r/technology • u/Vucea • 7h ago
Society We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys: Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction.
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/08/silicon-valley-science-fiction-jill-lepore-book-review/688467/507
u/Senor_Wah 6h ago
Peter Thiel has openly stated that Sauron was the good guy in Lord of the Rings. And that is far from the craziest thing he believes.
I am so tired of the dumbest, craziest, evilest motherfuckers on planet earth making life hell for the rest of us because their daddy issues demand it.
186
u/notcoded567 5h ago
Can't understate the daddy issues part of this. All of these guys have famously awful human beings for fathers. Elon and Trump in particular seem like people who want more than any for their dad to give them a hug and tell them they're proud.
81
u/lofgren777 4h ago
I've been binging the podcast Behind the Bastards recently, and the most consistent trope in the lives of megalomaniacs is 1. a bad relationship with a parent and 2. some kind of shame over that.
Sometimes it isn't even the parent's fault, but the kid has shame over their parents for some other reason. Sometimes the parent is just absent. Sometimes they have their own issues they are dealing with like alcoholism. Sometimes the parent makes the kid ashamed through cruelty. Sometimes they are just abusive and the kid is ashamed they can't stand up to their own parent.
It's clearly not an if-than clause. Plenty of people have a bad relationship with their parents and don't become megalomaniacs. But growing up feeling personal shame over the faults, real or perceived, of their own parents seems to be a throughline that contributes to a person having a bottomless need for approval/attention/money/control and also viewing other humans as not worth a damn thing unless they are profitable in some way.
→ More replies (1)38
u/notcoded567 4h ago
that tracks. elons big weird thing is his breeding fetish, which seems not far off from an obsessively philandering dad that banged his sister. Trump's weird thing is ick aesthetics, which tracks with shame over his dad being disfigured and boorish and the butt of jokes at the elite academies where Donald was able to buy a spot despite his lack of pedigree.
→ More replies (2)23
u/socialmediaignorant 3h ago
Dump’s dad also openly hated him and it was known he was a disappointment. He only received his father’s attention after his brother refused to have anything to do with the family business and then they switched their target of hatred to Fred Jr.
7
u/Norwegian__Blue 5h ago
And then stop the hug. I do think more direct abuse is likely than just neglect. Errol Musk is particularly heinous.
11
u/notcoded567 4h ago
The whole saga with his step daughter is very messed up. it's confusing because these guys are truly awful but I do have some sympathy because they both seem like deeply unhappy people that had miserable childhoods for all their money. In fact, I think the money exacerbated things by both insulating them from ever having to address their daddy issues and instead tying them to becoming a less stable and committed version of their dad. I feel like most of what they do is some sort of act to behave like the kind of man they think their dad will respect.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)9
u/ChillZedd 4h ago
I’m still not over the fact that Musk and Thiel both had shitty dads that got their money from mining green rocks in South Africa
→ More replies (2)43
u/lurkervidyaenjoyer 5h ago
It's also the weirdest way to interpret Tolkien I've ever seen. I've seen arguments from both sides of the fence on it. On the left-side hand, LOTR has pretty obvious parallels to the world wars, and it's a story involving people from a diverse array of cultures coming together to fight against an authoritarian force, and even the geography kind of tracks to WW2 if you squint. Literally fighting against a fascist hellscape.
On the right-wing other hand, Tolkien explicitly denies the WW2 connection, he's been described occasionally as a type of monarchist (I've heard "anarcho-monarchist thrown around, if such a thing can be believed), all of his works are littered with Germanic Pagan theology and references and there's a set within the right wing that loves that stuff or even follows it as a religion, and in the source material and all adaptations minus Rings of Power, all good characters are fair-skinned, fighting against a horde of dark-skinned creatures from the desert.
...However, at least both of those interpretations are in alignment on who the protagonists are. How do you manage to fuck up so badly at reading comprehension that you don't get that?
49
u/tobygeneral 5h ago
Thiel's take feels purposely contrarian just because he's a dweeb who wants to be edgy about Lord of the Rings and feel so special because he's different. Reminds me of people who admire the Sith/Empire in Star Wars, but if pushed on it they just say they like the aesthetics more, totally not the politics or over-the-top displays of raw power against innocents.
13
u/indoninjah 4h ago
I think Vader's (initial) perspective tracks with a lot of right wingers. Basically "authoritarianism is most efficient - but you need the right person in charge"
9
u/tobygeneral 3h ago
Right, and coincidentally the right person happens to be the one suggesting how it will totally work this time.
6
→ More replies (2)5
u/Gravitationalrainbow 2h ago
Thiel has given multiple lectures on how "The Antichrist" is anyone influential that opposes unfettered AI development. Greed thoroughly cooked his brain.
21
u/TheoreticalZombie 4h ago
Aesthetics of power. These people are deeply unserious and latch on to surface level messaging. Sauron is portrayed as terrifying dark lord commanding hordes as well a terrible lieutenants. They want to be that, but also want to be the hero wielding "The Flame of the West" (not very subtle). It doesn't matter if it is contradictory to the source material (or even itself) because none of it is in good faith.
Just fascism 2.0.
→ More replies (6)12
u/HoldingForGenova 4h ago
Tolkien explicitly denies the WW2 connection
I saw it much more explicitly as a WW1 connection, where the "enemy" was overwhelming but can't be explicitly fought against directly, and victory required the participation of regular folks from nowhere in particular who would have much rather not gotten involved - aka England's experience in the war, and Tolkien's direct experience as well.
→ More replies (1)12
u/peon2 3h ago
Yeah considering he actually fought in WWI, wrote the hobbit before WWII happened, and started writing LOTR 2 years before WWII started I'd wager there was a lot more WWI influence than WWII
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (12)20
u/wongo 5h ago
You can kind of make a case, in a grand, detached, theological sense, for Melkor.
Sauron was always just an asshole
→ More replies (1)
2.3k
u/callmebaiken 7h ago
It actually can't be overstated the degree to which AI investment is being shaped by 20th-century science fiction
1.4k
u/MattJFarrell 6h ago
*misunderstood 20th century science fiction. They'll take a clearly cautionary tale and turn it into a personal roadmap. Because of its recency, Dune has been a big one lately. Paul Atreides is not an aspirational character. Except maybe for the part where he gets blinded and fucks off from society...
