* edit of shame: it's satire. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
> there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA
That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
It's true for technology in the sense that anytime Congress wants to bring in someone for a hearing about anything tangentially related to being online, Zuckerberg will be invited.
Is it really satire? If so, I'm genuinely angry this was not flagged as such. But there is no indication on the website, and they have some older emails which sound familiar as authentic.
The most striking thing about this exchange for me is how abstract it is: until the last email from Clegg, there's no reference to any of Facebook/Meta's products. It sounds more like political strategists trying to find out how to appeal to Millennials, but by pandering to Millennials' pre-existing political views rather than trying to push a political view.
Even in back in 2019 I have a hard time believing this was true. As a millennial, my facebook feed was overtaken by my parents generation in the early 2010s and the handful of peers I know who still use it regularly use it to communicate with that generation.
Maybe he's counting Instagram usage as part of Facebook?
Isn't Thiel the one that believes democracy and freedom are incompatible and also a co-founder of Palantir? Why do we give these people any legitimacy? Because they have money?
Sorry, this song has been in my head since I saw the South Park episode. Highly recommend anyone to watch the 2nd Trump era episodes, they sure rid these people of any legitimacy they might have.
We don't give them legitimacy. The people who govern us do; they don't actually care about democracy, the second it causes them to lose elections. Look at Trump: lost an election, incited a riot to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power, pardoned those who were complicit in it.
The sad thing is, because the Dem playbook is now "fight fire with fire" (cf. the gerrymandering wars), it is only a matter of time until they stoop to the same level of overthrowing legitimate elections, in the name of fighting fire with fire...
> When Mark and Priscilla commit to giving away 99% of their wealth during their lifetimes
I hadn't heard this before but googling it seems like a genuine commitment at the time[0]. I mostly feel like Zuck isn't making the world a better place, but this sounds really impressive as a commitment - any idea if this commitments been stuck to now we're around 10 years on?
How kind of him to give his wealth away after intentionally using his company to fracture society as much as he could to earn the money in the first place
I didn't know that. I encountered these emails recently from the Tech Emails X account and figured I'd share here because 1) it's very timely considering the NYC mayor elections and 2) HN is a great place to read about people's thoughts on topics like these outside of where I usually hangout.
"One example of such an "iron grip" from my colleague Eric Weinstein: Of the 67 top research universities in the US, 62 have Baby Boomer presidents (three are Silent Generation and only two are Generation X). Today, the median age of these 67 university presidents is 65 years-old... And this is very different from the recent past. Only thirty years ago, in 1990, the median age of these same university presidents was a much lower 52-years old;"
Got to admit that's very interesting. That was January 5, 2020, I wonder how it looks today.
I asked chat:
Boomers: ~13 of 20 (~65%)
Examples: Princeton (Christopher Eisgruber, 1961), MIT (Sally Kornbluth, 1960), Harvard (Alan Garber, 1955), Duke (Vincent Price, 1957), Brown (Christina Paxson, 1960), Johns Hopkins (Ron Daniels, 1959), Columbia’s acting leaders across 2024–25 were also Boomers.
Gen X: ~7 of 20 (~35%)
Examples: Stanford (Jonathan Levin, 1972), Yale (Maurie McInnis, 1966), Dartmouth (Sian Beilock, 1976), Rice (Reginald DesRoches, 1967), Vanderbilt (Daniel Diermeier, 1965), WashU (Andrew D. Martin, 1972), Notre Dame (Rev. Robert A. Dowd, 1965).
Millennials/Silent: 0 in this Top-20 (today).
(A few large publics just outside the USNWR top-20 have Boomer or Gen-X chancellors as well; e.g., UC Berkeley’s Rich Lyons, 1961.)
The boomers are still holding on to power. Amazing!
Boomers: ~43%
(Nvidia/J. Huang 1963; Apple/T. Cook 1960; Saudi Aramco/A. Nasser 1958; Broadcom/Hock Tan 1951/52; TSMC/C.C. Wei 1953; JPMorgan/J. Dimon 1956; Oracle/S. Catz 1961; plus Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos 1964.)
Millennials: ~5%
(Meta/Mark Zuckerberg 1984.)
