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Beware the Tech Bro Pipeline
(lemmy.world)
RIP Aaron Swartz
And we’ll never know, selfishly speaking, the possible extent of his further contributions to society. Died at 26 after an incredible life already.
Besides his life, what else did they steal from us?
RIP Aaron
(Reposting my comment from last year)
It's not a pipeline. 2018 and 2025 guys either had 2014 guy killed or they ruined his life and forced him into suicide.
never forget Aaron Swartz
he was murdered though, it wasn't suicide
"I want to change the world with this tech"
...
"3 billion you say? The company is yours!"
Honestly selling the company is understandable. Getting out is normal.
It's the ones that turn into sociopaths that bother me.
Oh I am still at the 2014 phase.
We... used to have a term for people that advanced further: sell-outs.
Though I do very much prefer the recently popularized Cyberpunk lingo:
Fucking Corpo Scum.
People like 2025 guy have never held thoughts like the other 2, they were always self serving cunts. They just kept a facade till they depended on others, but once they joined the rich fucks club, they dropped the facade.
Bad meme. Implies "information wants to be free" leads to "have you considered monetizing empathy?"
yeah, the “information wants to be free” and the other two are completely different people….
it’s more like, 3 different kinds of tech people:
also, i’m going to call this “tech-bro” thing sexism… women are awesome in tech and the field can be very exclusionary… just because society has been keeping women out of tech, doesn’t mean you can just assume they’re all bros….
also check out unixsocks… they’re definitely not bros….
"Techbro" is a specific name for a subsection of the tech population who have become complete douche canoes (much like the middle and right people in the image). The crypto/AI/whatever people. These people are mostly male.
All kinds of awesome people work in tech, but they are not considered "tech bro", just cool tech people.
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I could be wrong, but I think "tech-bro" as a term isn't meant to apply to everyone in tech. It's mean to capture the intersection of tech people and "bros" -- the kind of guy who likes football or something.
Of course that's just what it's meant to be; if people use it for all men in tech then yeah it just becomes a sexist and luddite terminology.
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Its ai generated sir but it kinda checks out.
Ironically brought to you by the same tech bros it's dissing.
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Money .... it's always about the money and power
I'm sure there are tech bros out there that we will never hear about or see or know about .... those are the ones who just want to do tech stuff and not care about anything else
The ones we do hear about who become billionaires were only ever in it for the money and power
"Tech Bro" as a term though does pretty much imply insufferable nouveaux-riche douchbags devoid of any genuine emotion, who are happy to squash human dignity on an industrial scale for profit, and think themselves cool for doing it.
If someone is into tech for the true sake of technology then by definition they aren't a "tech bro" - they are a programmer, a hacker, a hardware tinkerer, an open-source evangelist, or any number of cool things that don't involve being an huge dickhead :)
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I'm going in the opposite direction.
I'm recognizing how much we've been herded like sheep just to make rich people richer, and I'm fighting back in the ways that I can.
2030: By the implementation of AI, the orphan crushing machine can now process 35% more biomass per hour, providing a sustainable power source to our server parks
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The first one is a hacktivist, the second one is an OSS dev, and the third is a tech bro. So not really a pipeline since there are still hacktivists, OSS devs, ans tech enthusiasts (also most tech bros started in finance)
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Tech bruh
Ai slop
IDK what this meme is trying to say. Its making some leaps.
I feel like most of tech had already sold out by 2014. Really by the late aughts it seemed to be all gone; that was when apple and its philosophy had taken hold. Not that apple was the only force in that direction, it just felt like the apotheosis of the greedy and controlling mentality. MS had plenty of greed, but they were willing (in some circumstances) to play ball. Google seemed to love interoperability in the early-to-mid aughts, but look at it now.
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I have a very very real problem with this oversimplification of very distinct tech viewpoints.
Like, what, you dont think information should be freely available? You LIKE the model where information is locked down with hefty fees? Because that's what the actual "tech bros" want.
This is at best ignorant and at worst just hateful.
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Am I stupid? Idk what the hell this is trying to say
It's not something that's unique to tech, but I read it as a joke about enshittification due to greed.
Lots of start-up companies start out all idealistic and positive, then don't stay true to that mission as the founders age and want more (or sell out to a bigger company).
I honestly think delusion is a core component of startup culture. There's this energy of overly sincere rich kids who think they can make the world a better place by perpetuating a system of exploitation
It's kinda tragic really
I do envy their ability to take such big risks though (often because they have money to fall back on, I assume).
I've never been in a position to take a risk like that without jeopardizing my (and now my family's) future.
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TIL there were no tech bros before 2014.
Hardstuck 2014. I'm not changing
Sorry, but I feel 2014 should be replaced with 1980, 2018 should be replaced with 2000... Maybe 1990. But the whole monetisation thing started loooonngg before 2025.
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This kinda follows the same pipeline that everyone else went down on Facebook and Twitter. At one point, the internet was all about Anonymous and Zeitgeist and revolution.
Then one Arab Spring and a couple of years later, we all went from Anonymous and Zeitgeist to thinking that billionaires and businessmen are the answers to all of our problems.
I don't know that it was ever as much like that--I think the earlier adopters of those technologies were more like that, and as the general public gained interest and increased usage, the trend swung the other way. Remember in 2005 when owning a mac device basically initiated you into a cult? Apple stores were set up like sanctuaries where people came to worship.
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When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
I think only a handful of people could remain principled in spite of having attained wealth, power and status. And it is not that power makes one greedy, I think a person who attains success becomes surrounded by sycophants and yes-men who like to gain access to the successful person for the sycophants' own use.
Fuck, monetizing empathy. Is that even a fucking option? Can we just buy our way out of this shithole timeline? Can Gates just write a check for 97 billion and we go back to not performing genocide bring us back out of the Jim Crow and misogynist era?
What tech are we talking about here, theres a billion different pieces of software out there all doing drastically different things.
If anything, this is more how money corrupts tech folks.
I work with these fucking yuppies every day and I hate them so fucking much.
Beware the AI slop Pipeline
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this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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