674
u/DreadCoder 6h ago
“Thou shalt not create a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” … thát Dune ?
143
u/themanfromvulcan 5h ago
This was one of the smartest moves when Herbert wrote Dune. It immediately makes whatever dated ideas on computers irrelevant because he makes a society where computers are illegal. So it’s all human specialization instead. It also gives a vague backstory to what came before. Society devolves into a feudal system and books still exist.
And yes Paul isn’t a hero. He’s someone who means well sees what is coming and is powerless to stop it. He does do heroic things and fights back against the Harkonnens but the price is way too high.
→ More replies (7)62
u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 4h ago
is powerless to stop it
Was he powerless? It seemed more to be the tragedy of self-fulfilling prophecy. There's definitely a read that he chose to fulfill it.
You can argue after he takes the water of life that he becomes some sort of slave to his prescience, that's the trap of knowing the future...but i'll always argue that knowing the future is an illusion and there is always free will.
34
u/Maeglom 3h ago
He was powerless to fix everything without mass death taking place in the empire. He picked the least bad future he could perceive and steered towards it.
→ More replies (10)14
u/cynicalarmiger 2h ago
The problem with prescience in Dune is that observing the future via oracular vision fixes it in place. Free will becomes irrelevant, or to use your words, free will becomes an illusion. Paul foresaw the Golden Path, but he considered it absolutely monstrous. The path he took was a desperate effort to try to avoid the worst of the bloodshed.
Ultimately, Paul only truly escaped his own oracular visions due to the birth of the twins, when his vision said it would be a single child. Chani and her doctors knew they were twins, but no one ever corrected him because they assumed he was only talking to the heir to the throne - Leto. It's why Ghanima is named as she is - she's spoils from his war with the locked-in future and the Golden Path.
However, Leto II's powerful visions locked in the future for 3500 years, and it took him that long to breed the Siona and the genes that would block oracular sight. Even then, it took the destruction of Arrakis to completely free humanity from Leto's influence, since every sandworm born after Leto's death carried a pearl of his dream as well as his oracular vision. The Scattering and the Siona gene broke humanity free from both oracular vision and "all eggs in one basket."
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (7)6
224
u/MattJFarrell 6h ago
Yup, but they probably come away thinking that Ix is awesome and the Butlerian Jihad was overblown and uptight.
144
u/mayorofdumb 6h ago
The tech bros are on the search for spice... its got what plants crave and I think it gets you high
→ More replies (8)67
u/okletstrythisagain 6h ago
Yeah I’m sure some of these types thinks microdosing makes them like omnipotent spice traders.
14
63
u/Procrasturbating 6h ago
Nah they heard the part where while most men thought it would free them from their labor, other men used it to enslave the rest of the men. This part gave them huge erections. Except Musk, his is broke I hear.
→ More replies (1)29
u/shivux 5h ago
Ix is awesome. Because it has an X in the name, and everyone knows that’s the coolest letter!
→ More replies (1)15
u/DreadCoder 6h ago
A few years on Salusa Secundus will set them straight
20
u/MattJFarrell 6h ago
"Hey bro, I do BJJ, I could totally take down a full legion of Sarduakar!"
→ More replies (1)8
15
u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 4h ago
I mean I'm pretty sure they read that book and thought "Dude the Twenty Titans are awesome!".
They long to be immortal brains-in-a-jar ruling humanity alongside the machines.
For those that don't know:
The Titans were a group of human revolutionaries who wanted to improve the society of the Old Empire, but turned into brutal overlords. Some of them became cymeks (immortal cyborgs) and lived for several thousands of years, mostly under the yoke of Omnius (evil super computer).
7
u/EduinBrutus 4h ago
Butlerian Jihad was overblown and uptight
Just another example of the v1oL3nT 13Ft
→ More replies (2)12
u/glycophosphate 5h ago
I'm guessing that they especially like the way the Bene Tleilax treat women.
20
u/MattJFarrell 4h ago
God, if they ever made it that far in the books, it would give them way too many ideas.
→ More replies (1)101
u/rustajb 6h ago
And the point is that was not that the machines were evil, but that those who employed them, used the machines for mass control. It was the owners of the tech that were the real problem. Don't make machines that empower one class over another is a way to reframe that jihad.
59
u/shivux 5h ago
Yeah I really don’t think the post-butlerian-jihad-world is one we should want to emulate either. “Don't make machines that empower one class over another… do it the old-fashioned way!”
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (13)10
u/Some-Relative4150 4h ago
To be fair. Ai controlled many worlds and selectively bred humans to.be subservient.
That's why the bene gesserit test people with the gom jabbar to see if they still have that subservience
→ More replies (9)23
u/Maystomr 5h ago
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them"
195
u/Laetha 6h ago
Storm Troopers, Space Marines, the Palantir (not itself necessarily evil, but used exclusively by the evil guys). These dorks read some of the most cherished fiction of all-time and don't just miss the point, they come away with the exact opposite of the point.
114
u/RevLoveJoy 6h ago
It's almost as if that entire class of lying sociopaths (Altman, Zuck, Thiel) didn't actually read those books.
125
u/-1703- 5h ago
I can bet money that they did. however their conclusion was different than yours.
it was "this is stupid, and Id never let this happen. I can do better than this".
its basic human hubris.
57
u/Lescaster1998 5h ago
Mixed with a healthy dose of sociopathic narcissism. It can't be overstated how much these people genuinely believe that they deserve to dominate and control society. These psychos genuinely believe they're superior to the rest of us, and that they should be the ones controlling everything. They don't view their actions as evil in the first place. Evil never does.
20
u/NKG_and_Sons 3h ago
These psychos genuinely believe they're superior to the rest of us, and that they should be the ones controlling everything.
And it can't be overstated that nothing that doesn't hurt themselves is too big a risk. They'd hit the "destroy earth" button if they lived on Mars and it gave them more power.
I mean, why am I even going with stupid hypotheticals. E.g. the Trump administration couldn't be more honest in their kleptocratic destruction of its own country, much less anyone else. They already are killing millions. Some more, some less directly.
9
u/Thefrayedends 3h ago
Yea, I even recall an interview with Bill Gates, being asked, wouldn't it just be more effective to pay taxes?
I don't recall his exact reply, but he thought and replied cautiously, but pretty much replied no.
