What spawned this was seeing a lot of posts on Medium where people (people who really desire success) keep quoting the most famous things tech giants have said.
The most popular one is:
Move fast and break things.
Everyone quotes that. But later, Mark Zuckerberg updated that statement to be:
Move fast with stable infrastructure.
No one quotes that. He also said:
They “trust me” Dumb fucks.
If you choose only the first quote, you are selectively viewing history.
The irony of idolizing Mark Zuckerberg for once being the underdog and now being the establishment is that he is the exact person you would treat with irreverence and overthrow if you were him.
I can guarantee you, if you don’t think Mark Zuckerberg, a multi-billionaire, has an extremely strong P.R. team that constantly edits his public image, you are willfully ignorant of a lot of other things in your life.
The easiest way to never achieve your own version of success is to idolize someone else’s. The best you can achieve is a version of theirs.
Mark Zuckerberg is in the stratosphere. I’m not saying you’ll never get there, but you will have no idea what it’s like until you do. And also, you probably won’t.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” — John Steinbeck
Stop using quotes from rich people to justify your own actions.
Start thinking critically about the deeper reasons behind these people’s successes and start thinking critically about what your own values are.
