* edit of shame: it's satire. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
> there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA
That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
It's true for technology in the sense that anytime Congress wants to bring in someone for a hearing about anything tangentially related to being online, Zuckerberg will be invited.
Being the cause of widespread despair, hate and fear, and so, the one most often called upon to be held accountable (at least from an optics perspective) is dramatically different than being "'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA" which is a completely delusional take.
But that does beg the question - what is it about our current system (western civilisation) that seems to reward the incredibly stupid.
Though I do wonder if you looked at all people with a net worth of over say 100M whether the proportion of incredibly stupid people would be the same as the general population or whether we just have so many incredibly stupid people some of them will get lucky.
Is it really satire? If so, I'm genuinely angry this was not flagged as such. But there is no indication on the website, and they have some older emails which sound familiar as authentic.
This is not satire. This is a website that has been around for years that has an email archive from emails released in lawsuits against tech companies. The page literally sites the specific case ("Tennessee v. Meta (2024)") that this came from and is easily verifiable.
Not satire. They really are just that up their own asses.
I remember perhaps a decade ago, a coworker and I were watching a clip of Zuckerberg walking up to a group of employees and they started clapping for him. I mentioned how odd it was to see, and he thought it was perfectly natural to applaud the CEO of your company. We never applauded when our boss showed up, and I've never really been sure where the line is for which authority I'm supposed to cheer for merely from being in their presence. I haven't thought about it too much since then, but obviously it's stuck with me.
As a society, we've all had our lips pretty firmly pressed onto the asses of the oligarchs for quite awhile, so it seems pretty natural that they think it's the natural order of things.
Whoopsie. Bizarre that it's this plausible but it shows how prone I am to confirmation bias. I'm adding an edit to the comment but leaving it up as a reminder.
* edit of shame: it's satire. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
> there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA
That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.