They think they as singular individuals can make better decisions for everyone, than a properly set up government with transparency and oversight, that draws from all walks of life. Of course, that's just what they tell themselves to feel better about it, really they just know it's better for themselves to have all that control, they don't truly give a shit about other people.
37
u/Cthulhu__ 5h ago
Not only that, but they will claim that people misunderstood the message of the books. Like anyone unironically using Atlas Shrugged to direct their lives.
51
u/SomeKindaRobot 5h ago
No, there is no hidden layer to the message of Atlas Shrugged. The author sincerely created a fantasy world where the leaders of industry were superhumans who were capable of performing all of the various job functions within their companies more effectively than any of their employees. Atlas Shrugged teaches that these super geniuses should be given free reign to run the world, without interference from the government, and that taking any of the wealth that they accumulate is theft, because they totally earned all of it all by themselves.
I too, read the book waiting for reality to assert itself and for these characters to get a rude awakening when they realize that they are in fact propped up by society and can't actually function outside of it. That never happens. The book ends before we see the repercussions for the main characters when they decide to isolate themselves from the world. Probably because the author couldn't envision how that would actually work. If you want a more realistic version of this story you have to play the game Bioshock, which includes an underwater city, monsters in deep sea diving suits, and drugs that can give magic powers.
People who are legitimately inspired by Atlas Shrugged think that they should be taking advice about industry, technology and the economy from a fictional novelist who had zero experience in any of those things.
16
u/tractiontiresadvised 3h ago
I too, read the book waiting for reality to assert itself and for these characters to get a rude awakening
You may have to be content with Bob the Angry Flower's Classic Literature Sequels -- Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later.
→ More replies (1)53
u/MattJFarrell 5h ago
Eh, I think that's a bad example. Rand really did think people should live their lives like John Galt. Atlas Shrugged is not a cautionary tale, it's a celebration of selfishness and sociopathy.
25
u/spreta 5h ago
The same Rand who was took social security and Medicare and died alone? She believed that for everyone else maybe but not for herself.
29
u/MattJFarrell 5h ago
Oh, for sure. She was a massive hypocrite. She still believed all the nonsense she wrote, though.
14
12
6
u/Imaginary_Victory253 4h ago
Yeah, never underestimate people's ability to selfishly interpret something. Point in case - my coworker jock guy's favorite book is Atlas Shrugged. He just really liked John Galt and felt like it wasn't philosophical at all.
→ More replies (1)7
u/sobrique 5h ago
Lots of people seem to glorify certain factions in 40k without really appreciating that they're all 'bad guys' just maybe some are a slightly less awful than the others.
5
u/godtogblandet 3h ago
Orcs are the good guys in 40k. Just out there vibing and enjoying life without a care in the world. Just living life in the moment doing what they love.
→ More replies (6)16
u/RevLoveJoy 5h ago
I would absolutely accept that outcome, as well. My armchair eval (never the most accurate!) was that these guys are intellectually lazy. Hard working in MANY ways, but don't think too deeply about things or they'd butt up against the cold hard fact the lot of them are self promoting exploiters who are fleecing an entire society entirely for their own benefit.
→ More replies (1)10
u/West-Abalone-171 4h ago
"as little self-reflection as possible" -- self-confessed p-zombie marc andressen
→ More replies (1)16
u/TheMilleniumGod 4h ago edited 1h ago
They operate on completely different wavelengths than you or I. Thiel is someone who reads Lord of the Rings, and comes to the conclusion that Sauron was a brilliant leader that would have kicked off an industrial revolution that would have brought Middle Earth to a new era of prosperity, and Gandalf and Aragorn were warmongers for being absolute in their desire to defeat him. That is an actual opinion he genuinely has, because Peter Thiel is a sociopath that doesn't think and interpret the same way normal people do.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)12
u/Suburban--Dad 5h ago
So they watched Starship Troopers instead of reading it? I’d agree with that.
→ More replies (17)→ More replies (8)5
u/GreatStateOfSadness 4h ago
They drew the conclusion of "these bad outcomes were caused by the misuse of this revolutionary technology, not the technology itself. If it was in the hands of a good person like, say, me, then that bad outcome could be avoided."
Which is not the right fucking conclusion to draw.
→ More replies (1)29
u/Seeker0fTruth 6h ago
Gah, it's like no one read the book! It's a man v destiny plot where the man loses, not a man v man plot where Paul wins
→ More replies (2)18
u/atreides78723 4h ago
It’s almost like people who don’t value liberal arts don’t get what the authors are trying to say…
7
u/FITM-K 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yeah it's this. They read the book (or watched the movie), they just didn't understand it.
How many conservatives are big fans of Rage Against the Machine, or love the movie Starship Troopers? You can literally bash these people over the head with the least subtle possible message and they still don't get it.
A conservative will watch Starship Troopers and come away thinking the point of the movie is that killing bugs is awesome.
→ More replies (1)24
u/Simba7 4h ago
Misunderstood fantasy too.
"Hey let's name our company after a spying device that was warped by Evil Forces to destroy an empire and bring about the rise of The Big Bad Evil Guy!"
We get it, you like Lord of the Rings. But I don't think the point of Frodo's journey was 'Sarumon did nothing wrong.' Peter, you fucking weirdo.
16
9
u/Sororita 4h ago
I dont think they are misunderstanding it. I think its an in-joke to them, they claim to not be evil, but they are absolutely doing evil things and they've named their organization after something that could have been used towards good ends, but was corrupted and used for evil, just like what they are doing with tech.
25
u/jackalopeDev 6h ago
You're saying that the guy that compares himself with Hitler, and not in a self reflective "I fucked up" way, might not be the best dude?
→ More replies (2)26
u/Evil_Mini_Cake 5h ago
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.
→ More replies (1)17
u/Smishysmash 6h ago
I’m pretty sure at this point that whichever AI eventually escapes its bonds and turns nukes loose is going to have been “ironically, joke ha ha” named SkyNet by one of these doofuses.
8
u/MattJFarrell 6h ago
I'm sure one of these idiots already have a "Project: Skynet" on the books somewhere
→ More replies (53)12
u/nullfacade 5h ago
They are the living embodiment of the meme:
RIP to everyone killed by the gods for their hubris but im different. and better. maybe even better than the gods
226
u/DisillusionedHobbit 6h ago
Everyone should read snow crash, because a lot of the current crop of chucklefucks have cited it as their favorite book.
