Earlier this year I asked a classroom of writing students what their current go-to profession would be for a movie or TV villain.
Their immediate, near unanimous responses were tech bro, tech billionaire and Silicon Valley asshole.
And this was months before we got a whiff of Jeremy Strong’s dry-ice version of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning or Andrew Garfield’s smiley, seductive take on OpenAI’s Sam Altman in Artificial, which some weeks ago did its test run at the N.Y. Film Festival.
It was also before Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary, Musk, became part of the film zeitgeist at Cannes, which has now guaranteed (Note: In my mind, anyway) that the guy’s surname recognition has finally vaulted past my favorite 1960s scent for just about everyone.
And certainly prior to the current IT film moment of 2026, You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s bizarro “representation” of crazy-eyed Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, which I’m seeing later in the week against all of my better instincts.
Of course, the vote for the tech villain trope didn’t surprise me. In fact, I was expecting it.
And not because I necessarily wanted to point fingers, though two right between the eyes of any one of the above, and more, might be/would be satisfying right about now.
In the 1970s it was politicians, in great part thanks to Richard Nixon and his band of merry Watergate pranksters.
There were the Wall Street guys in the 1980s, when “greed” was considered “good.”
Smarmy lawyers had a good run at the top of the immoral compass in the nineties for any number of indiscretions.
Ubiquitous terrorists and/or the international arms dealers that funded them became the thing pre and post 9/11.
Until we get to the digital disasters of the era we’re in now.
It’s amazing that such innovation can lead to such a fury of pop culture animus. But like their predecessors, this group only have themselves to blame.
And no – it’s not about the obscene amounts of money they’re making.
Primarily.
It’s about the insatiable appetite this current group at the top of the food chain has to rule everything/everyone and how tone deaf and resistant they are to the suffering of others.
As well as their uncanny ability to interpret any type of inconvenience to them, like commensurate taxes, as the real height of personal suffering.
People that have been given so much should pay that little vs. that old chestnut of:
With great power comes great responsibility.
Here in California we have the first billionaire’s tax on the ballot this November. It is a ONE-TIME 5% tax on all the holdings of billionaires who live in California, conceived to make up for the billions in federal cuts to Medicaid and other health and education funds in the state thanks to the passage of the laughingly titled Big Beautiful Bill.
Meta CEO Zuckerberg is so incensed over this (Note: It’s ahead in most polling) that he threatened put his $110 million Silicon Valley home compound up for sale and create a public PR nightmare for the company. The reasoning being once word got out that their wonder boy founder planned to leave the state and take his majority share of the company with him, well, it wouldn’t be a good Meta-sign.
Of course, this is all according to NY Times reporting but it sounds so right that even if it were in the NY Post I might just be convinced into believing it.
And needless to say, so was the board because it came up with a late minute tax-shielding course of action that would enable Zuck to sell enough “special shares” of Meta stock to not only offset the B tax but still retain the exact same 60.6% of his company.
In other words, all those stocks he sold to cover the tax would not reduce his ownership even a smidge of a percentage point. Everything would be as it always was for him because, well, that is his divine right, because, well, why wouldn’t it be???
It is worth noting Mr. Zuckerberg’s billionaire tax could be as high as $12.5 billion.
But it is also worth noting his personal fortune is estimated to be around $250 billion and that more of that is in liquid assets.
Meaning, yeah, he could write a check for the whole damn thing and still be the sixth richest person in the world.
There are a lot more examples from a lot more of these uber entitled rich folk but after a while it gets a little tedious and begins to raise your blood pressure sky high. Though when the mood hits, you might want to consider what Elon Musk’s Space X does to the environment in his adopted home corporate state of Texas. And how a new $760 million flood control project of his there could turn into an ecological disaster.
Look, nobody’s perfect and the Silicon Valley techies are certainly not the only self-centered billion/trillionaires in the bunch.
By now you’ve heard about the lengths biotech entrepreneur and Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, has gone to in what now looks like a losing campaign to defeat Democratic candidate, Dr. Amy Acton.
His estimated personal worth is $2.2 billion but he spent $4 million in campaign funds to cut one of the most heinous commercials in the history of American politics.
No, we’re not posting it here. You can google it. But the background is Dr. Acton’s stepfather was indicted 50 years ago for raping and abusing her between the ages of 10 and 12 years old as her mother, who neglected her kids and left them homeless in a tent, stood by him, fled the state with him and remained married to him until his death a few years ago.
As for the commercial, it’s now half a century later and Mom is way worse for the wear. But Vivek digs her up anyway and puts what remains of her on camera, having her grumble to voters that her daughter is a “liar” and they shouldn’t vote for her with nary a detail of what life with Mom was really like.
Which then caused Dr. Acton’s younger brother to cut his own commercial in Dr. Acton’s defense, lauding his sister for sacrificing herself and for protecting him all those years ago from even more abuse than he had already endured.
Is it worth it to sink that low in order to become the governor of Ohio? I guess so in this case.
Because clearly two billion dollars plus does not buy enough power to satisfy the most power hungry among us.
Nor does $250 billion.
Or over $1 trillion, the estimated worth of buzz-saw wielding, Doge cutting, hard right political angel (devil?) Elon Musk.
In some circles it’s never enough and never satisfying because an infection of selfish malevolence rots the soul from within.
Travie McCoy – “Billionaire” (featuring Bruno Mars)
