Our interminable national nightmare is, by some impossible miracle, almost over. Today, barring any major security or Trump-related catastrophe, the country will elect the next president of the United States.
It’s been a long journey, full of tapes, emails, conspiracy theories, non-existent tax returns, pussy bows, non-consensual pussy grabbing, Weiners (of both the Anthony variety and the more general variety), polls, tweets, !, different ways to say “angry orange troll,” Ken Bone, walls, bros, Cruz spittle, “rigging,” hacks, plagiarism, escalators, Aleppo, and small hands.
Along the way, we’ve had a great deal of mostly awful commentary from the usual suspects: pundits, the media, your aunt on Facebook, and Rudy Giuliani. But there is one group whose tone-deaf and buffoonish input I will perversely miss, and it is Silicon Valley. Throughout the campaign, our favorite tech luminaries have been right there to chime in with their precious thoughts.
Here, in all their glory, are some bad tweets.
Benedict Evans, partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Nick Bilton, technology writer for Vanity Fair
Chris Sacca, investor
Ah, yes. The classic line of a patronizing billionaire.
Sam Altman, president of Y-Combinator
Paul Graham, investor and co-founder of Y Combinator
Nathan Jurgenson, Snapchat “researcher” and “social media theorist”
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce
Balaji Srinivasan, board member of Andreessen Horowitz
Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga
Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower
Shervin Pishevar, co-founder of Hyperloop One and Sherpa Capital
Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR
Bob Parsons, billionaire and founder of GoDaddy
Anil Dash, entrepreneur
And now for some honorable mentions, some of which aren’t tweets but deserve to be recognized anyway:
Clay Shirky, internet “thinker”
Carl Icahn, billionaire investor and former Apple fan
From an October interview with CNBC about Trump’s leaked Access Hollywood tapes:
“Over my years I’ve listened to a lot of salacious talk in locker rooms, bachelor parties, et cetera, by a lot of high-level people, some of whom are now supposedly so outraged ... All I can do is refer to that great quote, ‘Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.’
It’s amazing that everyone is outraged by something that everyone knows is going on in every locker room in the country.”
Robert Scoble, Google Glass-wearer
Rob Rhinehart, CEO of Soylent
From a July interview with the Financial Times:
I ask if he will at least vote in November’s presidential election. “Probably not. I can’t stand all the coverage. I don’t have a TV. I’d rather study. I study my textbooks rather than get wrapped up in all that drama.
“Humans have this novelty bias where they think that new information is somehow more relevant, but most of the information generated in a day is noise and what’s really important is the patterns that have held true through generations. I feel like I could be reading a philosophy book that has held true for centuries or I could get stressed out by what’s on the news today.”
On the bright side, the darkness comes for us all eventually, and today, we all move one step closer.
We’ll be updating this post throughout election day. And if we forgot any bad tweets from this putrid election cycle, be sure to let us know in the comments.
DISCUSSION
Evidently, Gizmodo’s guide to completely avoiding the election should also include completely avoiding Gimzodo altogether, considering that there’s five election articles currently on the first page alone. Including live blog coverage.