One of the reasons it seems outlandish to us here is that computer stuff generally requires a mental acuity that is difficult to achieve when you're strung out on drugs/partying. So people like this typically wash out pretty fast.

But I did once work with a "Chief Architect of Data Science" who was only putting in 10 hours a week remotely for what was supposed to be a full time position.

The magic trifecta was that he was well credentialed, somebody's crony, and completely full of shit; so the hedge fund guys employing him didn't know any better.

> fake nihilism

Who would fake nihilism? And why?

Because when faced with the meaningless of everything it's cool to look cool and detached while behind closed doors shitting yourself and popping pills left and right trying to maintain that image.

Your initial comment is on-point, except I don't think any of these people are identifying with or as nihilists.

They are invariably politically leftists. Which is where contemporary "bad words and cancel culture" come from.

The irony of being ostensibly "leftist" while flashing a 0.1% lifestyle of "knowing the room service menu at the Ritz by heart" and getting high in first class.

You may be referring to a particular brand of "excuse me for being a degenerate occasionally, but you know my heart is in the right place and I'm a friend of the proletariat" sort of leftism, but it's definitely not a nihilism and they'll definitely parrot the right leftist lines at parties or they'll lose their little perch in a heartbeat.

I think leftism has a particular appeal for culture types because it's traditionally been the case (until 1980 or so) that capitalism didn't really have much of a place for culture - which was traditionally a poor product, and the better it was as culture, the worse it sold.

There's also the traditional aristocratic looking-down-upon-the-bourgeois for their grubby and banal mindsets, which has got sort of subsumed into leftism because there aren't many aristocrats left. Adorno is a kind of good exposition of this sort of thing.

Lastly, it's very traditional. The French revolution, at least in the early stages, was basically bankrolled and sheltered by L Phillipe de Orlean, the first prince of the blood.

People who want to look too cool for school.

Clearly they aren't actually nihilists because they care about money and status.