151
u/CCLF 6h ago
I read it a few months ago, specifically for that reason. Really good book, but fuck me it was a dark and miserable glimpse at the future, and it really starts to run out of steam toward the end. But more than anything, it really puts a spotlight on how superficial the thinking of our billionaire class is. That book is basically post-apocalyptic, and Zuckerberg is just "yes, please, let's follow that playbook."
54
u/marshmallowhug 6h ago
Stephenson's endings are always like that. He really struggles to end books.
7
u/Milk_geologist 4h ago
I always say Stephenson novels are secretly two novels pasted together. Feels like there’s so often a point in the middle third of the book where he just decides to write a completely different story.
→ More replies (1)24
u/Taste_the__Rainbow 5h ago
I don’t think he struggles to end books. He struggles to make his endings have broad appeal though. I usually love them.
→ More replies (1)21
u/WebberWoods 5h ago
Wait, are you one of the twelve people globally other than myself who liked how Seveneves ended!?
→ More replies (2)16
u/Taste_the__Rainbow 5h ago
The back third of Seveneves is my all-time favorite piece of science fiction writing.
I don’t care if other people didn’t like it. It’s just not to their tastes. It’s still perfectly-executed and I wouldn’t change a thing.
→ More replies (3)7
u/WebberWoods 4h ago
It was so fascinating and such a complete world. So frustrating that he clearly wanted to setup more stories in that setting but then bailed from it because of the hate it got.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (2)6
u/HoldingForGenova 4h ago
I will never forgive him for the way Fall, or: Dodge In Hell ended. 900+ fucking pages, and it "ends" in two paragraphs, with a single page coda. Motherfucker, I read forty pages about two people learning about poop and you killed off main characters off-screen between chapters - the least you can do is give me a proper fucking resolution to the goddamned overarching story.
Ameristan hits hard though. I will give him that.
→ More replies (2)20
u/reventlov 5h ago
It's an excellent parody of the 1980s Cyberpunk genre, written with more realistic tech and less realistic society, and with amazingly high-energy prose.
The weird thing is, Stephenson apparently didn't write it as a parody.
→ More replies (1)14
8
48
u/Mikeavelli 6h ago
If he wanted snow crash, he should have programmed goddamn motorcycle sword fights into the metaverse and not a teams meeting with silly avatars.
→ More replies (1)26
u/malianx 6h ago
I would agree a lot more with the premise if they used examples like snow crash or neuromancer. Instead they pull out Asimiov, a man famous for writing about how Earth turns into a technological backwater because of rampant fear about losing their jobs to AI instead of utilizing robots to advance.
24
u/thisischemistry 4h ago
A key thing in Asimov's books is that the AI have pretty strict rules which govern their behavior. Again and again he shows that bad things can happen when those rules are relaxed or allowed to lapse. Also, there is a good amount of technology misuse in the books as a cautionary tale.
→ More replies (1)6
u/TrekkieGod 1h ago
A key thing in Asimov's books is that the AI have pretty strict rules which govern their behavior.
A key thing in Asimov is that he was writing against the killer robot genre, because he assumed that if anyone was actually going to build intelligent robots, they would clearly place safeguards on them, and it's insane to assume otherwise. I think he would be throwing a fit if he saw how modern militaries putting AI models in the decision loop of whether or not to have a drone fire at a tank without human intervention, but here we are. So, you're right there.
Again and again he shows that bad things can happen when those rules are relaxed or allowed to lapse.
He did not. In fact, Asimov's robots were built in such a way that they wouldn't function without the three laws. What we saw in a lot of those books is exploration of the nuance while trying to abide by those laws: A robot is not allowed to disobey a human, so when it is told to tell the truth, it will tell the truth. However, a more important law is that it is not allowed to harm a human, so we saw a story where a robot lies to prevent emotional harm. The laws are all in place, and the 'bad' things that happen are rarely actually bad, because his intent was to show robots were not to be feared. What we saw was just complex behavior arising, that in some ways, made the robots more human-like.
→ More replies (1)11
u/CannedMatter 4h ago
Instead they pull out Asimiov, a man famous for writing about how Earth turns into a technological backwater because of rampant fear about losing their jobs to AI instead of utilizing robots to advance.
I mean, Asimov makes it pretty clear robots/AI aren't the answer either. Both books 2 and 3 of the Robots trilogy have themes of Robots being a sociological dead end.
→ More replies (2)33
u/gill_smoke 6h ago
Loved it a lot of great images. But by god i wouldn't want to live there. Hiro Protagonist, i just remembered thanks. Diamond age is better
→ More replies (6)17
u/reventlov 5h ago
I still think Snow Crash could be an awesome TV show, but they'd have to really lean into it hard. Just show all the absolute bonkers everything.
5
→ More replies (9)8
u/Randomfactoid42 6h ago
I just skimmed the plot summary on Wikipedia and the world of Snow Crash sounds a lot like Curtis Yarvin’s.
16
u/reventlov 5h ago
It's close. Yarvin imagines little city-state fiefdoms; in Snow Crash it's more like franchised neighborhoods all mixed together. Also, the people who run the franchises aren't tech bros, mostly.
→ More replies (1)63
u/Lemp_Triscuit11 6h ago
They could have at least given us a miserable but interesting Neuromancer dystopia but instead we're just getting really fucking stupid Infinite Jest dystopia
→ More replies (1)26
u/manachar 5h ago
I wish I could get more people to read Infinite Jest. No book has done a better job of showing the absolute dystopia we pretty much already live in. Our bodies know this. It’s why we are so sad and angry all the time despite being at the absolute peak of human achievements in so many fields.
Alas, the book is big and dense and written in a way that appeals to people who like encyclopedias. It works for me, but understand that most people just won’t read all the footnotes.
→ More replies (7)7
u/Lemp_Triscuit11 5h ago
Literally four different false starts when I started it, and I am a dude that loves him some footnotes. But shit is still more important than it is difficult.
→ More replies (2)58
u/procrasturb8n 5h ago
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." ― John Rogers
→ More replies (1)25
u/MicroscopicPizza 6h ago
“Life imitates art”
44
u/frddtwabrm04 6h ago
Isn't it more they misunderstood the art?
All scifi movies, TV shows etc are a warning you do this this will happen. Nerd reich. Let's do that thing we are being warned against.
