It is a great article. Zuck is trash and just another example of an insecure man who is all about "winning" with no regard to reason or sensibility. Silly dweeb. Has his wife left him yet?
The main issue with this post is that we need to review what capitalism means. It just means that the producer gets to keep the spoils of her own labor.
*Capital (latin) - personal wealth*
The most socialist people on the planet are the ones who rule it. They redistribute wealth.. mostly to themselves. That's the scheme. Get people to agree that "it's ok to steal (ex: taxes) as long as it's for a good cause". Then with their PERMISSION you can steal tons of wealth and toss out a few crumbs in the form of social programs, keep the lion's share for yourself.
This is why the people in charge often call themselves capitalists. Do you think they tell the truth to us? No. They are using their own horrible reps to misrepresent capitalism. THEY ARE SOCIALIST and they know it. The creepfest Vatican is at least open about it.
There is no such thing as a benevolent ruler. The benevolent absolutely refuse to rule over another.
The answer is anarchy (from the greek, it means "no rulers"). Until we understand that, we will not advance far. All we need is about 8-9 out of every hundred people to get onboard and that will be that. We don't need a group; we need to get on the same page by agreeing on the fundamentals of right and wrong. Unity is a byproduct, not the objective.
Once we get on the same page by understanding the absolute truths of the world we live in, we will not need to organize. We will just individually stand up and say NO, and that will be the end of the rulership.
My vow this year is to give as little money as possible to billionaires. No Prime. No Facebook ads. Minimal Amazon orders and instead ordering directly from manufacturers or buying things locally. I'm obviously not on X. If Facebook turns into a cesspool, I might need to get off there, but I don't yet have a good alternative to Facebook and Instagram.
"but I don't yet have a good alternative to Facebook and Instagram."
That part is tough. I'm in a couple bands and I'm not sure how else to promote our shows, apart from flyers and word of mouth, both of which are much harder now that I'm an adult with an adult job.
- individual action will never be enough. we need to organize and create alternatives communally.
- if you aren't willing to disrupt your "regular adult life", that's a major limitation to your own power to fight the system.
as long as people, especially those inside the US Empire, hold on to crumbs of comfort provided by the bloodthirsty machine they inhabit, it will carry on.
those at the margins, under famine and genocide, have no choice but to fight for themselves. those even barely within the sphere of safety of this system, even if critical, are still kept docile from overwork exhaustion and the melancholy of powerlessness. being in the latter category, the only way out is to allow your empathy and passion to move you to disrupt your own life and fight as if you were in the former.
The problem here is trying to organize a broad based coalition of resistance - and maintaining unity within that broad coalition. It's extremely hard to pull off.
This, indeed, is the hard part. Trying to pull like-minded people together in this day and age to support a cause as a coalition is a daunting task and needs a polarizing figure with broad shoulders and great reach to begin the process of motivating and energizing a base. The left has failed in this Bigly while the Right uses hate, fear, and denigration of the other to be successful.
I am with you. I know I need to break away from FB and Instagram. It's going to be tough, but the fact is, I've lived three-quarters of my life without either and was fine. And it sure would be nice not to waste my time on those platforms... I'll work toward it.
Idk about that, the world is so different now. My friends don't call me anymore, we interact on social media. We might even message on those platforms to make plans. While I would love to quit social media and meet people in real life, I worry that few would join me in that endeavor. Everyone is on their phones out there!
I’m doing the same and it feels great. It helps me reasses my needs and it lets me be proud of who I am supporting with the purchases I do make. I technically still have Insta and FB but I log in rarely, I don’t post, it’s gross there. I never had Twitter. We need to just walk away from these people.
You are correct, it was emotional. I am taking it back, not a good response.
One thing I want to know, do you think there will be something as big as these platforms and be completely unbiased.
For your information X is probably the least boased platform. They have opinions of every side, with very little censorship and community notes, you can research the algorithm of community notes, for now there is nothing that can be more accurate to correct users.
Lawl, sure, little censorship, just as soon as he stops banning journalists he hates, and anyone who dared to respond to his nonsense, you propagandist...
I was recently in a country where internet is patchy to the point that I gave up looking for it and, honestly, I was rarely happier. You don't need social media, they just make money off making you think you do
Turn Up (show up for yourself and your people, what you represent and believe in), tune out (if you're not following goals with purpose your chasing noise), and drop out (of those toxic cultures) once and for all.
Yes, I certainly understand the need to reach clients. If that is holding you from cutting more 'churn' style info (like insta/fb), perhaps consider areas like:
Linked-In - Pro Level showcase and building
Discord - Community centered and 'grows' if nurtured
Youtube - Great to share exciting aspects of your business, including adjacent and one-off brands/communities that will in turn help your community/brand
X - Quick, easy update that requires no work to maintain
Maybe there are other ways to do more word of mouth/viral style marketing, depends on the business and consumer.
