Erik TorenbergGeneral Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

🔥 'The crazies now rule our civilization' 🔥

6 Apr 2025 · 1 min

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1:04

In this polemical monologue, the speaker argues that historically marginalized dissenters—referred to as "crazies"—have been empowered by modern social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky. The speaker contends that these platforms have become the enemy of civil discourse because organizations fear being shouted at, and the floodgate opened by technologists and figures like Jack Dorsey has allowed extremist voices to dominate public conversation. The speaker blames well‑meaning liberal engineers from the mid‑2000s for unintentionally creating a system where anyone can shout "fuck you" at everyone else. The monologue ends with a tentative call for reducing the influence of these platforms, suggesting that removing people from X and Bluesky could shrink their power to irrelevance and confine the "crazies" to a metaphorical rubber room.

Chapters

As a crazy, how could you scream and shout at someone important? You could protest in real life and no, everyone would ignore you. You could write a letter to the editor and it wouldn't even be accepted. You could pass out pamphlets. As a crazy, you were disempowered. Now the crazies rule our civilization. Every civilization is ruled by these few fucking crazies. The platform is the enemy because every organization is afraid of getting yelled at on X or whatever. There's a quote you said something like, When you give everyone a voice, don't be surprised when they all say fuck you. Yes. And so that's what happened. Thank you, technologists. Thank you, you know, liberal, like, engineers living in San Francisco in 2005 who dreamed of, like, giving the voiceless a voice. Thank you, Jack Dorsey. Thank you for opening the floodgates of hell. Anyway, that's where we are now. And we're just starting to come back from that. Maybe if we can just get everyone off X and Bluesky and shrink the power of these platforms to irrelevance. Maybe we can get out of this by having it just be a rubber room where the crazies shout in.