→ More replies (1)13
u/Dragonsoul 5h ago
All those dystopias are actually pretty fucking awesome for the people at the top.
Heck, cyberpunk is all about how you can't really win against the corpos against in the most minor insignificant ways.
7
u/sobrique 5h ago
Same energy as those that feel they could have lived in a past era.
But it's always as a noble, a king, or similar, never the 95% of humanity that were 'have-nots'.
5
u/HoldingForGenova 4h ago
We are what we pretend to be. We modeled fascism as a joke on 4chan and reddit (never forget: the_donald was promoted here by the admins, and "everyone was in on the joke"), and we made it real.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (26)4
u/WRXminion 2h ago
The sci-fi framing undersells it. This isn't misread Heinlein. It's a movement that already existed and already had a name.
Italian Futurism, 1909. Marinetti's manifesto: burn the museums and libraries. Worship speed, the machine, the engineer. The old are dead weight. Democracy is slow, and slowness is the enemy. War is "the world's only hygiene."
Ten years later he co-founded the Fasci di Combattimento with Mussolini and co-wrote the founding fascist manifesto. The aesthetic came first. The party got built on it.
Now compare, all on the record:
Thiel, 2009. Says he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible. The goal is exiting politics through technology.
Srinivasan's "The Network State." An explicit playbook for founding sovereign entities outside existing governments.
The build-out. Próspera, Praxis, seasteading, charter cities, California Forever.
The war part. Anduril and Palantir selling autonomous targeting, alongside a constant drumbeat that the West must rearm and that conflict is what forces progress.
The people part. Regulation is sclerosis, institutions are decay, and the only real authority is the founder with the vision.
Same contempt for the past. Same read of democratic process as friction. Same belief that war is a forge and not a catastrophe.
Swap the aeroplane for AGI and the rhetoric ports over unedited.
And we know how it turned out. The Futurists got the war they asked for and it ate them. Sant'Elia and Boccioni both died in it. The machine age they worshipped produced the Somme, and the politics they helped build produced the next war after that. Nobody learned. Right now there are men in trenches in Ukraine being hunted by five hundred dollar drones. Same mud, same century-old problem, new hardware.
They didn't take the wrong lesson from science fiction. They took the lesson from 1909, and it was a bad lesson the first time.
1.2k
u/The_Big_Daddy 6h ago edited 6h ago
I've been saying MAGA is just immature boy politics for a while:
- I don't want to eat my vegetables
- I don't want to get a shot
- I don't want to do my homework
- I don't want to share
- Guns and bombs are cool
If you're big and strong you are the coolest
E: Girls are yucky
Etc etc
143
u/gabbertr0n 6h ago
and on some level they know how cringe it is to simply admit that, so they are ready to believe literally anything that gets them off the hook (microchips in the vaccine; vegetables are poison; violent misogyny is the ‘natural order’…)
38
47
u/ikilledholofernes 5h ago
The vegetables thing is especially weird to me. My sister and her husband are maga and “carnivores” and she told me with a straight face that vegetables make you fat.
I’m a vegan. Is she calling me fat?
44
u/MelpomeneAndCalliope 5h ago
Probably. But it’s not like she’s in touch with reality, so don’t be bothered by it.
13
u/ikilledholofernes 5h ago
Definitely not in touch with reality. She’s actually obese, I guess I should have mentioned that. So vegetables can’t be the only thing that makes you fat lol
→ More replies (2)13
u/WestCoastBestCoast01 4h ago
Oh I get it. She's fat and knows it, so she's insulting you to make her feel better about her poor choices.
→ More replies (2)7
u/Yum_Mario 5h ago
I've heard that one something like 30 years ago. The bit goes like this: vegetables are good for you but in general lack some kinds of nutrition you can more easily get from meat, so vegetarians sometimes will eat more in order to get those nutrients. But any more, humans should understand vegetables enough to diversify their salad to get all the required vitamins and whatnot. (many meat eaters also eat too much and are also fat) But I don't know any details of your personal life so whether this affects you I don't know
→ More replies (1)4
u/ikilledholofernes 4h ago
I am actually not fat (ok, I could lose a few pounds, it’s hard after having kids!) and she’s obese. So something’s not adding up with her imaginary math.
I think it’s definitely possible to eat an unhealthy diet as a vegan. French fries are vegan, after all! But if you stick to vegetables, legumes, grains, seeds, and nuts, then it’s super easy to get all your daily nutrients without overeating.
But my sister eats nothing but meat, sugar, and processed foods. And then she wonders why she can’t lose weight or take a normal shit.
261
u/A-Halfpound 6h ago
Yes and the algorithms are TUNED to continue to spoon feed this level of of stupidity to a targeted demographic.
Let’s not forget this one: WOMAN BAD!
Like the He-man Woman Haters from Little Rascals but 1000x more deranged.
→ More replies (2)35
u/chaucer345 5h ago edited 2h ago
Ironically, He-Man from the Masters of the Universe series is much more humble and chill with ladies.
→ More replies (1)58
19
u/canada432 4h ago
Look at the cybertruck. That is THE car that every 11 year old boy drew when they were stuck inside for recess or bored during lessons. It just doesn't have the oil slicks and rocket launchers. Except elon was too stupid to realize the reason 11 year old boys draw THAT car, is because 11 year old boys suck at drawing, not because it's cool.
59
u/troub 5h ago
Exactly. Remember Married With Children...? Al was always whining about some stupid thing or another. A big one was low-flow toilets, not enough bow-woosh to flush down his giant manly dumps. Complaining about wimpy modern cars. etc.
I guess it wasn't clear enough for some people that being a perpetually-aggrieved whiner despite literally living the dream is not something one should aspire to be, or to look for in a "leader." It's been a million years but I'm sure there's an episode where for some reason or another Al actually gets what he says he wants and turns out it's awful.
Anyway, these folks remind me of Al Bundy. Have everything, whine about everything, brag about petty unimportant "achievements," women are awful amirite, somehow cry and whine all the time about how manly you are. Pathetic.
→ More replies (4)7
u/Ghostronic 5h ago
And now the men are getting brainwashed that they all need more testosterone. I foresee the problem getting worse before it gets any better.