Most importantly, we're coming after their status as accepted members of the tribe. People crave acceptance more than anything. If everyone truly rejected these three for their selfish behavior, they would change. And the next wave would take note.
That’s a “customer is always right” type concept. I remember reading decades ago that as technology diminished the difference in products, customer service would become the distinction. In a humanly navigable local market that may be true, but scaled globally (where billionaires become possible), one can safely ignore huge swaths of customers without meaningful consequence. What’s a million more or less to a billionaire?
Our denial of acceptance will be received, super villain style, with the mustachio-twirling rejoinder:
“I’ll show them all. Then they’ll be sorry they didn’t love me when they had the chance!”
Whatever rejection based trauma they suffered in infant hood will not be corrected by more rejection. They are the only ones who can heal themselves, and they are too far gone down their alternative paths to change direction. Don’t expect modern Scrooge’s.
That is the question! I think the answer is to begin by reframing as ‘what can we do?’ and then as individuals we can plug in to those larger efforts. There is, almost undoubtedly, good work being done in your vicinity that you can plug into. It might be something small or it might be a powerful organization, but either way it can make a difference. I hope this is helpful!
Boycott as much as you can. Literally stop spending your money unless necessary. Join a mutual aid group and spend there instead. Don't send dollars to musk, Bezos, zuck, the Waltons, the Sacklers of the world. Don't do fast food, fast fashion, don't buy a bigger home than you need. Work to reduce travel and transit, energy use and meat consumption. Just pick one and start there. Little by little we can each reduce our involvement in these broken systems and impact on our societies and planet.
And don't forget reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The big pollution industry are making out like bandits. Especially with His Orange MAGA Majesty declaring "Drill baby, drill!"
For hands-on work, one organization I’m in has been asking for data entry help, and could probably use other IT assistance. You might see if organizations you’re interested in are looking for anything similar?
OK, so what are we supposed to do? Establish some sort of socialist communist regime, and put all the billionaires in jail? I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk, and it’s an amazing story. Really a kind of rags to riches narrative. He did not come from fabulous wealth. But he is such an OCD personality, very intense, and was able to leverage several large companies into fabulous amounts of financial security. SpaceX is a truly incredible corporation. Tesla is trying to drag the world into an electric future… How is that a bad thing? I think all the hate is kind of mentally unhealthy… Let’s try and grow up.
like i can be total tinfoiled, but if you (elon) makes, electrify that future, it is sure he can control it, why wouldnt he. mo(u)th-to-money, and neofeudalism
Oh wow are you ever singing my song. I'm an unemployed programmer. I feel like the proverbial tree that fell in the woods but nobody was around to hear it.
Isn’t it interesting that all it would take to bring these people down to earth again is unsubscribing. Wouldn’t even take a general strike, just a click delete.
I agree with everything you wrote JP, except the use of "losers." This is the language of bullies like Trump and the rest of them. Why divide the world into losers and winners (or others)? It makes your case sound petty when it's exactly the opposite of that.
They are losers in their own minds because they will never have the wealth and adulation their sociopathy requires. If one of them had it all it would not be enough. While the establishment uses “othering” based on colour, language, religion, ethnicity, sex, etc. as a weapon to divide the masses, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize and call out those who truly are “others”. Nazis, for example. Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos (and I’d include Gates and Thiel) are not only fascists (economic and political corporatists), they, like all capitalists and fascists, will also engage the atrocities of Nazism to retain and enhance their wealth and power. Thus, they are the “other” that we must be aware of and even in their own minds they are losers and that makes them extremely dangerous (like the Israeli war cabinet, for example).
Calling Bill Gates a fascist and a Nazi… This seems completely Looney Tunes and ridiculous. After all the guy dedicated much of his fortune towards eliminating disease like malaria from the Third World. Doesn’t sound like Hitler-type mentality to me.
Another excellent article. As always, you highlight the importance of something I overlooked. In this instance, it is these men’s desire to be liked, seen as normal, and even adored. As we build new societal forms (the grassroots organizing that you aptly promote) that do not lend themselves to cults of personality and we give these new forms the light and air they need to be attractive and healthy, then the shift in public attention away from the oligarchs could be their undoing. The trick is in building forms that no one can take over. The US’s founders thought that they had hit on a good model, but its genocidal, racist, and sexist roots introduced rot from the beginning.
