this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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i think one thing people miss is that counter culture movements sometimes win people over in the worst ways and they get really extreme ideas, or really extreme people get spun up in them and become little evil vorticies of power and influence. The sixties spawned the civil rights movement, peace movement. It also created the Manson family. There's a sort of yin and yang to these things IMO, creation and destruction. It's like a period of high energy and change and that can get used in many creative and destructive ways.
Some people see today as terrible and think socialism will fix it. Others, fascism. Two people agree that current leaders are failing, but for different reasons. And when everyone is demanding change, you can get some dangerous people to pop out of the wood work.
People like Musk and Thiel grow up in free thinking environments and in counter culture meccas and are a direct result of that energy. They dont run counter to it. They are a product of it.
There are complexities. Sure. Pushing new ideas is always complicated, and shitty people can do shitty things with them.
The Manson family was hoover's baby. Not that they're innocent, but they had help sucking that much.
None of that is this. The counter culture hasn't been there for decades; what's left is aesthetic remnants.
Thiel grew up in a Nazi cult. I think in south Africa? There were swastikas on the flags in his school. Musk is from south africa-during apartheid. They're not from fucking San Francisco. You're trying to make a point about how too much freedom is bad sometimes. I've got complex feelings, but your point is totally unsupported by facts on display here.
The point of what I said is that they're not genuinely from/of there, its just the cultural milleiu they knew in their 20s. They pulled the fucking aesthetics and nothing else, and they're getting stupid(er) because even the fucking aesthetics were too much for them.