Keen On

If money is supposed to make you happy, then why do tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen seem so miserably angry? That’s the question at the heart of Jacob Silverman’s new book, Gilded Rage, an expose of Silicon Valley’s angry plutocracy. The weird thing is that a lot of these billionaires behave little differently from the apoplectic lumpen commentariat on X or Reddit. Sure, they might own X, but they share all the right-wing conspiracy theories infecting the online mob - from trollish racism and anti-semitism to a bro style paranoia about female power. According to Silverman, their rage is a form of exhaustion with the world itself. These men don’t just want to own everything—they want to exit society entirely, by inventing new cities, buying private islands, and founding Martian colonies. Unlike the Gilded Age robber barons who happily built universities and libraries, today’s miserable tech elites sit in their palatial basements and rage against society. Maybe we should take