The tech bros’ school of thought purports that exclusivity and dominance move a system forward faster, while inclusivity and sharing mire systems down and introduce stagnation. To counter these claims, we also need a media corps that reports on the gains solidarity movements achieve. We need to show the successes that social movements garner, so public focus turns away from attention-seeking oligarchs and toward nourishing sustainable communities.
I definitely agree that these people would likely not be fun to hangout and their choices of what to do with their money are lame. But I think this piece lacks some important context.
These ultra wealthy people, as well as their sociopathy, are symptoms of the system not guides in creating it. If it’s not these assholes it’ll be others.
The focus should not be on them but on how we can disengage from the system which feeds these people disproportionately. And it’s not just the tech bros, the ultra wealthy in every industry are sociopathic.
So what do we do?
The first step is to earn enough money to own your house outright. This usually also means downsizing a lot and becoming more intentional with spending. Without a mortgage payment you already have more power. Then, work less and use your time to get on top of your food systems. Engage with local farmers to be a part of more resilient and ecologically viable agriculture. Learn to eat seasonally.
With your additional time, learn how to create more independence from the big companies in every aspect of life. Hopefully more doctors will do this and make way for independent health systems.
The only way forward is to create a dual system and drain the current one. The system has too much momentum to be changed at this point. For the initial stage of adulthood when you need to work for the big companies we can leverage unions etc. to at the least make it less unfair.
We must also accept that the current system is already unsustainable and there is no way forward. We simply can’t use the amount of energy that we currently do. Oil will become too energy intensive to extract over the next 25 years and green energy both not scalable and too reliant on non renewables.
It’s going to crash regardless but being proactive will put you in a position of leadership and strength in creating a new phase of beauty and equity on earth. That… is cool imo
You know who wouldn't have done us all this way? Tom. Tom from MySpace wanted to be friends with everyone. Zuck disdained from extending membership outside of specific schools initially and then for years kept it only for universities. I'll never understand why Facebook won when their (stolen) concept wasn't better or easier to use or more accessible.
I place much importance on inception stories; the 'why' behind an inception. And Facebook has the ugliest inception story ever for a big company; these guys wanted to rate hot chicks because they lacked the social skills to connect in person. This energy has spread throughout the world now. The purpose behind the site was to literally perve on girls, and the 'loser' behind this has now been crowned king.
Yes, and not just perv on "girls" - by which we mean WOMEN - but to perv on the ones who attended Harvard. Dude felt pissy about the very existence of "successful" (however superficially) women. So he snagged the headshots of an Ivy League group and reduced them to their looks by rating them with his loser incel buddies. As if attractivenes isn't subjective and as if anyone gaf what some creeps think. Lol.
Zuckerberg works for the deep state. He appears to secretly be of the Rockefeller house. Men like him love being submissive to their masters. They love to steal and take credit and stomp out the competition by any means necessary. His fame and position are totally manufactured.
It's no matter; we will render them all irrelevant. Say bye-bye, deep state.
True, I don't even think initially any of the actual innovators behind social media thought they were building something to get rich from. Livejournal and friendster developers should be wealthy if that were the case.
I am now 2 months out from fully *deleting* my Meta and X accounts, and my brain feels like it is healing, and all the news I am seeing about the integration of AI and removal of fact-checking and upholding of hate speech has just been affirming my decision. It is not an easy choice by any means, for a lot of people it is a necessity, but I wish there could be a mass movement to Boycott Social Media. I still have apps like Discord and Fable (social media version of Goodreads), but there are *so many* reasons to divest from Meta and the like. Amazon is also challenging, but not impossible. I am trying to tell as many people as I can about how nice it has been to go social media free (I didn't "deactivate", I *deleted*), in hopes that it will spread. I don't know what it will take for people to abandon ship on Meta, but the time is coming. Its danger has been proven time and time again, not only in its political influence (and the way it is misused, without our knowledge or consent, and even against the will of the U.S. gov't), but its "psychic damage" as I'd like to call it, which ranges from attention span, self-image, distortion of how we perceive the world, creation of echo chambers, its influence on loneliness, etc. It is time for some very serious changes and divestment. I think that we yearn for it (everyone I talk to says how much they'd "love to quit social media, *but*..."), and the time for action is now. It was "now" a while ago. All well said. If only we could get everybody on board with this idea.
The timing of this article is perfect as Zuckerberg starts rambling on about "neutered companies" and the need for "masculine energy" whatever that means.
I agree that the tech barons are unbearable to listen to and why I basically tune them out. I think it has to do with the lack of respect and the basic human need for acceptance (perhaps from being labeled a "nerd" in the derogatory sense hence their seemingly collective drive to appear hypermasculine). As you so aptly put, the desire for control is a huge problem and one way I think folks like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos try to garner the feeling of acceptance they crave.
