> Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, ...
...because their "volunteering culture" comes off as too little too late.
It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row.
Let me point out one aspect that seems lost on a lot of downtown techies: They see you. The bums and druggies and wastoids see the kids with wealth and success and not-fucked-up-ness of life and they resent it and them. Right or wrong, it's human nature. So yeah, Twitter was never about solving Civic Center's outdoor Bedlam, so they're never going to get credit for saving the world when they are squatting in hell clearly not saving shit. Eh?
> Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible.
> Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.
It's not impossible, but what you're talking about isn't "being a good neighbor" you're just complaining that people are blaming tech for their problems (whether it's true or not.)
(And don't get me started on Zuckerberg's gross purchased virtue signalling. He paid for a hospital, put his name on it so everyone would know, and now I can't talk shit about him and the problems his massive wealth and bewheemoth company are causing, because it makes me look like an ingrate!? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.)
> I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome.
Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth.
> The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.
Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians. This is a city of love, not self-hate. (Insert off-color joke about Castro, gay culture, learning to overcome hate and self-hate to love yourself and others freely, etc. just as a reminder that this city has been so many things to so many people in it's brief and drama-filled life.)
> And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery?
Again, no one worth respecting wants you to be miserable or to hate yourself.
I don't know you or what you've personally experienced here, so I can't speak to that (I can't even figure out why most people don't like me.) If you came here since ~2001 you're already too late, the culture of welcoming was already thrashed by then. ("Dot-Com Boom", yeah?)
A lot of the community has been pushed out, and most of us who remain are wary of the new wave of techie folks, or yes, outright hostile.
> I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome.
So go somewhere else? I don't mean that in a mean or disrespectful way. I'm a proponent of the idea that just moving somewhere else can be an excellent way to solve problems. It's not a panacea, of course, but it often does the trick.
Maybe you're not weird enough to hang with the old skool SF crowd. It's not a reflection on you. SF has long been the city of crazies. This whole tech-Mecca thing is hella recent. Less than a generation.
The old joke: "All the crazy people in America move to California, and all the crazy people in California move to SF. (And if you're too crazy for SF you move to Berkeley.)"
- - - -
Benioff gets a pass because he supported Proposition C.
> It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row.
I remember SF city government going out of their way to try to get actual businesses in there. Clearly Twitter made the egregious error of trying to play ball with the city government.
> Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
Yes.
The answers ranged from "fuck you" to "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity, give your job to a QTPOC, and leave". None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.
> Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians
I don't hang out with them if I can help it. I just meet the ones who lambast millions of dollars to charity as bad (when it's people they dislike) and characterize SF's xenophobic policies as love. Who obsess over SF's supposed weirdness while resenting people who don't conform to their expectations. Who make excuses for treating migrants with hostility, and expect them to understand as they refuse to return the favor.
I cut them out of my life as quickly as I can, because I have very little tolerance for that kind of hypocritical xenophobia.
The old skool SF types seem to like me. I've got a kind of weird they appreciate. The new skool, on the other hand...
----
But I'll play along. What can I do to gain a welcome?
> I remember SF city government going out of their way to try to get actual businesses in there. Clearly Twitter made the egregious error of trying to play ball with the city government.
Sure but SF gov and SF culture aren't co-extensive. A lot of us were not happy with what City Hall did to make that deal go through.
Also, it's not a case of wily city officials tricking Twitter is it?
>> Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
> Yes.
> The answers ranged from "fuck you" to "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity, give your job to a QTPOC, and leave". None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.
Well,
> "fuck you"
Let's discount that one right off, eh?
> "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity, ...
That is actually good advice, or at least similar to what Jesus said. But a bit extreme if you're not feeling it.
> "...give your job to a QTPOC, and leave"
Hmm, well that's back in the "discount right off" bin, eh?
> None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.
Well then, who the hell are these folks? It may be that you're just talking to loud mouths and freaks.
> I don't hang out with them if I can help it. I just meet the ones who lambast millions of dollars to charity as bad (when it's people they dislike) and characterize SF's xenophobic policies as love. Who obsess over SF's supposed weirdness while resenting people who don't conform to their expectations. Who make excuses for treating migrants with hostility, and expect them to understand as they refuse to return the favor.
Yeah, to me it sounds like you've gotten an earful from some of the louder and less hip freaks. Ignore them, they're loud and ineffectual.
