Indo-Pacific Monitor

ALL TROLLING IS LOCAL

HOW SAN FRANCISCO BECAME A CITY OF PEEVISH, SELF-LOATHING TROLL FEEDERS, JUST LIKE EVERYWHERE ELSE

This is a story about how an obtuse technology executive provoked an entire city into revealing its deep seeded culture of self loathing. Peter Shih posted a Hate Listicle about things that suck in San Francisco - the Fucking MUNI, the Fucking Homeless, The Fucking Bicyclists, and so on. He also complained about things that reflected more on himself, like the weather, and his inability to get laid.


The piece got a lot of attention, mostly negative. This despite the fact that in the quarter century since San Franciscans have had access to the Internet, somebody somewhere in the city has posted a list of things they hate about it roughly every 18 months. You probably wrote one too; you just don't remember.

But how did we get here? How did San Francisco go from being the City That Knows How, to being the City that Blows, Now?

LIFESTYLE TRIBALISM IN AMERICAN CITIES

Although it may not seem like it, many of San Francisco's issues with civility are shared by the rest of the country. In the last few decades, self expression in America has increasingly taken the form of Lifestyle Tribalism. Certain subgroups of Americans are becoming more like-minded and increasingly ideologically inbred, and have difficulty comprehending people who are unlike them. Contrary to what many San Franciscans may assume, they are not special, and therefore not immune from these trends. America's major cities often seem like safari parks that showcase various lifestyle tribes, and San Francisco is no exception.

One problem that may be somewhat unique to our city is a paucity of Regular Folks. That is to say, normal people who are simply too busy living their lives to be chasing some self-selected delusion of grandeur.  Despite the recent depiction of normal people living in San Francisco in movies like Blue Jasmine, there don't seem to be that many here, and those that are here, often don't speak English.

The presence of normal folk in today’s vibrant cities will often take the irritating edge off of the daily parade of pretentious posers on the streets.  But for some reason, San Francisco doesn't really have neighborhoods like Queens anymore, so there's no relief from the daily Bro vs. Boho drama.

But how did we get here? And who is responsible?

POLITICAL POLARIZATION = CULTURAL POLARIZATION

One possible answer is Clint Reilly. He was a political consultant, who sided with insurance companies to fight industry reform in the 1980s. They lost the election, but Reilly made millions, and developed more successful strategies for big corporations to control the initiative process, making California ungovernable. He also worked to get annoyingly parochial politicians elected in the state’s major cities (including himself), using imagery from a lot of dodgy philosophical ideas in his campaigns. He also, like Karl Rove, worked to win elections by mincing the electorate into politically digestible demographic bits. The results were mixed again, but those campaigns continued the trend of fractious, personality driven local politics. Reilly now works behind the scenes of California politics and culture, using political donations and philanthropy to preserve his timorous legacy, along with selling overpriced, twee food.


So finally, this is how both the guy in the SOMA condo who fantasizes about being Howard Roark, and the guy in the Mission flat who fantasizes about being Jean Paul Sartre, see nothing of themselves in each other, despite the fact that they both work for the same tech company, and have comparable levels of privilege.

And that is why nobody in San Francisco likes anybody else, anymore. 

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