
Kill the tech bro, save the world: how CEOs became Hollywood's new supervillains - ohjeez
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/06/tech-bros-ceo-hollywood-supervillains
======
Bartweiss
> _tech bro... CEOs_

Even in this headline, there's some pretty interesting equivocation happening
between techies and CEOs overall. The article makes a decent case for why
there's collective anxiety about tech companies, but neglects the question of
"why _only_ tech?"

The ~1990s had a whole string of movies with bankers and investors as
villains: _American Psycho_ , _Rogue Trader_ , _Glengarry Glen Ross_ , _Wall
Street_ , _Boiler Room_ , and so on. Lately, we had had _Wolf of Wallstreet_
and _The Big Short_ , but in a post-2008 world where banking already _has_
trashed the economy we're surprisingly short on bankers-as-villains films.

We got a couple of global warming films in the 2000s, and a couple more in the
2010s, but I can't think of one which makes a serious attempt to cast oil CEOs
as villains - certainly not in the sense that e.g. tobacco companies have
been. _Avatar_ is probably the closest thing to "CEOs trashing the
environment" that's been a hit.

Pharma companies lend themselves to human-interest tragedies, and we did get
_Dallas Buyer 's Club_. But there's no whole genre here like there used to be
with "the bank takes the farm".

So there's the missing question: why tech companies specifically? The most
obvious answer is just "more impressive visuals". I'm not sure we're talking
about a particular anxiety of the moment, or if it's just that banks and oil
companies work better on the page than on the screen.

~~~
eesmith
> Avatar is probably the closest thing to "CEOs trashing the environment"
> that's been a hit.

What about "Erin Brockovich"? PG&E is a power company, though the hexavalent
chromium was used to fight corrosion.

I did not see the movie, but the Wikipedia summary says the decision was
traced to upper management.

~~~
Bartweiss
_Erin Brockovich_ and _A Civil Action_ (about groundwater pollution) are both
good examples, yes.

I guess it depends when the article starts its timeline. I was trying to think
of movies from the 2010s or so, because I can think of a lot of tech CEO
villains in that span but not many non-tech CEO villains. My best guess at why
is that action films with corporate villains look better with tech companies.
(For instance, _Robocop_ is way older than the article's timeframe, but fits
the same villain narrative.)

~~~
eesmith
FWIW, IMDB has a list of movies with both 'environmental issue' and 'oil'
keywords at
[https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword?keywords=environmental-i...](https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword?keywords=environmental-
issue%2Coil&sort=moviemeter,asc&mode=detail&page=1&ref_=kw_ref_key) .

It seems to support your observation.

~~~
Bartweiss
Ah, thanks for that! This is the sort of observation where I always worry that
I've just got a biased sample, so any unrelated take on the topic is helpful.

I see a handful of very on-topic films there, _Trouble in the Peace_ in
particular looks like an environmental version of _Hell or High Water_
(mortgages) or _Legends of the Fall_ (local government corruption and
mistreatment of Native Americans). But those were high-profile films with
famous casts, while _Trouble in the Peace_ looks like a sleeper labor of love.

Honestly, I'm really surprised we haven't gotten any good "oil companies ruin
our lives" dramas this decade, you could do fracking or sea level rise or
drought or... It feels like a weird gap in the set of popular narratives.

------
lalos
About the tech bro (and less of the successful CEO) problem, I think it is
getting out of hand. Service workers (waiters, drivers, etc) in SF complain
constantly of their behavior. What's funny its that it's usually the new
blood, junior devs that behave like this. Why do they think they are kings of
the world if they are on the lowest chain in the tech world? I want to
sympathize with them but just can't understand their thought process. Also
I've had issues with them, I saw a group of tech bros touching all the
keyboards of the Computer History Museum, they don't even respect their own
history or are grateful of why they are here to begin with. Maybe it's just
that enough people are in tech now that we have a percentage of bad apples by
pure stats. It worries me, since we are getting stereotyped by what I hope is
a loud minority.

~~~
flog
I have worked in tech for 15 years, around the world, an have never met this
mythical "tech bro".

~~~
electricslpnsld
> have never met this mythical "tech bro"

The typical SF tech bro stereotype: Youngish white guy, BS in CS from
Michigan, lack of self awareness, enjoys Pliny the Younger, Barry's Bootcamp,
standup, rides a boosted board to work in SOMA.

(This is not meant as a critique, I probably satisfy a number of these
checkboxes myself...)

~~~
forgottenpass
That's what a bro is? No wonder I've been so confused these past few years.

A fresh grad, new to SF that doesn't yet realize he can't unironically like
trendy beers, workout routines or gauche means of conveyance?

That's not a bro! You guys just needed a word for cultural immigrants that
haven't assimilated yet without making yourselves sound like bitter townies,
didn't you?

~~~
Bartweiss
I'm not sure this is what 'tech bro' means to most people, because the term
also gets applied to California natives who went to Stanford. (Obviously the
completely inconsistent usage of the term is an issue in its own right.)

