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So my wife has been watching a ton of Desperate Housewives* lately while doing filing and billing and Christmas cards. It's got that classic Five {Wo}Man Band structure, with the characters representing different archetypes of modern womanhood: Bree is the uptight and upright right wing Christian, Lynette is the career woman feminist trying juggle job and kids while still being feminine for her husband, Gabby is a super hot materialistic slut, Susan is retarded, and Mary Alice is dead. I caught bits and pieces on our TV, it's not a complicated show you pick up on it fast, so we're vaping weed after work and she asks me Ok, which one of the women am I? I thought about and answered that she wasn't really like any of them, but Gabby is your id. Gabby is the devil on your shoulder telling you to buy shoes and get your rocks off. So she looks at me and says, ok, who is your id, what character? I looked at her, took a hit, and said Sam Bankman-Fried. We both burst into laughter as we realize what a brilliant choice that was. SBF really is my worst reflexes made flesh, me if no one slapped me and told me to shape up, I would have become a fat schlub doing drugs and playing a lot of video games and trying to hustle bullshit, though probably not as rich for however brief a time it lasted.
I think that's true for a lot of people on themotte and in the broader SSC-verse. We're fascinated because he's a failure mode we could have fallen into. And there's a broader thing I think about all the time, that born at most other times in history I would have been useless. I'm a bad farmer, a mediocre mechanic, a physical coward, but I think good and that pays these days. As we more and more highly reward thinkers, our villains will be the failure modes of thinkers.
*It's interesting to me that Desperate Housewives is mostly forgotten as a program, while the various Real Housewives programs live on. Originally the Real Housewives shows were take offs on the popularity of the Desperate Housewives phenomenon: this was going to be just like the show, but real. Now the reality TV show genre is dominant over the forgotten sitcom, young viewers of the reality show forget the sitcom it came from.
It does seem there is a niche in society for people with brains and some sociopathy, but the key is not overdoing it. Michael Millikin for example. SBF is the worst nightmare of the managerial elite because he embodies every worst stereotype of it, and the people affiliated with him.
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I mean, honestly, that speaks to me. I honestly can't imagine myself experimenting with weird drugs and trying to sell more-or-less fake products that you pump up with investment dollars while justifying it with "but greater good" or whatever the EA angle actually was. And I don't care about the SBF scandal. It's incredibly boring to me and I usually minimize threads about it; I don't actually know why I read this one.
But, when I do run into things that could be my dark twisted mirror, it's hard to look away or, for that matter, stop talking about them. That thing just happens not to be this guy, who comes off as a dork who stole from morons in a stupid but not entertaining way.
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