Nothing serious, just something that reminded me of topics in threads and, I
think, glen's acerbic comments about "great men / geniuses." Jessica
Wildfire's list (not so ironically making herself exactly what she is decrying
- absent billions of dollars of personal wealth)
5 most overated persons:
Steve Jobs:
Steve Jobs didn’t invent the computer. Steve Wozniak did. He also didn’t
invent smartphones or touch screens. These technologies already existed. In
fact, Jobs almost stopped Apple from releasing the first iPhone. A covert team
developed it in complete secrecy from him, in order to avoid his caustic
skepticism. So you might say the iPhone happened despite Jobs, not because of
him.
Elon Musk:
Elon Musk has been promising us an affordable electric car for over a decade
now. He’s used that promise to win billions of dollars in tax breaks and seed
money, while actively undermining any green projects he sees as a threat to his
own enterprise. Basically, he’s the biggest example of corporate freeloading
you could imagine. What the world admires about Elon Musk isn’t his
intelligence, or his environmental conscience. It’s his ego, plain and simple.
Jeff Bezos
Bezos conducts a masterful public relations campaign that allows customers
to believe Amazon isn’t completely destroying the environment, or working its
employees literally to death. In fact, it is. Despite Amazon’s recent pledges
to save the world, its carbon footprint has grown 15 percent since the pandemic
began. At best, the billions that Bezos spends will partly undo the damage he’s
caused. If that weren’t enough, Bezos and his company use every underhanded
tactic known to civilization in order to cheapen its labor costs and avoid
taxes. They’ve literally been caught stealing tips. Bezos himself pays almost
nothing in state income tax, while the rest of us are forced to make up the
difference. He cuts health insurance from his employees, then has the audacity
to say in public that he has no idea how to spend his immense wealth, other
than moving to Mars or cloning himself.
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah isn’t a hard-hitting journalist. She isn’t profound. She caters to the
lowest common denominator, the suburban housewives of America, who need to feel
special and important because nobody else treats them with any respect. Oprah
figured this out early on in her career. They’ve been her core audience from
the start. Oprah rode to fame on satanic panics and woo-woo spirituality. She’s
a chief architect of the magical thinking that now fuels QAnon-style conspiracy
theories and anti-vaccine movements. Oprah has spent a lifetime coddling
intellectual fragility, while manufacturing controversy and outrage for profit.
Tony Robbins
The more you learn about Tony Robbins, the more you find out his real
secret. He only knows how to succeed if you’re a big, good-looking white guy
like him. Otherwise, his advice doesn’t work. Of course, the worst thing about
Tony Robbins is that he apparently spent most of his career telling people to
stand up for themselves, while preying on women and bullying them.
What these people have in common:
So, apparently these are the five most successful people in the world. They
have the most money. They have the most influence. They’re kind of awful. If
we’re honest with ourselves, we can see how we’ve created a mythology around
these individuals. We tell stories about them that never really happened. We
ascribe pithy quotes to them they didn’t really say. We turn them into mirrors
of our own personal desires. In case you missed the last few thousand years of
western civilization, the most powerful people in the world aren’t nice.
They’re not fair. They don’t play by the rules. They’re brutal. They cheat.
Often, they’re simply in the right place at the right time — and they exploit
that to their advantage, often at everyone’s expense.
for entertainment purposes only.
davew
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