It's very weird that you kept emphasizing "PG was like that before he got rich." You mentioned this point in both of your comments, but the ones you replied to didn't imply PG became like that after he got rich. None of them did.
Straw-manning is a telling sigh that you got defensive about PG, for some reason.
Interesting! but I'm not sure I follow. The GP, for example, connected PG's writing style with his "position as a wealthy VC". Pointing out that the writing style predates that seems relevant. No?
If people just dislike wealth, that's one thing, but nowadays they bring that up while criticizing his writing. I don't think those two things are connected, and it seems weird to conflate them.
They're conflated because pg has an interest in paying young people low rates to work their butts off for a slim chance of success. He's a master of talking his book, and a lot of his blogs read like grist for the high-school to startup pipeline.
They're also conflated because pg has written some very reductive stuff about smart people, sheep people, and ThInGs YOu JUSt CaNT SaY AnY MoRE. His stripped-back style makes for an easy read, but when he's not about his own experiences, it's ice-cold and humourless. That surely gets him pigeonholed quite fast outside of HN, even if you don't know what he does for a living.
Still this is the first of his blogs in years where I agree with him completely. No notes!
You're profoundly wrong about "his position as a wealthy VC" though. pg was this way long before he became a wealthy investor. As I said in the GP (but not before you replied! I was busy editing) - he was (1) exactly this way long before that, and (2) it was by being this way that he became a wealthy investor at all. YC was an exercise in exactly the same kind of thinking and writing that his essays are. And I do mean exactly.