Hacker News Reader

I feel like people discount how much the “weird” contributed to the success of SV. You had The Grateful Dead in Palo Alto, Clifford Stoll types in Berkeley, etc. [1]

Monocultures aren’t very conducive to creativity.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

I would argue the opposite: SV is a monoculture of nerds obsessed with computers, science, and grand ideas of changing the world through tiny companies. Everyone around the world knows it. So all of these kinds of people flock to the Bay in droves, and drive all of the locals mad in the process, but eventually unicorns and impossible fortunes start oozing out of the cracks.

And how can we be sure SV is a monoculture? Because in San Francisco, and now Austin, residents are complaining loudly about the blight of uniform techies with nothing to offer the community at large but glass skyscrapers and hunched backs. Case closed!

The thing about this is that there are mops and geeks. The geeks just do the thing that they think is cool. The mops are there because the geeks are there. Since the geeks just do cool things, they have no trouble finding each other and doing cool things.

It's the mops who have trouble. They're always like "X place used to be cool. There were all these people who did Y here". Well, those people are elsewhere and you don't know it because you were never one of them. You were a groupie. So the mops always get annoyed at some point not because some lower class of mop arrived but because there is only so many of them that can exist without ruining their thing.

So, usually it's earlier groupies complaining about later groupies.

"Man, Oakland used to be full of artists"

"Oh yeah? What kind of art did you make?"

"Oh not me. I studied chemical engineering. But there were all these artists back then."

Riiiiight

MOP = member of public.

See essay "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution":

> The new scene draws fanatics. Fanatics don’t create, but they contribute energy (time, money, adulation, organization, analysis) to support the creators.

> Creators and fanatics are both geeks.2 They totally love the New Thing, they’re fascinated with all its esoteric ins and outs, and they spend all available time either doing it or talking about it.

> If the scene is sufficiently geeky, it remains a strictly geek thing; a weird hobby, not a subculture.

> If the scene is unusually exciting, and the New Thing can be appreciated without having to get utterly geeky about details, it draws mops.3 Mops are fans, but not rabid fans like the fanatics. They show up to have a good time, and contribute as little as they reasonably can in exchange.

* https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

* 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21963626

* 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487

* 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751

I'd argue that there's culture and there's vultures. In any place, a community of people create a unique culture.

Geeks create most of the artifacts & traditions of that culture, but the entire community (either passively or actively) contributes, supports, and adds to it.

When that culture blows up, the vultures move there because they find value to exploit in that culture, while simultaneously supplanting/destroying/building over that culture.

In your example, maybe the local ("earlier groupie") who studied chemical engineering knows the artists, supports their shows, smokes with them, shares his or her life with them, and has the culture ingrained in them even if that person isn't directly an artist or geek.

Continuing the example, contrast this with a "later groupie" who would move to said location. This person might move into a new highrise development that used to be the warehouse where aforementioned artist & chemical engineer would kick it on weekends. The vulture will also support noise ordinance laws that would kill the informal events/performances of the culture that said chemical engineer used to attend, and where said artist would perform his or her art when that person was still 'underground'.

Why I think you are both right:

- what you describe about SV isn’t as much a culture, as it is psychographic homogeneity that is in its own way unifying [1]

- but about how “weird” as a culture can be good and important, I see that as the existence and acceptance of various sub and counter cultures, leading to an air of vibrancy, excitement, and “cool“.

[1] where people view the world the same way and have similar values and aspirations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychographics

> SV is a monoculture of nerds obsessed with computers, science, and grand ideas of changing the world through tiny companies.

I've never been to SV, but when you put it like that - it sounds pretty damn awesome.

Highly recommend a visit at least once in the near future. It's like Hacker News but you can't logout.

Actual lol at that description! Probably the most accurate description of the valley I've ever read.

San Francisco certainly wasn't always this way. Seems like GP is expressing concern that the corporate culture will wash away the weird/counter culture in Austin as well.

Lol I enjoyed your rant. I think this is true for most new stuff in any city. From Stockholm to Milan, from Melbourne to Tokyo. It’s the general money culture you’re addressing, not necessarily from SV.

I wish we would have uniqueness to the city. It’s becoming all a monoculture of Eames fake bar stools and Edison bulbs illuminating your exceptionally well crafted macchiato. This started in late 2000s actually. I was just in Kyoto before the pandemic and a lot of traditional old cafes are being replaced by the most hipster japanese shit I've ever. You know the old cafes that served 10cm thick toast, I specifically remember one by the Tajima (sic?) market when I used to travel there back in early 2000s.

Honestly, I want to preserve culture, but that's "too conservative" and you get attacked for saying these things.

exceptionally well crafted macchiato.

This phrase is just insanely well-crafted for making me crave coffee.

That'll be $7, Apple pay?

>For them, Austin is having your cake and eating it too. You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment.

Give them a decade and they'll forget they actually enjoy the environment and light the cake on fire by putting their money where their mouth is, act like nobody could have foreseen the resulting tragedy and move on to do it again somewhere else.

Another Austinite here.

It's not so much the wealth that is a negative, IMO, but certain elements of the SV culture that feel like they are corrosive. In particular, the attitudes of "I earn high comp and know stuff in my industry so surely I must be smart on all topics" and "I must inject my lefty politics into everything always" are antithetical to Austin's (and Texas's) culture.

You’re describing the people who came here for the money, found SV boring, and colonized SF instead. Those parasitical shits are the ones assailing you like two-legged tree roaches (yes I lived in Austin...in the early 80s)

>People forget that South Congress was grungy for awhile.

