49% of Americans dislike tech billionaires, but you probably still want to be like them—here's why, say experts

According to a 2021 survey by Vox and Data for Progress, 37% of Americans think billionaires are terrible role models, and 49% said they have overall negative feelings towards them. And the heat is felt most prominently by the big-name tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

But despite the negative feelings, people still admire and look up to some of these individual figures. And it's not because of just their financial success; a 2021 study by Ohio State and Cornell found that people who stand against a class of extremely wealthy people still tend to admire individual billionaires like Musk and Bill Gates.

"The secret of Silicon Valley has been the storytelling," says Margaret O'Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington. O'Mara, who studies the history of modern America and the tech industry, highlights the reasons why the success stories of tech titans have stayed popular in the public mind against all odds.

It's 'a religion of entrepreneurship'

O'Mara describes intense admiration of tech billionaires as kind of "a religion of entrepreneurship": in the lack of presence of other role models and declining faith in other institutions like the government or churches or even science and the growing toughness to get ahead in traditional corporate America, people want to find a myth to believe in that will give them comfort, O'Mara says.

"And when you have these just really alluring and exciting stories of the whole startup company in your dorm room or garage that then becomes this trillion-dollar company, this exciting rags to riches story really fits into an American narrative that predates Silicon Valley," she says. "Those stories are exceptional, to be clear, but I think the fault is presuming that anyone can do this."

Most of the time these stories underplay advantages that people are born into such as gender, race and ethnicity, all of which determine what opportunities you may get and people you may be connected to.

Another story within the tech billionaire narrative that appeals to masses is that of disruption.

"'We are doing things differently and doing away with the gatekeepers and the establishment,' that narrative is also tapping into some things that run really deep in American culture," she says. "This is a nation founded on revolution, so being a rebel, not bowing to authority and being your own boss is kind of cool."

Tech billionaires define the terms of success

Another reason we just can't seem to quit these tech billionaires is because they have defined the terms of modern success, O'Mara says.

"This idea that what you should aspire to do is not to go work for a big company but start your own business and hack your way into being a founder like Mark Zuckerberg," is engraved into the public consciousness, O'Mara says.

So even when people are critiquing these tech billionaires they are often coming from a place where they think they can do replicate their success and do it better, O'Mara suggests. The overwhelming sentiment is "I want to build a better social network," or "I want to be a founder and start a company but I'm going to do this differently and make the world a better place."

The tech billionaire understanding of success is founded on entrepreneurship and is heavily about doing your own thing. But this focus on individualism rarely translates to real life success, she says. Most of the time, the success of these billionaires depends not just on their sole hard work but also on outside conditions like the connections they have due to the privileges they were born with and the hard work of the many people they work with.

"There's plenty of reasons to admire what these people have done and unpack what makes them successful," O'Mara says. "[But] I think the better remedy would be to have a society where there are more people who don't come in with advantages and networks and connections and have a chance to build their own thing."

It's a cult of personality

Richard R. John, professor of business history and journalism at Columbia University calls the hype surrounding tech billionaires a cult of personality, exacerbated heavily by not just regular media but also social media.

A cult of personality is the deliberate glorification of a specific public figure, a term most often used for authoritarian political figures. Throughout history, cult of personality hype of billionaire figures has usually been propagated through journalists and news media, John says, but with the founding of social media it grew massively through its unprecedented reach. "It's no longer regional, it's now national and even international," John says.

Although a cult of personality may sound nice to have on paper, it might doom your success in the long term. And betting everything on one charismatic leader can leave companies unbalanced when that leader leaves or fails, O'Mara says.

In 2018, tech investor Roger McNamee told CNBC Make It that a real issue in Silicon Valley is what he called a "cult of founders," saying that most of these tech billionaire leaders hold unchecked power but are not open to constructive criticism.

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