Most of Silicon Valley isn't working on ad-tech (although a large chunk of it is). To dismiss everyone working in SV as working in optimizing ads doesn't make much sense.
There are other sectors of the economy completely wrecking the Environment (Energy, Global Warming), Global Economy (Finance, 2008 crisis) etc. While those sectors get their fair amount of attention, it seems like its cool to pick on those in tech now.
/shrug
Should we have a movie made about ad tech and social media and their deleterious effects on society? Just to make it even.
Most of Silicon Valley isn’t working on ad tech, yeah, I get it. But for crying out loud what the hell are they working on? Thats my point. How this is interpreted outside of tech circles is that “tech” is just a thing to make “tech” people more rich.
Edit: I’d actually like to know what percentage of SV is working on ad tech, which I consider useless for American society at best and dangerous at worst.
If you are being left behind, if you're smart enough to know that, certainly it's not going to make you feel any better to know more about what people are doing that you can't do.
I wonder if anyone has written about the strangeness of the world being taken over by social media, specifically juxtaposed with the general belief that the people who develop tech lack social skills. That seems like a deeper challenge to what people believe than just nerds getting rich.
[Emphasis added] Well, this is certainly true. It's worth thinking for a moment about why "tech bro" has become a pejorative phase. Perhaps it has something to do with the "tech", which, for the most part, is really just online-ad-tech, UI/UX optimization, and a couple other things. Non-technical people don't really understand what most of this stuff is that "tech bros" work on, even though it really does affect them. And so it seems reasonable that they are a little confused as to how the "tech bros" got so rich working on "tech", which, again, is allegedly going to make us all better off. At least that's what we were all told growing up.
To be frank I think the hubris comes more for the other side of this equation that you do, and I don't think it's a uniquely leftist viewpoint to be skeptical of all of this (as I am not a leftist). When I visit SF (which is probably a dozen times a year) I'll see plenty of new billboards and ads for new startups working on the "hottest new stuff". I'm a technical person and can actually grasp what they're working on. Some of it is great. But working people who can't afford to live there now don't get what any of this is, and they're right to be skeptical about it. Who cares how passionate you are about revolutionizing an algorithm to better serve adds on social media. Long term, that's probably going to hurt society. Not help it. And if criticism of this is now "bullying" then, well, I'm Biff Tannen.