“Marc Andreessen — a pioneer of the web browser, a Facebook board member, and a top venture capitalist — is worth an estimated $1.7 billion. His VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, controls billions more in capital and is a major force in guiding the next generation of well-heeled start-ups … He seems to live well: In the last six-plus months, he’s spent $255 million on three homes in Malibu. He ticks some of the other popularity metrics: a million Twitter followers, a regular on the conference and speaking circuit, a member of the Internet Hall of Fame. He’s donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats and Republicans, and he has the ear of fellow billionaires including Elon Musk. Andreessen is a big deal — a tech, business, and political power player — in whatever sense that still matters. For Andreessen, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. This putative titan of industry has spent the past week tweeting about how he and some of his fellow billionaires are less powerful than one might think. In fact, they might not even count as ‘elites,’ that most hallowed signifier of political and economic influence.” Jacob Silverman nails it in NYMag: Pity the Billionaire. I wrote about this really weird trend when Elon Musk first made his move for Twitter. Musk has 81 million followers on Twitter. Almost every word he says makes headlines. He is the richest person in the world and among the most famous, too. To quote the great philosopher Nigel Tufnel, if the loudest, free-est speech ever measured goes to ten, then Elon’s goes to eleven. His speech goes to eleven. His fame goes to eleven. And his wealth goes to infinity and beyond. And yet, he feels like he’s somehow being shortchanged by the current ecosystem. I see this trend playing out with other wildly successful businesspeople as well. This era brings us a staggering version of narcissistic victimhood. People who couldn’t be benefiting more from the current state of things are intent on convincing themselves that they are actually the victim of the current state of things.