Just a phase they’re bro-ing through
What happens when tech wunderkinds hit their midlife crisis?
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg made headlines for commissioning a giant statue of his wife, and likening himself to a roman emperor.
A couple of days earlier, Elon Musk hosted a bizarre, rambling interview with Donald Trump, just days after a Chechen Warlord publicly thanked him for supplying his machine-gun-mounted Cybertruck.
Not to be outdone, Jeff Bezos has just unveiled one of the world’s largest and most phallic spaceships. And of course Sam Altman is busy building his own leaky Batcave, presumably to hunker down in when the world ends, thanks to by his own AI.
So, no, it’s not just your imagination. Tech bros really are behaving even more weirdly than usual at the moment.
So what gives? It’s easy to chalk the behavior down to obscene wealth. I’ve been covering tech bros for 25 years and, of course, they’ve always been strange. Steve Jobs famously had no furniture and sometimes ate only apples and carrots, Larry Ellison bought an entire Hawaiian island. But all of that seems positively relatable, and charmingly benign, compared to the dangerous batshittery of today’s tech titans.
And, sure, sudden wealth can change you. But all of the weirdos I listed above have been rich for most of their adult lives.
When Zuck founded Facebook he was 19, as was Sam Altman when he founded Loopt. Musk founded his first tech company, Zip2, in his 20s. Bezos was a wealthy hedge fund guy long before he started selling books in his garage. For years most of these men seemed to live relatively normal, even nerdy lives before their middle-aged turn for the absolutely batshit.
And therein, I think, lies the answer. Today Sam Altman is 39, Zuck is 40, Musk is 53, and Bezos has just turned 60.
I’ll let Forbes Health (surely the gold standard source for the lifestyle habits of billionaires) fill in the gap. “A midlife crisis is defined as a period of emotional turmoil in middle age, around 40 to 60 years old, characterized by a strong desire for change.”
Yep. We are witnessing what happens when our tech wunderkinds experience midlife crisis.
Now I know what you’re thinking: Paul, you can’t diagnose these tech gods with something so banal as a plain-old midlife crisis. They are not like us, heaven knows they’re barely human. Fortunately, Forbes offers us a list of midlife crisis symptoms to consider.
Symptom: “Abrupt career or lifestyle changes, such as quitting a job or moving homes.”
Just last month, Musk announced he is moving SpaceX and Twitter to Texas. Newly-minted Trump supporter, Ben Horowitz (58) recently fled to a four-gated community in Nevada. Altman has bought a patch of land in Big Sur for doomsday preparation purposes while his Trump-supporting mentor Peter Thiel (56) went the extra step of getting New Zealand citizenship to escape the coming apocalypse. Sure, they’ll claim it’s to avoid taxes, killer AI, or the woke mind virus but who are they trying to kid?
Symptom: “Behavior changes, including becoming antisocial, impulsive or irrational”
Stop laughing. I mean, nothing says “antisocial” like buying Twitter and filling it with Nazis. Or triggering a multi-billion dollar divorce by sending dick pics to your younger girlfriend. Or Horowitz and his wife ending their support for the Glide homeless outreach church and shifting their spending to Ted Cruz and JD Vance. (Another truism of middle age: You become more like your dad. Which in Ben’s case means David “inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out” Horowitz.)
Symptom: Dramatic changes in appearance, behavior or self-care
Even the most cynical of us have to agree that Zuck’s new workout regime, haircut and gold chains are a dramatic change for the better. Elon’s penchant for leather jackets considerably less so. But the gold medal for dramatic self-case surely belongs to Peter Thiel who reportedly takes blood transfusions from youngsters to keep himself spritely.
Symptom: Financial irrationality and excessive spending
For most middle-aged men this means a sports car. For the likes of Andreessen/Horowitz, Altman, and Musk it means funding the crypto industry in order to foist financial irrationality on millions of others. And as for Zuck’s investment in the metaverse…
…I could go on with the symptoms. But that crypto point alone (not to mention Cybertrucks for warlords and potentially world-ending AIs) underscores why we should all be afraid of the change occurring in the brains of our tech overlords.
When I (44) had a midlife crisis, I quit my job, wrote a novel, and opened a bookstore in Palm Springs. When Elon and his deranged pals get similarly angsty they threaten to bring down the global economy, unleash killer robots or re-elect a fascist. A midlife crisis in a tech billionaire is like diarrhea in Godzilla.
Fortunately there is some good news, courtesy of Elliott Jaques, who famously identified the concept of the midlife crisis back in the 1960s. Per Jaques: “Working through the infantile experience again increases one's confidence in being able to love and mourn what has been lost and increases the possibility of enjoying full maturity and old age.”
Musk is just a few years shy of 60, and Bezos just sailed across that threshold (with his new wife and $850m yacht). If Jaques is right then there is at least an endpoint for the batshittery.
In the meantime I hope they at least find a way to channel their midlife energy in a more productive, and profitable direction. Surely we are overdue the first wave of great midlife crisis inspired companies and products?
Products like: Instagram filters that remove Ozempic face, AI that helps pick out a leather jacket that actually fits. 3D printed wife statues.
Or – let’s dream big – how about a Tesla that will self-drive you to visit your trans child once in a while, like a normal and loving parent would.