Odd that we’re supposed to give two figs as to what they think. Yes they’re just people - we all need to fit in somehow or other - must be hard to be publicly slated even though they apparently give as good as they get!
And to be absolutely clear, I'm certainly not saying their actions are justified. More thinking about driving forces--doesn't eliminate responsibility for their actions and our need to resist their objectives.
I am completely awash in nerds from high school and college friends, and when I went back into the corporate world I brought my nerd shit with me and expressed gratitude when coworkers got their inner nerd on because it meant they were in their bliss over things that mattered. I also never tolerated bullshit or meanness in silence, none of these guys would last ten minutes in a room with me without calling shenanigans on them. I am surrounded now by farmers and social workers and therapists and artists of all kinds and teachers and social justice admins and book club friends and local church people. I miss the days when suck was in front of Senate panels and the older women would dress him down like someone's Mom. He's going to skate, trump is just in time for their antitrust and liability problems. If I could get the cabal of friends off FB ...I had an acct for 20 yrs and NEVER looked at it until the pandemic. There's got to be another way.
I am terrified to be alive at a time where the richest man in the world and the most powerful leader in the world, both sociopathetic clowns with no self-awareness whatsoever, have teamed up to crush the rest of us.
Yes, yes and yes. They all want to be the Weyland Yutani corporation, or the Tyrell Corporation. They want government gone entirely, replaced by technocracy for profit. The one thing not touched on here is that they are willing to literally kill us all in these pursuits. Not just oppress or demean or silence - they will destroy the entire world in their pursuit of unattainable self-satisasction.
Unfortunately, when the chips are down, the left does not come together. People on the left love making the perfect the enemy of the good, or at least the profoundly less bad.
This piece lays bare the absurdity of our era: men who are so profoundly disconnected from themselves, from community, and from the Earth that their only means of seeking fulfillment is hoarding wealth and control. But what we’re seeing isn’t just personal pathology—it’s the predictable outcome of a system built on extraction, violence, and historical trauma.
Capitalism, like colonialism, is a trauma response. It is a structure of disconnection, one that severs people from land, from relationships, and even from their own bodies. The tech oligarchs embody this disconnection in extreme form. Their endless accumulation, their obsession with dominance, their inability to find satisfaction—these aren’t just character flaws. They are the logical end point of a system that has, for centuries, rewarded dissociation, competition, and the numbing of human empathy.
Trauma studies show us that unresolved harm doesn’t disappear—it mutates, repeats, and scales. A society structured around extraction creates individuals who do not know how to relate without control. The billionaire class operates from a place of profound lack, filling the void with power, surveillance, and the destruction of everything they fear might reveal their own emptiness. This is why they invest in AI rather than human relationships, space colonization rather than repairing the world they’ve damaged, digital avatars rather than presence. They are products of intergenerational trauma inflicted by the very system they now uphold.
But here’s the thing: their sickness is not inevitable. It is a wound that can be refused, a pathology that can be unlearned. The solution isn’t just fighting these billionaires—it’s dismantling the colonial-capitalist structure that produces them. Healing requires that we move beyond mere opposition to these men and instead rebuild systems rooted in reciprocity, relational accountability, and collective care.
The last line of this piece is crucial: We have to save ourselves. But to do that, we must remember that there have always been other ways to exist—ways of being that these men and their worldviews have tried to erase. Indigenous knowledge systems, land-based governance, and relational economies have long provided alternatives to extraction and domination. The future doesn’t belong to billionaires desperately seeking to fill a void. It belongs to those of us reclaiming what was never truly lost: the ability to live in connection, rather than control.
Didn’t miss a single beat, sheesh. What powerful work here 💪🏾 speechless
Thank you!!
It is a great article. Zuck is trash and just another example of an insecure man who is all about "winning" with no regard to reason or sensibility. Silly dweeb. Has his wife left him yet?
The main issue with this post is that we need to review what capitalism means. It just means that the producer gets to keep the spoils of her own labor.
*Capital (latin) - personal wealth*
The most socialist people on the planet are the ones who rule it. They redistribute wealth.. mostly to themselves. That's the scheme. Get people to agree that "it's ok to steal (ex: taxes) as long as it's for a good cause". Then with their PERMISSION you can steal tons of wealth and toss out a few crumbs in the form of social programs, keep the lion's share for yourself.
This is why the people in charge often call themselves capitalists. Do you think they tell the truth to us? No. They are using their own horrible reps to misrepresent capitalism. THEY ARE SOCIALIST and they know it. The creepfest Vatican is at least open about it.
There is no such thing as a benevolent ruler. The benevolent absolutely refuse to rule over another.
