Pax Dickenson: Rebel
October 22, 2014 10:50 AM   Subscribe

"... the tech industry is losing the freedom that made it – and America – great. This worries me, and I want to talk about it." Ousted Business Insider CTO and self-described "brogrammer" Pax Dickenson meditates on the death of Fun in Silicon Valley tech circles.
posted by lkc (18 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: However it was intended, this appears to be a great excuse for everyone to get their hate on, and that doesn't make for a worthwhile thread, sorry. -- restless_nomad



 
I don't think there's a universe big enough for my eyeroll right now.

And yes, I even RTFA.
posted by muddgirl at 10:54 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]


I managed to get to the end of the first paragraph (summary "it's political correctness gorn maaaaaad'). Is there any way to get that 30 seconds back?
posted by pipeski at 10:55 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


I will never get tired of people equating "the thing I like" with "the Thing That Made America Great". It's like Yakety Sax or something- it's an immediate clue that you're now participating in a comedy.
posted by DGStieber at 10:56 AM on October 22, 2014


OK I read the article. Still don't give a shit what he has to say. Apparently his argument is "I was just kidding" and "some of my best friends are women". If there's anything interesting at all in here, it's that there's some new startup Glimpse he's involved with. It appears to be a SnapChat clone, "Get notified when it's ready!". Great marketing there.
posted by Nelson at 10:56 AM on October 22, 2014


it’s an essay about tolerance (or, rather, the lack of it) in the tech world and how political correctness is making people fear to ‘Think Different’.
Why can we not tolerate assholes being assholes at work?
posted by jeather at 10:56 AM on October 22, 2014


Acting like a shitbag in public has unintended consequences. News at 11.
posted by stenseng at 10:57 AM on October 22, 2014


Racist, sexist dick who got fired for being a racist sexist dick and is now so radioactive no company will touch him whines about how life is unfair.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:58 AM on October 22, 2014


Is there some reason we'll link directly to this guy's tripe, but not the reporting about his disgusting behavior?
posted by frijole at 10:58 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


The term brogrammer makes me want to punch people in their face, hard.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 10:58 AM on October 22, 2014


previously
posted by wormwood23 at 10:59 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'll admit it, I felt some schadenfreude reading this.

I was curious about what he would say. I'm not a huge fan of mobs and pitchforks either, even when the mob is in the right. But wow, he still really doesn't get it.

Shall we draw a line here, at GamerGate, before we have nowhere left to go?
posted by leopard at 10:59 AM on October 22, 2014


His quote from the Joel Kotkin piece:

The new liberal ruling elite, a mix of academics and cultural powerbrokers, is like the old clerical orders—wielding its wealth and power to enforce “truths” and punish dissenters.

Today’s Clerisy attempts to distill today’s distinctly secular “truths”—on issues ranging from the nature of justice, race and gender to the environment—and decide what is acceptable and that which is not. Those who dissent from the accepted point of view can expect their work to be simply ignored, or in some cases vilified. In the Clerical bastion of San Francisco, an actress with heretical views, in this case supporting a Tea Party candidate, who was pilloried, and lost work for her offense.


That's some Dark Enlightenment/neoreactionary Cathedral paranoia there.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:59 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


This isn’t an essay about me and my moment of infamy...


Spoiler: It pretty much is.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:59 AM on October 22, 2014


So sociopaths and bullies still think that because they were having fun, that they weren't being bullies. Same old shit.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:59 AM on October 22, 2014


Is there some reason we'll link directly to this guy's tripe, but not the reporting about his disgusting behavior?

That's in the second link...
posted by Sangermaine at 10:59 AM on October 22, 2014


More generally, what is it about people who enjoy causing offence that leads them to believe that they're just more open-minded than the rest of us?
posted by pipeski at 11:00 AM on October 22, 2014


The Rant Even Medium Refused to Print!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:00 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Why can we not tolerate assholes being assholes at work?

Robert Sutton out of Stanford wrote a book a while back called The No Asshole Rule that applies here.

I remember he gave a talk on his book at my office at the time, and he pointed out that it was actually really hard to give examples, because you can't really go around writing a book that calls out various CEOs as assholes. He had to rely on certain infamous cases where the media had already dubbed someone an asshole so he was just citing those reports.
posted by zachlipton at 11:00 AM on October 22, 2014


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