I once had a Marxist roommate who tripped a circuit-breaker by trying to move an external electric socket to let a bookshelf be set flush with the wall. She went at a live circuit with a screwdriver! This person was over fifty yet didn't know enough about home electrical wiring not to stick a screwdriver in a live socket, but somehow felt that she knew how a city or country should be governed!?
So yeah, pick your friends wisely, there are a lot of losers here (because this is the town you move to if you can't make it in Cleveland or wherever.)
Remember that Burning Man started here as a fire-on-the-beach birthday celebration, eh?
> The old skool SF types seem to like me. I've got a kind of weird they appreciate. The new skool, on the other hand...
So you are sharing and understanding the problem?
----
> But I'll play along. What can I do to gain a welcome?
> Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth.
JWZ's struggles with San Francisco about the DNA Lounge were quite legendary and that was prior to 2001.
SF was welcoming as long as you were buying shitty property in a shitty area and helping to gentrify it. Anything else and they fought you tooth and nail.
The difference now is that all the shitty property is gone.
Okay, I hate him now. (Just kidding. I will admit that I am not upset by this in the same way that Zuckerberg's thing makes me feel. FWIW, I'll examine that personally on my own time.)
> got a pass well before Prop C came along.
You mean he didn't suddenly become cool circa Prop C?
I find it slightly ironic that in one post you're complaining that when it comes to supporting the community "nobody cares, except to criticize", then a post or two later a dude's gifted a load of money to a children's hospital and you describe that as "buying his name on a hospital"
I was deliberating mirroring my interlocutor's phrasing to make a point. One was resented, and used as a point against the person. The other passed unremarked.
As a rhetorical flourish, it did it was intended to do and exposed an apparent double standard.
A better solution is to simply stop caring about the opinions of the entrenched SF special interest groups and simply go on with one's life, and ignore the attacks that are never going to go away.
Those entrenched groups are getting less powerful by the day, anyway. Their opinions can't be change, and they aren't going to matter much soon.
And the other, newer, techie focused groups are getting more influence.
There isn't much point in "negotiating" with the entrenched groups when they are never going to be convinced, and you can just usurp them instead.
...because their "volunteering culture" comes off as too little too late.
It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row.
Let me point out one aspect that seems lost on a lot of downtown techies: They see you. The bums and druggies and wastoids see the kids with wealth and success and not-fucked-up-ness of life and they resent it and them. Right or wrong, it's human nature. So yeah, Twitter was never about solving Civic Center's outdoor Bedlam, so they're never going to get credit for saving the world when they are squatting in hell clearly not saving shit. Eh?
> Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible.
Ask Rainbow Grocery. https://rainbow.coop/ No one blames them for anything.
> Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.
It's not impossible, but what you're talking about isn't "being a good neighbor" you're just complaining that people are blaming tech for their problems (whether it's true or not.)
(And don't get me started on Zuckerberg's gross purchased virtue signalling. He paid for a hospital, put his name on it so everyone would know, and now I can't talk shit about him and the problems his massive wealth and bewheemoth company are causing, because it makes me look like an ingrate!? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.)
> I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome.
Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"
Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth.
> The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.
Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians. This is a city of love, not self-hate. (Insert off-color joke about Castro, gay culture, learning to overcome hate and self-hate to love yourself and others freely, etc. just as a reminder that this city has been so many things to so many people in it's brief and drama-filled life.)
> And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery?
Again, no one worth respecting wants you to be miserable or to hate yourself.
I don't know you or what you've personally experienced here, so I can't speak to that (I can't even figure out why most people don't like me.) If you came here since ~2001 you're already too late, the culture of welcoming was already thrashed by then. ("Dot-Com Boom", yeah?)
A lot of the community has been pushed out, and most of us who remain are wary of the new wave of techie folks, or yes, outright hostile.
> I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome.
So go somewhere else? I don't mean that in a mean or disrespectful way. I'm a proponent of the idea that just moving somewhere else can be an excellent way to solve problems. It's not a panacea, of course, but it often does the trick.
Maybe you're not weird enough to hang with the old skool SF crowd. It's not a reflection on you. SF has long been the city of crazies. This whole tech-Mecca thing is hella recent. Less than a generation.
The old joke: "All the crazy people in America move to California, and all the crazy people in California move to SF. (And if you're too crazy for SF you move to Berkeley.)"
- - - -
Benioff gets a pass because he supported Proposition C.
https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-homeless...