The answer is anarchy (from the greek, it means "no rulers"). Until we understand that, we will not advance far. All we need is about 8-9 out of every hundred people to get onboard and that will be that. We don't need a group; we need to get on the same page by agreeing on the fundamentals of right and wrong. Unity is a byproduct, not the objective.
Once we get on the same page by understanding the absolute truths of the world we live in, we will not need to organize. We will just individually stand up and say NO, and that will be the end of the rulership.
My vow this year is to give as little money as possible to billionaires. No Prime. No Facebook ads. Minimal Amazon orders and instead ordering directly from manufacturers or buying things locally. I'm obviously not on X. If Facebook turns into a cesspool, I might need to get off there, but I don't yet have a good alternative to Facebook and Instagram.
"but I don't yet have a good alternative to Facebook and Instagram."
That part is tough. I'm in a couple bands and I'm not sure how else to promote our shows, apart from flyers and word of mouth, both of which are much harder now that I'm an adult with an adult job.
that's because of two other traps of the system:
- individual action will never be enough. we need to organize and create alternatives communally.
- if you aren't willing to disrupt your "regular adult life", that's a major limitation to your own power to fight the system.
as long as people, especially those inside the US Empire, hold on to crumbs of comfort provided by the bloodthirsty machine they inhabit, it will carry on.
those at the margins, under famine and genocide, have no choice but to fight for themselves. those even barely within the sphere of safety of this system, even if critical, are still kept docile from overwork exhaustion and the melancholy of powerlessness. being in the latter category, the only way out is to allow your empathy and passion to move you to disrupt your own life and fight as if you were in the former.
Colonialism built the chair and capitalism upholstered it, and it can be very comfortable.
Until the pain of remaining the same outstrips the pain of changing, we don’t change.
The problem here is trying to organize a broad based coalition of resistance - and maintaining unity within that broad coalition. It's extremely hard to pull off.
This, indeed, is the hard part. Trying to pull like-minded people together in this day and age to support a cause as a coalition is a daunting task and needs a polarizing figure with broad shoulders and great reach to begin the process of motivating and energizing a base. The left has failed in this Bigly while the Right uses hate, fear, and denigration of the other to be successful.
I am with you. I know I need to break away from FB and Instagram. It's going to be tough, but the fact is, I've lived three-quarters of my life without either and was fine. And it sure would be nice not to waste my time on those platforms... I'll work toward it.
Idk about that, the world is so different now. My friends don't call me anymore, we interact on social media. We might even message on those platforms to make plans. While I would love to quit social media and meet people in real life, I worry that few would join me in that endeavor. Everyone is on their phones out there!
That is 100% correct.
I’m in the same boat.. like okay I delete FB and Insta but now I don’t have any contacts and am going to be pretty lonely….
I’m doing the same and it feels great. It helps me reasses my needs and it lets me be proud of who I am supporting with the purchases I do make. I technically still have Insta and FB but I log in rarely, I don’t post, it’s gross there. I never had Twitter. We need to just walk away from these people.
Absolutely. Made this promise in 2023 and will continue
Actually, InYourFacebook is already a cesspool. Unfortunately, as you point out, it's also a monopoly.
Go live in the woods.
Not a very curious or clever comment.
You are correct, it was emotional. I am taking it back, not a good response.
One thing I want to know, do you think there will be something as big as these platforms and be completely unbiased.
For your information X is probably the least boased platform. They have opinions of every side, with very little censorship and community notes, you can research the algorithm of community notes, for now there is nothing that can be more accurate to correct users.
Stay well.
Lawl, sure, little censorship, just as soon as he stops banning journalists he hates, and anyone who dared to respond to his nonsense, you propagandist...
There are plenty of people contradict him on his social network, and they are still there. It is not that all the people on X are in favour of him.
I was recently in a country where internet is patchy to the point that I gave up looking for it and, honestly, I was rarely happier. You don't need social media, they just make money off making you think you do
Alternative to FB/Insta- none.
Turn Up (show up for yourself and your people, what you represent and believe in), tune out (if you're not following goals with purpose your chasing noise), and drop out (of those toxic cultures) once and for all.
Many of us are business owners who need to market our businesses.
Yes, I certainly understand the need to reach clients. If that is holding you from cutting more 'churn' style info (like insta/fb), perhaps consider areas like:
Linked-In - Pro Level showcase and building
Discord - Community centered and 'grows' if nurtured
Youtube - Great to share exciting aspects of your business, including adjacent and one-off brands/communities that will in turn help your community/brand
X - Quick, easy update that requires no work to maintain
Maybe there are other ways to do more word of mouth/viral style marketing, depends on the business and consumer.
