I'm loathe to reply because I know you don't want to engage anymore, but I think it's fair to reply to your reply on this point:
I'm sure you're right that the people involved in this will be defensive and roll their eyes, and I'm sympathetic to that human reaction, but it's also why society at large will continue along this path of thinking we suck.
If we roll our eyes at their legitimate criticism of all this sleazy stuff that is going on, then they're just right to criticize us.
And sure, "we shouldn't care if people at large think we suck because we roll our eyes at their criticism of our sleaziness" is a totally valid response to that. But I'm certainly not going to take up our cause against the inevitable backlash, in that case.
> This "bubble" that you speak of is literally just a bubble created by journalists.
I don't think so. I'm honestly sympathetic to how you've become convinced of that by the California Forever thing, which I agree has gotten a raw deal in the press. But I think this tech / SV / HN bubble is nonetheless a real thing. I work inside that bubble but live outside it. I spend a decent amount of time during my days reading and (often foolishly, like today) commenting on threads here.
But I spend a lot of my evenings and weekends with friends and family (in Colorado) who are very distant from our "scene". And I'm telling you, in my twenty year career, I have lived this evaluation from from "the internet is so awesome, google search is amazing, you know how to do software, that's so cool!" to "I don't know how you can stomach working in that industry". Sure, the media has had some impact on this, but we've also been super arrogant, have screwed up tons of stuff that is visible and salient to lots of people, and have seemed completely oblivious to this.
This episode is just one more example of that trend, and I think it's crazy to think "nah, this is all fine, nothing to see here".