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Computer Trouble in Paradise
Silicon Valley and Hollywood may seem culturally monotheistic. Recent rifts suggest otherwise.
It seems that Twitter and media outlets have been abuzz this week with one high-profile drama after another.
The fall of Netflix and its abandonment by progressive investors, Disney’s myriad problems in Florida, Elon Musk’s very public efforts to buy Twitter and take the company in a more free-speech positive direction, Jack Dorsey’s thoughts on the subject, Joe Rogan and the bad kids on the block of new media, rabble rousers like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss: Cracks are showing in the ice of what has heretofore seemed like an impenetrable wall of moral certitude and progressive bona fides from New York City to Hollywood to Silicon Valley and back.
These cultural kerfuffles have done nothing so much as expose one of the chief dangers of groupthink. When everyone is saying one thing, anyone willing to say something else has a lane of their own.
Writing another 2,000 word article about the unique evils of the Trump Administration puts any content creator from the NYT to CNN+ in a pile with 10,000 others just like it, some written by people more influential and with larger online followings.
A true contrarian, someone like Elon Musk, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Rogan, Matt Taibbi, Russell…