00:00:00.000Hello, I'm Adrian Dobb, and whether I like it or not, I am in bed with the right.
00:00:09.820Can I just tell you guys, we do the opening bit for this show so often.
00:00:15.080I've just done like five takes where I've messed it up and I've waited for Moira to
00:00:19.220like chime in and say that she's Moira Donegan, which she will be in about a minute.
00:00:23.660But I'm just recording this intro by myself here for the second part of our wonderful live show that we recorded on August 27th, 2026 at Swedish American Hall here in beautiful San Francisco, How to Become a Silicon Valley Creep in 10 Easy Steps.
00:00:40.100Now, if you are just starting your journey into becoming a Silicon Valley creep with this, be forewarned.
00:00:46.360You are skipping a bunch of the steps.
00:00:48.960So do maybe go over to the other episode, and then you can come back to this one.
00:00:54.260I also want to plug my book, which this live show was sort of based on, What Tech Calls Governing,
00:00:59.460which is out with Stanford University Press now for the very affordable price of $16.
00:01:03.980dollars. Well, with that out of the way, please enjoy the second part of our wonderful live
00:01:10.560episode, How to Become a Silicon Valley Creep in 10 Easy Steps.
00:01:19.120Well done. I'm starting to worry that we have nothing to teach these people. I feel like I
00:01:48.560It can't be like rage, rage against the dying of the light.
00:01:51.060It has to be like, I got a system, you guys.0.96
00:01:53.740i must put a thing in my butt and that way i'm not gonna die uh that has to be it right uh and0.58
00:02:00.740in fact we're gonna have a second game we need a second volunteer but let me first tell you what0.93
00:02:05.060your game is because this is a it's a tricky one it's gonna be about this man brian johnson
00:02:10.440you're all familiar with him he's the guy who's not gonna die spoiler alert definitely gonna die
00:02:15.400um he is at the very least doing a lot of press about how he's not gonna die the least dyingest
00:02:22.060man in history. And this is going to be about, is this a thing that Brian Johnson does in order
00:02:29.180to live forever? I think we have a volunteer. We have a volunteer. Come on up. Well done, sir.
00:02:37.060Thank you. Now, before you embark on this journey with us, it's a little hard to tell for sure
00:02:45.440whether or not Brian Johnson doesn't do it. So if you want to argue with us and tell us no,
00:02:50.380So, like, we perused this website, which has a whole system.
00:02:53.820We looked through all the different articles.
00:02:56.220But it's possible, of course, that that does not exhaust the full range of, like, he spends, like, four hours pumping himself full of stuff.
00:08:28.640the like youth obsession that is really core to how these guys think about their own power
00:08:35.840like they see themselves as sort of playing they think that they're like little boys who are like
00:08:43.540dressed up in costumes playing villain it's like no no you're like the actual villain like you're
00:08:47.600you're actually a grown man yeah like really doing this yeah right some of the worst people
00:08:52.600in history were like younger than you when they got up to the worst stuff in history right it's
00:08:57.160not too late guys like i also think that there is an element here of like wanting to be every age
00:09:03.940at once i think that there really is just like a refusal of the sequence of time in a human life
00:09:09.260here because musk has a different mode too when he's like philosophizing it's like oh you want
00:09:13.820to be like this grizzled old hand like this this person who's like thought deeply and suffered a
00:09:19.080lot and it's like yeah but then you're like an insult comic like two minutes later it's like
00:09:23.660So Ian McKellen suddenly was like, these nuts, you know, who are these two people?
00:09:29.860Like, how many personalities are in this person, right?
00:09:34.080I also often think about the fact that, like, when it comes to this kind of question of aging and of middle age for these very powerful people,
00:09:46.500and it's very noticeable that, like, they've become so preoccupied with narratives of civilizational decline, planetary decline.
00:09:53.240And now I don't want to poo-poo all of that,
00:09:55.120given that, like, partly thanks to their efforts,
00:16:20.860These are two people I thought about, just to kind of not always beat up on Elon Musk, is Tim Draper, whose hobby is splitting up California into multiple Californias.
00:16:46.660Right. So this guy goes out every couple of years and is like, people should be able to shop around for the best California. It works on Amazon. So why shouldn't it work for Californias? And then another group of people, let's call them election consultants, is like, this is a payday. We will flatter this man into giving us tens of millions of dollars.
00:17:12.540Every time this poor man sinks millions of his own money,
00:17:16.220because no one else will donate for this, right?