Most importantly, we're coming after their status as accepted members of the tribe. People crave acceptance more than anything. If everyone truly rejected these three for their selfish behavior, they would change. And the next wave would take note.
That’s a “customer is always right” type concept. I remember reading decades ago that as technology diminished the difference in products, customer service would become the distinction. In a humanly navigable local market that may be true, but scaled globally (where billionaires become possible), one can safely ignore huge swaths of customers without meaningful consequence. What’s a million more or less to a billionaire?
Our denial of acceptance will be received, super villain style, with the mustachio-twirling rejoinder:
“I’ll show them all. Then they’ll be sorry they didn’t love me when they had the chance!”
Whatever rejection based trauma they suffered in infant hood will not be corrected by more rejection. They are the only ones who can heal themselves, and they are too far gone down their alternative paths to change direction. Don’t expect modern Scrooge’s.
I agree with everything posted here. But what can I even do to help? I'm an engineer, not an influencer. Who'll listen to me?
That is the question! I think the answer is to begin by reframing as ‘what can we do?’ and then as individuals we can plug in to those larger efforts. There is, almost undoubtedly, good work being done in your vicinity that you can plug into. It might be something small or it might be a powerful organization, but either way it can make a difference. I hope this is helpful!
Boycott as much as you can. Literally stop spending your money unless necessary. Join a mutual aid group and spend there instead. Don't send dollars to musk, Bezos, zuck, the Waltons, the Sacklers of the world. Don't do fast food, fast fashion, don't buy a bigger home than you need. Work to reduce travel and transit, energy use and meat consumption. Just pick one and start there. Little by little we can each reduce our involvement in these broken systems and impact on our societies and planet.
And don't forget reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. The big pollution industry are making out like bandits. Especially with His Orange MAGA Majesty declaring "Drill baby, drill!"
For hands-on work, one organization I’m in has been asking for data entry help, and could probably use other IT assistance. You might see if organizations you’re interested in are looking for anything similar?
OK, so what are we supposed to do? Establish some sort of socialist communist regime, and put all the billionaires in jail? I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk, and it’s an amazing story. Really a kind of rags to riches narrative. He did not come from fabulous wealth. But he is such an OCD personality, very intense, and was able to leverage several large companies into fabulous amounts of financial security. SpaceX is a truly incredible corporation. Tesla is trying to drag the world into an electric future… How is that a bad thing? I think all the hate is kind of mentally unhealthy… Let’s try and grow up.
like i can be total tinfoiled, but if you (elon) makes, electrify that future, it is sure he can control it, why wouldnt he. mo(u)th-to-money, and neofeudalism
You're what's unhealthy, bootlicking!
Oh wow are you ever singing my song. I'm an unemployed programmer. I feel like the proverbial tree that fell in the woods but nobody was around to hear it.
Isn’t it interesting that all it would take to bring these people down to earth again is unsubscribing. Wouldn’t even take a general strike, just a click delete.
I agree with everything you wrote JP, except the use of "losers." This is the language of bullies like Trump and the rest of them. Why divide the world into losers and winners (or others)? It makes your case sound petty when it's exactly the opposite of that.
They are losers in their own minds because they will never have the wealth and adulation their sociopathy requires. If one of them had it all it would not be enough. While the establishment uses “othering” based on colour, language, religion, ethnicity, sex, etc. as a weapon to divide the masses, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize and call out those who truly are “others”. Nazis, for example. Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos (and I’d include Gates and Thiel) are not only fascists (economic and political corporatists), they, like all capitalists and fascists, will also engage the atrocities of Nazism to retain and enhance their wealth and power. Thus, they are the “other” that we must be aware of and even in their own minds they are losers and that makes them extremely dangerous (like the Israeli war cabinet, for example).
Calling Bill Gates a fascist and a Nazi… This seems completely Looney Tunes and ridiculous. After all the guy dedicated much of his fortune towards eliminating disease like malaria from the Third World. Doesn’t sound like Hitler-type mentality to me.
I agree.
I agree with that it’s the same shallow rhetoric which obscures the serious issues. And the positive stuff too.
Correct; calling them such only earns the rejoinder: I’ll show them all! etc.
Another excellent article. As always, you highlight the importance of something I overlooked. In this instance, it is these men’s desire to be liked, seen as normal, and even adored. As we build new societal forms (the grassroots organizing that you aptly promote) that do not lend themselves to cults of personality and we give these new forms the light and air they need to be attractive and healthy, then the shift in public attention away from the oligarchs could be their undoing. The trick is in building forms that no one can take over. The US’s founders thought that they had hit on a good model, but its genocidal, racist, and sexist roots introduced rot from the beginning.
