by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Marc Andreessen changed my life. And, but for the hard wiring of my synapsis, could have made me a billionaire. “I was there,” as the song goes, in the early days of the Web when the first web browser Mosaic, that he designed, was released. I was in college and I immediately realized the potential of this new technology.
If I had a different type brain, I probably would have become a programmer and made my billions in some Web startup as part of the general dotcom boom of the mid-to-late-90s. But, alas, I’m a big old doofus and just know how to write and take pictures.
So.
Why do I bring all of this up?
Well, Andreessen implied tonight on Twitter that the “woke cancel culture mob” is analogous to the excesses of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. There is so much to unpack there.
First, it’s clear that Andreesen has turned into one of those Red Pilled fascist tech bros who would are obsessed with the culture wars to the point that they would give up their American birthright of democracy in exchange for low-to-no-taxes.
Ugh.
Having said that, let’s look close at what he suggests — does he have a point?
Hmmm. This is an interesting question. The issue is, social media has made the weaponization of shaming on a mass scale for the stupidest shit really easy. And, yet, Andreesen is being an asshole to suggest that the “woke cancel culture mob” can be equated with the weird, fucked up shit of the Cultural Revolution.
The two are just not the same.
Oh no, something woke!
The worst that happens to someone who is “canceled” for having views that don’t fit the media narrative is…they become a talking head on Fox News as a martyr to the cause? And sometimes, they face NO accountability other than they don’t get to go to the cool cocktail parties at Martha’s Vineyard anymore. It’s not like the “woke cancel culture mob” is killing people in public.
Now, this is the point where I say I am WELL AWARE of how suspectable I, personally, am to be “canceled” should, for some reason, I blow up with my novel money and become any sort of prominent public cultural figure. I have done plenty — PLENTY — of things over the years in my drunken dissipation that might get me canceled.
And, what’s more, I’m writing a novel that may never get published because I write about things in a way that the “woke cancel culture mob” may blanch at.
So…lulz?
But I still think Andreessen is being a dick. He wants to score culture war points by muddling and conflating things that might SEEM similar, but upon any sort of nuanced reflection definitely aren’t.
