CEO of Freedom

Lmaoo, sign me up

Hackers make computers do things they couldn't do before, and give away the results for free.

Tech bros take away things that computers used to do, and charge rent for the "service."

I'm not sure I buy this distinction. Stephen Levy's description of the hacker ethic in Hackers (in particular free speech absolutism, what is now called "meritocracy", and the idea that rapidly accelerating adoption of technology will make the world better and decouple us from burdensome traditional power structures) is much closer to contemporary "tech bro" ideology than its opposition.

A decade later, this combination of ideas was criticized in the early stages of the dotcom boom as the Californian Ideology, and still mostly tracks with what we would call "tech bros" today. Occasionally, you see people from that era (e.g. John Carmack) be criticized for saying something that would've been a boring consensus opinion in online hacker circles back in the 90s.

The ideas that people find now find problematic were always present.

I think it's a matter of scale. Certain behaviors seem quaint or quirky when applied to a local university computing environment (especially when they were in a more nascent stage), but the exact same behavior would seem much more obviously sociopathic when applied to a larger organization like the federal government.

For example, when Gosper was threatening to destroy the PDP-6 like Roark from The Fountainhead (the comparison is from the book, not me) if they implemented time-sharing, was that about distributing power? No, it's ultimately about one person thinking he is superior and therefore gets to decide the circumstances in which other people live/work.

I do have to speak up, from my own experience what you described in regards to "showing off their skills" and wanting "acknoweledgement and the respect of their peers" is only a small and, if I may say so, fairly toxic part of hacking culture; myself and most others I know in this community build, learn and do things on our own terms, for our own enjoyment, and barely even remember to share anything or intentionally don't share things due to past bad experiences, for me this is 50/50

More simply hackers are anyone with an interest in technology for the sake of technology, tech bros are grifters who's grift happens to include technology

hacker: I made this toaster play Doom, just because I can.
techbro: I increased this website's engagement by 17% and in doing so raised teenage suicides by 5%.

know the difference. it could save your life.

@brouhaha @RobKopp Well, there's about 10,000 cults out there cosplaying as evangelical churches. The RDF in places like that would make Steve jealous.

There was more to Jobs than the RDF though. Apple was better when he was there. I mean really, what new thing have they really come up that's been successful? AirPods?

I also don't think he would have given $1 million to an inauguration.

@unconed @datn
To me as a non-native English speaker the "bro" part seems very vague. The first time I saw the word "techbro" used (on fedi, not in a newspaper), I thought it meant any man in tech.

I wish there was a more precise term to refer to the tech rent-seekers...

@datn Uh, if people are directing their ire to the wrong group, and making them into a stereotype they're not, that is actually their burden to fix.

The question is why they believe men in tech are uniformly "bros" and the answer is that it's the news media that has had a vendetta against tech for a decade or so and refuses to make the distinction clearly.