Why Do Tech Billionaires Make for Good TV Villains? Pretty Much Pop #93 Considers “Made for Love,” et al.

The tech genius has become the go-to bad guy in recent films: They’re our mod­ern mad sci­en­tists with all imag­in­able resources and sci­ence at their com­mand, able to release dystopic tech­nol­o­gy to sur­veil, con­trol, and pos­si­bly mur­der us. Even Lex Luthor was made into a “tech bro” in Bat­man v. Super­man.

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an dis­cuss the HBO Max series Made for Love star­ring Cristin Mil­i­oti, as well as Alex Gar­land’s Devs, Mike Judge’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, and Jed Rothestein’s doc­u­men­tary WeWork: Or the Mak­ing and Break­ing of a $47 Bil­lion Uni­corn. How does this trope work in com­e­dy vs. seri­ous media? How does it relate to real-life tech moguls? Can women be vil­lains of this sort, or is a cri­tique of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty part of this sort of depic­tion?

To learn more, read what we read:

• “HBO’s New Series Found a Bet­ter Way to Sat­i­rize Sil­i­con Val­ley” by Matthew Dessem
• “Made for Love’s Bil­ly Mag­nussen Is Decon­struct­ing Douchebags and Oth­er Tox­ic Tech Men” by Jack­son McHen­ry
• “‘Made for Love’ and the Rise of the Tech-Bro Bil­lion­aire Vil­lain” by Kayleigh Don­ald­son
• “Why Made For Love Changed Byron Gogol (& The Book’s Dol­phin Lust Sto­ry­line) For HBO Max” by Shan­non Car­lin
• “10 Movies and TV Shows You Can Watch to Under­stand Why Tech is One of the Most Pow­er­ful Indus­tries in His­to­ry” by Katie Canales
• “9 Enter­tain­ing Movies and Shows Based on Sil­i­con Val­ley, on Net­flix, Dis­ney + Hot­star and Ama­zon Prime Video” by Deepali Singh
• “Hol­ly­wood’s Best and Worst Depic­tions of Sil­i­con Val­ley” by Chan­dra Steele

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.