I only became of aware of Bill Gates as more than a placeholder name once he’d transitioned into the Kinder Gentler Philanthropist Gates… but my lord is this video an eye-opener.
There are interesting content-related things to think about here, but I found myself surprised how strong my gut reaction was against the man. Some large portion of my emotional response stems from familiarity with the way scorn is flaking off his face in those clips. Yes, I’ve met a number of men who don’t care to conceal how irritated they are at having to waste their far more valuable time on whatever our necessary interaction is. Yes, a number who really think they’re So Smart and so much more Important than you that they don’t have to care how they come off to you.
It’s interesting how you can feel a throughline with the Zuck’s painstakingly media-coached persona, even though his successor goes to such lengths to try to not seem that way.
I mean… if there were political will, they certainly could revise the standards on which anti-trust regulations are enforced to meet older standards (e.g., they used to care about regional inequality within the US which meant everything was regional-scale). I think this is plausible mostly because the electorate doesn’t really understand the system we had or the system we currently have, so it’s not like we’re all super attached to it.