{"id":2289,"date":"2016-02-17T09:43:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2289"},"modified":"2016-02-17T09:43:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T17:43:03","slug":"another-day-another-dumbass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2289","title":{"rendered":"Another day, another dumbass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another young white startup founder has reacted in horror<\/a> that a modern urban environment has a problem with homelessness. And reacted in horror that people somehow found his remarks objectionable, as if begging for capital on Kickstarter was somehow morally superior to begging for subsistence on Market Street and not just a matter of degree and Maslow. It\u2019s of a piece with the other shitbags who seem to surface once a year – the Peter Shih and Greg Gopman types who are appalled that their hip downtown Disneyland is actually a real city with real problems that aren\u2019t solved by companies that get tax breaks so they can come up with new ways to try to get nudes from coeds.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I wonder if the continuing tech bro problem isn\u2019t the inevitable result of kids who never have to face real problems. Grow up in a nicely-coddled bubble, head to Stanford (but I repeat myself) and then have money dumped in buckets on whatever stupid idea you have\u2026and when it goes bust, get more buckets dumped on you, because failure is now some kind of badge of honor. Ten years ago, I defined a charmed life as \u201cfreedom from the consequences of your actions\u201d and in a world where your mother will descend like a fucking Navy SEAL on a fast-rope to argue that you deserved better than a B+ in handwriting, it\u2019s easy to see how the bros get like this in San Francisco, or on Reddit, or in any sort of shared environment (looking at you, Twitter). \u00a0When nothing bad can happen, and the worst is that you\u2019ll have to work for someone instead of gulping down sweet sweet Y Combinator money, you don\u2019t even have to acknowledge that other people exist.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s probably why I see that thing about \u201cWhat would you do if you knew you could not fail?\u201d and want to throw a brick through the window. Because I\u2019d teleport to London and drink a Guinness. But guess what? You can<\/em> fail. Failure is a real thing that real people have to content with, and sometimes it means worse things than having to get your friend\u2019s frat brother\u2019s dad to cough up another angel round. Sometimes it means changing careers, sometimes changing states, sometimes losing your car, or your house, or your loved ones. Fear of failing – fear of real consequences – is how you keep from doing stupid shit. It\u2019s how you achieve self-reliance. It\u2019s what you do when your folks aren\u2019t holding a net under you in case you go boo-boo.<\/p>\n

This sort of thing is the result of permanent adolescence (and it\u2019s not lost on me that this clown\u2019s essay was written at about the sophistication level of a ninth grader writing a theme on What I Saw In The Big City). Maybe the biggest part of growing up is knowing that there are other people, that there are rules and limits in a society, and that getting along means not taking a huge public shit on people less fortunate than you. It means that we have to stop treating \u201cfounder and CEO\u201d as if it means any more than \u201cPresident of the Backyard Mutant Avenger Club,\u201d because it doesn\u2019t. The guys behind the counter slinging pizza or tacos, the bus and train operators keeping things moving, the woman who makes sure the trash isn\u2019t overflowing your shared kindergarten table after hours when you\u2019re not there – these people are every one of them far more important to the function of this society than the \u201cfounder CEO\u201d of an investor-owned pre-IPO server management company that doesn\u2019t clear seven figures of revenue a year.<\/p>\n

These swine think this town and this valley rightfully belong to them. What are you prepared to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another young white startup founder has reacted in horror that a modern urban environment has a problem with homelessness. And reacted in horror that people somehow found his remarks objectionable, as if begging for capital on Kickstarter was somehow morally superior to begging for subsistence on Market Street and not just a matter of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Another day, another dumbass”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}