I have better taste than you, don’t you get it? I went to Stanford, you went to Berkeley. I wear Common Projects, you wear Veja. My consumer tech is Teenage Engineering, you got yours from Best Buy. I live in San Francisco, you live in San Jose. I’m a member of technical staff, you are an engineer. Everything about me is out of distribution, you’re more of an average. I read Nick Land, you read Jared Diamond. You can’t understand me, I know everything about you. I’m an exited founder, you’re employee # whatever. I go to exclusive parties, you go to hackathons. I live in Pac Heights…you don’t live in Pac Heights. I’m me, and you are you. You could be me if important people allowed you to be. But I’d never be you. I need you to know this. I really really really need you to know this.
The Niners had to play the Mahomes dynasty Chiefs in the Super Bowl twice and the Seahawks get to play the San Jose State club flag football team, nice.
In my 30+ years of life in the Bay Area living in 11 cities here, the most distinct and strange archetype of young person I encounter is those who grew up in Palo Alto
First off, they almost universally loathe their parents and feel victimized by them. They’re left wing but extremely machiavellian, they have the violent agitator belief system of disenfranchised revolutionaries with the jaded aloofness of an aristocrat class. Bizarre combination and very recognizable, so many times in my life I encounter the archetype and later learn they grew up in PA, and it immediately is obvious in hindsight
There’s no parallel to it in the Bay Area, it’s like there’s something in the water. Kids from affluent areas of the East Bay, SF, Los Gatos/Saratoga all have subtle distinctions but generally have pretty similar, chill, moderate-left, high achieving cultures. For some reason the affluent Palo Alto area is has this little isolated subculture of young people full of hatred with a super high rate of sociopaths
tiktok has a new trend where people drink hot water and stretch in the morning and call it being chinese
but have u ever cried while doing math with your dad at the kitchen table and he broke your pencil in half
Hey, sorry for how I acted when our plans changed slightly. So long as everything from here on out goes exactly as I’ve planned forever, I won’t be like that again