All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again. It was a quiet echo of the past, and perhaps a hint of things to come, when TechCrunch took a break from exploring the ethical questions inherent of helping American soldiers survive combat (they are against) to publish a pair of hit jobs on Alexandr Wang. The problem, according to crazy people, is Wang’s public position Scale AI won’t factor sex or race into hiring decisions, which is, for a certain kind of online lunatic, something very close to mortal sin. But the year is no longer 2020, and these hit pieces hit different — not only because of the loud support Alex received for once unspeakable, if totally obvious moral truths (literally just “racism is bad”), but because of how much time it took the activist press to strike. Alexandr’s initial post went viral almost two weeks before their first attack, while the second only landed a few days ago — much more chaotically written, also widely panned, and almost immediately stealth-edited to strip the stinking trash heap of its most offensive language. In the end, it was only the goofy TechCrunch that opted into histrionics, and not even they would commit to the bit. We’re in the vibe shift now. Workplace struggle sessions are over, and all the clowns who used to run this insane asylum have vanished into obscurity.

Right?

Certainly the world has changed, but I do think it’s all a bit more complicated. As of June 2024, a handful of prominent venture capitalists are publicly supporting Donald Trump, a once unthinkable act. But as Pirate Wires broke last week, actual donations from venture capitalists haven't meaningfully changed. In fact, with Silicon Valley Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman on the board — a man who takes up space — things are up and to the left. So what has changed? Are we just talking more openly on X, a newly-open social media platform, with fewer social consequences?