Which way modern man?
(media.scored.co)
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Not really, because as noxious as neckbeards were, a lot of them still had some misdirected affection for people and salt-of-the-earth type stuff that you could see in their love for anime and games, for instance. They had a primal need for affection and connection. The guy on the right is a soulless optimizer that doesn't feel passion for anything in particular. Probably jogs a lot, drinks kale shakes, eats tapas, whatever VCs do.
For example the fedora tipper at Google who got fired for trying to save the life of his "self-aware" AI waifu is a neckbeard. Sam Altman is the guy on the right.
A few neckbeards became technocrat husks of course. A lot of them went discord tranny mode, some of them wised up and abandoned materialism, and some of them are probably just fat and depressed. One thing I'm sure of, there's not a lot of them left anymore.
Sam Altman is way higher than a crypto bro or biohacker. Hes one of the crown jews who heads the next big shakeup. He sits higher than Google and Microsoft, people just dont know it yet. Even if Open AI crashes when the AI bubble pops..he is filthy rich and will funnel that money into various other projects.
I don't think the guy on the right is usually soulless, although in the case of Altman, Thiel and so on yes. A lot of them have a desire to be cool and fit in as well as a love for pop culture and pop soyience. At least as depicted in this meme they don't come across to me as cold psychopaths who only want power.
I'm not sure someone who was a neckbeard atheist can change all that easily either. It's painful to admit you were wrong and change your whole identity. I think they were always a very small minority who just got a lot of attention before because they were so bold and arrogant about their views and had clubs and meetings, whereas now they've been divided by politics and don't have much of a leg to stand on because atheism devolved into sex isn't real mental illness and religious people actually proved to be more sane.
Technocrat types don't seem to enjoy things the same way that other people do. They'll get into a hobby for the pure utilitarian benefits without loving or understanding it for what it is. For example Elon supposedly loves games, but hired an Indian to level up his account. They "love" art but want to create personally curated AI experiences that completely miss the point.
People don't change easily, but the neckbeards have had their favorite things systematically degraded and eradicated for over a decade now. In the prime of neckbeards, you could go to an anime convention and express your unironic love of cosplay girls and your unironic hatred of console players. Today you can't even do that online. Movies, games, and fandoms were delivering exhilarating new experiences every year. Today's movies and games make people scream from boredom or try to spiritually castrate you.