When the porn theatre was renovated into office space...who knew that was the turning point.

My parents still remember when this happened! For me it was losing Magnolia Cafe at the Lake

What???

I’ve been gone too long. When did that happen?

COVID. they closed the Lake Austin location. There's still one on Soco

This is true of a lot of cities of course. You have 42nd Street in NYC, the Combat Zone in Boston... Through really, people complaining that it's not like the old days either didn't live there then or they're looking back through very rose colored glasses.

Case in point, the old adult theatre the parent is talking about was flush with pimps, prostitutes, and drugs along with the rest of south Congress street.

It was not somewhere you would walk during the day, much less at night. Yet people are remembering it fondly.

Oh, let me be clear, I was a teenager when that thing was around. I'm not remembering it fondly...I just remember it and thought it was funny that it was being renovated into an office at the time.

If I'm going to remember something fondly it will be the smaller music venues like Liberty Lunch and old Emo's.

Honestly...most of the changes are good. More smart people is always good. More VC attention is (mostly) good. Some of the new buildings are good.

What I don't appreciate:

People that can't stop talking about how awesome SF or NYC is.

Cookie cutter condos.

People that don't appreciate what they're moving to and trying to get the best parts shut down -- i.e. Don't move to a condo next to a well known live music venue and try to get it shut down or at least quiet after 9 pm. Not cool.

Cheap places to live are disappearing for people who don't make a lot of cash.

Straining already struggling infrastructure (traffic and water, in particular).

Lame cookie-cutter architecture in general being thrown up as quickly as possible.

And, generally, bringing bad attitudes into what has been a very chill, very accepting culture.

But those are small things, all things considered. Most of the people moving here are smart, cool people that acclimate quickly. To them, I say Welcome! To the others I say...maybe Dallas or Houston would be a better fit.

Oh that brings back a memory, I looked at that space just after renovation as a place for our new office.

You get loudly decry everything the state government does while silently enjoying the tax and business environment.

Worry not. In 20 years they'll be fleeing for the next Texas, after flipping it blue and raising taxes, among other things.

I am a tech “bro” myself, but my move to SF predates the recent tech boom. I was also annoyed at the local government for not fixing quality of life issues. But off late, I am increasingly disillusioned by the tech industry and the loudmouth tech execs and VCs on Twitter. They complaint all day about SF. They are constantly looking for validation and affirmation of their self importance from local leaders. They probably believe that everyone owes them something. And I started to realize that people forget why they moved to SF to begin with. It was because it wasn’t a wasteland of mono culture of office parks and white collar workers. And now every day they decry what they moved into.

You can use taxes as a sword, but Texas has no personal income tax. A higher minimum wage would also help, but that has to go through the same people who don't want a personal income tax.

As more and more people move to Austin they will grow in political influence until they can vote out those people, institute a personal income tax, etc.

Why? No income tax and high property taxes is a good idea IMO. Property taxes in Austin are outrageous.

> As more and more people move to Austin they will grow in political influence until they can vote out those people, institute a personal income tax, etc.

Houstonian and UT grad here. We libtards have been saying that for as long as I can remember, and it never seems to come to pass. It's much like the old saying, [X] is five years in the future, and has been for the last 50 years.

Owned a home in Galveston only to have the property tax triple, but when I finally challenged it using a local realtor family friend's help it turned in to "okay how much do you want to pay". Its a game with rules that aren't exactly clear.

Texas amended the state constitution in 2019 to prohibit a personal income tax.

Also, the legislature of TX isn't structured in such a way that a large increase in Austin's population would enable sufficient political power to alter the constitution.

Finally, why would you want to move from California to Texas and then try to transform Texas into California? Just stay in California if that's what you want.

Fairly sure the gerrymandering will keep any sufficiently large population locations' influence minimized.

Given how much you've waxed poetic about Austin, what's pushing you to move to SV? Money, school, a startup idea?

waxing poetic is one of my favorite hobbies. combination of climate, closer to hiking, and jobs

Sounds like a repeat of what happened to SF. Be ready for the tech money and tech sis/bros to descend like a swarm of locusts, displace all the locals, extinguish everything cool, and then start complaining about how nobody appreciates them.

Imo, these are the worst type of people. I look forward to the day they all leave the Bay Area and go somewhere else.

You are going to be waiting forever

Not necessarily. The people who were there for money / work are leaving in droves. I can only hope that a crash similar to the tech bust in the late 90s / early 00s accelerates the process. Those who are staying tend to genuinely like and appreciate the area, and they tend to be better citizens who contribute to a sense of community.

Nobody would have been displaced if SF home building wasn’t at an all-time low. The propensity for the left in this city to stick up for homeowners and their intentional housing crisis is incredible.

I think it has more to do with preserving the character and vibe of the city -- the things that make it uniquely San Francisco. A lot of animosity toward the new arrivals stems from the lack of respect and appreciation for these. The valley itself (i.e. the peninsula and Fremont down to San Jose) has always been a cultural wasteland. I miss the days when the techie scum used to confine itself to those environs.

> the techie scum

Surely the irony that you're writing this on HN isn't lost on you?

It's a nice rant but you clearly don't care about most of the things you complain about.

You're moving to SF.

Everything you complain about is worse in SF and there are even more problems like (still) insane real estate prices, out of control homelessness, city government against everything new (e.g. it took SF months to approve bird etc. scooters).

Your actions speak louder than your words.

There are, of course, plenty of good reasons to move to SF from Austin (weather, ocean, mountains, more tech jobs) but those are not what you claim are your reasons.