The tech bros’ school of thought purports that exclusivity and dominance move a system forward faster, while inclusivity and sharing mire systems down and introduce stagnation. To counter these claims, we also need a media corps that reports on the gains solidarity movements achieve. We need to show the successes that social movements garner, so public focus turns away from attention-seeking oligarchs and toward nourishing sustainable communities.
I definitely agree that these people would likely not be fun to hangout and their choices of what to do with their money are lame. But I think this piece lacks some important context.
These ultra wealthy people, as well as their sociopathy, are symptoms of the system not guides in creating it. If it’s not these assholes it’ll be others.
The focus should not be on them but on how we can disengage from the system which feeds these people disproportionately. And it’s not just the tech bros, the ultra wealthy in every industry are sociopathic.
So what do we do?
The first step is to earn enough money to own your house outright. This usually also means downsizing a lot and becoming more intentional with spending. Without a mortgage payment you already have more power. Then, work less and use your time to get on top of your food systems. Engage with local farmers to be a part of more resilient and ecologically viable agriculture. Learn to eat seasonally.
With your additional time, learn how to create more independence from the big companies in every aspect of life. Hopefully more doctors will do this and make way for independent health systems.
The only way forward is to create a dual system and drain the current one. The system has too much momentum to be changed at this point. For the initial stage of adulthood when you need to work for the big companies we can leverage unions etc. to at the least make it less unfair.
We must also accept that the current system is already unsustainable and there is no way forward. We simply can’t use the amount of energy that we currently do. Oil will become too energy intensive to extract over the next 25 years and green energy both not scalable and too reliant on non renewables.
It’s going to crash regardless but being proactive will put you in a position of leadership and strength in creating a new phase of beauty and equity on earth. That… is cool imo
You know who wouldn't have done us all this way? Tom. Tom from MySpace wanted to be friends with everyone. Zuck disdained from extending membership outside of specific schools initially and then for years kept it only for universities. I'll never understand why Facebook won when their (stolen) concept wasn't better or easier to use or more accessible.
I place much importance on inception stories; the 'why' behind an inception. And Facebook has the ugliest inception story ever for a big company; these guys wanted to rate hot chicks because they lacked the social skills to connect in person. This energy has spread throughout the world now. The purpose behind the site was to literally perve on girls, and the 'loser' behind this has now been crowned king.
The lore never reflects the reality. It needs to be repeated, loudly, often. It's essentially built-in to the platform's very stupid name.
Yes, and not just perv on "girls" - by which we mean WOMEN - but to perv on the ones who attended Harvard. Dude felt pissy about the very existence of "successful" (however superficially) women. So he snagged the headshots of an Ivy League group and reduced them to their looks by rating them with his loser incel buddies. As if attractivenes isn't subjective and as if anyone gaf what some creeps think. Lol.
Zuckerberg works for the deep state. He appears to secretly be of the Rockefeller house. Men like him love being submissive to their masters. They love to steal and take credit and stomp out the competition by any means necessary. His fame and position are totally manufactured.
It's no matter; we will render them all irrelevant. Say bye-bye, deep state.
What’s wrong with perving on girls? As long as it’s done politely and with some respect… I mean it’s one of my favorite hobbies! 🤓🤠
You're also a bootlicker, so of course...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog
"I'll never understand why Facebook won when their (stolen) concept wasn't better or easier to use or more accessible."
Because equally sociopathic Vulture Capitalists smelled the opportunity and decided to promote them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog
True, I don't even think initially any of the actual innovators behind social media thought they were building something to get rich from. Livejournal and friendster developers should be wealthy if that were the case.
I am now 2 months out from fully *deleting* my Meta and X accounts, and my brain feels like it is healing, and all the news I am seeing about the integration of AI and removal of fact-checking and upholding of hate speech has just been affirming my decision. It is not an easy choice by any means, for a lot of people it is a necessity, but I wish there could be a mass movement to Boycott Social Media. I still have apps like Discord and Fable (social media version of Goodreads), but there are *so many* reasons to divest from Meta and the like. Amazon is also challenging, but not impossible. I am trying to tell as many people as I can about how nice it has been to go social media free (I didn't "deactivate", I *deleted*), in hopes that it will spread. I don't know what it will take for people to abandon ship on Meta, but the time is coming. Its danger has been proven time and time again, not only in its political influence (and the way it is misused, without our knowledge or consent, and even against the will of the U.S. gov't), but its "psychic damage" as I'd like to call it, which ranges from attention span, self-image, distortion of how we perceive the world, creation of echo chambers, its influence on loneliness, etc. It is time for some very serious changes and divestment. I think that we yearn for it (everyone I talk to says how much they'd "love to quit social media, *but*..."), and the time for action is now. It was "now" a while ago. All well said. If only we could get everybody on board with this idea.
