Yeah, I was invited by the queer Black kid who ran it. He ODd on the last night of the fest. Grim stuff. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/peter-thiel-anti-woke-film-festival-trevor-bazile

It’s funny you mention that, because there is one new patron in tech who is making waves in NYC: Peter Thiel. The catch is, of course, that everything he finances goes through his ideological filter. And he’s not being particularly generous either.

Thiel has put money into a series of small zines, a youth focused film festival, a small production company, a few very popular podcasts, and a feature film that just went to Cannes. None of it has made him any money because the target audience of edgy, sexy, artsy 20 somethings have rejected the technofeudalistic dogma that these works promote.

There was certainly a brief reactionary wave where young artists in LA and NYC rebelled against liberals for Covid restrictions and “corporate wokeness”, but other than the occasional use of slurs, it never materialized beyond aesthetics and all but ended when Roe V Wade was overturned.

I worry that the apathy doesn’t come from a lack of fear of accountability, but a genuine contempt for humanity. The enshittification of the internet we are currently experiencing is deeply anti-human.

I met a wealthy YCombinator guy at a friend’s wedding. He told me he was having Midjourney create a portrait of himself and his wife because “AI art doesn’t have the imperfections of the human touch.” Now, I’m no snob: I specialize in thrillers, crime, horror, and comedy, but I was still genuinely baffled and nauseated by this attitude. Another tech guy I met at a nightclub who runs a Linktree clone told me “Film and TV is over.” But what does that mean? The future is algorithmic UGC and AI generated TikTok videos filtered through his app? How is that guy and his junk product worth 40 million dollars in VC funding but a real movie or TV show is worthless? I don’t get it.