December 29, 2022

Narcissism.

Tech journalist Mike Elgan sums up a bit of 2022 quite well in this article (unfortunately it may be behind a paywall, I received it as an email).

And that’s why “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is exactly the movie we need right now. Yes, it’s a fun murder mystery. But the theme throughout is: Most of these young super-geniuses lionized by social media are actually just narcissist morons.

Some other gems from the article:

Elon Musk ran his mouth about Twitter so narcissistically that he was forced to buy it, wasting $44 billion and destroying the social network by personally making all the major decisions and, in doing so, driving away its most active users and best advertisers.

Kanye West ruined his own business empire by expressing his antipathy for Jewish people and his admiration for Adolph Hitler. But behind this garden variety antisemitism was a more familiar trait of total narcissism — West’s longstanding belief that he’s an unparalleled artistic and business visionary genius. And Jesus.

And, of course, Donald Trump continued to dominate the news with his own special mix of malignant narcissism and criminality, caught stealing top secret documents (most likely to show off as trophies at his golf club) and lying about winning an election he lost.

I won’t share the entirety of the article here, but if you’d like to see more, drop me an email.

Ringy Dingy.

Today I learned how long distance dialing worked in 1951. I love these old videos. I find them much more enjoyable than the Chinese spyware known as TikTok.