Comment by xlii

I was about to make this point, but with some clarifications:

A nerd, when I was growing up, had to have a "thing", and that thing had to be unfashionable. Being a nerd was not a good thing. You loved your subject despite the stigma. (although later on people loved a subject because of the stigma)

There was a difference between a $subject nerd, and an arsehole/weirdo. To be liked, you needed to hide the nerd streak and learn to interact with people using commonly accepted rules. This is partly why the internet flourished in the 90s because you could be surrounded by other nerds and talk nerd shit.

The downside is that a lot of people felt marginalised, but you were in touch with the "normies", so still had to act like a normal high functioning member of society.

Ruthless buisness types were seen as that (at least in the UK) out to make money, and fuck you if you got in the way.

The problem for us now is, ruthless business types now own all the media, and want to shape the world in their image.

"Nerd" means whatever you want it to mean. I've known people who called themselves nerds because they played d&d and smoked tons of weed. I've known other people who were really focused on technical stuff. I'm sure both types think they're smarter than everyone else, just like most people do.

I've definitely met some finance folks who are nerds. Had a very fun conversation with one where we concluded that Culver's Scoopie Tokens are dairy forwards.

I actually agree with the author's evaluation, but the irony is that their post is the first time I heard about this Founders Mafia thing. They're right that last thing we need is more people looking past the sins of the Thiels and Altmans of the world. Maybe this kind of thing works within 100 miles of the Pacific coast. But as a non-SV native still getting used to the culture around here, I see zero risk of this kind of content sowing any fondness for tech CEOs outside of the most tech-brainwormed regions of the world.

There were people who told me 15 years ago that I’m not like others who go to software engineering universities. Because although I’m a nerd, I can speak about non nerdy things, and I don’t speak about them in non nerd environments. This happened to me many-many times. They were even surprised that I’m in this field.

Not anymore. I haven’t heard this for a while now, and I didn’t change regarding this. But people behave very differently when I say “software developer” recently. Now they think immediately, that I’m rich. Not that I’m a freak nerd. They are not surprised anymore at all.

I experienced this very obviously with something else too. I born in Hungary, but I moved to Austria. There is a huge difference between how people behave with me if I say that I’m from Hungary, than if I say that I’m from Austria when I travel. They immediately recommend me things which are more expensive. The beaches, restaurants, pubs for rich tourists. Not when I say Hungary. That’s the only time when they say to me that something is expensive.

I state openly, that if somebody says that the public perception didn’t change and also the people in this field didn’t change to be more money focused, then those people lying, probably even to themselves. The current discussions about AI make this obvious. Most developers, engineers, founders are fine to ship shit on every single level, if they get the same money for it. They became “developers” only for the money.

“IT crowd” is unimaginable today.

Agree. I think that the complaint is about the dominating narrative in every radio channel you could possible pick from.

It's similar to the "old Internet" argument: it's still there, but buried in layers and layers of stuff that isn't the real thing.

Very much similar thoughts. The examples provided are not nerds, except a few. It is just tech is a lucrative path to make money and it attracts a variety of “interesting” personalities, specifically those that can captivate and persuade masses to invest in them. By all means tech is just a means to an end to such founders. A nerd is someone who is interested in tech for the sake of it, because it is beautiful, not because it will aid drones in killing targets more efficiently and not because it will land a great contract.

> Musk for me was never a nerd. Many "founders" aren't nerds for me. In the end, I wouldn't classify anyone who is "money" first as a nerd - to me they are businessmen (and businesswomen) in their core.

People can fall into multiple categories at the same time. A lot of them aren't mutually exclusive.

IMHO Musk can be put into both the nerd/geek bucket and the asshole businessman bucket at the same time.

I'd say, you are looking at this from the angle of a nerd. For you Elon or Sam are not (primarily) nerds because you know nerdier nerds (what you called very high-profile nerds). But for the general public Elon and Sam are very much the definition of a nerd. They have never heard of any of the high-profile nerds you know.

And that's exactly the argument of the article IMO, that the famous nerds went from well-meaning eccentrics to evil greedy overlords.

AKA Woz vs Jobs

Yup, the nerds are still here. They're people like Jeff Geerling, Stefan Hermann, Andreas Spiess, Jan Roetz and many more. They're very visible if you end up on the 'right' side of the algorithm, it's a much more positive side of the internet in general IMHO.

But it's easy to slide back into the fear mongering, engagement bait side if you don't pay really close attention to how you're feeding the algorithm.

Does anyone consider Musk a nerd? He's more into marketing than GOOGL.

> Musk for me was never a nerd. Many "founders" aren't nerds for me.

It's pretty hard to describe Elon Musk's ventures in space exploration, robots and human-like AI as anything other than prototypical, "core" nerd culture. Especially when it turns out that the very word 'Elon' shows up in obscure magazine excerpts from the 1950s as the leader of a science-fictional Martian government, and apparently this somehow plays a part into why Musk gets named Elon.