Silent Generation: ~5%
(Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett 1930 — slated to hand CEO role to Greg Abel, b. 1962, at year-end 2025.)
A little better, but my gosh they are really holding on. I'm sure it is unprecedented. Certainly heath is better than any time in history, but this seems extreme.
It looks like there has been some turnover at the universities since the quote from Eric Weinstein. I quick survey (could be incorrect!) says it is now more around 63.
That's still high but not as high as what Eric Weinstein was quoting.
Do these dweebs ever let up on huffing their own farts? I can only hope that the actual measurements of their declining platform influence and use are true and we see FB peter out at some point. Sadly, it'll be replaced by something even more banal, but at least Zuck will fade away, here's hoping Thiel does as well.
> Of course, there are numerous ways in which this role (Mark as Millennial spokesman) is both pretty unfair and highly inappropriate. It is unfair because this much of a burden should not be placed on any single person; and it is inappropriate because Mark is a highly unrepresentative example of the Millennial generation, for a whole range of reasons that we do not need to enumerate. But even with these caveats, I believe that we might be better served by understanding that something like this is going on and trying to think about what it would mean for Mark to think of himself as a Millennial spokesman... and perhaps to contrast this with what I take to be our current policy (at least implicitly) — of Mark as a Baby Boomer construct of how a well-behaved Millennial is supposed to act. If forced to make a choice, I would always rather win popularity contests with Millennials than with Boomers!
That entire paragraph is mind bending. I really wish he had enumerated for a wider audience what was there because you could read something quite profound into it.
> there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA
Fucks sake... that is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
> While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation.
They really are up their own asses so much in this thread. Just the arrogance of these people absolutely kills me.
That Meta/facebook had a special role in the lives of his generation is not up for debate. It's a fact. Also, zuckerburg probably meant he was the "most well-known person in tech" of his generation, which is true. But expanding it beyond tech, he definitely is as well-known as anyone else in his generation. Everyone in his generation knows what facebook is. Everyone in his generation knows zuckerburg.
The guy may be arrogant, but nothing about his statement was arrogant. He was stating facts.
Those that have their names on the high score board of capitalism are truly the Einsteins of our generation and we should be so lucky to hear every thought stream that dribbles out of their heads.
I’m not agreeing, but I’m hard pressed to find another person that is from the millennial generation that has been a persistent “public figure” as long and persistently than Zuck. He has been persistently in the news more or less daily since 2006.
Can you name another millennial that has a wider and longer lasting notoriety?
Does that mean that people respect him, or think of him as an ideal person or whatever?
No
but that’s not what Zuckerberg is saying - he’s saying “well known”
I’m not sure I could name another millennial that is as well known globally for as long - maybe Ronaldo or Taylor Swift
Well if the changeover happens it seems it will happen in the 2030s.
Amd millennials found their replacement for housing bubble with the stocks / crypto bubble.
And democracy is good for boomers, because they are too many and outnumber everyone else in battle. So millennials and genz are not unsympathetic to less democracy (a view that Thiel shares).
Thiel in this context could be considered a boomer, and his interests lie with them
Facebook and instagram are a disease. Time and again Meta’s properties have been shown to be detrimental to children’s (and adults’) mental health. Even by Meta’s own research!
The whole thing stinks of the same foul reek as big tobacco.
When their reckoning comes we will wonder how we could have let one megalomaniac’s scam go so far.
> We have a team working on an ambitious long term project on loneliness/isolation which, again, has the potential to hold particular appeal to the Millennial sentiments set out in the paper. The latest plans will be presented to Mark next week.
> One theme we've discussed is that many important institutions in our society (eg education, healthcare, housing, efforts to combat climate change) are still run primarily by boomers in ways that transfer a lot of value from younger generations to boomers themselves.
I do not understand the reason for assuming any successive group of old leaders to behave differently than boomers?
Millenials are going to have an even more disproportionate old age population, and presumably will seek to squeeze the younger generations even more than the boomers:
The era you experienced growing up can influence how you are when you get older quite a bit. The generation before the Great Depression tried to create a more progressive equitable world but of course that was eroded eventually. Everything goes in cycles and the next generation coming that experiences the fallout from all our recent excesses will be different as well.
Also much more addicted to service economy with little survival and self sufficiency instincts.
