seriously, and a few of its shriller
residents have taken note.
Recent weeks have seen the birth of a
few new blogs poking fun at America's
crucible of technology, among them
whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com,
a relaunched version of the classic
Valleywag.com, and, perhaps most
discussed,
jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com
Call it the zeitgeist. To a certain class
of steely-eyed observers, Silicon
Valley's overvalued startups, its
kingmakers, and those who get caught
up in its hyped products need taking
down a peg.
A sampling: "I love Quora. Like I love
Prince Harry: for his sad, never-be-
king desperation," wrote the
anonymous scribe behind Jesus Christ
Silicon Valley in musings about a
question-and-answer service little
used outside Silicon Valley that has
nevertheless raised $50 million.
A spokeswoman for Quora declined to
comment on the blog or whether
company founders had read it.
At the reborn Valleywag, editor Sam
Biddle took aim at Larry Ellison and
the movie "The Wind Gods," which
documents the Oracle chief
executive's sailing exploits in the
America's Cup.
"There's been something missing in his
aggrandizing oeuvre," Biddle wrote.
"Maybe an invite from Larry Ellison to
the premiere of a movie about Larry
Ellison."
An Oracle spokeswoman declined to
comment.
Valleywag, a widely read blog owned
by Gawker Media that shut in 2008
due to low advertising, relaunched in
April.
White Men Wearing Google Glass is
the simplest site, little more than a
growing gallery of photographs of men
sporting the new wearable Google
computer. Individually, the photos
might not catch the eye, but
collectively they manage to look
ridiculous. "In its favor, if Google Glass
didn't exist, all these Silicon Valley
guys would be having affairs or buying
unsuitable motorbikes," reads the
site's sparse copy.
Trenchant commentary once filled
blogs about Silicon Valley, but many
died out in the mid 2000s. Think
F*ckedcompany or Uncov, blogs about
troubled companies of the dotcom era
and beyond that died in 2007 and
2008 respectively.
Perhaps the best known: the Secret
Diary of Steve Jobs, a blog written
anonymously by a writer using the pen
name Fake Steve Jobs. It took almost
a year before his identity as then-
Forbes writer Dan Lyons was
uncovered in 2007.
Over the past five years or so, the
digerati have gone relatively easy on
Silicon Valley. Those who have poked
fun at the Valley range from
AllThingsD's Kara Swisher to
commentators with Twitter handles
like crazydrunkvc and Vinod Coleslaw -
a parody of the well-known venture
capitalist Vinod Khosla. But they are
mild compared to the musings of
today's new crop, who seem to find
inspiration in the booming start-up
economy.
"We over-celebrate our
accomplishments out here, and we
over-tear people down," said Kenny
Van Zant, the business development
head at Asana, a business software
company founded by two Facebook
alumni who said he had glanced at
some of the new blogs.
Some think the new crop is pushing it
too hard.
"When you see it from the inside it
makes you want to make fun of it a
little less," says Philip Kaplan, the
founder of f*ckedcompany. A New
Yorker when he wrote it, he has since
moved to Silicon Valley and founded
several startups.
But being mean apparently pays when
it comes to amassing readers. "What
you have to do is find a sacred cow
and line up the spears," says Uncov
founder Ted Dziuba. "What you have
to do is be totally vicious."
That, many readers say, defines Jesus
Christ Silicon Valley, which started to
get noticed with a withering critique of
Dave Morin, the founder of social
network Path.
A spokeswoman for Path declined to
comment on the blog, whose writer
Tweets under the handle Jesus94306,
the zip code for part of Palo Alto,
home to many tech insider.
Some may call the writer a coward for
not putting a real name behind the
posts.
But sound career-related thinking
could be behind the secrecy. Just
consider the case of the writer behind
the Bitter Barista blog, a snarky look
at customers of a Seattle coffee shop
in Seattle. As soon as his identity
came out in February, the barista got
fired.
© Thomson Reuters 2013
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