Entrepreneurs: Young, Wealthy, Alone and Lonely
by Miki Saxon
Successful startups have spawned thousands of wealthy, young, predominantly male, workers who spend the majority of their daily 24 hours on a computer programming, gaming and surfing.
Additionally, more often than not, if they aren’t on their computer they’re doing the same stuff on their cell phone.
Most have little social life and fewer real-world social skills; more comfortable interacting with their buddies than with someone of the opposite sex.
Over the last few years ‘entrepreneur’ has come to mean anyone starting any kind of business.
The abundance and easy access to a myriad of Internet tools combined with the power of social media marketing makes it simple to start and run a business, whether it’s all online or has a real-world presence.
The combination forms a powerful attraction to another type of entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
Josephine” — a local prostitute — arranges a collection of t-shirts across the table. They’re emblazoned with phrases like “Winter is Coming” and “Geeks Make Better Lovers.” She wears them in her online ads to catch the eye of the area’s well-off engineers and programmers.
“I’m trying to communicate to them that I understand a little bit what it’s like to be techy, nerdy, geeky,” she says. There’s another thing Josephine and her clients have in common: Like many of the techies she caters to, Josephine views herself as an entrepreneur. (…)”I’m quoting Belle de Jour, who did Secret Diary of a Call Girl, but you know, you sell the strength of your arms when you dig a hole. Selling our bodies — which everyone thinks of as this big scary thing — anyone who has a job that requires labor does that.”
I don’t see this as a bad thing, as long as pimps, drugs and coercion are not present and the cops seem to agree.
Kyle Oki of the San Jose Police Department, works on San Jose’s Human Trafficking Task Force, which focuses on stopping coerced prostitution. He sees technology as one of the sex trade’s biggest growth drivers.
Some of the women have day jobs, but not all.
“I consider the sex work that I do my career,” Siouxsie says. “I would like the podcast to be a vehicle to really humanize sex work and have people see that I am just a girl trying to make a living and pursue the American dream.”
What I do consider sad is that most of the guys don’t have a clue to handling themselves in social situations.
Stryker’s a comics fan with tattoos of molecules on her neck who considers herself a natural-born nerd, and is happy to “train” geeky clients on how to interact with those they’re smitten with. “You explain it to them in a way that’s like a formula,” she says. “Then they say ‘ohhhh, math. It’s math. Eventually if I plug these things into the formula, it will work.’
Sad as well is the story of YouTube celebrities Jenna Marbles and her ex Max Weisz.
They both say the work is lonely. “Luckily, I have a buddy now who holds my camera for me,” Mr. Weisz said.
Ms. Mourey, on the other hand, still operates the camera by herself. She is adjusting to living alone in a city where, for all her Internet fame, she has few friends and rarely goes out.
Like lots of other YouTube personalities, Ms. Mourey said, “for the most part, we all just stay in our houses, alone, making videos.”
Your twenties used to be a time to learn about yourself in relation to other people; develop interpersonal skills that would last a lifetime and form relationships that would do the same.
It makes me wonder what kind of future life these kids will live.
Flickr image credit: 22Lauren
