Thread by @StewartalsopIII

I don't think people who weren't there can understand how fascinating and beautiful it was to live in San Francisco in the years 2008-2015.

Tech optimism was universal, yet SF also had the full flowering of transformational psychology. The wierdos had finally won.

There wasn't yet the hint that this tech thing might sweep across the world and cause the kind of transformation that would come with unintended consequences, some of which would rattle the very core of who we think we are. Looking back now, it seems a bit naive.

If you had the right university degree, you could come in and participate in this gold rush where everyone was changing the world with the assumption that that change would bring only the Good. 20 years old were becoming millionaires and it seemed like anyone could do it.

Burning man was at its zenith as the coolest universe imaginable. San Francisco turned into a burning man itself. That burning man ethos then traveled to urban centers around the world like Bali, Berlin and Chiang Mai with smaller outposts in places around the world.

It was like a recreation of the 60s but this time infused with an optimism of technology. People started living in communes again. People started living in vans again. Lots of drugs everywhere. It was limitless potential.

The old ways were completely thrown out the window (not totally, but thats what it felt like).

You like BDSM? You can find it!

You like orgies? You can find one!

Everything that is taboo anywhere else quickly became part of the menu with no judgement in San Francisco.

You want to identify as a pigeon?

Go for it!

The rules were being rewritten and it wasn't quite clear that some of the rules might have been useful. This brand of "out with the old" spread from Burning Man/SF to the rest of the world, at least the urban centers.

Now sitting on the other side of the great filter which has started from San Francisco (a pandemic mixed with social media) it seems like it was all a farce for late stage capitalism and San Francisco seems like one giant cult where everything is inverted. Up is down and all that

When it first showed up "owning privelage" seemed the right and necessary step for the people of San Francisco who were clearly at the top of the pyramid. It was great to do this soul searching after some LSD. But as with every moral crusade it started to turn on itself.