Fortune asks 'Why does America hate Silicon Valley?'

Jesus, speaking of narcissism...<p>America likes tech, but <i>really</i> doesn&#x27;t care that much about Silicon Valley. Does anyone leave this place and not immediately see that?<p>(even the original article is flawed, somehow thinking that distance between the New York financial sector and the press lets them fare better. The meme these days is that the tech sector is after your private data to advertise at you, but Americans by and large put the financial sector at about the same level as they put Congress. The idea that Americans even care enough about Silicon Valley to be able to loathe the place is a joke)

People who hate Silicon Valley do so because they think it&#x27;s full of narcissistic social climbers who just want to get rich quick but talk like they&#x27;ve joined up with the Peace Corps or are working on a cure for cancer. Wall Streeters, by comparison, are more honest about their rapacity.<p>It&#x27;s a stereotype, and one that I&#x27;d argue is mostly unfair but at least occasionally accurate.

I can say that, in Australia, we simply have &#x27;Tall Poppy Syndrome&#x27; which Wikipedia defines to be &quot;... a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers.&quot;<p>Wouldn&#x27;t go so far as to say we &#x27;hate&#x27; Silicon Valley.

It&#x27;s interesting that most of the comments here are about the point that non-tech people hate silicon valley people. The most interesting part of this article for me was the fact that these companies are changing the world but not helping or contributing to their own local areas. As businesses are more easily able to reach a global market, rather than having to build from a small area and grow, they seem to be caring less about social responsibility. It would be interesting to see how something as simple as shutting down Twitter&#x27;s free employee meals&#x2F;snacks etc. and instead subsidising purchases at local businesses would affect the local area.

Not living there, what&#x27;s the Silicon Valley crime like <i>in reality</i>?

They hate us for our freedoms.

On one hand:<p>It&#x27;s not Google or Facebook&#x27;s responsibility to fix a broken government. Stop being so entitled. Twitter cannot fix a ghetto. Twitter cannot hand out jobs to gangsters and murderers. Twitter cannot build a police station. Twitter cannot set up surveillance for the neighborhood. Twitter cannot open up it&#x27;s campus to random strangers. Twitter is a company, not a charity. It&#x27;s working in the best interest of its employees.<p>On the other hand:<p>You are judged by your attitude. &quot;Change the World&quot;ers remind me of Christians. They worship Jesus yet act nothing like him nor do they follow any of this rules or philosophies. Googlers &amp; Twatters talking about changing the world with WiFi Blimps in Africa and bringing democracy to the middle east while isolating themselves from their own local community is like Christians talking about how much they love Jesus, read the bible, donate millions to televangelists, build million dollar church stadiums yet completely ignore helping the children, poor, &amp; sick.<p>Then again:<p>Should &quot;Change the World&quot;ers be more corporate so we don&#x27;t judge them based on the expectations they set themselves up to? How is that better?

Why mediocrities hate cleverness? Because of inevitable cognitive dissonance they must experience in order to fool themselves back to the delusion of their own cleverness.)<p>Why common people hate hipsters is another question worth asking.) This is because everyone could see, except hipsters themselves, that their playacting of being smart&#x2F;sophisticated instead of <i>actually being smart</i> is an offence even to that very basic intelligence common folks have.<p>True smartness doesn&#x27;t require any special behavior or a dressing style, the same way that wearing a robe is optional for a true seer and flawlessness of a posture is of second importance to the goal of so-called meditation.)