Because it’s so much better when they’re charismatic assholes?
I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn’t expect them to be such losers
Submitted 3 weeks ago by dwazou@jlai.lu to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
hansolo@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I think it’s much sadder (more sad? saddest) that people fall for such absurd douche bags. If they would at least be sexy and seem smart you could understand how people could be fooled but this is just too hard to watch.
frickineh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah like, they have negative charisma, so it’s extra baffling. I cannot imagine a world in which I’d support Donald Trump, but definitely not in this one where he routinely shits his own diaper. If he was only disgusting mentally but was a good speaker or handsome or whatever, it would make at least a little more sense
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So like, if instead of musk and zuckerburg, it were a 1990s George Clooney? The smug bastard…
theneverfox@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Propoganda fucking works, simple as that
Billionaires just buy good press and publicists to manage their image, it’s so effective they believe it themselves
BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
People will kiss anyone’s ass for enough money.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
A charismatic tyrant at least provides SOME excuse. People aren’t necessarily monsters, they are just gullible.
When you have someone as decrepit and incompetent as trump who ALSO has a visible diaper bulge at his hips and who can’t speak a coherent sentence? There is no argument other than people truly choosing hate above all else.
sbv@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Yeah, I don’t get this. If it was George Clooney or some other charismatic/likeable person, they’d still be fucking us over.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah but at least they’d have style. Their popularity would at least make sense. It would feel a little less horrifyingly alienating.
truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
The sad thing is that the bar is so low. If it was a once in a century charismatic leader you could say “I get how people fell for this!”. But the fact it’s Trump and Musk just exposes how utterly flawed human society is, and how easy it is to slide backwards.
TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I don’t know about Clooney. His wife is one of the good eggs in this world and I’d think she would kick him in the grapes if he was a shithead loser like these fucks.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Agreed. Tom Brady being the football goat doesn’t make him being MAGA any more palatable.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The smug bastard…
Draces@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It would make more sense.
cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I just started reading this book about Facebook and I am amazed how little they cared about how much power they had, and how oblivious they were of it.
These are companies that rule the world, but don’t know what they want with it, other than for it to generate profit
rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
If I had as much power as them I’d at least make dogs that can speak esperanto.
QuantumEyetanglement@lemdro.id 3 weeks ago
This book is great! Everything you thought about Facebook (meta) is true, and worse. Highly recommended
Tournesol@feddit.fr 3 weeks ago
I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.
This. This is what I feel like
tibi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What’s worse is that half the population actually voted for these losers. After the losers published a document describing exactly what they are going to do. We are surrounded by idiots.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Imagine if, when Facebook rolled out, people were just like “no thanks, I’m good” and it never took off.
vga@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
That’s exactly what happens when a Facebook competitor (possibly an ethical one) rolls out. Which is part of the problem.
Telorand@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Friendica exists, and it’s part of the Fediverse. It’s not going anywhere.
GladiusB@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
AllOutOfBubbleGum@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 3 weeks ago
You would break up over switching online platforms?
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I remember LiveJournal as something good. I wouldn’t use it, but felt a bit like Telegram today, except without Telegram, which is a good thing.
chramies00@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
It was, until the events of the mid-2010s when most of the science fiction fandom community quit it and went over to Facebook, presumably because that was more convenient (i.e. on it already) than going to e.g. Dreamwidth (a LJ-alike that is still going). It operated in a very similar way to FB but somehow much more focussed maybe because it never got the ‘businesses having pages on there’ bit. Those of my friends who were on both, often used FB more as an events calendar than all-around social media.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos-- you can tell they are insecure. They became rich and powerful and now want to stomp on people.
capuccino@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s like the meme of the nerd.
toastmeister@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Who did Zuck stomp on?
Deceptichum@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
The world? Dudes done more harm than any of the other two.
BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He’s been implicated in the recent genocide in Myanmar. Facebook cultivated the spread of the racist lies, allowed it to proliferate, spread in the region and then shorted companies operating there. If you know there’s going to be ethnic cleansing in the region, causing outrage and destabilisation, business takes a hit and the options pay off massively. All it takes was the deaths of thousands, but hey Mark has the capital to burn on his AR pet project that nobody wants.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Zuckerburg and Facebook enable lies to spread because that’s how he makes money.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
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.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Block third-party scripts, no cookie popup.
Cocopanda@futurology.today 3 weeks ago
I will be happy if Zuck is Luigi’d before my death. Also Musk and Bozo.
elrecoal19_1@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I hipe you aren’t from the US because that’s surely gonna put you on a NSA list
FragrantGarden@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
NSA take note, we can Luigi you too. Sit back and let the oppressors perish and it will stop with them.
muusemuuse@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I wouldn’t worry about the list. We are all on it by now anyway.
Cocopanda@futurology.today 3 weeks ago
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.
RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fuck the NSA
HalfSalesman@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Trump is scaling back the NSA and CIA isn’t he?
network_switch@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
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 cool 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
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. 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
Syrc@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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”.
obbeel@lemmy.eco.br 3 weeks ago
It doesn’t matter if they’re nerds or not. What matters is where society is swaying to.
network_switch@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
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
So what’s the purpose of the article though? 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
SaladKing@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
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.
MuskyMelon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The Prince was a warning of what could happen. The Drumpf is the result of ignoring the warnings.
thefartographer@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Huh, it’s almost like people who try to destroy the world are weird and shitty. I’m mostly surprised that anyone else is surprised.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Seriously, it’s like nobody else ever had to deal with a pathological narcissist or someone with BPD before in their lives.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
People expect the villains to be cool, because that’s how they’re portrayed in movies.
Skavau@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It is indeed pathetic how Musk, Zuckerberg and even Trump don’t actually have any friends.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
zuckerberg is prefer android friends.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Why wouldn’t you? Only losers seek power, and only losers could and would fuck up this badly.
masterofn001@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
[deleted]postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Living your life to impress other men by hating women is one of the most embarrassing things I can imagine. Looking up to any of these men for how to live your life is even sadder.
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. Now they are in my face daily, not only influencing the world for the worse but making me nauseous at how uncool and pathetic they are, on top of their other sins. It’s too much, I can’t take it, there needs to be a change.
It’s time for us to start getting revenge on the nerds.
Sounds to me like they crave attention more than anything, poor insecure past-neglected angsty man-agers they are. Depopulating their various platforms and reducing their viewership would be nice. Sucks that anyone at all would feel inclined to lend them their ears and eyes when there are far better alternatives out there.
Suavevillain@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The saying money can’t unlame you still true.
AidsKitty@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Every major politician in the USA has major financial backers with their own agendas that they purchase through superPAC contributions and by funding re-election campaigns. It’s been the ruling oligarchy my whole life and I’m middle aged. Pretending it’s different or worse now is disingenuous.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
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 wallboaratio@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He’s such a fucking dork.
cuban_Pete@lemy.lol 3 weeks ago
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
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.)
resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Can’t they wear suits at least?
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Come on, who wouldn’t want this?
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I read the first chapter of Careless People last night and I never thought these people were such large dorks, but here we are.
Docker@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Great to find a like minded tribe. How about getting decentralised ?
selkiesidhe@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Stupid and ugly af too…
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Why was Altman missing in the story? The next ruler of the world…
Teknikal@eviltoast.org 3 weeks ago
She’s got a point I bet they were all tortured in school.
Lanske@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Zuck can piss off
GluWu@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
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.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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.
o1011o@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s a tired stereotype. Powerful people are unloved because they don’t need to be loved. They are psychopaths, they have all the love they need, they are bored with the world and have nothing more to want.
People around you are unloved because they have problems.
Also money can buy you a cottage surrounded by nice trees near a river, healthy food, more house animals than you could want, a fast PC, jasmine and lilac bushes outside your window.
I think it can go a long way.
My irritation from this stereotype is because it kinda says the opposite of what it says. It feels like sublimated envy, expressed by saying that you don’t envy them. Why talk about their money at all then.
I wouldn’t envy anyone’s money if that’s all the difference between us, unfortunately money buys power and power is used to impose one’s will upon me, and that I very much care about.
But your typical young Trotskyists in the Interwebs write whole articles consisting of Marxist vibes (a strong thing, especially in spring, but not enough) and envy to those having more. LOL, someone having more money is not our problem. Our problem is someone attacking us with it.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
While this is a fresh perspective of the trope, there is very significant evidence that becoming rich is a predictor of early death and depression, presumably due to how hard it becomes to connect to people. Normal people need money to eat and live, and handle it like the privilege it is. It is synonymous with survival for most people. It’s no wonder at all to me why the oligarchs has been naturally selected to be psychopaths. All other people die. A select few give it away and devote themselves to reintegrate back to humanity but those are very few and far between.
obbeel@lemmy.eco.br 3 weeks ago
People not accepting that other people got a easier time doing certain things than others is certainly a problem, but too much blaming isn’t good as well.
overload@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
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.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
He wants to be Augustus Caesar. That’s not “normal loving relationship” behavior.
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
“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.
limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
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.
theangryseal@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No amount of money and power will ever scratch their itch
db2@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’ll end where they deserve though. Alone, despised and empty. No amount of money or stupid blue checkmarks will ever change that.
Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It might end with them realizing the truth, but it’ll be as they’re surrounded by the ashes of our civilizations and bodies.
lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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…
🤷♂️ 🤡 🖕
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Looks like autocorrect did ya dirty.
No one >> noons
Lodespawn@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
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.
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What’s wrong with Zuck’s family?