The timing of this article is perfect as Zuckerberg starts rambling on about "neutered companies" and the need for "masculine energy" whatever that means.
I cannot really bring myself to listen to him. These people are basically nerds…which isn’t inherently bad but the pitfalls of their ‘control’ are…
I agree that the tech barons are unbearable to listen to and why I basically tune them out. I think it has to do with the lack of respect and the basic human need for acceptance (perhaps from being labeled a "nerd" in the derogatory sense hence their seemingly collective drive to appear hypermasculine). As you so aptly put, the desire for control is a huge problem and one way I think folks like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos try to garner the feeling of acceptance they crave.
Odd that we’re supposed to give two figs as to what they think. Yes they’re just people - we all need to fit in somehow or other - must be hard to be publicly slated even though they apparently give as good as they get!
And to be absolutely clear, I'm certainly not saying their actions are justified. More thinking about driving forces--doesn't eliminate responsibility for their actions and our need to resist their objectives.
I am completely awash in nerds from high school and college friends, and when I went back into the corporate world I brought my nerd shit with me and expressed gratitude when coworkers got their inner nerd on because it meant they were in their bliss over things that mattered. I also never tolerated bullshit or meanness in silence, none of these guys would last ten minutes in a room with me without calling shenanigans on them. I am surrounded now by farmers and social workers and therapists and artists of all kinds and teachers and social justice admins and book club friends and local church people. I miss the days when suck was in front of Senate panels and the older women would dress him down like someone's Mom. He's going to skate, trump is just in time for their antitrust and liability problems. If I could get the cabal of friends off FB ...I had an acct for 20 yrs and NEVER looked at it until the pandemic. There's got to be another way.
I am terrified to be alive at a time where the richest man in the world and the most powerful leader in the world, both sociopathetic clowns with no self-awareness whatsoever, have teamed up to crush the rest of us.
Yes, yes and yes. They all want to be the Weyland Yutani corporation, or the Tyrell Corporation. They want government gone entirely, replaced by technocracy for profit. The one thing not touched on here is that they are willing to literally kill us all in these pursuits. Not just oppress or demean or silence - they will destroy the entire world in their pursuit of unattainable self-satisasction.
Unfortunately, when the chips are down, the left does not come together. People on the left love making the perfect the enemy of the good, or at least the profoundly less bad.
Leftists: "We need to fight 'toxic masculinity', the idea that men must follow conventional masculine gender roles."
Also leftists: "That's why I poke fun at men for their lack of conventional masculinity whenever the opportunity arises."
I bet you'd be fun at parties. NSDAP, for example. 👍
It’s interesting isn’t it?
This piece lays bare the absurdity of our era: men who are so profoundly disconnected from themselves, from community, and from the Earth that their only means of seeking fulfillment is hoarding wealth and control. But what we’re seeing isn’t just personal pathology—it’s the predictable outcome of a system built on extraction, violence, and historical trauma.
Capitalism, like colonialism, is a trauma response. It is a structure of disconnection, one that severs people from land, from relationships, and even from their own bodies. The tech oligarchs embody this disconnection in extreme form. Their endless accumulation, their obsession with dominance, their inability to find satisfaction—these aren’t just character flaws. They are the logical end point of a system that has, for centuries, rewarded dissociation, competition, and the numbing of human empathy.
Trauma studies show us that unresolved harm doesn’t disappear—it mutates, repeats, and scales. A society structured around extraction creates individuals who do not know how to relate without control. The billionaire class operates from a place of profound lack, filling the void with power, surveillance, and the destruction of everything they fear might reveal their own emptiness. This is why they invest in AI rather than human relationships, space colonization rather than repairing the world they’ve damaged, digital avatars rather than presence. They are products of intergenerational trauma inflicted by the very system they now uphold.
But here’s the thing: their sickness is not inevitable. It is a wound that can be refused, a pathology that can be unlearned. The solution isn’t just fighting these billionaires—it’s dismantling the colonial-capitalist structure that produces them. Healing requires that we move beyond mere opposition to these men and instead rebuild systems rooted in reciprocity, relational accountability, and collective care.
The last line of this piece is crucial: We have to save ourselves. But to do that, we must remember that there have always been other ways to exist—ways of being that these men and their worldviews have tried to erase. Indigenous knowledge systems, land-based governance, and relational economies have long provided alternatives to extraction and domination. The future doesn’t belong to billionaires desperately seeking to fill a void. It belongs to those of us reclaiming what was never truly lost: the ability to live in connection, rather than control.