fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5848 ]

[ SECRET POST #5848 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5848 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Glass Onion]

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03.

[Josh Groban]

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04.

[Greta (2018) & Suspiria (2018)]

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05.

[The Witcher]

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06.

[The Newsroom (2012)]

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07.

[Aunty Donna]

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08.

[Final Fantasy VII]

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09.

[Crazy Ex-Girlfriend]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #837.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't remember that - where does it happen? I just rewatched the scene where Helen tells Blanc how everyone got their shot, and she doesn't really specify what Miles did that helped them:

"And things started happening. He got Birdie a show for her designs. It did well. Got Lionel published. Duke set up at Twitch. Claire elected locally. You know, small stuff, but it happened. And then the big things happened."

I definitely don't think that means that Miles was using connections to help them.

(also, not related, but I love that when he asks Andi about her idea for Alpha, Miles is lining up a pool shot which he then just completely misses)

if you don't understand what is being said with "he got birdie a show" then you probably don't have the requisite cultural knowledge here. outside of money and connections, how you do you think he got birdie a show or got claire elected or got lionel published? do really think miles was out there being a community organizer for claire?

original "implied generational wealth" anon here

1) ^ exactly these lines, it's the sort of thing that really does point to like, having the ability to call your dad's country club friend

2) "my mom took me to paris to see the mona lisa when I was six" - is this impossible for a poor family to do? of course not. does it kind of imply being well off, though? also yes

3) his whole Unearned Confidence Vibe, which absolutely a useful-to-a-point trait in the american business world, is also something that's often cultivated by the experience of growing up fairly wealthy. everything comes easy to you, it must be because you're so great at it! and no one ever told you otherwise!

4) he's an idiot, so why does he, out of all the other dipshits, have definitely the right to half the company (Andi doesn't say, my napkin my idea my company, no way on Klear, she says I'll take my half) and the ability to swipe all of it? maybe he provided some seed money out of a trust

5) with the alpha company assets in dispute, all the other dipshits side with him, and the courts crush her. sounds like he had other resources to fall back on and afford serious lawyer fees (and the other dipshits knew it)

6. Out-of-text reason, but...all these billionaire bros had millionaire parents, ivy league legacies, etc. Miles isn't about Elon Musk™ Specifically, but if Miles was a genuine Rags-to-Riches story with a weird Donut Hole in the story of doing nothing but ride Andi's coattails because they met in a bar one time and this extremely driven black woman from alabama picked up a neer-do-well grungy white boy boyfriend who made no contributions to her life and made him co-owner of her business for no reason....it's a weaker story on a lot of levels. The satire of that whole class is so on point in every other respect that I don't believe the intent wasn't to imply that it also matches reality in this one.

I'm not saying this is Absolute Fact, but I think the circumstantial case makes sense. If there's anything in the movie you think contradicts this reading, I'd be interested to hear it!

all these billionaire bros had millionaire parents, ivy league legacies, etc.

I'm not saying that Miles wasn't rich, or didn't have a million other kinds of privilege that played into his ability to do what he did. But I don't think what he did can be reduced to his privilege. I mean for one thing, there are all kinds of absolute shitheads with millionaire parents and ivy league legacies who *don't* end up being this specific kind of fraud. I think the kind of person that Miles ends up being is much more specific than just being a rich white idiot, and I also think that idea fits better with the themes of the movie.

Look at the bit in the board room where Andi and Miles are arguing about Klear, and Andi tells Miles "The reality distortion field ends here." That's one of the closest parts the movie comes to showing us what Miles actually does. Andi doesn't talk about Miles' privilege and wealth and connections, she talks about him having a reality distortion field.

And a "reality distortion field" is actually a Steve Jobs thing. Steve Jobs was famous for having the ability to essentially completely bend peoples' minds - he would insist so strongly on reality being the way that he perceived it, and he was willing to use any argument or rhetorical technique whatsoever, or even just make up facts, that when you were around him it was basically impossible for most people to disagree with him.

And that's basically what Steve Jobs did during his career. Steve Jobs didn't invent anything. What Jobs did was take a bunch of computing design ideas and a bunch of other peoples' technical innovations, and put them into practice as an actual mass consumer product. How he did that was mostly by putting insane amounts of willpower and effort behind that vision, by using the reality distortion field to convince the actual tech and design people to pull off insane stuff and to convince people on the corporate side of things to let him do that.

