way better than getting features pulled and put behind an increasingly higher paywall.
Give it time.
So is lemmy or mastodon selling shirts yet? if not, why not?
I was on Reddit for 12 years with nearly a million Karma, and I got permabanned soon after the Inauguration for repeating an anti-MAGA opinion I had posted numerous times before he was elected.
I came over to Lemmy, and discovered that I was only one victim of a bloodbath, demonstrating that Reddit had decided to forego their free speech mission, and grovel for their new masters. Pathetic punk ass corporation.
I never wore a Reddit shirt, but I’d happily wear a Lemmy shirt.
I had an 11-year old Reddit account permabanned and they didn’t even give me a reason. Feels bad man
Poor blue maga, while anyone with a consciense was permabanned from Reddit loooong ago by Jessica Ashoosh, now their slightly more right wing sister party has done it to them.
You had so much free speech as long as it was the US regime narrative.
Says more about you people than Reddit.
They just go where the money is, and if that means going to a dictator, that’s what they’ll do.
No one’s taken my lunch money in awhile wearing Linux t-shirts. I need to up my game - I’d buy a Lemmy shirt.
TBF they’d probably take your lunch money for wearing a shirt with some latin words on it too
I imagine selling t-shirts would be against the Marxist/Leninist ideology of Lenny’s devs?
But given the volume of non-tankie instances now up and running, I’m sure some enterprising admins would be willing to give it a go.
…and as long as they’re ethically sourced (no sweatshops), high quality (materials and GSM), and reasonably priced (accounting for the other two factors) - I’m all for it!
If they are ethically made by union labor, there is nothing anti marxist about selling a shirts. 😁
Che Guevara t-shirts seem to get sold quite a lot.
The Mastodon project put a lot of energy into a high quality plushy.
That must have been frustrating when the user base responded “but I already got my Blåhaj”
well, because everyone has the right to sell one, basically
Everyone has a right to sell a shirt with some latin words written on it too. That didn’t stop bluesky from making a bunch of money doing so.
Mastodon has merch, but it sells out near-instantly.
Got a link to where this stuff can be bought when available?
That’s cool but I’ll check back in to see which fascist technocrat is running bluesky in 8 years
In 8 years, anyone not mainlining Truth Social through their compulsory Neuralink will captured and euthanized.
Yeah, it’s kinda sad but that will probably happen.
In theory, Bluesky is supposed to be immune to that due to it being open source. In practice, I don’t know what that would look like. The architecture seems to be much less decentralized than ActivityPub (which is what Mastodon uses).
Ofcourse they ain’t making shit from custom domains. Anyone who is interested in connecting a domain to their Bsky account and has the skills or patience to learn how to probably already has a domain bought at another registrar to connect to.
Also they only make referral fees because they’re not a registrar themselves
Also most people won’t care anyway. Even big businesses are unlikely to really be that bothered.
For years everyone’s been fine with Twitter and that never had custom domains.
But up until recently, Twitter used the blue checks to verify identity. Bluesky (as far as I know) doesn’t verify anyone’s identity. Instead, your domain name is your verification.
No, its because they don’t advertise it at all. The page for buying them has the date 2023 on it.
it’s a fire shirt not gonna lie
You are thinking of Nero!
touché
Who got a link? I wanna buy one
Not for me, I live in Australia. $80 shipped. I’ll pass
I’m going to state an unpopular opinion. Bluesky should have ads, not a personalized ads that track users, but just simple ones at the very top of the feed. Consumers today are too addicted to free services, and companies need to be financially independent so that they can support a quality product.
Alternatively, no ads and we can support it through donations or anti-oligarchy purchases like this shirt.
Ads open up a pandoras box of monetization of user data/traffic/clicks/links/additional engagement, etc.
It’s a dark, dark, dark road, and we’ve been down it dozens of times with tech giants. It never ends well.
Let’s stop having advertising be the way we fund pseudo-free services, and instead just give people options to donate or pay into it some other way. We need to end this reliance on advertising industry for revenue.
Ads are attractive to many users because they have a simple option for universal opt out (adblocking) at the cost of everyone who isn’t a Freerider.
Ads incentivize them to make the platform addicting and to prioritize ragebait because it will cause people to stay engaged in the app longer.
Agreed. Being financially independent can also foster ad investments and lead to a popularity gain
Free services? Where?
Free services don’t really exist.
Could you suggest alternate wording that succinctly conveys what the commenter obviously meant?
Their custom domain business can’t be big, I am assuming they merely get some referral commission from sending business to a registrar, that can’t be a lot of money.
Or am I missing something?
True, but they also just don’t fucking advertise it at all, and its on a forgotten subdomain only linked to in a blogpost, and the date on the page still says 2023 at the bottom.
of course the android wears a shirt with latin phrases.
Why is he doing that? Is he competing with Elon Musk on stupidness?
It occurred right around when the kingdom in orange took power. Somehow zuck thought that it would be advantageous to his interests to compare himself to Caesar during an obvious triumvirate. The orange one and phony stark would be crassus and pompey by extension. But I think commodus is a far more appropriate roman emperor for zuck to choose as his patron saint
I swear there really are two types of people who learn latin…
That’s all well and good, but the problem remains: Namely, the fact that Meta earns far more every day than all companies worldwide earn from the sale of T-shirts put together - much,much more. And Meta pretty much doesn’t even sell anything (Oculus, c’mon). They mainly just sell massive reach for advertisements and PR (influencing opinions). In addition they sell, the personal data of users to make it work devilishly acuarate. As long as the vast majority don’t care how this business model works and what power the centralization of attention means for their reality, nothing will change, I’m afraid.
I mean why is this surprising? Custom domains are a very niche thing; the majority of people don’t know or don’t care.
I bet that if you tell Markie that Caesar was a probably bisexual man affected by mini-strokes and/or epilepsy, he would make those t-shirts disappear in a minute.
Ignorance is bliss.
In way side, it seems like a win, on the other, Bluesky is capitalizing off of Meta hate?
Hmm, yes, ads bad but that IS a good product
I guess most people who want to use a domain as their username aready have that domain.
Every little bit helps.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Where’s Brutus when you need him?
itsathursday@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This is so fetch
Revan343@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Stop trying to make fetch happen
henfredemars@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
What does this mean? Am I old?
banana_lama@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Last i heard he was in New York
Lemmist@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Every Caesar should have his own Brutus. We can’t rely upon a single Brutus!