In Mountain View, the platform for the VTA light rail is on the northbound side of the Caltrain tracks, between Castro Street and the Caltrain platform. And in the last couple of years, the afternoon commute hours have seen it turn into a straight-up bike boulevard. Anytime between 5 and 6 PM on a weekday, one can watch bicycle after bicycle whizzing down the platform, directly beneath the multiple signs saying “No biking, skateboarding or rollerblading on the platform.”
Here’s the thing: the light rail platform doesn’t turn into a bike boulevard in the morning, as far as I’ve observed. Only in the afternoon – when the bike traffic is headed for the northbound train, back to San Francisco. And of necessity, that bike traffic must be coming from the other side of Central Expressway, or the VTA platform would be out of the way. Where reposes a certain Internet search giant. In short, it’s almost a lock that the majority of these malfeasant cyclists are tech employees headed back to San Francisco after work.
So why do I point this out? Partly to shame VTA for their utter indifference – an agency that runs their light rail system with performance and efficiency more suited to Thomas the Tank Engine – but more to illustrate the same kind of thinking that led to one Pax Dickinson being catapulted into a swamp by Business Insider the morning after the technology Internet press absolutely went in on his outrageously unprofessional and dicktastic Twitter account.
There is a problem in Silicon Valley. In a way it’s always been here – for decades, this has been an industry largely populated by the socially inept, the Asperger’s-diagnosed, the kind of people who retreat into technology because they’re not well-suited for the real world. Not coincidentally, it was overwhelmingly male, and developed the sort of “no girls allowed” thinking one might associate with, say, Dungeons and Dragons night in 5th grade.
That’s changed this time out. In the current bubble, the “brogrammer” phenomenon is reaching critical mass. The kinds of big swinging dicks that would inevitably have gone into big finance in the 1980s are all switching their Stanford major from business to computer science, and along the way, the usual sort of paste-eater who populates the industry is starting to decide that if he gels up his hair, throws on some aviators, dresses like a Jersey Shore understudy and talks like a Tucker Max message board, he too (it’s always he) can be cool and awesome and live the big life.
Time was, being somebody who was incapable of taking other people into consideration was a flaw. It was something to be frowned upon, something you had to work to correct, a source of embarrassment if not outright shame. And yet, sometime since the last bubble, it was apparently decided that being a complete and utter douchebag was not a bad thing, but was in fact something to aspire to. Something that showed how “edgy” and “disruptive” you were, how you were free from the chains of “political correctness” (which, in my experience, usually means “manners”) and how you were so great and powerful that you didn’t have to play by the normal rules of society. Somewhere along the way, being an utter asshole ceased to be a socially and career-limiting move.
Thing is, Larry Ellison built Oracle into a world-class database company despite being regarded as the biggest swine in the Valley. Steve Jobs made an incredible comeback at Apple only after being humbled by ten years in the wilderness and despite the temperament of a French film director. Tony Stark is a fictional character. Successful people who are jerks tend to accomplish this success despite being jerks. If all it took to be wildly successful was to just be an asshole, Wall Street wouldn’t have had to beg Uncle Sam to pick up the tab in 2008 and Pax Dickinson’s boss wouldn’t be permanently banned from the securities industry for insider trading and deceptive practices.
So, dear millennial bros of Silicon Valley, take it to heart before you’re too old to check yourself: nothing you bring to the table justifies what you take off it. It’s not okay to be racist. It’s not okay to be sexist. It’s not okay to be an utter asshole. You live in a society, and taking a big shit on the basic rules of decent human interaction doesn’t make you clever, or revolutionary, or special – it makes you a dick.
And try walking your fucking bike on the goddamn train platform.