So I think that is, basically, what Miles did as well. His self-belief and his lack of scrupulousness and his intensity of purpose all went into convincing people to put energy and resources into ideas and visions that other people had. I think that's probably the role he played with the Disruptors and with Andi (and TBH I think we kind of see this in the way that the other Disruptors react to him, but maybe not, maybe it's just the wealth and power at that point).

And I think that's also part of the point of the movie. All of these people who act like this, all of the tech bros, are at best one step from being con artists, and often are actually just con artists. Fakery and fraud is the reason they're successful as much as it's why they fail. And that's really the problem - not that people like Miles are from privileged backgrounds, but that being this kind of empty corporate business bullshit person is basically bad. It may make you very successful because American society is built to indulge that kind of thing. But it's still fundamentally fake. And often at some point the whole edifice will come crashing down because it is fundamentally fake. And we should stop indulging people with infinite self-belief and 0 moral scruples in their pretensions to be world-altering geniuses.

DA

THIS!!! This is why it's so cathartic when those damn glass tchotchkes get smashed. Just an act of justified rage against overvalued tat breaks down the entire illusion that everyone was under that Max was anything more than a harmful yet powerless idiot. Max was only ever as powerful as people let him be.

You cannot be this sort of person without at least invoking the trappings of connections and wealth. the reality distortion does not work without it. Like, you don't seem to know why people do indulge these people: other self-made rich people cosign. everybody else is just going along with what the other rich people who consign have already guaranteed with the "respect" of wealth. the investors are not a separate part of steve jobs success, they're the main part. like...all of them will admit to being con artists (literally everything about microsoft and apple will straight up say they stole IP), but why their conning worked and other people's didn't is the wealth and connections.

The psychology doesn't work with understanding the sociology.

DA : But they didn't say him being rich wasn't a reason, they were just more specific about what type of riches he was and why not any type of rich person is interchangeable with this character. Doesn't mean he's interchangeable with a non-rich character.

I love that you seem utterly convinced of your take to the point of getting snooty about it, but AYRT is doing a 1000% better job at defending their argument than you. Requisite cultural knowledge? Understanding the sociology? You don't evince any of that yourself.

Ikr???

AYRT

You cannot be this sort of person without at least invoking the trappings of connections and wealth. the reality distortion does not work without it.

I pretty much agree with that. But even if the trappings of privilege are a necessary condition for doing this sort of thing, they are not a *sufficient* condition for doing it IMO. The kind of behavior that we're talking about goes way beyond just having access to and exploiting the trappings of privilege. Most people who take advantage of the trappings of privilege are not doing what a Mark Zuckerberg does, an Elizabeth Holmes, a Steve Jobs, an Elon Musk. There is a difference between a "normal" privileged idiot, and someone who does the whole tech visionary business genius fraud thing.

Proximity to power and privilege is a crucial element that shapes societal perceptions. But there's also reasons beyond that why people are willing to go so far down the garden path with Elizabeth Holmes or Elon Musk or Adam Neumann. There are specific things that they do that make them good at being fraudsters, beyond just taking advantage of privilege and networks.

the investors are not a separate part of steve jobs success, they're the main part.

I think if you look at what Steve Jobs actually did and accomplished, especially earlier in his career, this is not really the case. His ability to convince a bunch of insanely talented tech people to let him take advantage of their work was absolutely crucial to his success. Convincing Wozniak to start a business based on Woz' early Apple circuit board design, convincing Bill Atkinson to work for Apple, stealing the Macintosh project from Jef Raskins after losing an internal power struggle on the Lisa project and then getting the Mac team to actually bring the Mac into existence - none of that is fundamentally about dealing with investors, but without Jobs doing those things, the Mac would not exist (and the world would probably be a better place, but that's not the point) (also there's probably more to say about Jobs, class, privilege and capital access but that's a longer and more complicated conversation that we don't need to get into)

why their conning worked and other people's didn't is the wealth and connections.

Yeah, again, I basically agree with that, but I think that they had a bunch of attributes that made them good at conning in addition to the wealth and connections. The wealth and connections matter but there's also a lot more stuff on top of that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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