Anecdotally, very briefly dated a 40 year old who claimed she only ever cooked boxed food; had never even baked or microwaved a potato. Her words!
They’re the Gizmodo and Ars Technica journalist crowd exploiting slave labor while bitching about social justice. The 1984 double speak is strong with them.
America is a passive investor society. Like Trump thinking factories will just appear because he wishes it, Millennials wish to be enriched without giving a shit about externalities.
I base this entirely off their actual effort on the ground. Their "thoughts and prayers" may be cranked to 11, but my lived experience is they're even more disconnected from obligation to themselves than Boomers and GenX who at least spent some part of their life solving their ground truth problems.
They prefer socialism (which I am not against) because they realize they're screwed as individuals, they need help. Many probably expect they'll be served by it, not serving it.
Thanks for this. This helped me understand Zuckerberg’s recent change of style.
It is now clear that he made a repositioning, and not that was fruit of some psychological breakthrough or something like that.
At the same time it’s scary to think about to what extent that men can go for business and also, given his pathetic behavior at the White House dinner, who is actually controlling that man.
The thing that most surprises me in these emails are that those two people care about housing price or student debt, or millennials in general.
And cynical me can't brush of the feeling that this is satire or that I need to read between the lines.
A dude that buys all houses around him just to get privacy and "fuck off" others (Zuck) cares about housing? A guy that think Greta is antichrist and think anyone that blocks AI advancement is antichrist, somehow thinks "we should look at why millennials choose socialism" as a thought process?
A more realistic, "what they mean" interpretation of this emailing is:
"FB product have influence over millennials (Instagram) and Boomers (Facebook). Boomers are dying out, so we should double down on our grip over millennials and tune the algorithms so we can manipulate them more than ever. We should lobby and push out the boomers and set millennials in the position of institutional power, and no other cohorts, so that we have a direct pipeline of controlling the public discord and communication between this generation "
Surprisingly self-aware and empathetic from Thiel:
> I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.
But when he gives examples of the "iron grip" boomers have on power, he only talks about their control of universities and the government. He leaves out wealth and capital.
Socialism in real life = Biggest Government, Biggest Tech monopoly, forced uniformity, no self-agency, no authenticity for anyone who slightly disagrees with any aspect of the agenda, etc.
No offence but Venezuela is a political meme and one of the most corrupt country out there lol, given your natural resources you should be doing way better regardless of where the government leans.
Socialism brought a lot of good things all over Europe in the 1900s
DrewADesign|3 months ago
* edit of shame: it's satire. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
> there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA
That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
sebular|3 months ago
seydor|3 months ago
jimbokun|3 months ago
But beyond that, yeah.
tempodox|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
Aurornis|3 months ago
It’s flattery. Consider the audience for the emails. These were not intended for the public.
mvdtnz|3 months ago
tempfile|3 months ago
carlosjobim|3 months ago
yapyap|3 months ago
iwontberude|3 months ago
cjs_ac|3 months ago
lm28469|3 months ago
hamdingers|3 months ago
Even in back in 2019 I have a hard time believing this was true. As a millennial, my facebook feed was overtaken by my parents generation in the early 2010s and the handful of peers I know who still use it regularly use it to communicate with that generation.
Maybe he's counting Instagram usage as part of Facebook?
butterfi|3 months ago
hypeatei|3 months ago
karmakurtisaani|3 months ago
Sorry, this song has been in my head since I saw the South Park episode. Highly recommend anyone to watch the 2nd Trump era episodes, they sure rid these people of any legitimacy they might have.
buellerbueller|3 months ago
The sad thing is, because the Dem playbook is now "fight fire with fire" (cf. the gerrymandering wars), it is only a matter of time until they stoop to the same level of overthrowing legitimate elections, in the name of fighting fire with fire...
exogeny|3 months ago
Zuck is Thiel's mouthpiece, through and through. And it explains everything about Meta.
benrutter|3 months ago
I hadn't heard this before but googling it seems like a genuine commitment at the time[0]. I mostly feel like Zuck isn't making the world a better place, but this sounds really impressive as a commitment - any idea if this commitments been stuck to now we're around 10 years on?
