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?
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
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.
4 comments:
What Clint Reilly has to do with is beyond me. And there are normal people in SF, just not where you live, apparently. It's called The Sunset.
Clint Reilly: still evil?
I'm using Clint as a stand-in for micro targeting politics. But yes, he's still evil.
Cool!
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