The Rise of Anti-Heroes

Kanye, Elon, and Trump all transformed from heroes to anti-heroes

Housekeeping: We launched two new podcasts this past week: Request for Startups and Thesis Driven real estate podcast.

Also, I helped incubate a a new company with Sean Linehan. He’s CEO/founder, and I’m helping with distribution via Turpentine. It’s a staffing company for remote engineers called Squad. Check it out and either send me an email or fill this out if you want to hire talented engineers for $40-60/hr. Seeing the success my friend Jonathan Swanson had with Athena (use Athena if you want an EA!) inspired me to help Sean on a similar business model. Sean used an extensive remote engineering team at his most recent company and has had great results helping other people execute a similar strategy.

Also also, life is short, so treat people with the love and care and gratitude you will have for them when they are no longer there.

OK, now let’s get to the piece.

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Trump. Kanye. Elon. 

I'd argue that there are three defining rightist or rightist-adjacent cultural figures of whatever decade we're in the middle of: Trump, Elon, and Kanye.

Each of the three is a mega-mega-mega-mega superstar Jesus/Beatles level hit.

One became President, the second became the richest man in the world, and the third is virtually universally acknowledged by people in the creative fields as the peak artist of our time.

(And, worth noting, Kanye is also one of the richest self-made black Americans in history.)

Each of the three is a primal force, irrepressible, unbounded energy, unbelievable willpower, fearless, aggressive, constantly pushing, tilting hard into controversy, putting on a show, has a massive following, cult leader, etc.

None of the three has anything resembling what any of us could describe as "self control". And in fact up close they are all tortured souls. Or at least Elon and Kanye are. Who knows what Trump has deep down.

To put it more simply: each of the three is also a human wrecking ball — and that’s part of the appeal.

There is a new playbook that the three of them have written that has had massive success in generating attention. There are a lot of people trying to follow this playbook, or bits and pieces of it, some with some success. But most people who are trying to follow the playbook are not *really* willing to follow it, they won't take on that level of risk and pain. Mr. Beast and PewDiePie, to name just two examples, don’t want to get tagged as politically controversial. Whereas Trump, Elon, and Kanye are thrilled to be politically controversial.

A great book for thinking about this topic is called "Life The Movie" by Neal Gabler. That was written at the start of the reality TV era. He predicts essentially what's played out with these three figures + the reality TV/professional wrestling-ification of the broader culture. The takeaway of the book is that fiction is inherently limited — fiction writers can only write so much fiction and have it hold together in a way where people will follow along with it. Whereas nonfiction doesn't have that constraint at all. Nonfiction — he uses the term "lifies", real life competition to movies — can run forever, with infinite variations and unlimited creativity, and the audience will come along no matter how implausible it gets because it’s *actually happening*.

So viewed through that lens, the unifying pattern of Trump, Elon, and Kanye is that at their core, they're putting on a show. A massive, unlimited duration, infinitely varying, endlessly fascinating show — the greatest shows on earth. And that show attracts attention, yes, but also votes, feet in the street, shareholder investment, car sales, music sales, sneaker sales, etc.

And that’s why you can’t get the good of Trump, Elon, or Kanye without the bad. The bad is part of the appeal, the bad is what shows it’s authentic; and probably powers the engine — the torture that keeps them going.

This is why perhaps the most interesting part of the Kardashian universe was when we saw Kim begging Kanye to stop. Even they flinched because they’ve been appropriating authenticity for tv their whole life.

I remember a strain of cultural commentary from when Kim and Kanye first started dating along the lines of, why is this legit artist lowering himself into the reality TV world. Well...arguably he was doing the exact opposite: strapping himself onto a rocket ship.

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Kanye, Elon, and Trump were once far more normal than they are now. Kanye was beloved advocate for black empowerment. Elon was Tony Stark incarnate. Trump….well Trump at least ran the Apprentice TV show that was widely enjoyed. But each of these three transformed from heroes to anti-heroes. We should view this not only as commentary on them but also as commentary on the time they live in: Our society is not one of heroes anymore, it’s one of anti-heroes.

Think of the evolution in society like this:

1st era: promote heroism in an unironic way. This would have worked in the 1950s. It’s Clark Kent.

2nd era: attack/deconstruct heroism. This is the information environment we live in, where there are ubiquitous antibodies to unironic positivity. It’s Gawker/TikTok/irony.

3rd era: promote grim determination. More Punisher than Superman. This is Elon’s mindset. The recognition that there are internal enemies and obstacles but we will plow through them. Nietzscheanism, not optimism.

As Thiel has noted, our society today doesn’t believe in heroes. But it does believe in anti-heroes. And that may be enough.

Bukele from El Salvador for example is not a classical hero. He’s an anti-hero, a Punisher. That’s why he’s credible. There are internal enemies. He physically jails them. There are external enemies. He verbally attacks them.

So why don’t we have heroism anymore? Heroism only exists within an aligned society which is exactly what the West does not have. You kind of need a certain phase of civilization for “hero” stories to be taken in unironically. China and India are in that phase now; they have countries with national heroes. But in the west we’re too fragmented to agree on universal heroes. Which is why we have Greta on one side and Andrew Tate on the other, but no Clark Kent. Part of the appeal of both of those characters is the hatred they engender from the other side.

A hero is universally loved within a society, an anti-hero is hated by double digit percentages. Until new borders are established, this is a time of anti-heroes.

When Slave Morality is embraced by the establishment, the word “hero” today often means victim: Greta and the like.

And when Master Morality is demonized, traits like strength, masculinity, power, tribalism, are seen as anti-hero traits. Batman, Punisher, Donald Trump, Kyle Rittenhouse, 2nd Amendment, Andrew Tate — the mood of the right is not hero but anti-hero. The Republican establishment doesn’t want it, but the populace does.

Strap in, because for better and for worse, I think we’re only going to get more people following the Elon, Trump, and Kanye playbooks.

Thanks for various friends in group chats who inspired this piece