00:17:17.900Because it's like, to use a technical term,1.00
00:23:47.120There is, you know, the seasteading, which would allow them to have a compound in international waters, which I feel like really combines all the shibboleths of the truly tech-brained.
00:24:00.560And, of course, I think, like, the Mars that Musk is hoping to one day colonize, I think, would be that.
00:24:08.000Like, that plus a little bit more Epstein Island, I'm guessing.
00:24:10.380But I think what's important to note here is, as Moira was saying, like, they in some way don't make explicit what these are for.
00:26:36.080why this was actually such a smart move.
00:26:38.160Yeah, the sort of attempt to create like a political economy of Elon Musk can sometimes be generative, but it does have to overlook the fact that this guy is clearly not thinking beyond like further than his nose, you know, like he's just all impulse.0.97
00:26:51.500But the thing about the reply guys who say masterful gambit, sir, when he slams his dick in the car door, is it like now they have AI bots who say masterful gambit, sir, when they slam their dits in the car door.
00:27:03.580They've like actually automated the reply function.0.94
00:27:06.060Yeah, I mean, they love, for instance, creating these thirst traps almost, where they thirst trap him for himself, right? They generate these images that very clearly depict Elon Musk the way he'd like to see himself or the way he recalls himself or something, and then either tag him in or hope he finds this.
00:27:25.180and then when he replies like it helps that elon musk has made it quite lucrative to get his
00:27:31.600attention on x right it's it's a way to make money not a ton uh he's the one well he's also
00:27:37.180not making money no one's making money on twitter who knows what this thing like it's the weirdest
00:27:41.700economy in the world but in essence yeah you're thirst trapping the owner of the site into
00:27:47.220hopefully replying to you and then you make like two thousand dollars or something like that
00:47:04.720I also think that there is an element here, of course, of this like weird dyadic economy, right?
00:47:09.760Like you have these people on Twitter making memes for Musk who probably like make like just a tiny bit of money off this guy.
00:47:17.580It's like the manor lord and like the peasant, right?
00:47:20.040Like that is sort of the creepy economy.
00:47:22.120There's the lord who debases himself and degrades himself a little bit.
00:47:24.920And then there's the people who can like feel a little bigger because they're just as creepy as him.
00:47:28.600And I think that there's a real scary kind of dialectic there.
00:47:32.480If and when, I don't know, an AI bubble or something like that ever really comes for these people, they will have an army at their backs.
00:47:39.460And it's going to be, I mean, it's not going to be everyone, but it's going to be a bunch of people you don't want to really be in close interaction with is what I think.
00:47:59.820Hi, I have perhaps a similar question about success, which is I feel like the pervert and the preacher as categories don't require maybe like right wing masculine notions of success in the way that the creep does.
00:48:12.940And I specifically wanted to look at it through Alex Jones as kind of a syncretic example of, you know, bits of preacher, bits of creep, certainly lots of pervert.
00:48:23.740But is pervert the only category that doesn't require success in this, you know, right-wing way?0.68
00:48:32.820Although I feel like the pervert is often, like, also has to have displays of wealth or at least of time, right?
00:48:39.600Like a pickup artist kind of thing where, like, you're just like, well, clearly you don't have a very fulfilling job because, like, this seems like a ton of work.
00:48:47.720And also black lights are not cheap, right?
00:48:50.520Like, there is an element, I think, of, like, just disposable income,
00:48:55.060the same way that, like, a compound isn't cheap for the preacher or for the creep.
00:48:58.900I mean, I would say that, like, basically all of these guys
00:49:01.800assume themselves to be failures or to exist in a world
00:49:06.380that has fallen by its failure to recognize them, right?
00:49:09.680So, like, the preachers are commanding a moral authority
00:49:12.360and they're outraged that they don't have it.0.96
00:49:14.300The perverts are demanding sexual access0.79
00:49:16.100and they're outraged at the women who refuse it0.99
00:49:18.960or have the gall to try and refuse it.
00:49:21.040And the creep is sort of a synthesis, right?
01:02:33.560I do think if there's a different, like, regulatory environment, they will suddenly, like, you did see, like, as soon as Trump won, Zuckerberg being like, I'm going to dress like an idiot.0.99
01:02:46.500Like, I also had a very embarrassing lesbian moment of, like, making fun of his outfit on Rogan and then realizing that I was wearing, like, the exact, like, chain.