Listening to this week’s “The Intercept Briefing” titled “The Broligarchy fired up my Gentrified Web neurons again. I have been venting my political energy on another site, but Elon Musk buying his way into the presidency gets close to something that I started writing about, but never quite captured: feeling like my history has been stolen.

The Techo-counterculture#

I have worked in tech for almost 30 years. I spent a couple of years out west at a startup company, where I learned about silicon valley and the brutality of venture capital. Most of my career has been spent fixing broken shit for normal people that barely understand what computers are.

Out west, people thought about technology differently. Most of them saw it as a way to get rich. Some of them saw it as a way to make the world a better place. A lot of them were neurodivergent assholes that think being smarter than everyone else meant something, and they were furious about it not getting them anywhere. I understood that frustration, and at times I succumbed to it. I am probably also one of those neurodivergent assholes.

Prior to Donald Trump, I would vent my neurodivergent asshole frustrations in the darker places of the Internet. In those places I saw people be horrible to eachother. But I always figured that the racism, homophobia, and misogyny was ironic. Like these dudes just did shit for shock value (the lulz). But when the chips are down, anons would do the right thing, like they did during the Arab Spring. Yet somehow all of that shit became the alt-right. It probably always was the alt-right and I just didn’t understand it.

Losing my tech religion#

I have long used the Internet to get on my soapbox about privacy, free speech, open source, and fair use. I saw myself as a patriot for the digital age. My techno-utopianism was gradually replaced with techno-libertarianism. Then the 2016 presidential election turned me off of the idea of the Internet as a place where people were free. Twitter, Q-Anon, Cambridge Analytica, and Pepe the Frog all made me realize that the Gentrified Web was a propaganda machine that served tech’s richest individuals and no one else. The Gentrified Web is a feudal state where we are all peasants.

The thing is these tech bros are just like all those neuro-divergent assholes that are upset that being smart doesn’t mean shit. The only difference is that being smart did get them somewhere. It got them enough money to buy controlling interest in the American presidency.

These assholes#

This is where I am, existentially. 8 years ago I watched Internet culture get co-opted for white supremacy. Now I am seeing the tech sector turn into the American version of the Russian oligarchy. The problem isn’t oligarchy. There are oligarchs all over the world. The problem is that they’re American. America is a global cultural and economic influence. A Russian oligarch can fuck up plenty of shit in Russia, and then retire to London. An American oligarch can fuck up the entire world.

Also, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, OpenAI… these companies are either being sued by the government for anti-trust or are the targets of government regulations for consumer well being or their product being a threat to national security.

In the case of Elon Musk, he’s been in the government’s crosshairs a couple of times, while simultaneously collecting subsidies and contracts from the government for Tesla and SpaceX. He now has direct access to the regulators that once constrained him.

Punk rock time#

This is not a time to be dismayed.

This is punk rock time, this is what Joe Strummer trained you for.

It is now time to go. You’re a good person. That means more now than ever. – Henry Rollins

I am done with the gentrified web. I would say I was done with American politics, but I was never really down with it in the first place. Mostly, I just vote against the worse of two options. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement from me.

What I am down with is direct action. I am getting back to my punk rock roots. I am getting back to my hacker ethic days where I flatly refuse to respect artificial scarcity or authority. It starts with my stupid little blogs about self hosting, off grid technolgies, and street protests.