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34978249
laserlight|3 months ago
Giving away to their own LLC, not to a non-profit [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Zuckerberg_Initiative
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
thatguy0900|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
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unknown|3 months ago
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unknown|3 months ago
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HEmanZ|3 months ago
planewave|3 months ago
This exchange is cited as:
tsm|3 months ago
badcryptobitch|3 months ago
HardCodedBias|3 months ago
Got to admit that's very interesting. That was January 5, 2020, I wonder how it looks today.
I asked chat:
Boomers: ~13 of 20 (~65%) Examples: Princeton (Christopher Eisgruber, 1961), MIT (Sally Kornbluth, 1960), Harvard (Alan Garber, 1955), Duke (Vincent Price, 1957), Brown (Christina Paxson, 1960), Johns Hopkins (Ron Daniels, 1959), Columbia’s acting leaders across 2024–25 were also Boomers.
Gen X: ~7 of 20 (~35%) Examples: Stanford (Jonathan Levin, 1972), Yale (Maurie McInnis, 1966), Dartmouth (Sian Beilock, 1976), Rice (Reginald DesRoches, 1967), Vanderbilt (Daniel Diermeier, 1965), WashU (Andrew D. Martin, 1972), Notre Dame (Rev. Robert A. Dowd, 1965).
Millennials/Silent: 0 in this Top-20 (today). (A few large publics just outside the USNWR top-20 have Boomer or Gen-X chancellors as well; e.g., UC Berkeley’s Rich Lyons, 1961.)
The boomers are still holding on to power. Amazing!
What's it like in the private sector?
Gen X: ~53% (Microsoft/S. Nadella 1967; Alphabet/S. Pichai 1972; Amazon/A. Jassy 1968; Tesla/E. Musk 1971; Eli Lilly/D. Ricks 1967; Walmart/D. McMillon 1966; Tencent/Ma Huateng 1971; Visa/R. McInerney 1975; Mastercard/M. Miebach 1968; ExxonMobil/D. Woods 1965; plus Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters 1970.)
Boomers: ~43% (Nvidia/J. Huang 1963; Apple/T. Cook 1960; Saudi Aramco/A. Nasser 1958; Broadcom/Hock Tan 1951/52; TSMC/C.C. Wei 1953; JPMorgan/J. Dimon 1956; Oracle/S. Catz 1961; plus Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos 1964.)
Millennials: ~5% (Meta/Mark Zuckerberg 1984.)
Silent Generation: ~5% (Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett 1930 — slated to hand CEO role to Greg Abel, b. 1962, at year-end 2025.)
A little better, but my gosh they are really holding on. I'm sure it is unprecedented. Certainly heath is better than any time in history, but this seems extreme.
HardCodedBias|3 months ago
It looks like there has been some turnover at the universities since the quote from Eric Weinstein. I quick survey (could be incorrect!) says it is now more around 63.
That's still high but not as high as what Eric Weinstein was quoting.
Would be a great time series.
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
theideaofcoffee|3 months ago
nextworddev|3 months ago
fidotron|3 months ago
That entire paragraph is mind bending. I really wish he had enumerated for a wider audience what was there because you could read something quite profound into it.
code_for_monkey|3 months ago
Fucks sake... that is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
haunter|3 months ago
"This document is from Tennessee v. Meta (2024)" ain't cut it in the age of LLMs anymore
tedivm|3 months ago
They really are up their own asses so much in this thread. Just the arrogance of these people absolutely kills me.
code_for_monkey|3 months ago
latexr|3 months ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/1g1gw7v/famous...
Zuckerberg thinks he’s more well-known than Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Scarlett Johansson, Adele, Lady Gaga, Cristiano Ronaldo, Beyoncé…
lbrito|3 months ago
hearsathought|3 months ago
The guy may be arrogant, but nothing about his statement was arrogant. He was stating facts.
xp84|3 months ago
saubeidl|3 months ago
throitallaway|3 months ago
AndrewKemendo|3 months ago
I’m not agreeing, but I’m hard pressed to find another person that is from the millennial generation that has been a persistent “public figure” as long and persistently than Zuck. He has been persistently in the news more or less daily since 2006.
Can you name another millennial that has a wider and longer lasting notoriety?
Does that mean that people respect him, or think of him as an ideal person or whatever?