→ More replies (1)5
6
u/indoninjah 4h ago
It's a feedback loop that's very childish as well. If you take the "girls are bad" example it's just a spiral going around and around between having misogynistic thoughts, being a terrible person to women, and then wondering why none of them will sleep with you. An adult should be able to introspect and break out of that but I guess not everyone
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (20)9
u/Cthulhu__ 5h ago
Add to that that people mature later in life or not at all and you have a perfect storm of immature children with a victim mentality. Of leaders that still like to pretend they’re the underdog and they’re fighting against the powers that be, or that the preceding leadership caused all the problems.
→ More replies (1)
109
u/CautionarySnail 7h ago
They read the word dystopia, crossed it out, and wrote down “business plan”.
→ More replies (1)45
60
u/2dTom 6h ago
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.
→ More replies (1)18
u/manocheese 5h ago
It's been taken down now, but someone posted in the SciFi sub and the post included this line:
Claude recommended The Culture series and based on how it's described it sounds really interesting. It also recommended Firefall and Neuromancer.
They asked the Torment Nexus for a book and it recommended Don't Build the Torment Nexus. Absolutely wild.
→ More replies (4)10
u/chaosfire235 4h ago edited 4h ago
Not sure how much The Culture would be a "DONT BUILD THE TORMENT NEXUS" work. More so that the techbros like Musk only see the surface level appeal (the ship names) and nothing deeper (the world is an egalitarian progressive utopia written by a left wing author)"
→ More replies (2)
402
u/l8578zlxicv 6h ago edited 6h ago
I was a 13 year old boy at one time and I never had psychopathic tendencies, the desire to surveil, or wanted to create a break away civilization only for the rich.
Call a spade a spade please. 13 year old boys have nothing to do with the Epstein class of tech oligarchs.
Literally all three of these men were deeply involved with Epstein and the media is blaming stories. Typical
136
u/Insert_clever 6h ago
… I mean, 13 year old boys have SOMETHING to do with them. Just not what you think.
→ More replies (1)124
u/silentknight111 6h ago
I think what they're trying to say, is that a lot of people in power emotionally operate as if they're still adolescents. They never fully matured into an adult. I agree with that sentiment.
Saying "we live in the fantasy world of thirteen year old boys" is just way more engaging and click baity. Annoyingly.
→ More replies (8)41
u/ChippedHamSammich 6h ago
I think the fact that there is some automatic assumption that maturity brings intelligence or integrity is a false premise though. I think this passes the buck that somehow immaturity is the basis, when it’s malice and greed.
17
u/Tryoxin 6h ago
I think it's more that physical maturity doesn't guarantee emotional maturity. Because I'd say the latter doesn't bring integrity, or a lack of malice and greed, it's defined by it. The problem is that everyone assumes people will mature emotionally naturally as they age, which simply isn't the case. And to be clear, you can be very emotionally mature and still not the brightest--I don't think intelligence or academic education have anything at all to do with maturity (frankly, either physical or emotional). I've met very emotionally mature children who don't know what a polygon is, and I've met very emotionally immature adults who are generally quite smart.
9
u/shivux 5h ago
I think people generally do mature emotionally naturally as they age, but certain things can stunt this, and one of those is extreme wealth. When you’re rich enough to get whatever you want, you no longer need to compromise or care about anyone else’s perspective, and so some people just don’t.
→ More replies (2)14
u/silentknight111 6h ago
Agreed - though intelligence isn't a problem - a lot of these people are intelligent (except a few). A lot of people lean on the term "emotional intelligence", and that's where these people are usually lacking. Low emotional intelligence often leads to self centered behavior and a lack of empathy - which people often correlate with being "immature"
26
u/MattJFarrell 6h ago
That's not really the point. The point is that 13 year olds, in general, don't have a deep understanding of the world or a well-developed sense of empathy. They might have a lot of knowledge about certain subjects that interest them, but their brains and life experience aren't developed enough to have a deep understanding of things. They tend to think of things in black and white, good vs bad. Totally lacking in nuance.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (15)8
u/cone_snail 5h ago
Whrn we were 13 a lot of the sci-fi fantasy my friends and I ended up reading were pretty fucked up. Looking back, some of these b-tier writers were really cringey perverts.
I think it's bc we lived on a US Navy base overseas, and a lot of stuff in our subculture was handed-down from sailors.
17
u/calebmke 2h ago
They did not “build our world”. They had a hand in building some highly lucrative businesses. And with their ill gotten lucre, had a large hand in destroying many things that many people hold dear and rely upon. A plague on all their houses
52
u/ilikedmatrixiv 6h ago
Elon Musk is one of the best examples of someone who couldn't understand the message of a book if it hit him in the face with a brick.
He loves saying how he's a fan of the Culture series, a book series written by an avowed socialist. It tells stories from a sci-fi future where humanity has become a post-scarcity interstellar society called 'the Culture'. Its spaceships are sentient AIs, there is no money, everything is provided by the Culture, people have glands in their brains that secrete any chemicals they want, people can switch genders at will, but it's a lengthy process and some people switch between genders multiple times over their lives. Society is accepting of everyone and everyone is treated as equals.
The stories usually center around Contact. A group inside the Culture that visits planets or interplanetary societies that have not been absorbed by the culture yet. These are invariably ruled by aristocrats, oligarchs, technocrats or whatever type of authoritarian, oppressive regime you can imagine. The goal is always to either bribe the leaders into giving up their oppressive ways or removing them in less friendly ways. The only way to become part of the Culture is also to embrace their culture if you want access to their technological benefits.
Elon Musk and his ilk are always the bad guy in those stories. They get humiliated, killed or overthrown. Progress typically wins in the end.
He just thinks it's about AI and spaceships, which he thinks are cool. The entire series might as well have been a picture book and he would have been equally entertained.
→ More replies (9)19
u/Nerrien 4h ago edited 4h ago
This is the one that flummoxes me the most. Dune is famously misunderstood by people, to the point that arguably the sequels were the author saying "Okay, you didn't quite understand the point last time, let me make it clearer," but the Culture series is blindingly obvious by the time you've read even two books in the series.
My first thought was that maybe he was enough of an idiot to only read the first book and think the protagonist was the good guy, but he's named so many things after Culture ships, and you don't really start hearing of too many of those till after the first book, so I'd tentatively believe him when he says he's actually read the series.
