The fundamental flaw in the analysis isn't the celebration of performative sadness, which I agree is interesting in itself, but your reliance on Kotkin's outdated neo-feudal narrative that positions tech figures as modern aristocracy, when their window is clearly passing. We can witness their descent into becoming merely the most visible prisoners of the same system, where, far from being puppet masters, these figures now frantically perform their own version of dandyism—Zuckerberg's new drip rebrand, Musk's increasingly strange Twitter stunts, and Bezos's space-cowboy aesthetics all reveal not oligarchs in control, but men increasingly captured by the same demands as the techno-serfs with Pinterest tats, differing only in scale and resources.
Kotkin's perspective functions more as a broad backdrop for understanding shifts in aesthetic trends, a kind of coincidental overlap between medieval economic structures and a renewed interest in medieval sentiments and visuals. That said, I also think his framework feels outdated, the world evolves so quickly that maybe we're in something more like a technofeudal era now, or whatever you’d call it. I really liked your point about the performative games tech moguls play, I feel like the gaze has changed from a scrutinizing one to a 'vibe check' with fewer and fewer moral boundaries around the personas they adopt. The culture has become incredibly permissive toward the eccentricities of our "overlords," which feels like yet another medieval symtom, reminding of the bizarre kings and queens of old times, with their strange hobbies and whims
The fundamental flaw in the analysis isn't the celebration of performative sadness, which I agree is interesting in itself, but your reliance on Kotkin's outdated neo-feudal narrative that positions tech figures as modern aristocracy, when their window is clearly passing. We can witness their descent into becoming merely the most visible prisoners of the same system, where, far from being puppet masters, these figures now frantically perform their own version of dandyism—Zuckerberg's new drip rebrand, Musk's increasingly strange Twitter stunts, and Bezos's space-cowboy aesthetics all reveal not oligarchs in control, but men increasingly captured by the same demands as the techno-serfs with Pinterest tats, differing only in scale and resources.
Kotkin's perspective functions more as a broad backdrop for understanding shifts in aesthetic trends, a kind of coincidental overlap between medieval economic structures and a renewed interest in medieval sentiments and visuals. That said, I also think his framework feels outdated, the world evolves so quickly that maybe we're in something more like a technofeudal era now, or whatever you’d call it. I really liked your point about the performative games tech moguls play, I feel like the gaze has changed from a scrutinizing one to a 'vibe check' with fewer and fewer moral boundaries around the personas they adopt. The culture has become incredibly permissive toward the eccentricities of our "overlords," which feels like yet another medieval symtom, reminding of the bizarre kings and queens of old times, with their strange hobbies and whims
Jeepers