No
but that’s not what Zuckerberg is saying - he’s saying “well known”
I’m not sure I could name another millennial that is as well known globally for as long - maybe Ronaldo or Taylor Swift
noir_lord|3 months ago
Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth, I never liked Clegg much even when he was in office but bleh.
seydor|3 months ago
Amd millennials found their replacement for housing bubble with the stocks / crypto bubble.
And democracy is good for boomers, because they are too many and outnumber everyone else in battle. So millennials and genz are not unsympathetic to less democracy (a view that Thiel shares).
Thiel in this context could be considered a boomer, and his interests lie with them
jimbokun|3 months ago
drivebyhooting|3 months ago
The whole thing stinks of the same foul reek as big tobacco. When their reckoning comes we will wonder how we could have let one megalomaniac’s scam go so far.
> They trust me. Dumb fucks.
> Zuck aut nihil.
He never changed.
jimbokun|3 months ago
disambiguation|3 months ago
- They're going to run Zuck for president to beat the millennial socialist zeitgeist.
- They're going to use generational warfare to stage an institutional coup.
> we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed
Classy.
tru3_power|3 months ago
jimbokun|3 months ago
xg15|3 months ago
With the goal to reduce it, right?
...right?
lotsofpulp|3 months ago
I do not understand the reason for assuming any successive group of old leaders to behave differently than boomers?
Millenials are going to have an even more disproportionate old age population, and presumably will seek to squeeze the younger generations even more than the boomers:
https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...
Mistletoe|3 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
code_for_monkey|3 months ago
elzbardico|3 months ago
scarmig|3 months ago
tekbruh9000|3 months ago
Anecdotally, very briefly dated a 40 year old who claimed she only ever cooked boxed food; had never even baked or microwaved a potato. Her words!
They’re the Gizmodo and Ars Technica journalist crowd exploiting slave labor while bitching about social justice. The 1984 double speak is strong with them.
America is a passive investor society. Like Trump thinking factories will just appear because he wishes it, Millennials wish to be enriched without giving a shit about externalities.
I base this entirely off their actual effort on the ground. Their "thoughts and prayers" may be cranked to 11, but my lived experience is they're even more disconnected from obligation to themselves than Boomers and GenX who at least spent some part of their life solving their ground truth problems.
They prefer socialism (which I am not against) because they realize they're screwed as individuals, they need help. Many probably expect they'll be served by it, not serving it.
motoboi|3 months ago
It is now clear that he made a repositioning, and not that was fruit of some psychological breakthrough or something like that.
At the same time it’s scary to think about to what extent that men can go for business and also, given his pathetic behavior at the White House dinner, who is actually controlling that man.
NalNezumi|3 months ago
And cynical me can't brush of the feeling that this is satire or that I need to read between the lines.
A dude that buys all houses around him just to get privacy and "fuck off" others (Zuck) cares about housing? A guy that think Greta is antichrist and think anyone that blocks AI advancement is antichrist, somehow thinks "we should look at why millennials choose socialism" as a thought process?
A more realistic, "what they mean" interpretation of this emailing is:
"FB product have influence over millennials (Instagram) and Boomers (Facebook). Boomers are dying out, so we should double down on our grip over millennials and tune the algorithms so we can manipulate them more than ever. We should lobby and push out the boomers and set millennials in the position of institutional power, and no other cohorts, so that we have a direct pipeline of controlling the public discord and communication between this generation "
jimbokun|3 months ago
unknown|3 months ago
[deleted]
triceratops|3 months ago
> I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.
But when he gives examples of the "iron grip" boomers have on power, he only talks about their control of universities and the government. He leaves out wealth and capital.
joeldg|3 months ago
[deleted]
hereme888|3 months ago
Socialism in real life = Biggest Government, Biggest Tech monopoly, forced uniformity, no self-agency, no authenticity for anyone who slightly disagrees with any aspect of the agenda, etc.
Source: I fled Venezuela because I lived in it.
lm28469|3 months ago
Socialism brought a lot of good things all over Europe in the 1900s
iwontberude|3 months ago
buellerbueller|3 months ago
That this particular of satire is nigh on indistinguishable from reality/so believable indicates how good a satire it is.
ireadtheemail|3 months ago
throitallaway|3 months ago