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'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

missionlocal.org

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Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#211

Post by asddubs »

raffraffraff wrote: post #199
minimaxir wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more the state of modern social media. Post Elon acquisition, many influential tech figures have discovered that being a provocateur on Twitter/X is more consistently successful at building an audience than genuine insight.

This was the case pre Elon too. It's human nature. People are social creatures and they love to join some fight as long as they have their own comrades with them. My wife spent years on Twitter embroiled in a very long running and bitter political / rights issue. She was always thoughtful, insightful etc. She'd spend 10 minutes rewording a single tweet to make sure it got the real point across in a way that wasn't in…

thoughtful posts are boring, especially if you already agree with them. but people love a good spectacle

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#212

Post by vidarh »

renewiltord wrote: post #80
badrequest wrote: post #47

> Tan, for his part, apologized over the weekend, noting that his post was a reference to a Tupac Shakur lyric Ah, so if it's a quote, it doesn't matter, because even though you've decided when to use them, they're not "your words" Thanks, going to publish press releases with Cannibal Corpse lyrics going forward.

You know, like a Che T-shirt doesn't mean you're endorsing the killing of political prisoners and stuff. Or that a George Washington statue endorses slavery. It's like a "you came at me but I'm going to beat you" lyric, not literally as Tupac meant it. Whatever, it's not intended to mean killing someone. But you have to be a colossal dumbfuck to say it like that to a bunch of people wise in the ways of the street pol…

Most people who see a Che t-shirt don't know who he was, only that his face shows up a lot.

The problem isn't referencing something or someone, but doing so expecting those on the receiving end to know the reference and not take it at face value.

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#213

Post by vlovich123 »

tempsy wrote: post #191
dymk wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t pretend it’s anywhere near a free market as is. It’s nigh impossible to build new or denser inventory there.

Yeah that’s not true there’s plenty of half empty apartments all over soma and mission bay

And a vacancy tax would force developers to finish projects or abandon them completely so someone else can at a lower price.

If it’s set where it’s cheaper to hang onto the vacancy until rents rise again and finish the build then, it’s a problem.

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#214

Post by explaininjs »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196
bhawks wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is a quote (which I didn't know) moves it out of the extremely disturbing category and into the extremely cringe & very disappointing category. SF politics is a clown show on all sides - Garry has lost serious credibility that he could play some part in cleaning it up. I think he knows that.

To me, it's extremely disturbing that someone would consider this whole thing as extremely disturbing in the first place. Whether people in the US are extremely oversenstive to tweets and words, or that the tweets and words have the power to suddenly make regular people hateful and violent - neither of those states are normal . Either that, or the country really is a few Twitter sparks away from civil war, which agai…

While on one hand I agree that getting this worked up over speech is weird, Gary is a (not so) unique case in that when he is able to incite the Twitter activist mob mentality on his side, against other people’s speech, he will happily do so with no hesitation whatsoever.

A while back somebody put up some stickers with his face on an octopus and the tentacles holding his various assets. The Twitter mafia went all out saying this was clearly racist and totally unacceptable in civil society, because of some prior art where an asian individual was offensively caricaturized atop an octopus. I tired to point out that the octopus has been used as a symbol of a many faceted organization since forever, and the racist aspect of the prior art wasn’t the octopus but rather the ridiculous caricaturization. The picture of Gary used in his octopus was a totally normal photo, so the racist prior art was of no consequence. Gary somehow saw my comment and decided to launch a tweet thread telling his hundreds of thousands of followers what a terrible racist horrible idiotic person I am, which resulted in a huge hacking campaign being launched against various little personal projects I had posted on my Twitter.

Ugh.

I don’t use Twitter anymore.

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#215

Post by oneepic »

Of course he's probably getting kicked out of YC for this, but I still feel that most politicians (and tech leaders too, actually) say the same worthless points and don't really do much good in the world. In some ways, I'm more interested in Tan.

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#217

Post by timmytokyo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196
bhawks wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is a quote (which I didn't know) moves it out of the extremely disturbing category and into the extremely cringe & very disappointing category. SF politics is a clown show on all sides - Garry has lost serious credibility that he could play some part in cleaning it up. I think he knows that.

To me, it's extremely disturbing that someone would consider this whole thing as extremely disturbing in the first place. Whether people in the US are extremely oversenstive to tweets and words, or that the tweets and words have the power to suddenly make regular people hateful and violent - neither of those states are normal . Either that, or the country really is a few Twitter sparks away from civil war, which agai…

Your comment seems to suggest that you're viewing this event from outside the US. If so, perhaps you're unaware of the dangerous and recent rise in violent political rhetoric here. Garry Tan is a prominent and powerful person in the tech industry, and his words carry weight. When he rips violent lyrics out of a hip-hop song and refashions them into a political rant, he's pouring more fuel on a fire that's starting to burn out of control.

Garry Tan should know better. As an earlier article mentioned [1], he was previously quoted as saying "this kind of stuff should have zero place in San Francisco politics," referring to an activist's taunt that millionaires and landlords should be guillotined.

[1] https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#218

Post by publius_0xf3 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #196
bhawks wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is a quote (which I didn't know) moves it out of the extremely disturbing category and into the extremely cringe & very disappointing category. SF politics is a clown show on all sides - Garry has lost serious credibility that he could play some part in cleaning it up. I think he knows that.

To me, it's extremely disturbing that someone would consider this whole thing as extremely disturbing in the first place. Whether people in the US are extremely oversenstive to tweets and words, or that the tweets and words have the power to suddenly make regular people hateful and violent - neither of those states are normal . Either that, or the country really is a few Twitter sparks away from civil war, which agai…

Where or what do you consider normal? The United States is far from the only place where harsh words provoke outrage, rightly or wrongly. It's actually a cultural and historical norm.

Re: 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant

#219

Post by ugh123 »

badrequest wrote: post #47

> Tan, for his part, apologized over the weekend, noting that his post was a reference to a Tupac Shakur lyric Ah, so if it's a quote, it doesn't matter, because even though you've decided when to use them, they're not "your words" Thanks, going to publish press releases with Cannibal Corpse lyrics going forward.

So, he "re-tweeted" Tupac but does not endorse it? :)
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