• supafuzz [comrade/them]
    ·
    6 months ago

    so as far as I can tell, way back when SF was still a cool viable place to live it became a tech mecca for the following reasons: 1) the close links between the universities and the military industrial complex meant a lot of real engineering talent moved out there and stuck around to work in 2) companies that still did actual research; 3) affordable housing was available with garages for workshops both inside SF and in all the surrounding areas; 4) psychedelic drugs and a general outsider, artistic, borderline anti-capitalist vibe.

    NYC has none of this. It is a dead city ruled by finance and real estate psychos.

    And in fact SF has none of this anymore (there have been some efforts to bring the drugs but it is not the most important leg of the chair). There aren't engineers, there are startup-brain business school types masquerading as engineers, dreaming of getting rich by doing things that make the world worse and flipping it to retail investors in an IPO or a buyout or just a straight scam. There is no longer anywhere to live that gives the young and weird space to work on idiosyncratic projects that could turn into something. And big companies don't do blue-sky research, they try to buy up innovation when it happens, which it essentially no longer does.

    • Skeleton_Erisma [they/them, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      I once dated someone who told me they saw the Castro go from "being a nice safespace for LGBT to express themselves and hit dance clubs" to "an extremely sterilized techbro space with expensive coffee shops and boutique clothing stores". Haight and Ashbury, and all the other SF enclaves that gave the city its character suffered the same fate according to them.

        • Skeleton_Erisma [they/them, any]
          ·
          6 months ago

          "I can only hope for more techbros to absolutely suffer. They've completely destroyed the region their microchip country club sits on top of. Underneath all the PCBs, mangled AI hands, patagonia puff jackets and cybertrucks was a rich culture of people- now nearly pushed away or rendered into an inert version of its former self. Outpriced and alienated for craft beer breweries, smartwatches, rent to own apartment homes, vampire weekend and guacamole made with cream cheese."

      • ped_xing [he/him]
        ·
        6 months ago

        The Haight was a decent spot to find people selling weed in the open in the early 2000s, but The Gap was already at Haight and Ashbury.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      Oakland will be 100% white and gentrified because of overflow from SF before they admit that SF housing has been ruined.

      • iPostPMCLinkedIn [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        No, that's tech bros apologia. The richest and most successful tech founders were largely from a pure technical background. Nvidia guy, Microsoft guy, Google guys, Amazon guy, Facebook guy, etc.

        Tech people discovered business and finance and weaponized technology to cash out. Tech people ruined tech because they got seduced by capital

  • regul [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    NYC should be more like SF

    - the utterly deranged

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    6 months ago

    It's not entirely wrong, what with the early transhumanists setting up shop in SF's hippie culture there was a new left and left anarchist influence on the early tech scene. However the 1980s and the fall of the left in the 90s caused that to disappear.

    I do want to write my marxist history of transhumanism effortpost one day.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
      ·
      6 months ago

      As a former Discordian and guy who has read Robert Anton Wilson in his teens. These guys were clearly bad news from the start.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Oh, yeah, I know, I grew up on the old USENET lists, but they were a significantly different flavour of bad news than what they became.

  • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    If this is how Silicon Valley people view NYC, I suggest New Yorkers punch any techie they see.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    I'm guessing this dude is just doing Anarchists = Libertarians(ancaps), a bunch of the cryptocurrency techbro crowd have been coopting anarchism that way for years now.

    Like this: https://youtu.be/Z1EA5k34PEM

  • mayo_cider [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    6 months ago

    as we all know, the best promoters blame the customers when they fuck up the promotion, rent a conference space for 10000 people and end up with 5 people asking for the toilet

    the only reason ny isn't sf