I thought his "rant" was refreshing. I know the "woke" term from the last 5 years, but it apparently has a much longer history. Both PG and myself dont like the fact that it's so badly defined (while being heavily discussed).
In my view the woke crowd did a lot of performative gestures w/o event attempting to really solve the underlying problems. PG also believes that way.
The woke crowd does not actually discuss things: you are labelled a fascist, racist, transfobe, anti-semite or biggot before you can even make your point. So I've stopped discussing with them and stopped caring for being called these names.
> you are labelled a fascist, racist, transfobe, anti-semite or biggot before you can even make your point. So I've stopped discussing with them and stopped caring for being called these names.
This is being severely co-opted by the alt-right to the point that people become apologists for Elon Musk doing multiple literal Nazi salutes at the US presidential inauguration.
Decrying wokeness a week later in a meandering essay is about 8 years too late for the "well actually, some people do go too far with it" discussion. He could have written it at any point within the past decade, but doing it only after a change in who holds the purse strings is obviously just realignment for personal gain.
You should indeed stop talking to people who only throw around pejoratives, but this doesn't mean we should discredit all related cause for alarm. Calling the richest man in the world a duck because he's walking like a duck isn't woke. Pretending otherwise is some emperor's new clothes nonsense.
> Decrying wokeness a week later in a meandering essay is about 8 years too late
I did not look at it like this. What you are saying is that PG timing for the woke article is like Zuckernerd who suddenly wears a gold necklace over his sweater while he announces the DEI positions are absolved and the tampons will only be put on the ladies' rooms. They are just blown by the winds, and take little stance of their own in this.
Still I found it a really good write up. And maybe PG is in a position where he has to lean in with DEI-nonsense in order to achieve his business goals.
> but this doesn't mean we should discredit all related cause for alarm.
I think racism got worse lately (i'm in the EU), because the wokies put is much more on the agenda. We were closer to not bothering at all with color, now it is again a topic on many agendas.
Also "bodily autonomy" and "informed consent" used to be values we all (ok, except the baby-circumsizers) subscribed to. The C19 hit and the wokies' alarmism pushed "bodily autonomy" and "informed consent" in to the trashcan. I was an enemy of the wokies for not taking it. The govt stood by them and called the unvaccinated "dirty" and "anti-social" and "grandma killers".
And dont get me started on the push on young people to reconsider their gender.
Personally I believe that all capitalists (the owner class) shift to fascism when that's the best way to protect their interests. I never believed they were nice to begin with.
I have more problem with the US' military support for a nation that clearly commits a genocide. This is not a nazi salute, this is actually genociding. It was the genocide (and pharma tests on undesirables) that made the nazis so evil; not the nazi salutes.
Rightwing snowflakes are a thing, yeah. Bill Burr for one loves to roast them, as he did recently using the LA fires.
Elon threw that salute because his man-child ego took a massive beating with the H1B rightwing in-fighting, when the white nationalist wing of Maga started screaming bloody murder at him and Vivek. It's a bullied kid trying to get back in the good graces of the extreme wing of Trump's base. This virtue signaling to your friends and then declaring it to be sarcasm or comedy when called out by your foes goes back to WWII times. [0]
That being said, pg has been consistent on the woke stuff since back in the day. He wrote an essay called "What You Can't Say" over two decades ago, for god's sake. His timing on this essay was unfortunate. Although there's never a good time to publish stuff like this. He's also one of the lone "pro-Palestinian" VCs left out there, for what it's worth.
"What You Can't Say" was silly back then, and is still silly now. Here's a guy with a huge online following, multiple channels for speaking his mind and getting his message out, yet complaining about a need to self-censor and that you can't say what you want. It reminds me of the "I Have Been Silenced" cartoon[1]. He also doesn't even list a specific example of something he wants to say but "can't." It's left up to our imagination.
> He also doesn't even list a specific example of something he wants to say but "can't."
That's because he's making the general point that in every era there is always something "that can't be said" that then later becomes accepted in another era, and therefore people should strive to find truths that are as "era independent" as possible. He specifically mentions Galileo, pre-Civil War South, and Germany in the 1930s. I'm sure you can imagine a few things "that couldn't be said" in those environments or eras. The essay was written in 2004, when it wasn't unheard of of people were getting fired for their various takes on 9-11 and the wars on terror either, so I doubt it was hard for a reader to "imagine" some examples to understand the point.
You said in your comment above that he's "out there ranting about wokeism like a lot of them now, he's losing the plot", as if his stance is a new thing. I was just pointing out that his stance is not new.
I'm not aware of the relationship between wokeism and his stock portfolio. He wrote the first essay when YC was not even around.