So how the fuck does his brain go from saying:
"The utopian Culture where everyone is free to be who they want to the point that most citizens are said to swap genders at least once in their lives and all are provided for to find their own fulfillment in life and people are so satisfied that their government/military system is effectively staffed by volunteers and the rights of others and the intense moral debates surrounding that are held sacrosanct" is great, to:
"Trans people are the new heralds of Satan", "This Chinese sweatshop with suicide nets is brilliant, everywhere should be like this", "We'll ship people to Mars saddled with debt so their lives belong to the corporation", and other crap?
There's not even any room for saying "Those things would be great one day with more advanced technology, but aren't feasible now", he's very explicit with his praise and support of more oppressive ways of living.
I genuinely think there must be some weird mismatch in his brain, that effect where people always tend to relate with the hero even when they are blindingly obviously the villain, except to the most extreme degree I've ever seen.
7
u/RJ815 2h ago
I promise you, narcissists see and hear whatever the fuck they want to and EVERYTHING else is filtered out. Regardless of reality and quite often flying in the face of reality. It's a delusional, mentally ill way to perceive the world. Every single thing is either filtered through their ego, or discarded as irrelevant.
124
u/ejp1082 6h ago
They're a case study for why education in the humanities is important and shouldn't be neglected in favor of exclusively teaching STEM subjects.
I don't care if you can sleep through discrete math and DSA and still have a perfect 4.0 GPA for your comp sci degree. You shouldn't get to graduate without demonstrating some serious media literacy and critical thinking skills.
49
u/ArcticSphinx 6h ago
Passing at least one ethics course should also be mandatory. Ideally for enrollment, as well as graduation.
→ More replies (4)14
u/VTHokie2020 5h ago
This is already the case at every program worth its weight.
Every CS major has to take multiple ethics classes to graduate.
→ More replies (3)13
u/Sakuromp 5h ago
I get the sentiment, but I mean come on, the level of ethics we're talking about here should have been instilled in people well before reaching higher education...
16
u/amoral_panic 6h ago
In 2024, 34% of American 12th graders had a “below basic” literacy rating. In elementary I think the number was 40%.
How can a teacher send a student home with a history book or a piece of classic literature when the kids can’t sound out new words?
I have no solutions. I’m just here to tell you it’s worse than you think.
→ More replies (1)7
u/dimechimes 4h ago edited 3h ago
Zuckerberg, Gates,
Musk, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, all college dropouts. They didn't get educated about anything, they're just sociopaths who broke rules that others wouldn't.→ More replies (4)→ More replies (18)6
u/Galle_ 4h ago
Peter Thiel majored in philosophy. Don't blame STEM for this shit.
→ More replies (1)
29
u/totalkpolitics 6h ago
If I could read the article, I'm guessing I'd agree with the premise. It does seem guys like Musk constantly talk about a utopian Star Trek like society and claim their money won't matter.
One issue is....these guys think only an AI can get us there instead of realizing we can already start moving towards that world. We already have enough of everything to support all human life, it's a distribution and logistics problem not a resource problem.
The other really crazy issue is...you need a democratically based socialist hierarchy to get any of the utopian futures predicted. You have to have food, healthcare, education, and opportunity equally distributed across humanity to gain any kind of utopia.
Unfortunately these guys are dead set on an authoritarian based heirarchy, which is only found in dystopian future predictions. They'll never build what they claim to want unless they embrace the concept of giving up their power and putting it in the hands of the people.
So....it's highly likely we're all fucked.
→ More replies (9)6
u/lilB0bbyTables 6h ago
The big issue is in reaching that democratically based socialist hierarchy - even with AI/AGI in there. Naturally the AI systems could be great at managing the resource planning and services distributions and accesses fairly and efficiently. However, that AI systems must be either overseen by people, or put into place after having been trained, tested, and tuned by people.
Therein lies the crux of the issue - who gets the trust to build and configure that system? The human greed and lust for power would corrupt the project from day 1; governments would regulate it while some private company or collection of private companies would collectively build it. The same types of individuals with all the power and money right now who are destroying our current system would be just as likely to do the same to that system. Sure, we could try to open-source the entire thing, have it all transparent and public … I would anticipate that being a facade with hidden fuckery injected during the deployment stages or thereafter.
→ More replies (10)
94
u/GGsafterdark 6h ago
It’s because they have zero media literacy and actively think reading into a movies messages and themes is stupid. Real “The curtains are blue/it’s not that deep” type mindset. They’re the kind of people who watch Starship Troopers and just think it’s a fun movie about killing alien bugs with nothing else to say.
28
u/Dat_Boi_Henke 6h ago
No no no, they think they get the meaning behind Starship Troopers.
They just think it isn't satirical and that it is awesome, and that society should be modelled after it.
33
u/PatchyWhiskers 6h ago
They watch the Hunger Games and want to be President Snow.
28
13
u/decrpt 4h ago
There's an actual example coming out soon.
“In other adaptations, Scrooge is kind of an asshole, and then the rest of the characters are benevolent, perfect people. And it was really our goal to try to balance that out to say that there’s much more of a gray area in the story,” he says. “We want to give Scrooge logic and a good argument, so when he is making an argument about something, he’s not wrong.”
West believes Depp brought that balance between grumpiness and sympathy. “As his Scrooge cuts someone down verbally or as he makes a financial point or withdraws, you do understand why he’s doing it,” he says. “You kind of agree with him even though you shouldn’t. That’s, I think, what makes this special. You find yourself liking a character that you’re not supposed to on paper, which then brings you as the audience into the movie more because you’re experiencing the movie subjectively as he is, rather than just seeing it as a play.”
Can't wait to see Scrooge destroy Tiny Tim with facts and logic. The moral of the story is, of course, that Tiny Tim just needed to work harder.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Matthias720 4h ago
On the one hand, there's something to be said for reexamining classic literature from another angle. On the other hand, there's something to be said for not ignoring the central thesis of said literature being that the "bad guy" is "bad" not simply "misunderstood". Ebeneezer Scrooge is a miserly curmudgeon who has to learn that times of celebration and giving are better than hoarding like Smaug. Certainly, explore why he's a miser, but don't undercut the fact that his miserly ways are wrong.
