Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff

The gamified values of The Mindset have trickled down to people who believe they are finally taking the red pill, escaping the simulation of the Matrix and seeing the real world as it truly is. They hate Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg for their globalist ambitions, their eventual “censorship” of conspiracy theories, and their alliances with Democrats. Yet they embrace the opportunity to be just like those self-appointed masters of the universe, remaking the world as if playing a “God game” on the computer. Accepting their role as “users” of social media platforms who actually provide all the content and labor, members of the club piece together narratives out of tiny clues, actively “doing the research,” and then accept the game’s fan-fiction-style lore as the hidden workings of the real world. In the manner of an improvisatory “yes-and” exercise or open-source experiment, everyone adds their own facts, however contradictory, into the canon. Still, the Great Awakening they hope to ignite bears more than a passing resemblance to the tech billionaire fantasies they believe they are resisting. There’s nothing incremental, no theory of change, no adaptation, and no compromise. Just enthusiastic anticipation of a cleansing apocalypse. Tear everything down and start over. True autonomy means total independence from all obligations to community and the conditions in which we live. Compromise is castration. We must only be satisfied with an infinity of choice and abso...