Funny writing from Scott, as usual, but my main takeaway from this was that I'm glad to live in New York, and not the Bay Area.
The events I go to here are attended by people from all different industries and walks of life. Putting too many tech-adjacent people in a room together has never made for great parties, in my experience.
I agree, though I think you're missing most of downtown and west oakland, jack london square, plus the oakland hills, most of marin, almost all of the peninsula, albany and el cerrito, san jose, and maybe now even santa cruz.
It's difficult to downplay that when you go to almost any house party in those places, it's literally what this guy wrote. Like down to the overconfident assertions that one person already knew about the other person's super niche point about some obscure faux-spiritual tech concept. “Of course it can, that’s the whole point of Buddhism." I'd bet someone said that exact, absolutely terrible phrase within a ten block radius of Haight & Ashbury within the last 18 months, for sure. And they name drop some partnership they have with a new startup thing with someone on its board who once worked for the esalin institute as its like vp of sales and mindfulness.
Still, I do think there's just as much diversity on the far periphery of the Bay as there is in say the outer borroughs of NYC. You don't get this in Vallejo.
> when you go to almost any house party in those places, it's literally what this guy wrote
No, not even those places. This is a classic example of a social bubble. There's definitely a higher concentration in those places, but the majority of house parties, even in the Bay Area, are just a lot of drunk shenanigans, beer pong, weed, and not high brow intellectual talk. HN / ACX types are high-education, tech-adjacent, and likely raised outside the area. Their social networks are quite different from the rest of the 8m people here, especially the rest of Alameda county and San Jose, where most of the house parties happen. Even if all parties on the Peninsula were this type, they'd probably account for 2% of Bay Area house parties, those places have been so expensive for so long they're mostly amenable to workaholic and Netflix types.
Source: am Bay Area raised and have a foot in both worlds.
> Yes, but the fun part is that out of 100 of these people, one will end up a billionaire, and another will end up setting the cultural agenda for the next decade
The billionaire bit I get. Plenty of billionaires have come out of the Bay Area and will continue to come out of there. But what does he mean by “setting the cultural agenda”? Who from the Bay Area can claim to have done this, and if nobody yet, why does the author think it will start happening?
Jack Frost and Jerry Garcia are by no means pop, or Hollywood. The bay area has impacted our collective culture in deep, meaningful ways for generations. Not in pop, or Hollywood ways, but in deep, meaningful "a path diverges in the woods" ways.
True, but most certainly feel his impact through the folding of his work into the fabric of modern culture. It's not about knowing who he is, but understanding and appreciating his impact on modern culture. There are countless folks like this, economists, city planners, artists, musicians, they all have shaped the modern world we interact with and experience every day but I cannot name most of them by name. There impact is felt nonetheless.
Trust me, I'm not overestimating the importance of Jerry Garcia of Robert Frost. I've read only a handful of Frosts works, and am only a casual dead fan. I'm not close to them any more than any other casual consumer of their work. There are whole documentaries on this stuff, I'm just a guy.
I take this as a reference to the CIA's use of these parties to find self-proclaimed "super connectors" who run group therapy sessions for powerful people that make things like NFTs happen seemingly overnight. https://www.amazon.com/Superconnector-Networking-Building-Bu...
> have you heard of the Temple of Artemis? One of the Seven Wonders of the World. Burned down not by a Christian or a Muslim, but by a random Greek guy who wanted his name to be remembered by history
The Temple of Artemis was destroyed and rebuilt a few times. Herostratus burned the second temple in 356 BC and it was rebuilt in 323 BC. The list of ancient wonders dates from the time of the third temple.
Funny how brief visits form such firm, nuance-free opinions. I have strong opinions on French folks but my year in Spain showed a universe of humanity.
This condescending caricature will ring true for many who don’t live there and few who do — like most travelogues written for snark over insight.
I used to make a few hundred bucks a month on good months participating in a real app called SURKUS. Went to a lot of weird places, including a Halloween party put on by a VR consortium. It sent me to someone’s actual house party at least once, but usually was a movie, or an event in the park, or music event and almost every week they’d have me order something off Amazon to review. They would pay via PayPal the value of the Amazon product plus $5-$20 for my time.
I read this and felt like it was a party with a caricature parodying most of my interests, especially the part about steppe nomads. I don’t even live in the bay. Man, I need to step back from tech. Guess I should go become a zen monk or lay on the beach or something…
> “No, you don’t understand. This is just the first step. Once we make it super-big, we’ll introduce other things into the algorithm. Charities. Political causes. We’ll have millions of people competing to praise UNICEF in order to get that next million-dollar ViraCoin drop. If you think about it, all problems are caused by lack of awareness. We’re an at-scale solution to awareness. Solve that, and you solve poverty, inequality, racism…”
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 69.7 ms ] threadThe events I go to here are attended by people from all different industries and walks of life. Putting too many tech-adjacent people in a room together has never made for great parties, in my experience.
It's difficult to downplay that when you go to almost any house party in those places, it's literally what this guy wrote. Like down to the overconfident assertions that one person already knew about the other person's super niche point about some obscure faux-spiritual tech concept. “Of course it can, that’s the whole point of Buddhism." I'd bet someone said that exact, absolutely terrible phrase within a ten block radius of Haight & Ashbury within the last 18 months, for sure. And they name drop some partnership they have with a new startup thing with someone on its board who once worked for the esalin institute as its like vp of sales and mindfulness.
Still, I do think there's just as much diversity on the far periphery of the Bay as there is in say the outer borroughs of NYC. You don't get this in Vallejo.
No, not even those places. This is a classic example of a social bubble. There's definitely a higher concentration in those places, but the majority of house parties, even in the Bay Area, are just a lot of drunk shenanigans, beer pong, weed, and not high brow intellectual talk. HN / ACX types are high-education, tech-adjacent, and likely raised outside the area. Their social networks are quite different from the rest of the 8m people here, especially the rest of Alameda county and San Jose, where most of the house parties happen. Even if all parties on the Peninsula were this type, they'd probably account for 2% of Bay Area house parties, those places have been so expensive for so long they're mostly amenable to workaholic and Netflix types.
Source: am Bay Area raised and have a foot in both worlds.
> Yes, but the fun part is that out of 100 of these people, one will end up a billionaire, and another will end up setting the cultural agenda for the next decade
The billionaire bit I get. Plenty of billionaires have come out of the Bay Area and will continue to come out of there. But what does he mean by “setting the cultural agenda”? Who from the Bay Area can claim to have done this, and if nobody yet, why does the author think it will start happening?
Jerry Garcia
Dave Chappell (he says he built his comedic style here)
Ansel Adams
Francis Coppola
Robert Frost
Santana
Jack London
Tupac
Tom Hanks
Clint Eastwood
This is the list I found quickly googling: https://www.quora.com/Who-are-some-of-the-most-famous-celebr...
Maybe "pop culture agenda?" Or "Hollywood agenda"?
Sometimes when you're really close to something you overestimate how important it is.
Trust me, I'm not overestimating the importance of Jerry Garcia of Robert Frost. I've read only a handful of Frosts works, and am only a casual dead fan. I'm not close to them any more than any other casual consumer of their work. There are whole documentaries on this stuff, I'm just a guy.
Only kinda kidding.
The Temple of Artemis was destroyed and rebuilt a few times. Herostratus burned the second temple in 356 BC and it was rebuilt in 323 BC. The list of ancient wonders dates from the time of the third temple.
This condescending caricature will ring true for many who don’t live there and few who do — like most travelogues written for snark over insight.
Poetry.
Lame! Truly the Bay area is full of the seeming of life with no substance.