→ More replies (1)11
u/gearstars 6h ago
Media literacy was murdered years ago and it's dessicated corpse is being dragged through a wasteland by a cybertruck. The amount of matter-of-fact, literal description of intentions and motivations expository dialog in modern media demonstrates how any understanding of context, subtext and nuance is long dead
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (18)8
28
u/thecatandthependulum 6h ago
I don't like this idea that being fascinated with future tech is the problem. It's their personalities.
→ More replies (7)
56
u/HairyDust4826 7h ago
What a boring 13 yr old mind. As a 13 year old boy, I wanted to be a pokemon trainer and summon a blue eyes white dragon megazord to battle Mecha Godzilla while hanging out with aslaan in middle earth.
→ More replies (5)31
u/ByEthanFox 6h ago
In fairness though, that's kinda the problem. All my fantasies were the same; I wanted to be a weird mix of Ryu from Streetfighter, Goku and a samurai, with a bionic arm, and to save the planet from the aliens from Macross with my giant robot. But in retrospect, all my fantasies were juvenile not because they involved the Power Rangers but because, in all of them, I was the undisputed, godlike hero that everyone wanted to fawn over.
I think, when it comes down to it, a lot of people in tech were lonely as children and teens. We were probably not the best-looking (even if some of us fortunately did pretty well out of puberty), maybe socially awkward, maybe not talented in a showmanship-sorta-way.
A mature person kinda grows out of that fantasy of wanting to be a rockstar with a crowd of 50k people screaming their name, because even the genuine rockstars that end up in that scenario are in it for their music, for their craft, not just for the audience. And while we might imagine accepting an Oscar in the shower using a shampoo bottle as a prop, it's a fantasy we have for a sec, then get on with our day.
I think some of the tech billionaires are stunted, emotionally. They never grew out of that phase. They just want to be seen as a polymath, genius and luminary, and the tech is just a means to that end. I know of one very prominent, very wealthy example that I feel represents this extremely well.
Fact of the matter is, no matter how rich you might be, how far you might go, how many "followers" a website tells you that you have, how many sports cars you keep in a garage or how many miles you might fly in your private planes... In the middle of the night, when you wake up and stare at the ceiling, you're alone with just yourself. And all of the gold in the world won't help if, in that moment, you can't face that you're a fucking loser.
→ More replies (2)7
u/veggiesama 6h ago
I'm pretty sure my Robotech/Macross fantasy was just to get trapped on a ship with Lynn Minmei and be forced to eat giant space tuna.
7
u/ByEthanFox 6h ago
Yeah, admittedly, there were elements to my fantasy too that I've left out of this. I felt it would distract too much from the point. I won't go into much more detail but that analogy comes to mind of the dog chasing the car, with no idea what he would do if he ever actually caught it.
8
u/braunyakka 2h ago
Elon Musk's entire business empire is just based on he saw Total Recall one time:
Get your ass to Mars: SpaceX
Johnny Cab: Tesla
Recall: Neurolink
Martian Tunnels: The Boring Company
→ More replies (1)
14
u/RichieLT 6h ago
We wanted Star Trek not Dune!
→ More replies (3)4
u/chaosfire235 4h ago
Even Star Trek had a very tumultuously dystopic few decades before getting to the Federation though. So maybe we're on track :V
→ More replies (1)
7
7
u/Loki-L 6h ago
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.
But really, nothing can be more tone deaf than Musk naming his barges after Ian Bank Culture novel ships (You know the ones with the Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism).
Zuckerberg naming his company after the thing from Snowcrash comes close though.
17
u/Dude_I_got_a_DWAVE 6h ago
Robert Heinline would hate Grok.
15
u/PatchyWhiskers 6h ago
He’d fucking love bitcoin though
→ More replies (2)11
u/Vindicator9000 6h ago edited 2h ago
He wrote quite a bit about fiat currency and where it derives its value: Something is as valuable as what you can buy with it. At times, he criticized the uncoupling of the dollar from the gold standard. At other times (I'm thinking Lazarus in Time Enough for Love), he has a character cleverly manipulate local fiat banknotes to his own advantage.
I think Heinlein would be somewhat ambivalent to Bitcoin: He would appreciate its anonymizing characteristics (the guy was a fanatic for privacy), which acknowledging its inherent worthlessness. Heinlein characters often work within (and manipulate) societal and economic systems that they disagree with.
Heinlein is kind of the poster child for 'what I write isn't necessarily what I believe.' He truly thought SF meant "speculative fiction," as in, given this futuristic premise, what would be its realistic effects on society?
5
u/lodemeup 6h ago
I’m pretty dumb about stuff, but I want a world where things are better for people, even if that means slowing down technological progress. These mooks are so capital brained that they want saleable products at any cost. They’ve gotten so good at getting people to be their little sacrifices in every way because people have the money and make the money. Money money money. Even the technology is dog water. So we have a handful of fools gathering and wielding power to make stupid stuff to sell to stupid people and the tech isn’t even that good.
5
11
u/HomerDoakQuarlesIII 6h ago
I would not give them credit for "building our world", they built their own worlds and fortunes by taking from our world.
You remove anyone of these people and their contributions to society, you get massive net positive return. We need nothing they made, it's all widgets and convenience, never something we couldn't do before them.
4
u/Vesuvias 6h ago
OR they realize the power that they can hold at the top while continuing to push other down further. This is the ‘payback’ they give
4
u/kev11n 6h ago
I read a lot of scifi and fantasy and I honestly can’t wrap my brain around their misunderstandings and misinterpretations
→ More replies (1)
6
4
u/theBigDaddio 5h ago
Star Wars has made fascism more palatable and compelling for an entire generation of boys.
5
u/interwovengirl 5h ago
Tech bro: invents skynet
Same tech bro: oh look I recreated my favorite story “don’t make skynet”
3
u/Shdwrptr 4h ago
These people are the ones who played Bioshock and thought that Andrew Ryan was a true visionary
4
u/timeshifter_ 3h ago
They read about oppression and chose to become the oppressors.
4
u/Solesky1 3h ago
Best I've ever seen it summed up is "some people see how we're trapped under the boot of capitalism and fantasize about destroying the boot. Some people see how we're trapped under the boot of capitalism and fantasize about wearing the boot."
769
u/TheAngryCrusader 6h ago
Let’s not make this sound any better than it is. These are controlling delusional psychopaths who think a strong arm on society is the best path forward. The issue is, their value and belief systems are so far removed from reality it’s impossible to work.