It seems that wider society is just starting to realize that the pedestal that we have put many tech bros on is maybe not the most strategic or healthy. And that perhaps we should talk about this a bit.
I’m glad y’all are here, but you’re also late to the party, and here’s how.
I grew up with two siblings, one of whom died in an untimely manner in 2014 (I have written publicly about this but will not be linking it here). The other is alive and very much a tech bro, and we are extraordinarily estranged.
As far as I am concerned, the estrangement is very much a relief and extremely necessary. It is, as much as anything in this situation can be, my choice. And also it will likely get worse before it gets better — a fact which I have accepted, and for which I am preparing as much as I can.
Now on to societal tech bros, including many behind the current AI BOOM (and that’s BOOM as in “oh shit we blew something up we didn’t intend to,” not BOOM as in productivity). They’ve been vested with enormous power, but more so, adulation. And I think you underestimate just how much that adulation means to them: It means everything, more than money (though that means a great deal too); more than the process of building stuff; more than keggers. More than, idk, girls.
And they are committed to continuing to get that adulation. By whatever means necessary.
You can keep winking at them and saying, “Let’s just feed them to get what we want; they don’t mean what they say; they don’t mean what they do, when it doesn’t match what they say; man, they’re socially awkward so let’s not put too much stock in what they say or do, period.” I really don’t care what your rationalizations are, at the end of the day. Nor do they.
But in terms of understanding just how entangled you are and what your options are, you must understand that the adulation which you have afforded them over the past decades is baked in at this point. You couldn’t withdraw it wholesale if you wanted to. You are programmed to give it in ways that can’t easily be undone, just as much as they are programmed to receive and feed on it.
So does that mean your only option is some other form of extrication? Of estrangement? No, not necessarily. Social dynamics are different than family ones (much as toxic social ones can fuel family dysfunction like nobody’s business). You do have other options for autonomy, for containing the damage, and for control.
But first you must recognize how entangled you are, and where the adulation you are providing comes from — what you get from giving it, not just how they receive it on their end. How all of this means that the whole situation is likely to deteriorate first before it can get better; but it can get better in the longer term.
This doesn’t mean that you should give into prognostications of doom, just that should take stock of the situation now, all of it, including what you have invested to keep it going.
Because you have invested. A lot. And that investment has likely come to the fore in your mind in some way just in the minutes it took you to read this.
Good. And know that I deliberately started it with hints at my own family drama before putting the lid on that, while continuing to reference it obliquely. Because as much as my situation is likely to deteriorate further, I am also engaged in actively containing exactly how bad it can get.
I want to thrive too, but it may take a generation or more to undo some of the worst things that have been baked in. And I am okay with that. It is not about me exactly or what I individually manage to accomplish before I am gone.
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