The Gay Tech Mafia
wired.com
wired.com
I have a snarky response, then a real response.
Snark: Oh like a bunch of gays are capable of that level of coordination without it breaking into vicious drama and infighting. We can barely hold together a volleyball team sometimes.
Real: Well, yes, a lot of gay guys do know each other, especially in dense urban cities like SF, NYC, and Chicago, because we are all in the same sports leagues, we go to the same bars, we go to the same circuit parties, and it’s natural to give someone you know an internal referral as a leg up, because it’s a lot easier to hire someone you know versus sifting through 1600 job applications from strangers.
The article seems to admit that its central premise is entirely made up. If a conservative 3% of people are some flavour of gay, then they are 6-fold underrepresented, at least in this area.
Tried many times to explain this to women - cis straight men are not your blockers, especially fathers.
Men who legit see you as redundant are.
"Allies" has been such an DEI Orwellian term.
Same with "racism" - up is down, left is right. Discrimination between Asians? Totally fine, zero attention, can't be true.
Under that mental model, the only thing surprising about this article is that WIRED would publish. It's conspiratorial and easy to construe as homophobic. This is an SF-based magazine that still has physical distribution. What editor in those shoes doesn't immediately spike a story like this? They know something.
Are there nepotism, favor trading, and walled garden clubs at play here? Yes, of course, this is a field with a lot of money exchanging hands and people are using whatever advantage they can get. Did the tech scene in the bay area attract a higher than average number of gay people? Seems like it, similar to other minorities who are over-represented for various reasons. But focusing on a "Gay mafia" instead of the more universal dynamics that allow money and power to be concentrated in a small population seems like missing the mark and directing public rage at the wrong targets.
We've done it before with targeting Jews, then lately people of Indian and east-Asian heritage, and now we seem to target gay people. If someone thinks the tech industry is not fully meritocratic, then they should tackle the dynamics that encourage that head on - the identity of the people who are over-represented will change over time, but the systemic dynamics that allow a non-meritocratic power concentration will remain.
https://postscript1794.substack.com/p/is-the-most-shocking-m...
> Part of me wanted to ignore it in favor of other, more intellectual topics, and those topics are still the main focus of this Substack in general. However, I feel compelled to discuss this topic at least once. The thing about this particular rumor is just how frequently I have heard it over the years. Various iterations of the exact same story, but from very different people, with very different agendas, and at very different times. And it is striking to me how generally consistent it is.
> Instead of discussing it myself, I’m merely going to post some screenshots of what other people have posted on this topic and simply note that what all these people are saying very much echoes what I and others have also heard for years. Make of that what you will.
I’m sure you wouldn’t want your own private life leaked this way.
You can see what this would look like already by searching for prnewswire https://news.google.com/publications/CAAqKQgKIiNDQklTRkFnTWF...
Companies pay to place those things and some outfits run them. It'd all look like that.
Anyways, journalist reach out for comment and are supposed to consider the response of the parties involved but that's about it.
That was an awful thing to defend, have a sense of shame and apologise Chris.
I don't know why you're engaging this way but this conversation is definitionally a waste of time.
Sometimes that's sex tapes and Epstein Island
It's ok. We're not going to resolve things here
2. Sure. Have a great time
2. freaky
You're conflation a bunch of things there
I can say, for example, entertainment weekly or the national enquirer is in poor taste but I didn't think they should be chased out of business
Journalism has to be responsible.
This article is a clusterfuck, no pun intended.
There's a conservative christian billionaire who is actively funding political groups blocking this.
You, a journalist, working at a tabloid, finds out he's secretly gay. Sound like a story?
There's context to all of these things.
We all have different ones
But, like, Peter Thiel genuinely thinks life ought to be harder for gay people? He's a good Christian and thinks gay people will go to hell? I still don't really get it.
He's always worked on the law/capital/property side. The man can't code and has never claimed to be able to.
He's a deeply libertarian conservative christian who happens to get titillated by men.
But that last part is just what he is, it's not really who he is.
Being gay doesn't constrain you to a particular set of beliefs.
There's plenty people active on the right that are all kinds of diverse; hispanic, gay, asian. Look at that recent shooter, a trans person with a history of far right activism with neonazi tattoos who said they were "to the right of hitler" but also, transgendered.
It's really all over the map. Shit's complicated.
It must be a miserable life to think your very existence is wrong.
But he has the billions to buy him happiness anyway, so, I guess he's OK.
That's not at all how happiness works.
It takes an issue of people in power abusing that power, and ties it to their sexuality, as if the men abuse their power because they’re gay, or as if straight men never do similarly.
Identifying abusive power structures is good, but writing about it in a way that centers the sexuality of the participants has the effect of demonizing a whole group of people unfairly.
I am appalled that Wired published this.
The behavior is the problem. The exclusionary nature of these networks happens to be illegal in many US states, as sexual identity is a protected class. Doing the same nonsense at the Harvard club is equally noxious, not not illegal.
There’s a number of very significant, very problematic power brokers wielding authority in tech companies now. The fact that a significant part of the cohort is gay is irrelevant - the fact they have a clique that is insular and possibly corrupt is. That commonality is no less relevant than the PayPal Mafia.
No you wouldn't that's not how it works.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never felt like I was excluded because of those sort of thing. To be fair, I’m nowhere near the physical fitness/attractiveness standard described here, so I guess it’s possible that’s biased my experience.