I cam across a poll on social media that just completed on Sunday Dec 17: so I know the outcome. I was wondering who WSF members would vote for as the worst in 2023. I chose only the final 8 contenders from the original 32. 1. Jeff Bezos 2. David Zaslav 3. Larry Ellison 4. Elon Musk 5. Peter Thiel 6. Palmer Luckey 7. Sam Altman 8. Sam Bankman-Fried
I didn't vote as I don't know who half the people listed are. I won't Google their names, because ignorance is bliss. This is the first time I've heard the word techbro.
I chose Elon Musk. Too much power and influence. Has his hands in too many pies (Tesla, Starlink, Neuralink, SpaceX, X, etc). Also, in looking things up, I noticed he used to own PayPal. Is there anything he hasn't touched? Don't know exactly what a "tech bro" is but I kind of surmised or whatever.
Here are some names that were in the running whom you may be more familiar with... Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Satya Nadella, Tim Cook. They did not render enough votes to propel them to the final 8 this year. Hard to vote for just one of the final 8. They have all put our security (using tech) at high risk in one way or another. For me it came down to a toss up between Thiel, Musk & Zuckerberg. Bizarre behaviour, moral decline & inexplicable business decisions convinced me that Musk was the worst this year. He got my vote in the WSF poll (I did not vote in the SM poll). FYI: Results from the SM poll: Musk & Bezos were the finalists. Musk 84.1%, Bezos 15.9%.
A few contenders but I picked Musk. Might be a visionary in tech (or at least in putting the right people together and obtaining financing) but an absolute *** as a human and 2023 showed it in spades. I haven't been paying too much attention but Ellison seems more like a has-been. Sam Bankman-Fried is close, though, playing the "I didn't mean to hurt anyone" as he enjoyed using others' money...
I have to agree, I pick Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried. Besides what you already mentioned, I believe Musk is an idiot for changing the name of a well known brand of Twitter. He's probably going to need to sell quite a few Tesla shares next year to keep X alive. And I also don't believe in Tesla's Cybertruck, it's one of the most ugliest trucks I have ever seen. And SBF is a complete moron for ruining both his own and other lives out of pure greed and stupidity.
Must be all that caffeine still riding around in his system. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-reportedly-once-drank-203132383.html
Elon Musk rose to the top of video game charts. Now he has confessed to cheating. The world’s richest man has admitted to paying to boost his online warriors into global leaderboards, raising questions about his gaming prowess — and his need for digital praise... Elon Musk...often brags to the world about one of his great passions: his skill at video games... He boasted...that he ranked among the world’s best players of the role-playing game “Diablo IV,” ... And last month, he shared regular updates on his social network, X, about how quickly he had conquered the global leaderboards of another game, “Path of Exile 2,”... [O]nline sleuths recently made a shocking accusation: Musk had cheated. They suspected that he had pursued a widely mocked tactic known as “boosting,” paying strangers to play his character and rake in loot so that, when he logged in, he could face challenges with the most powerful gear... Musk fought the allegations before ultimately confessing in messages this month... A few days later, his character could be seen chasing treasure through the game’s sulfuric caverns while Musk was in the Capitol Rotunda, attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration..." {Paywall, but they used to allow a few articles per month -- not sure if they still do.] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/29/elon-musk-video-games-diablo-path-exile/
