This site has a lot of interesting people that did and do interesting "hacker" type things that keep me coming back, but a lot of commenting is people looking to build things of questionable value, legality, or social good and sell them off and gtfo before the cracks show.
Less "Hacker" More "Greed via Computer" So the idea that they aren't bothered by Mr Beast's lack of integrity is because they too find deceit acceptable so long as they profit. Because, someone else before him did, so why shouldn't he? It's toxic greed all the way down in this view.
the bizarre social Darwinism nonsense that permeates the internet has done a nice job of taking this antisocial mindset - passersby at a glance recognize it quite rightly as the ideology of the asshole - and rebranded it as 'smart' and a mere recognition of the 'real world' (much to the confusion of people succeeding and enjoying the company of others doing so without robbing one another)
Read it again slower ;) There's no outrage, and there's no us vs them. unless you identify personally with greed. I never thought of greed as a 'them' - are you a greed?
Thank you for putting this in words; it's been rattling around in my head too.
I feel like the Peter Thiel world has eaten the Moxie Marlinspike world, and this is such a huge, monstrous loss for intellectual curiosity, individual liberty, and human flourishing.
I disagree with the GP simply because this has been the state of the world since, well, forever. Witness the entire hippie and rock culture of the 60s and beyond. Imbalance of wealth and non-proportionality to labour has been a topic for millenia, not for decades.
And this has not led to any loss of intellectual curiosity or "eaten" any of the non-mainstream world.
Basically, there is always the mainstream, and there is always the counter-culture. HN lives in this weird mixture where it brings together both profit-seeking minds, but also is majorly a community of rebel types (hackers, freedom [not just software] aficionados and academics, just to name a few — and obviously, not all of them are the rebel types, but they are certainly not the "mainstream").
And each of us also lives somewhere on that N-dimensional continuum between searching for profit, fame/recognition, other mainstream behaviours and personal values which don't align with the "mainstream".
the insightful intelligent discourse that this site's audience brings often lets the darker side of that blessing - resentment for the successful - to surface.
whether that is convenient altruism masquerading as a disdain for greed or sheer jealousy at their own lack of agency or fortuna or virtu is for their own ego to
hopefully one day confront.
Less "Hacker" More "Greed via Computer" So the idea that they aren't bothered by Mr Beast's lack of integrity is because they too find deceit acceptable so long as they profit. Because, someone else before him did, so why shouldn't he? It's toxic greed all the way down in this view.
the bizarre social Darwinism nonsense that permeates the internet has done a nice job of taking this antisocial mindset - passersby at a glance recognize it quite rightly as the ideology of the asshole - and rebranded it as 'smart' and a mere recognition of the 'real world' (much to the confusion of people succeeding and enjoying the company of others doing so without robbing one another)