But you do strike a chord with _" a word for cultural immigrants that haven't
assimilated yet"_. I know one person from the rural midwest who studied CS,
landed in the Valley, and ended up leaving for some midwestern company -
earning less money for work he liked less - because he couldn't assimilate. He
swore teaching English in Japan had been less stressful and shocking than
trying to keep up with the demands and hostility of SF culture, and honestly I
don't find it hard to believe.

I've had people quite sincerely tell me that there's no such thing as "Bay
Area culture", just an expectation that people do the right thing. I suppose
it's one of those "fish in water" situations, but I still have trouble
understanding the amount of hubris required to say "oh, other people have
cultures, we just have the right way of behaving".

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Wohlf
Ah yes, Hollywood, our moral arbiters that can't stop projecting their own
issues on to everyone else.

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mLuby
Might be reflective of a world where we fear oppressive systems (created by
maybe evil maybe naive tech guys) more than strongmen (who now act as mere
agents of said system).

~~~
richsinn
This comment reminds me of "the banality of evil" concept.

src:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_bana...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banality_of_evil)

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vkou
They already were, in the anti-globalization anti-corporate backlash at the
end of the cold war. Orcs and comic book supervillians and bankers had two
decades in the sun, but the wheel has once again turned.

~~~
cfadvan
Even then, a lot of comic book super villains were essentially caricatures of
CEOs, or actual CEOs. Green Goblin from Spider Man being a fine example of the
crossover.

~~~
52-6F-62
Lex Luthor, anybody? or Valentine from Kingsmen 1

 _edit: woops, didn 't look at the article before that. Lex is the core of the
article_

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nojvek
> After all, what’s scarier? The rise of the machines, or the rise of the
> morally ambiguous men who pioneer them.

This article summarized things so well. I love it!

------
Apocryphon
The article isn't very deep, only pointing out a phenomenon by way of examples
and without too much analysis.

I'd argue that villains need power to have teeth and believability. Our
definition of power changes over time- that's why we don't see too many
communist rebel Che Guevara knock-offs, for example, as movie villains anymore
unlike in Predator or Escape from LA. But if it wasn't tech CEOs then tinpot
dictators and rogue generals always work, because they're always in power
somewhere in the world. There's also the archetype of the sinister senior
intelligence apparatchik or bureaucrat as highlighted in Mission: Impossible,
24, the Bourne movies, and a ton of others even before the Snowden revelations
or the Iraq War, because that's another example of American conception of
power.

I'd argue that tech CEOs also make for an easy target because their public
personas are often defined by their idiosyncrasies (Jobs' turtleneck, Bezos'
shaved head) and perceived social awkwardness. Sometimes, in the case of
Upgraded, it just feels cruel to stereotypically awkward or neuroatypical
nerds. But there's at least one major counter-example: Ex Machina was a great
Hollywood exploration of A.I. and the Turing Test, and its genius CEO villain
was played by Oscar Issac as a charismatic, or at least chummy, non-
stereotypical nerd.

------
DanAndersen
I wonder which other groups of people the Guardian would feel comfortable
writing headlines about promoting killing for the good of the world.

------
joshuaheard
Something I've noticed about Hollywood bias. When there is a Republican
President, the villains tend to be corporations ("Rollerball") or government
("No Way Out"). In other words, Republicans are the enemy. When there is a
Democrat President, the villains tend to be aliens ("Independence Day) or
natural disasters ("Twister"). In other words, Democrats are the heroes. Just
anecdotal, I've never seen a study on it.

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bitwize
Lex Luthor went from mad scientist to ruthless CEO sometime in the 80s or 90s.

~~~
mLuby
I bet (mad) scientists/inventors like Frankenstein, Jekyll, Herbert West, Tom
Swift, and Tony Stark became less plausible as intense specialization became
more and more common.

~~~
bitwize
We live in a world that has Elon Musk in it. Tony Stark stretches credibility
much _less_ than contemporary characters in his genre.

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paul7986
Well they also are similar to dirty hedge fund operators.. no morale compass
.. win and become filthy rich at whatever cost.

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monksy
Why would we take this article seriously? It's a bit of sexist toss to point
out that "tech bros" are the issue. (They use the term to imply that it's men
and that they're the dominate population within tech.. which isn't even close
to being true)

The issue here is people who are over-promoted in the media and lack ethics.

Also in the article:

It goes from the use of stereotyping to the whole liberal "companies are bad"
argument.

~~~
johnbender
> They use the term to imply that it's men and that they're the dominate
> population within tech.. which isn't even close to being true

This seems to contradict most of the information I've seen in the diversity
reports from companies. Maybe there is some information covering the broader
industry that supports this point?

~~~
evanpw
I took GP to mean that "tech bros" (with all of the negative stereotypes that
implies) are not dominant, not that men aren't.

~~~
monksy
Yep. That's what I meant.

