If there's one thing I cannot stand, it's Silicon Valley rich kids who invented a thing, sell the thing for a lot of money, and then start screwing around online because they have the money and they can.
Meet Palmer Luckey, a Silicon Valley guy who started Oculus, a virtual reality company which was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. Lucky indeed.
Now that he has way too much time on his hands, here's what he's up to -- "Shitposting" dirty memes about Hillary Clinton.
Nimble America says it’s dedicated to proving that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real,” according to the company’s introductory statement, and has taken credit for a billboard its founders say was posted outside of Pittsburgh with a cartoonishly large image of Clinton’s face alongside the words “Too Big to Jail.”
“We conquered Reddit and drive narrative on social media, conquered the [mainstream media], now it’s time to get our most delicious memes in front of Americans whether they like it or not,” a representative for the group wrote in an introductory post on Reddit.
Potential donors from Donald Trump’s biggest online community—Reddit’s r/The_Donald, where one of the rules is “no dissenters”—turned on the organization this weekend, refusing to believe “NimbleRichMan” was the anonymous “near-billionaire” he claimed to be and causing a rift on one of the alt-right’s most powerful organizational tools.
This Reddit post will tell you all you need to know about the character of the man.
https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/779151377083740161
Let's begin with the claim that he "worked his way to the top." No, he didn't work his way to the top. He may have had some geek expertise, but he basically parlayed that into some helpful public relations from the tech community -- including the very prominent tech promoter Robert Scoble. He used his new shiny thing and the promotion it was getting to sell himself to Facebook, who then acquired his company with the abundant funds they have.
He is essentially nothing more than a spoiled sh*t-for-brains geek who thinks way more of himself than he should. Frankly, he should be looking at himself in the mirror every day and wondering how he can use his millions for good in the world instead of tossing it away on garbage subReddits and misogynist memes.
Dave Winer, one of the founders of the social web, writes:
Luckey sold Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion. His stake was worth $700 million. Yesterday it came out that he's using some of that wealth to fund an online astroturf campaign to make it look like there are lots of assholes who hate Hillary Clinton. These fake assholes don't exist. The joke is that if you know a little about tech, very little, you can make it look like they do exist.
The thing that's so galling is that the money Luckey made was based on the work we did to create a world where people could freely share ideas and life experiences. To make the world more real. To pervert it the way Luckey has is humiliating to the very technology that made him rich.
We didn't make wealth our first goal, though I did okay, thank you. No one needs the amount of money Thiel or Luckey have, and they are living proof of it. No one should be able to sue a publication out of existence in a country that was founded on free speech. And Luckey flipped it around, creating fake people with simulated speech. As with Thiel, using wealth he has no idea what to do with. Not that anyone with that much money would.
For his part, Luckey says,
“It’s something that no campaign is going to run,” Luckey said of the proposed billboards for the project.
“I’ve got plenty of money,” Luckey added. “Money is not my issue. I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time.”
Oh! For the lulz. What's a little misogyny and fake people among friends, after all?
