Dot-Com Resentment

It's something this paper's certainly been guilty of in recent months, but we're hardly alone. You hear it on news broadcasts and in subway conversations. Perhaps the most flagrant example has been the Post's celebration of the collapse of Pseudo.com, the Silicon Alley-based Internet broadcasting company. The Post had been covering Pseudo for years, usually in a very laudatory manner?but the minute the bottom fell out in September, you could almost hear the stifled giggling. And the stories kept coming?interviews with newly unemployed employees, interviews with bitter former employees, follow-up stories weeks after the fact.

It's just one example of many. The question remains, though?why? Not "Why are these companies failing?" I'll let the economists answer that one. But rather, "Why are we so happy to see these companies fail?" Especially when the Internet?and, thus, Internet companies?have become so central to the culture? When you wouldn't have your economic boom without them? When we no longer know how to use libraries or telephone books because we've become so dependent upon them?

There are quite a few possible explanations, actually. Wanting to see those smug kids in their hip clothes fall flat on their faces is right up there, I imagine. Beyond that, however, is the general hatred we feel toward those people who're actually making it in a Get Rich Quick culture. These kids, it's presumed, are making millions by doing virtually nothing.

Weird thing is, it's a hatred that comes from both ends of the economic spectrum. It comes from the poor, who work two jobs and still can't make it, seeing the gulf between the haves and have-nots widening astronomically. And it comes from Old Money, watching these upstarts moving into their territory. In between, I guess, are the people who just hate those smug kids.

Across the board, though, I think it can be traced back to what Nietzsche, in on the Genealogy of Morals, termed ressentiment. It's met every new major successful industry that has ever appeared in the world?automobiles, Christianity, television, computers. We hate these people for succeeding, for making more money than we do much faster than we ever could. And we love to see them fail. It's an old, old story.

Something to keep in mind, though, next time you cheer the failure of another multimillion-dollar dot-com?something a former Pseudo employee reminded me of recently: the man who did make millions with that company sold it before the bottom fell out. He has his money, and he's keeping it. Who was hurt? The near-200 employees?the little people?the art directors and receptionists and secretaries and carpenters?who were canned without any prior notice, dumped on the street with no severance packages and armloads of worthless stock. Sent away with nothing.

For better or worse, it's a new world we're living in, and the next time you let your resentment run wild and free at the latest bad news, keep in mind?as goes the New Economy, so goes the economy.